Kaja Silverman
Encyclopedia
Kaja Silverman is an American
film theorist and art historian. She received her Ph.D. in English from Brown University
. She taught at Yale University
, Trinity College
, Simon Fraser University
, Brown University
, the University of Rochester
and the University of California, Berkeley
, before joining the University of Pennsylvania
Art History Department in 2010. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 2008.
Her writing and teaching are focused at the moment primarily on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, photography, and time-based visual art, but she continues to write about and teach courses on cinema, and she has a developing interest in painting. She is currently writing a book about photography, called The Miracle of Analogy, and her long-in-the-making book, Flesh of My Flesh, was published by Stanford University Press
in fall 2009.
Stanford's advertisement for the long-awaited Flesh of My Flesh in PMLA 125.1 (Jan., 2010) quotes a review by George Baker of UCLA stating that it "is an extraordinary book: Silverman's magnum opus [...] the kind of book that one comes across only a few times on one's life." Stanford does not give any clue as to what the book's subject matter is, however, though blurbs used for other books in the same advertisement do. The Stanford University Press website gives a much more thorough description, including the following more informative blurb by Adrienne Harris of NYU: "Kaja Silverman's thesis, pursued over centuries of artistic work and thought, is that it is in the experience of analogy that an authentic approach to mortality is possible. Above all, her project is to illuminate the ways that the individual—artist, soldier, or citizen—is haunted by war and violence and that the metabolizing of such violence and horror requires relationality. From a psychoanalytic perspective in which intersubjectivity and relatedness are central, this is fascinating and welcome news."
Silverman is the author of numerous articles, and the following eight books:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film theorist and art historian. She received her Ph.D. in English from Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
. She taught at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Trinity College
Trinity College (Connecticut)
Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University. The college enrolls 2,300 students and has been coeducational since 1969. Trinity offers 38 majors and 26 minors, and has...
, Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...
, Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
and the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, before joining the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
Art History Department in 2010. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 2008.
Her writing and teaching are focused at the moment primarily on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, photography, and time-based visual art, but she continues to write about and teach courses on cinema, and she has a developing interest in painting. She is currently writing a book about photography, called The Miracle of Analogy, and her long-in-the-making book, Flesh of My Flesh, was published by Stanford University Press
Stanford University Press
The Stanford University Press is the publishing house of Stanford University. In 1892, an independent publishing company was established at the university. The first use of the name "Stanford University Press" in a book's imprinting occurred in 1895...
in fall 2009.
Stanford's advertisement for the long-awaited Flesh of My Flesh in PMLA 125.1 (Jan., 2010) quotes a review by George Baker of UCLA stating that it "is an extraordinary book: Silverman's magnum opus [...] the kind of book that one comes across only a few times on one's life." Stanford does not give any clue as to what the book's subject matter is, however, though blurbs used for other books in the same advertisement do. The Stanford University Press website gives a much more thorough description, including the following more informative blurb by Adrienne Harris of NYU: "Kaja Silverman's thesis, pursued over centuries of artistic work and thought, is that it is in the experience of analogy that an authentic approach to mortality is possible. Above all, her project is to illuminate the ways that the individual—artist, soldier, or citizen—is haunted by war and violence and that the metabolizing of such violence and horror requires relationality. From a psychoanalytic perspective in which intersubjectivity and relatedness are central, this is fascinating and welcome news."
Silverman is the author of numerous articles, and the following eight books:
- The Subject of Semiotics (Oxford University Press, 1983)
- The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Indiana University Press, 1988)
- White Skin, Brown Masks (Indiana University Press, 1989)
- Male Subjectivity at the Margins (Routledge Press, 1992)
- The Threshold of the Visible World (Routledge Press, 1996)
- Speaking About Godard (New York University Press, 1998; with Harun Farocki)
- World Spectators (Stanford University Press, 2000)
- James Coleman (Munich: Hatje Cantz, 2002; ed. Susanne Gaensheimer)
- Flesh of My Flesh (Stanford University Press, 2009)