Eric Rentschler received his academic training in German literature and intellectual history, studying in Stuttgart, Bonn, and Prague, before taking his doctoral degree at the University of Washington in 1977. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Humboldt, ACLS, DAAD, and Fulbright grants as well as the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Prize for best teaching by a senior faculty member at Harvard (2001) and the Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship (2003).
Rentschler's publications concentrate on film history, theory, and criticism, with particular emphasis on German cinema during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the post-1945 and postwar eras. His articles have appeared in a variety of collections and periodicals; his books include West German Film in the Course of Time and The Ministry of Illusion. He was also the editor of German Film and Literature, West German Filmmakers on Film, Augenzeugen, and The Films of G. W. Pabst. Presently he is completing a book project, Haunted by Hitler: The Return of the Nazi Undead and working on a manuscript titled Courses in Time: Film in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1962-1989.
PhD, University of Washington