Barton Byg to be Honored with Ulfers Foundation Award at NYU

Barton Byg, professor emeritus of German and film studies, has been honored with the Ulfers Foundation Award by New York University’s (NYU) department of German.

The Ulfers Foundation Award was established by Friedrich Ulfers, associate professor of German at NYU in recognition of an individual whose achievements have served to promote and highlight German culture and history. This award is endowed with a $5,000 grant. Byg was presented with the award in a ceremony on Tuesday, Sept. 25 at the Deutches Haus at NYU in New York City.

Byg retired in 2018. He was a professor in German and Scandinavian studies, associate faculty in comparative literature and communication and as a founding faculty member of the interdepartmental program in film studies.

His principal areas of research and teaching include the work of filmmakers Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub; German Democratic Republic (GDR) cinema and culture, documentaries; culture of the Cold War; memory culture; landscape and film; and color and film. As founding director of the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst, the only archive and study center outside Europe devoted to the cinema of the GDR and related subjects, Byg was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in April 2017.

He will donate the 2019 Ulfers Foundation Award grant to the DEFA Film Library Endowment.