Linus Mao joined the PhD program in German with a Designated Emphasis in Film and Media Studies at University of California, Berkeley in 2023. They work on twentieth century and contemporary German and Chinese literature, film, and transmedia cultural products, with a theoretical focus on Marxist aesthetic theory, the Frankfurt School critical theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy of history, and formalism. Their current project investigates the often-corporate-commissioned industrial films (Industriefilm) in the Weimar Republic in juxtaposition with vlog-styled short videos filmed and posted by Chinese industrial workers in the 2020s. They received their B.A. in College of Letters (Comparative Literature) and German Studies from Wesleyan University. They wrote their honors thesis on the works of filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, discussing the relationship between cinematic time, queer temporality/historiography, and Auteur theory.

Andrew Blough is a PhD in the German department at UC Berkeley. They joined the department in 2019 after receiving an M.A. in Philosophy from Duquesne University. They are interested in the interrelation of mediality and knowledge construction, particularly as this pertains to poetics from Romanticism to concrete poetry. They are currently working on a dissertation on categories of the experimental in modern German poetics.