Karen Fiss is an associate professor at California College of the Arts. She was film curator for the exhibition Encounters with the 1930s, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in fall 2012, and is also at work on two book manuscripts: From Nation Building to Nation Branding and Modernity on Display. Her books include Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture (MIT Press, 1990).