Stephen Brockmann is Professor of German with courtesy appointments in English and History at Carnegie Mellon University. He was the president of the German Studies Association in 2012-2013, and he currently serves as president of the International Brecht Society.  In 2007 he won the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies/Humanities. His major research projects explore the relationship between literature and culture on the one hand and German national identity on the other. His most recent book, A Critical History of German Film, which was published in 2010, is an overview of German film history from the perspective of German national identity. German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour, published in 2004, examines the ways in which German intellectuals and writers, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, confronted perhaps the most difficult complex of problems ever faced by modern intellectuals in the western world: the complete defeat and devastation of their country, the crimes of the Hitler dictatorship, the onset of the Cold war, and ultimately the political division of the nation. He is currently at work on a book about East German literary culture from 1945-1958.