Elisabeth Bronfen - Biography#

Elisabeth Bronfen is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich. She did her PhD at the University of Munich, on literary space in the work of Dorothy M. Richardson's novel Pilgrimage, as well as her habilitation, five years later. A specialist in the 19th and 20th century literature she has also written articles in the area of gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory and art. Her book publications are Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester University Press) and a collection of essays Death and Representation, co-edited with Sarah W. Goodwin (Johns Hopkins University Press). She has edited a four volume german edition of Anne Sexton poetry and letters. Further books are The Knotted Subject. Hysteria and its Discontents (Princeton, 1998) and the monograph Sylvia Plath in the series “Writers and their Work” (Northcote Press 1998). A book version of her dissertation has appeared in English, under the title Dorothy Richardson's Art of Memory. Space, Identity, Text (Manchester University Press). The book Home in Hollywood. The Imaginary Geography of Cinema was published by Columbia University Press in fall 2004. A collection of essays on recent scholarship in gender studes, co-edited with Misha Kavka and entitled Feminist Consequences. Theory for the New Century appeared with Columbia University Press, 2000. Further books are about the importance of the diva in celebrity culture, entitled Die Diva. Geschichte einer Bewunderung (with Schirmer und Mosel, München), as well as collection of essays Liebestod und Femme Fatale. Der Austausch sozialer Energien zwischen Oper, Literatur und Film. The most recent publication is a book on the cultural configurations of the night, published in German: Tiefer als der Tag Gedacht. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Nacht. It will be published in English by Columbia University Press. Current research projects include a book on Hollywood and War (forthcoming with Rutgers University Press), an introduction to the writings of Stanley Cavell, and a book on Queen Elizabeth I. as the first diva.