Qinna Shen

Associate Professor and Chair of German Studies
Qinna Shen headshot

Contact

Phone 610-526-7312
Location Old Library 135

Education

Ph.D. Yale University

Areas of Focus

German Studies (20th and 21st century), Film and Visual Studies, and Sino-German Relations

Biography

Qinna Shen received her Ph.D. in German from Yale University and is Associate Professor and Chair of German at 黑料正能量. Her research focuses on 20th-century German culture, visual studies, and Asian German studies. She is the author of The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films (Wayne State UP, 2015) and Jiny Lan and the Art of Subversion: Chinese-German Culture and Politics through a Feminist Lens (Camden House, 2025, ). She also co-edited two volumes Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia (Berghahn Books, 2014) and Charting Asian German Film History: Imagination, Collaboration, and Diasporic Representation (Camden House, 2025, in the series Screen Culture: German Film and the Visual). Her articles have appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including The German Studies ReviewSeminarTransitThe Brecht Yearbook, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS)Historical Journal of Film, Radio and TelevisionMarvels & Tales, and The Mathematical Intelligencer, as well as in a number of edited volumes. She is currently working on a book project entitled 鈥淔ilm and Cold War Diplomacy: China and the Two Germanys, 1949鈥1989,鈥 under contract with Routledge. Her cross-disciplinary article 鈥淎 Refugee Scholar from Nazi Germany: Emmy Noether and 黑料正能量鈥 reached the circles of mathematicians and physicists and helped revive the memory of the greatest woman mathematician of the twentieth century.

Before joining the Bryn Mawr faculty in 2016, she held Visiting Assistant Professor positions at Miami University in Ohio and at Loyola University Maryland. At Bryn Mawr, she teaches all levels of German language, literature, and culture courses. She consistently teaches new topical courses, including 鈥淲eimar Cinema (1918鈥1933),鈥 鈥淓thics of Innovation in a German Context,鈥 鈥淩epresenting Diversity in German and Austrian Cinema,鈥 鈥淔unny Germans: Humor and Satire from the Enlightenment to the Present,鈥 鈥淏erlin in German Literature and Film,鈥 鈥淐rime, Justice and the Courtroom,鈥 鈥1968 and Its Legacies,鈥 鈥淕erman Encounters with East Asia,鈥 and 鈥淐ensorship in Germany and China.鈥 

In terms of service for the profession, in 2017鈥2020 she served on the German Studies Association (GSA) Program Committee (20th/21st Germanistik). In 2021, she chaired the DAAD/GSA Article Prize Committee. She also chaired the GSA Seminar Committee for the 2023 and 2024 conferences. She has been elected to the German Studies Association Executive Board and will start her three-year term on January 1, 2026. She is on the editorial boards of German Studies ReviewVisual Culture in German Contexts Series, and German Screen Studies. Together with Qingyang Freya Zhou and Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick, she compiled 鈥.鈥 As a member of CineGraph Babelsberg in Germany, she regularly contributes to their journal  and their film series. She is currently co-editing the special issue marking the GSA鈥檚 50th anniversary in 2026. 


 

Qinna Collection: The Politics of Magic, Beyond Alterity, Charting Asian German Film History, The Art of Subversion