Elsa-Margareta Venzmer

Elsa-Margareta Venzmer

Elsa-Margareta Venzmer holds a bachelor’s degree in Media Studies and Musicology and a master’s degree in Media Studies from the Universität Regensburg. In addition, she received a certificate in IT Studies. During her studies she worked as a journalist for the German online newspaper ShortNews, as a film editor for the website Save.TV, and as a freelance author. In 2021 she gained experience as a research fellow at the Institute for Media Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Her research interests include film studies, quality television, fan studies, feminist theory and affect studies.

 

Project: Ineffable Husbands – Die Inszenierung und Rezeption sentimentaler Männerfreundschaften in Buddy-Filmen und -Serien. Versuch einer Systematisierung des Verhältnisses von Queerbaiting, Affizierung und Fandom

The dissertation project examines the staging and reception of sentimental male friendships in buddy films and TV series. The aim of the project is to determine how these media texts affect viewers through their aesthetic design and narrative themes, and further, how these stimulate emotional appropriation processes and participatory culture, especially the writing of fan fiction. The main interest lies in such fan fictions in which female fans transform two male characters, who in the original texts are linked by a heterosexual friendship (“buddies”), into a homosexual couple and create a love story. The project seeks to analyze what prompts authors of fan fiction to take this narrative step and focuses in particular on the phenomenon of ‘queerbaiting’. The project intends to show that sentimentality plays a crucial role in queerbaiting and affecting the spectator by analyzing films and TV series that rely on the sentimental mode. Next to the forms of the sentimental in cultural texts, the project is also interested in its functions: a second aim is thus to investigate whether and why media producers use certain aesthetics and narrative structures in a targeted manner – for example, so that the discussion of their media texts through the creative appropriation processes of the fans continues many years after their release.

 

Talks

  • 07/2024: “Feelings in Frames: Evolving Gender Portrayals in Animated Family Sitcoms”, joint workshop The Poetics and Politics of Family Feelings of the research training groups 2845 “Family Matters – Figuren der Entbindung” (LMU München) and 2726 “The Sentimental in Literature, Culture, and Politics” (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung München.
  • 11/2023: “Ineffable Husbands – The Staging and Reception of Sentimentality in Buddy Films and TV Series. Systematizing the Interplay of Queerbaiting, Affect, and Fandom”, Method Lab of the Fan and Participation Studies workgroup of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM), Zoom.
  • 09/2023: “Sentimentale Abhängigkeiten zwischen FernsehproduzentIn und Fan: Zum Verhältnis von Queerbaiting, Affekt und Fandom”, annual conference Abhängigkeiten of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM), Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
  • 06/2023: “Einführung in die feministische Filmanalyse”, lecture Vermittlung der Grundlagen der Filmanalyse in einem diskursiv-disziplinübergreifenden Kontext, Hochschule Fulda – University of Applied Sciences.
  • 05/2023: “Einführung ins Quality Television”, seminar The Sentimental Disposition of (Popular) Posthumanism (Christian Krug, English Cultural and Literary Studies), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
  • 04/2023: “Ineffable Husbands – Die Inszenierung und Rezeption sentimentaler Männerfreundschaften in Buddy-Filmen und -Serien. Versuch einer Systematisierung des Verhältnisses von Queerbaiting, Affizierung und Fandom”, Film- und Medienwissenschaftliches Kolloquium (ffk36), Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg & Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.
  • 01/2023: “‘We’re partners. What happens to you, happens to me.’ Buddies im Spielfilm” (with Kay Kirchmann), lecture Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zu Freundschaft zwischen Gleichheit und Differenz II, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

 

Publications  

  • In print: Perspektiven des Quality Television: Theorie – Ästhetik – Fandom – Queer-feministische und gesellschaftskritische Serienpraktiken. Chemnitz: TheNextArt Verlag, 2024.
  • In print: “Vorwort: ‘Quality TV ist doch schon vorbei!’ – Zur Perspektive einer modernen Fernsehwissenschaft”. In: Venzmer, Elsa-Margareta (ed.): Perspektiven des Quality Television: Theorie – Ästhetik – Fandom – Queer-feministische und gesellschaftskritische Serienpraktiken. Chemnitz: TheNextArt Verlag, 2024.
  • In print: “It’s Ineffable? The Role of Sentimentality and Queerbaiting in Fan-Creator Interactions: Exemplified by the Good Omens Fandom”. In: Venzmer, Elsa-Margareta (ed.): Perspektiven des Quality Television: Theorie – Ästhetik – Fandom – Queer-feministische und gesellschaftskritische Serienpraktiken. Chemnitz: TheNextArt Verlag, 2024.
  • In print: “Nicholas Maniu: Queere Männlichkeiten: Bilderwelten männlich-männlichen Begehrens und queerer Geschlechtlichkeit”. In: MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen | Reviews, Nr. 4-24, 2024.
  • In print: “Women representing women in the nuclear family: Exemplified by the female characters of the animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers”. In: Animation Practice, Process & Production, vol. 13; Special Issue: Animating Change: Women and Genderqueer Animators, 2024.
  • Forthcoming: Fandom | Cultures | Research (with Vera Cuntz-Leng, Sophie G. Einwächter, Anne Ganzert, Vanessa Ossa & Kaya Mogge), 2024.
  • 25 Jahre Manga-Boom. Einblicke in die Welt der deutschsprachigen Manga-Kunst. Erlangen: Comicmuseum Erlangen, 2024.
  • “Ineffable Husbands. Sentimental Queerbaiting in the TV Series Good Omens”. In: ffk Journal, Nr. 9, 2024, pp. 49–66.
  • “Finding Those ‘Hints’: Sentimental Queerbaiting on TV Exemplified by the Amazon Prime Series Good Omens”. In: Piepiorka, Christine & Zündel, Jana (eds.): Blog Fernsehmomente of the working group Television of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM), 2023  (peer-reviewed).
  • “Das digitale Panopticon – Wie die NSA-Überwachung unser Verhalten verändert”. In: Bachor, Martina/Hug, Theo & Pallaver, Günther (eds.):  DataPolitics. Zum Umgang mit Daten im digitalen Zeitalter. Innsbruck: innsbruck university press, 2021, pp. 73–91.
  • “Big Data, Big Brother, Big Trouble. How a world dominated by data controls our lives” (with Christian Fernández Larrere). In: Fischer, Christian & Kühn, Guido (eds.): Formula Mundi. Impact on Tomorrow [Anthology of the international film festival of the same name]. Hochschule Fulda – University of Applied Sciences: E-Publi, 2021, pp. 94–106.
  • “‘What’s happened to the American Dream?’ Intertextualität und Interpiktorialität in der Graphic Novel Watchmen”. In: ForAP, vol. 3 Nr. 3, 2020, pp. 27–43.
  • Bob’s Burgers – Gender-Aspekte in einer Animationsserie. Regensburg: Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg, 2016.
  • “Geschlechterrollen in der Werbung”. In: Ottmann, Solveig (ed.): Blog Sprembergs Werbeschallplatten, 2014 (peer-reviewed).

Teaching

  • Seminar “Einführung in die feministische Film- und Fernsehtheorie”, Institute for Theater and Media Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, summer term 2023.