Elisabeth Bronfen, professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich, will deliver the Otto and Ilse Mainzer Lecture at New York University on Thursday, October 12, at 6:30 p.m., discussing “Night Talks.” This special event, which is introduced by Dean Catharine R. Stimpson of the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science, takes place at the NYU Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East (at Waverly Place), in room 703. It is free and open to the public. For further information call 212.998.8663 or visit www.nyu.edu/deutscheshaus.
In her talk Bronfen takes listeners on a philosophical journey through visual and textual representations of the night.
A scholar of 19th and 20th century literature, Bronfen has written articles in the areas of gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory, and art. She is the author of Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and its Discontents, and Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema. Bronfen has edited a four-volume German edition of Anne Sexton’s poetry and letters, has co-edited a collection of essays entitled Death and Representation, and has authored a book in German about the importance of the diva in celebrity culture, Die Diva. Geschichte einer Bewunderung, which will be published in English by MIT Press. Her current research projects include a cultural history of the night as well as books on pop art and Hollywood cinema, and war cinema.
In 1988 Ilse Wunsch-Mainzer pledged a substantial donation to support research in recognition of her late husband, Dr. Otto Mainzer, and his invaluable contribution to a theory of gender and love. Since Spring 2001, lectures presented by such distinguished scholars as Judith Butler, Catharine MacKinnon, Julia Kristeva, Sander Gilman, Lukar Möller, Avital Ronell, Sam Weber, and Camille Paglia have been funded through this generous bequest.