Biography
Prior to joining King’s in 2019 as Lecturer in Film Studies, I worked as Research Fellow at the Institute of Media Studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany. I completed my PhD in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick in 2016.
In The Invisibilities of Torture: The Presence of Absence, I analyse the cinematic rendering of the torture committed during the War in Iraq and under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Beyond addressing the representational ethics of such images, my work explores affect as critical mode. I demonstrate how some audiovisual texts succeed in making the consequences of torture experientially available to the audience, thereby expanding epistemological approaches towards torture, to include long-term, emotional and collective repercussions.
My research remains interdisciplinary and oriented towards ethical as well as theoretical concerns. I am currently working on a chapter on Jordan Peele’s Get Out for the anthology Screen Ethics under Globalization, and exploring questions of audiovisuality in looped formats such as GIFs and short-video formats shared on TikTok.
Research interests and PhD supervision
- Ethics on Film, Political Cinema, Documentary Cinema; Violence and Film; Race, Gender, Class in Film, Cultural Studies
- Transnational Cinema, World Cinema, especially Cinema of the Southern Cone
- Film/Philosophy; Haptic Visuality; Affect Theory
- Post-cinema, GIFs, digital media and film, Dispersed Agency
- Academic Podcasts, Video Essays, Creative Methodology and Pedagogy, Community outreach
Teaching
In my teaching, I strive to convey my passion for the films, theories and objects we are studying. My goal is to foster an appreciation for the abilities of deep thinking and critical analysis in my students and to guide them towards developing a metacritical awareness of why and how they study. It is important for me to establish in each class an atmosphere of trust and respect.
Book a meeting with me during my office hours.
Expertise and public engagement
- External examiner for University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
- Introduction to Film Series on German Female Directors at the Istituto Tedesco in Perugia, March 2019
- Mentor at the mentoring programme of the University of Konstanz, 2018 - 2019
- Advisory Committee (Beirat) at the University of Tübingen summer semester 2018 – winter term 2019
- Exploring Game Theory through Game Play,” workshop at Brunel University London, May 2018
- Public lecture on Torture in Film, Science Pub Tübingen, April 2018
- Workshop with students of all disciplines about Film and Violence: “History, ethics, and perpetrators in The Act of Killing” at Tübingen Monastery, December 2017
Selected publications
- Jung, Berenike. The Invisibilities of Political Torture. The Presence of Absence in US and Chilean Fiction Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).
- Jung, Berenike. “Within the limits of the possible: Aesthetics and Ethics in Larraín’s Dictatorship Trilogy,” in Laura Hatry (ed.), ReFocus: The International Director Series (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020).
- Jung, Berenike & Bruzzi, Stella. Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain (London/New York: Routledge, 2019).
- Jung, Berenike & Girina, Ivan (eds). G|A|M|E - Games as Art, Media, Entertainment 8: ‘Would you kindly?’: Claiming Video Game Agency as Interdisciplinary Concept (2019).
- Jung, Berenike. “ ‘Now You’re In The Sunken Place’: Agency in Reaction GIFs” in G. Plaitano, S. Venturini, P. Villa (eds) Moving Pictures, Living Machines. Automation, Animation and the Imitation of Life in Cinema and Media (Mimesis International: Udine-Milan 2020).