Dr. Rebecca Schäfer is the Program Coordinator for German Studies at RIT. She received her Ph.D. from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany. Before joining RIT, she taught at Mainz and, from 2022 to 2025, at Binghamton University (SUNY). She teaches all levels of the German language curriculum as well as interdisciplinary, cross-listed outreach courses, i.e., on German film history or German literary and critical theory. Spanning German-speaking and transnational contexts, her research and publications often discuss sexuality, gender, age(ing), and especially temporality, such as her dissertation and ensuing monograph on alternative temporalities in contemporary film and visual culture, which was awarded the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Award. She is currently working on a series of articles: about intersections of gender, aging, and disability in the films of Adina Pintilie, about German and acts of transnational language transfer in the music of Rosalía, Lady Gaga, and the broader global pop music scene; and about the temporalities and heterotopian spaces of Techno and the nightclub. She is an alumna of the Harvard Institute for World Literature (IWL).

Beyond her academic career, she’s also worked in media and the cultural sector, including as a journalist covering the German Bundesliga, the UEFA Champions League, and the Olympics, and as a senior publicist for the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).