Christof Decker teaches American studies and media studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU). He has published widely on documentary and Hollywood cinema, avant-garde film, literary and cultural history, melodrama, and the history of mass media. Most recently he edited Visuelle Kulturen der USA/Visual Cultures of the USA: On the History of Painting, Photography, Film, Television, and New Media (2010) to which he contributed a chapter on American film. Other recent publications include "Trauma Narratives, Mixed Media, and the Meditation on the Invisible." Imaginations 3.1 (Summer 2012): 92-103, and "Image History: Compilation Film and the Nation at War." Screening the Americas: Narration of Nation in Documentary Film. Eds. Josef Raab, Sebastian Thies, and Daniela Noll-Opitz. Tempe, Az: Bilingual Press/ Trier: WVT, 2011. 299-316. Professor Decker received an M.A. from the University of Frankfurt, conducted postgraduate research at Goldsmiths' College (London) and received a Ph.D. from the Free University Berlin in 1994. He was Honorary Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and joined the LMU in 2001 where he is teaching in the Department of English and American Studies. His current research interests include projects on gender and media, the history of documentary and compilation film, and screen violence.