Elisabeth Bronfen

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Elisabeth Bronfen (2013)

Elisabeth Bronfen (born April 23, 1958 in Munich ) is a cultural and literary scholar and author; she is a professor of English studies and professor at the English Department of the University of Zurich . She has also been Global Distinguished Professor at New York University since 2007 . Bronfen has published numerous essays in the fields of gender studies , psychoanalysis , literature, film and cultural studies as well as some highly regarded books. She currently lives in Zurich.

Live and act

Elisabeth Bronfen studied German , English and comparative literature at Radcliffe College and Harvard University , where she obtained her first academic degree. From 1985 to 1992 she worked at the University of Munich , where she did her doctorate on Dorothy Richardson's pilgrimage novels. Since 1993 she has held a chair at the University of Zurich. Her original area of ​​expertise is the Anglo-American literature of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In her habilitation thesis Over Her Dead Body (1992), Bronfen's interdisciplinary, post - structuralist discourse mainly focused on an original deficiency - death - and processes of re-figuration and defiguration, which, in her opinion, often occur in our culture through the female body, or the female corpse, to be negotiated. Her work quickly became known beyond specialist circles. Certain thematic affinities of her analyzes to the investigations of Klaus Theweleit ( Book of Kings ) come to mind. Bronfen's interpretations, however, draw from numerous theoretical sources, one could name here, for example, Judith Butler , Michail Bachtin , Jacques Lacan , Charles Taylor , Stephen Greenblatt , Michel Foucault , Jacques Derrida , Stanley Cavell , Roland Barthes .

Bronfen's more recent works deal, among other things, with Shakespeare's comedies, the European-American dialogue in post-war culture, the cultural history of the night, studies of Pop Art and Hollywood cinema, and the relationships between literary and visual culture. Further research areas of Bronfen are Mad Men and the cultural imaginary of America, Shakespeare's theater, seriality and the DVD novels of the 21st century, and the question of the connection between political sovereignty and gender .

Elisabeth Bronfen was also a member of the jury of the Klagenfurt Ingeborg Bachmann Competition on several occasions . She was also in charge of the four-volume first German edition of Anne Sexton's poems and letters , contributed to Kindler's Literature Lexicon , wrote a foreword for the republication of Ambrose Bierce's stories from the civil war (Elster, 2009), and wrote various essays for literary and film studies as well as psychological ones Specialized magazines, also wrote individual articles for Vogue and the daily newspaper . She has been a full member of the Academia Europaea since 2011 .

Works

In her habilitation Over her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (1992, German only about her corpse. Death, Femininity and Aesthetics ) Bronfen examined the representation of femininity and death using examples such as Wuthering Heights , Frankenstein and Vertigo - Aus the realm of the dead . Bronfen argues that the narrative and pictorial representation of death can be read as a symptom of our culture. Because the female body is culturally constructed as a superlative instance of the non-self , culture uses art to dream the deaths of beautiful women.

In the collection of essays Homesickness: Illusion Games in Hollywood , Bronfen deals with American films as a representation of psychological processes using cinema classics such as The Wizard of Oz , Rebecca and Seven . In particular, Bronfen examines the films on the basis of Freudian concepts such as the uncanny . According to Martin Stingelin, Bronfen's thesis is that "Identity can only develop as a defense process against the traumatic moment that is constantly threatened with failure."

In the 2002 book on the cult of divas, Bronfen examined the accident in the star cult sign system : the blurring of the boundaries between public role, art and life based on the cases of the Comtesse de Castiglione , King Ludwig of Bavaria , Sarah Bernhardts , Marilyn Monroes , Maria Callas ', Elvis Presleys , Evita Peróns , Rita Hayworths , Andy Warhols and Joseph Beuys '. According to the author, divas walk a “tightrope between power and victim role ”.

Enthusiastic reviewers of the book Liebestod und Femme Fatale from 2004 certified Bronfen to be able to confidently juggle between opera , drama, literature and film, gender theory, psychoanalysis and exegesis of texts, and praised the author's “ deconstructivist sharpness”. Less well-meaning critics, on the other hand, spoke of "late-postmodern dowsing". Among other things, structural similarities between the fatal couple constellations of film noir and the Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde are shown in the book.

With cross mappings. Essays on visual culture (2009) Bronfen presented her theoretical concept of crossmapping , in which formal aspects such as character constellations of different texts are superimposed and compared, which enables a new reading of the individual texts. At the same time, the anthology presents a selection of Bronfen's contributions on art, artists and visual culture; many texts appeared in it for the first time in German. Crossmappings was also chosen as one of the 30 most beautiful Swiss books.

In Hollywood's wars. History of a Visitation (2013), Bronfen deals with the cinematic processing of US war history. From the Civil War as “unfinished business” in Gone With the Wind and Gangs of New York to “battle choreographies” like Saving Private Ryan and the Band of Brothers , Bronfen explores the similarities between military and cinematic spectacle.

In 2015, Bronfen published the book about female war reporters in World War II ( Martha Gellhorn , Lee Miller , Margaret Bourke-White ) , which was published together with Hoffmann and Campe publisher Daniel Kampa .

In 2016 Bronfen published the book Mad Men for Diaphanes- Verlag - an analysis of the award-winning American series broadcast from 2007 to 2015. Mad Men is "a novel on DVD" and an "intelligent self-reflection on the role of television" that deals with the advertising industry as the creator and illustration of American ideals of family and personal happiness. The book appears in English under the title Mad Men, Death and the American Dream .

Cross-mapping

Cross-mapping is the reading method of texts described by Elisabeth Bronfen, which is based on comparisons of their visual language and formalities. Rolf Löchel calls crossmapping an "insightful method of 'comparative reading'", which is not about showing intertextualities , but rather "working out similar concerns of texts of different medialities". In her anthology Crossmappings , published in 2009 . Bronfen applies the method to essays on visual culture , among other things, to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story The Yellow Wallpaper and the photographic oeuvre of Francesca Woodman . In seminars at the University of Zurich, Bronfen also set up cross-mappings between Shakespeare's Histories and The Wire , Macbeth and House of Cards, as well as Antonius and Cleopatra and The Honorable Woman .

criticism

Bronfen's application of originally psychopathological terms as a cultural pattern of interpretation is partly criticized in the professional world and in journalism. The translator Hans-Dieter Gondek finds the application of the term trauma to the film analysis "fundamentally problematic" and, in the case of Bronfen's book, "not sufficiently worked out." In the journal Mittelweg 36, the Berlin psychologist and literary scholar Harald Weilnböck complains about Bronfen's concept of trauma, which is not based on an individually experienced experience of violence , as is common in clinical psychotraumatology . Instead, Bronfen lifts the term beyond any individual experience by suspecting a “traumatic core” “at the navel of all identity systems ”. In doing so, she ontologizes the trauma, i.e. sees it as an abstract basic experience that is common to all people and that accordingly no longer needs to be overcome, integrated and healed. On the contrary, Bronfen understands a trauma understood in this way as a source of productive impulses and an excessive “enjoyment” in the “dissolution of the self”.

Awards

Bibliography (excerpt)

  • with Ivo Ritzer and Hannah Schoch (eds.): Ida Lupino. The two sides of the camera . Bertz and Fischer, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86505-329-9 .
  • with Christiane Frey and David Martyn (eds.): Once again different. A poetics of the serial . Diaphanes, Zurich and Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-03734-637-2 .
  • Obsessed. My cooking memoirs. Realtime Verlag, Basel and Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-906807-00-3 .
  • Mad Men . Diaphanes, Zurich and Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-03734-486-6 .
  • with Daniel Kampa (ed.): The American woman in Hitler's bathtub: Three women report on the war: Martha Gellhorn, Lee Miller, Margaret Bourke-White. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-455-50365-4 .
  • with Beate Neumeier (Ed.): Gothic Renaissance: A Reassessment. University Press, Manchester 2014, ISBN 978-0-7190-8863-6 .
  • Hollywood wars. History of a visitation (original title: Specters of War , translated by Regina Brückner). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-009656-2 .
  • with Norbert Grob (Ed.): Stilepochen des Films. Volume 2: Classical Hollywood. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019015-9 . (Films from 1929 to 1960)
  • Crossmappings: Essays on Visual Culture . Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-85881-240-7 .
    • English translation: Crossmappings . IB Tauris, London 2017 (i. E.).
  • Stanley Cavell as an introduction . Junius, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-88506-608-8 .
  • Deeper than the day thought. A cultural story of the night. Hanser, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-446-23010-1 .
  • Love death and femme fatale. The exchange of social energies between opera, literature and film . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-518-12229-0 .
  • with Barbara Straumann: Diva. A story of admiration. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-88814-308-X .
  • with Misha Kavka (Ed.): Feminist Consequences. Columbia University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-231-11705-1 .
  • with Birgit Erdle and Sigrid Weigel (eds.): Trauma. Between psychoanalysis and the cultural pattern of interpretation. Böhlau, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-412-14398-7 .
  • Homesickness . Illusion games in Hollywood . Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-353-01104-8 .
    • English: Home in Hollywood. The Imaginary Geography of Cinema . Columbia University Press, New York 2004, ISBN 0-231-12177-6 .
  • The knotted subject. Hysteria and its Discontents . Diane Publishing, Collingdale 1998, ISBN 0-7567-8144-2 .
  • Sylvia Plath . German translation. Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, 1998, ISBN 3-627-00016-1 .
  • with Sarah W. Goodwin (Ed.): Death and Representation. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1993, ISBN 0-8018-4627-7 .
  • Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. 1992.
  • The beautiful corpse: female death as a motivic constant from the middle of the 18th century to the modern age . 1987.
  • The literary space. An investigation using the example of Dorothy M. Richardson's Pilgrimage. (= Studies in English Philology NF, Volume 25). Niemeyer Tübingen 1986, ISBN 3-484-45025-8 (dissertation University of Munich 1985).
    • English translation: Dorothy Richardson's Art of Memory. Space, identity, text. Manchester University Press, Manchester, New York, NY 1999, ISBN 0-7190-4808-7 .

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Bronfen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Directory of members: Elisabeth Bronfen. Academia Europaea, accessed on August 6, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Martin Stingelin: Virtual Home. Elisabeth Bronfen exposes the cinema as the deceptive home of our imaginary identity. on: literaturkritik.de , March 2000.
  3. ↑ Scheidegger & Spiess
  4. ^ The Most Beautiful Swiss Books of 2009 (judged in January 2010). In: Swiss Design Awards.
  5. ↑ Bronfen: Hollywood's Wars. P. 16.
  6. ↑ Bronfen: Hollywood's Wars. P. 107.
  7. ^ David Kleingers: War in the cinema: The eternal front in Hollywood. In: Der Spiegel. 5th December 2013.
  8. ↑ Review in Jungle World
  9. ↑ Diaphanes. "Online blurb".
  10. ↑ Diaphanes. "Online blurb."
  11. ^ Rolf Löchel: Similar concerns. Elisabeth Bronfen demonstrates her insightful reading process of cross-mapping. on: literaturkritik.de , February 2010.
  12. ^ Elisabeth Bronfen. "BA Seminar: Shakespeare's Wire." University of Zurich, fall semester 2013.
  13. ^ Elisabeth Bronfen. "BA Seminar: Shakespeare Now." University of Zurich, spring semester 2015.
  14. ↑ Summary of two reviews in Perlentaucher
  15. ↑ Bronfen et al. (Ed.): Trauma. Between psychoanalysis and the cultural pattern of interpretation. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 1999, p. 153.
  16. ↑ Harald Weilnböck: "The trauma must remain unavailable to the memory". Trauma ontology and other misuse / use of trauma concepts in humanities discourses. In: Mittelweg. 36, issue 2, volume 16, April / May 2007, p. 12. can be viewed online at eurozine.com
personal data
SURNAME Bronfen, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cultural and literary scholar and book author
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich