Naomi Schor

Naomi Schor (around 2000)

Naomi Schor ( October 10, 1943 in New York City - December 2, 2001 in New Haven ) was a well-known literary scholar and theorist . She was considered a pioneer of her generation with regard to the development and application of feminist theories and as a leading voice in modern Romance studies , here in the field of French literature ("French Studies"), as well as in more recent critical theory, especially French provenance ( Jacques Derrida , Luce Irigaray ).

Childhood and youth

Naomi Schor's parents, Ilya and Resia Schor come from Poland. They fled from the Nazis first to Paris and then via Lisbon to the USA, where they arrived on December 3, 1941. Both were artists. Ilya Schor was a painter and goldsmith , his works are attributed to the Judaica . Resia Schor was also a painter and gold and silversmith. The family lived in a multilingual environment that was full of musicians, artists and intellectuals. The Schors spoke French in the family, so Naomi Schor grew up with French as her mother tongue. She attended the Lycée Français de New York and passed her Baccalauréat there in 1961 . Her father died in the same year. Naomi Schor attended Barnard College after school , from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature . She continued her studies and received a Ph.D. from Yale University. in French literature . Naomi Schor wrote some of her scientific papers in French, the majority in English.

Scientific work

Naomi Schor is one of the early advocates of French psychoanalytic and deconstructivist theories in American literary studies . She reinterpreted works of the French literary canon , for example by Émile Zola , Gustave Flaubert , Marcel Proust and Honoré de Balzac , with a double theoretical approach: on the one hand through the glasses of leading exponents of deconstructivism such as Jacques Derrida (whom she knew personally), Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan , on the other hand with approaches from feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva , Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray .

Together with Elizabeth Weed , Schor founded the scientific journal differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies in 1989 and was co-editor there. The magazine is conceived as a critical forum on the concept of difference or différance , the scope and problems of which are discussed using texts on visual, literary, political and social subjects. With Elizabeth Weed, Schor also edited a number of differences books, including The Essential Difference in 1994 and Queer Theory Meets Feminism in 1997 .

One of her specialties was the work of the feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray . Together with Carolyn Burke and Margaret Whitford, Schor edited the book Engaging with Irigaray , in which essays by Rosi Braidotti , Elizabeth Weed and Judith Butler appeared.

Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine is considered to be one of Schor's most influential books. In this classic from 1987, which was reprinted in a paperback edition in 2006, Schor dealt with the detail in art, literature and architecture and its connection to gender , in particular to the image of femininity.

In her writings on George Sand , she developed the concept of female fetishism and discussed, also in connection with Sand, the question of idealism . In her later work, she reassessed the concept of universalism in an era of identity politics and difference.

Teaching, awards and honors

Schor has received a variety of awards and honors, including the Woodrow-Wilson Fellowship (1963-64), several Fulbright Award Fellowships in France, NEH Fellowships (1981 and 1990-91), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1990). She became an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997 . Schor taught at Columbia University and Brown University (1978-1989) where she 1985-1989 the Nancy Duke Lewis Chair held and at Duke University , where she the William Hanes Wannamaker Professor of the Chair Romance Studies , as well as at Harvard University . Until her death (she died of a cerebral hemorrhage), Schor held the Benjamin F. Barge Professorship at Yale University .

Naomi Schor publications are part of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University and the Archive of Elizabeth Weed Collection for Feminist Philosophy of Science at the John Hay Library of Brown University .

Books

Bad Objects: Essays Popular and Unpopular , Duke University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0822316930
George Sand and Idealism , Gender and Culture Series, Columbia University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0231065221
Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine , original edition Methuen Press, 1987, reprinted by Taylor & Francis, 2006, with an introduction by Ellen Rooney. ISBN 978-0415979450
Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction, Columbia University Press, 1985, ISBN 978-0231058742
Zola's Crowds, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, ISBN 978-0801820953

Editorships

Decadent Subjects: The Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy and Culture of the Fin de Siècle in Europe , Charles Bernheimer, eds. Jason Kline and Naomi Schor, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0801867408
Feminism Meeta Queer Theory (with Elizabeth Weed), Indiana University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0253211187
Engaging with Irigaray (with Carolyn Burke and Margaret Whitford), Columbia University Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0231078979
The Essential Difference Naomi Schor and Elizabeth Weed, eds., Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0253350930
Flaubert and Postmodernism Naomi Schor and Henry F. Majewski, eds., University of Nebraska Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0803241435

Essays

Pensive Texts and Thinking Statues: Balzac with Rodin, Critical Inquiry 27 (2), 2001: 239-264.
Blindness as Metaphor, differences 11, number 2, summer 1999, 76-105.
Anti-Semitism, Jews and the Universal, Oct. 87, Winter 1999, 107-111.
One Hundred Years of Melancholy. The Zaharoff Lecture for 1996, Romantisme (Clarendon Press, TKyear) 1-15.
Reading in detail: Hegel's Aesthetics and the Feminine, reprinted in Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, ed. Feminist Interpretations of GWF Hegel. (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 119-147.
French Feminism is a Universalism , differences 7.1, 1995.
Cartes Postales: Representing Paris 1900. Critical Inquiry 18, Winter 1992, 188-245.
The Scandal of Realism, in Hollier, Denis, ed., A New History of French Literature (Harvard University Press, 1989), 656-660.
This Essentialism Which is Not One, differences 2, 1989, 38-58
Idealism, in Hollier, A New History, 769-773.
Simone de Beauvoir: A Thinking Woman's Woman, LA Times , May 19, 1986.
Roland Barthes: Necrologies , Sub-Stance 48, 1986, 27-33.
Female Fetishism: The Case of George Sand. Poetics Today 6, 1985, 301-310. Reprinted in Suleiman, Susan. Ed. The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Approaches, Harvard University Press, 1986, 363-372.
Female Paranoia: The Case for Psychoanalytic Feminist Criticism. Yale French Studies 62, 1981, 204-219.
Le Détail chez Freud , Litterature 37 (1980), 3-14.
Le Délire d'interprétation: naturalism et paranoia, in Le naturalisme: Colloque de Cerisy, Paris, 10/18, 1978, 237-255.
Dalí's Freud , Dada / Surrealism 6, 1976, 10-17.
Le Sourire du sphinx: Zola et l'énigme de la fémininité , Romantisme 12-14, 1976, 183-195.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Douglas Martin: Naomi Schor, Literary Critic and Theorist, Is Dead at 58th New York Times, December 16, 2001, accessed October 2, 2016 .

personal data
SURNAME	Schor, Naomi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American literary critic and feminism theorist
DATE OF BIRTH	October 10, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City
DATE OF DEATH	December 2, 2001
Place of death	New Haven (Connecticut)

[NYTob-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Douglas Martin: Naomi Schor, Literary Critic and Theorist, Is Dead at 58th New York Times, December 16, 2001, accessed October 2, 2016 .