Academic Bio
Malynne Sternstein is Associate Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Chicago, Associate in Cinema and Media Studies, Affiliate in Germanic Studies, and Chair of the Fundamentals Program in the College. Author of The Will to Chance, a study of the Czech historical avant-gardes, Czechs of Chicagoland, a photographic history, articles and lectures on such topics as iconic language, gender and citizenship, Kafka's fleshly laughter, the folded discourse of monstrosity, the anaesthetics of kitsch, surrealism as a modus vivendi, Lacan's oblative anxiety, the sexualized child in horror film, the power of architectural spoliation, among others, this particular Sternstein is invested in art, literature, film and politics as and through dialectics. She is sustained by the work of Vladimir Nabokov and reads him against main tendencies of "confrontation," either with the man or his narrators, instead upsetting product-oriented readings with ones that focus on process, game, and play. Her recent work is on modes of horror, social anxiety, and the legal-literary discourses of hooliganism. Her current book project argues that French, and other "western," liberal left critique of Czech New Wave cinema and socialist realpolitik of the 1950s to 60s are best understood as operations of ressentiment.