On 14 September RICH-fellow Rita Felski will give a lecture about the conflicting lifeworlds of a novelist and her housekeeper in Magda Szabo's The Door. The lecture will start at 4PM and will be followed by drinks.
Lecture abstract
The idea of the life world has little uptake in literary studies, yet its blend of phenomenological and social meanings seems especially well-suited to capturing life as it is lived. In Magda Szabo’s The Door, a novel about the relationship between a novelist and her housekeeper, their shared yet conflicting lifeworlds come to the fore. How are intellectuals seen by those who cook their meals and clean their floors?
Biography Rita Felski
Rita Felski holds the John Stewart Bryan Professorship of English at the University of Virginia. Her research concentrates on aesthetics, method, and interpretation. In her latest book, Hooked: Art and Attachment (2020), she discusses what makes us emotionally connected to art. She argues that “being hooked” is as fundamental to the appreciation of high art as it is to the enjoyment of popular culture.
Felski also served as editor of several high-ranking journals such as Feminist Theory, Modernism/Modernity and Modern Fiction Studies. She was awarded multiple fellowships and professorships, among which the Niels Bohr Professorship by the Danish National Research Foundation in 2016 and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010.