After receiving his PhD from Stanford University in 1973, Professor Kaes taught German and comparative literature as well as film studies at the University of California, Irvine, serving as director of Comparative Literature from 1978 to 1981. In Berkeley since 1981, he holds a joint appointment between the German and Film & Media Studies departments. He served as director of the Film Studies Program from 1990-98 and was Chair of the German Department from 2001-06.
Kaes was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Research Grant (1978); an Alexander v. Humboldt Foundation Fellowship (1984/85; 1986/87); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1989/90); an NEH Research Fellowship; a UC President’s Research Fellowship (1995); and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize for 2005/06. He was a scholar in residence at the Getty Center for Art History and the Humanities in 1989/90, at the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio in 1998, at the Zentrum für Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin in 2000 and at the IFK (International Research Center for Cultural Studies) in Vienna in 2001. At UC Berkeley, he received a Distinguished Teaching Award in the Humanities in 2010.
Besides teaching modern German literature, cultural theory, German film history, photography and film theory, Kaes is also affiliated with the Critical Theory Program where he regularly offers seminars on the Frankfurt School. He was director of four NEH Summer Seminars for College Teachers (1989-94) and is co-director of the bi-annual German Film Institute since 1985. He taught a Master Class at the University of Amsterdam and workshops in Jerusalem, Seoul, Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge University. He was a visiting professor at the Australian National University in Canberra (1995), Harvard University (1999) and Tel Aviv University (2008).
Kaes has served as a consultant to modern art exhibitions at LACMA, MoMA, SFMoMA and to programming at the Bologna Film Festival and the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone, as well as the Criterion DVD collection. He also served on the Editorial Board of the PMLA, German Quarterly and New German Critique, among others. Since 1994, he is co-editor of the 50-volume book series “Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism.”
