Cara Tovey
Lecturer
Cara Tovey is a Lecturer in German in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to UCLA, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of German and Russian Studies at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. She completed her Ph.D. in German Studies, with a Designated Emphasis in Film and Media Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. Her primary research interests include the intersection of early cinema and German literature with performance studies in the early 20th century. Her research focuses on questions of the body and performance, critical disability studies, environmentalism, and social movements. Her secondary research interests include 20th-century Austria, in particular Red Vienna, as well as contemporary transnational cinema. Her publications include the chapter “Nature” in the Red Vienna Sourcebook, November 2020, winner of the American Library Association’s “Best Historical Materials” award; “The Language of Dance, the Dancer’s Eye, and Aesthetic Experience in Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II” in Seminar, May 2022; “Performing Deaf Identity and Deaf Gain in Michael Arden’s 2015 Spring Awakening,” in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Vol. 17, Issue 1, 2023; and “Liquid Space and Digital Aesthetics in Babylon Berlin” (co-written with Michael Sandberg) appearing in Babylon Berlin, German Visual Spectacle, and Global Media Culture (Bloomsbury Press, 2024). She is also the co-editor of Karl-Marx-Hof: Schüsselbau der Moderne (Mandelbaum Verlag, 2024), and has a forthcoming chapter, “The Urgency of Dis/ability in the German Curriculum,” in Teaching German Literature of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries with PMLA.
Dr. Tovey also serves as the faculty advisor for the German Club and UCLA’s chapter of Delta Phi Alpha, the National German Honor Society.
Education
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, German Studies
M.A., University of Cincinnati, German Studies
B.A., University of Cincinnati, German Studies
Featured Works
Selected Publications
Articles
- “Performing Deaf Identity and Deaf Gain in Michael Arden’s 2015 Spring Awakening” Forthcoming in Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies (Liverpool University Press) Vol. 17, Issue 1, 2023
- “The Language of Dance, the Dancer’s Eye, and Aesthetic Experience in Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II” Seminar, May 2022
- “Liquid Space and Digital Aesthetics in Babylon Berlin” coauthored with Michael Sandberg. Babylon Berlin, German Visual Spectacle, and Global Media Culture, ed. Hester Bear and Jill Suzanne Smith, Bloomsbury Publishing, March 2024
- “Nature” in Red Vienna Sourcebook ed. Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, and Ingo Zechner, Camden House Press, November 2020
- 2021 Winner of the American Library Association’s Award for “Best Historical Materials”
- “Natur” in Das Rote Wien. Schlüsseltexte der Zweiten Wiener Moderne 1919–1934 ed. Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, and Ingo Zechner, De Gruyter, October 2020 German edition of volume above
Translations
- “Baggage” Translation of “Gepäck” by Deniz Utlu in Das neue Deutschland. Migration and Diversity in Germany Today edited by Özkan Ezli and Gisela Staupe
- Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World, Vol. 9, Issue 1, 2013-14
Honors and Awards
Community-Engaged Course Development Grant, 2024-25. Co-recipient with Dr. Elsa Duval, “Teaching European Languages and Cultures in Los Angeles: Connecting with Diverse Communities”