Office: Phelps 6220
Email: seyfertab@ucsb.edu
Teaching and Academic Specialization
My research explores the intersections of film history, digital methodologies, and transcultural studies, with a focus on European cinema during the late Weimar Republic and the transition from silent to sound film. My dissertation, Cinematic Loss: Missing Pieces of German Film, 1929–1933, examines how absent films shape historical and cultural discourse. As a co-editor of Enchanted by Cinema, I investigate exilic filmmakers’ transnational legacies. I am also the creator of The Weimar Talkies Project: A Virtual Archive, a digital humanities initiative that reconstructs Germany's first sound films through archival research and media archaeology.
My teaching philosophy is inspired by cultural studies and critical pedagogy, aiming to help students understand the cultural, political, and historical forces that have shaped the lives of diverse individuals and communities.
Recent Publications
- "Cinema of the Underprivileged." Aesthetic in Transition. Ed. Donna W. Brett and Deborah A. Barnstone. Bloomsbury, May 2025
- “Kinder dieses Volkes.” Die Musik macht den Ton. Ed. Hans-Michael Bock, Jan Distelmeyer, and Jörg Schöning. Text+Kritik, April 2025
- Enchanted by Cinema. Co-edited with Jan-Christopher Horak, Berghahn Books, May 2024