Event
Battle Choreography on the Hollywood Screen: D-Day and its cultural survival.
A specialist in 19th and 20th century literature, Elisabeth Bronfen is a Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich. She received her M.A. at Harvard University (1980) and her Ph.D. at the University of Munich (1986). Elisabeth Bronfen has written ten books and numerous articles on the topics of literature, gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory and art. Her book publications include: Home in Hollywood. The Imaginary Geography of Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2004); Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester University Press, 1992); The Knotted Subject. Hysteria and its Discontents (Princeton, 1998) and the monograph Sylvia Plath in the series “Writers and their Work” (Northcote Press, 1998). She has also published a collection of essays: "Death and Representation," co-edited with Sarah W. Goodwin (Johns Hopkins University Press), and she edited a four-volume German edition of Anne Sexton’s poetry and letters. Her dissertation was published as the book Dorothy Richardson's Art of Memory. Space, Identity, Text (Manchester University Press, 1999). In 2004, she published a collection of essays on cross-mapping, entitled Liebestod und Femme Fatale. Der Austausch sozialer Energien zwischen Oper, Literatur und Film (Suhrkamp Verlag). She also co-edited Feminist Consequences. Theory for the New Century, with Misha Kavka (Columbia University Press, 2000). Elisabeth Bronfen’s most recent book is about the importance of the diva in celebrity culture, entitled Die Diva. Geschichte einer Bewunderung (Schirmer und Mosel). Current research projects include a cultural history of the night, an introduction to the writings of Stanley Cavell, a book on War Cinema, and a study of Elizabeth I as an example for the politics of celebrity culture.
This program is made possible through the generous support of FEW (Fund to Encourage Women) and Penn’s Germanic Languages and Literatures Department and Cinema Studies Program.