On Sunday 31 October Patricia Pisters will give a lecture "Growing Pains: Breasts, Blood, and Fangs" at the Final Girls Film Festival Berlin. Time: 14.30 - 16.00. Location: City Kino Wedding.
In her lecture Patricia Pisters will talk about her latest book on female horror directors, focusing on new takes on vampires, werewolves and other contrived souls, especially in relation to tortured coming-of-age stories that address social pressure and traumas.
Lecture by Patricia Pisters at Embassy of the Free Mind Amsterdam, 10 July 2021
In his famous poem ‘Eidolons’(1876) Walt Whitman extends the Greek concept for the idealized or spectral image of a person to include the soul of the Earth (‘the mighty Earth eidolon’) and even the stars and planets. In this presentation I will depart from Whitman’s cosmic interpretation of these mimetic eidolons and reframe these figures within contemporary debates on posthumanism where human fate is entangled with nonhuman forces beyond the nature/culture divide. I will focus on the question what our perception and interpretation of our high-tech and posthuman self-image can learn from ancient sources of the alchemical tradition, a tradition that is full of mythical images of human’s connections to the non-human. As such, alchemy itself can be considered as the low-tech (fore)shadow of our high-tech future that still holds infinite wisdoms that are worthwhile reconsidering and updating for the protean future of mankind.
See for more information the website of Embassy of the Free Mind, or here.
It has been one year since Professor Thomas Elsaesser suddenly passed away, leaving Amsterdam University Press (AUP), the communities of film and media studies who had been fortunate enough to know him, totally devastated.
Film Culture in Transition, the book series that he setup together with the press, became orphaned in the absence of his editorship. Maryse Elliott, Senior Commissioning Editor in Film, Media and Communication at AUP, says,
“We have been deeply moved to receive many messages from authors and editors worldwide wanting to pay tribute to Thomas in their recently published and forthcoming books in the series.”
Today, in remembrance of Thomas Elsaesser, AUP celebrates his vast intellectual legacy and confirms its commitment to his founding bookseries Film Culture in Transition by appointing a team of new series editors, consisting of Malte Hagener (Marburg), Patricia Pisters (Amsterdam) and Wanda Strauven (Frankfurt/NewYork).
The new editors will be dedicated to Elsaesser’s mission of publishing innovative studies on cinematic culture at large, by young and established scholars, from all parts of the globe.Their aim will be to ensure the continuation of one of the most successful book series of Amsterdam University Press.
Malte Hagener is Professor of Media and Film Studies at Philipps-University Marburg. His research focuses on film and media history, European cinema, as well as digital infrastructures and methodologies.
Patricia Pisters is Professorof Film, Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Her research is centred on film theory, film-philosophy, image politics, and mediaecologies.
Wanda Strauven is Privatdozentin of Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research interests include early and avant-garde cinema, media archaeology, tactile media, and children’s interaction with media.
For more information about the neweditorship or the Film Culture in Transition series, please contact Senior Commissioning Editor Maryse Elliott(This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
New Blood in Contemporary Cinema & Poetics of Horror
