Gisela Brinker-Gabler

Professor of Comparative Literature Department

Graduate Director

Gisela Brinker-Gabler is Professor of Comparative Literature. Her work has been on modern literature and thought, gender, knowledge and history, women's literature and political culture. Furthermore, she has been interested in narratives of exile and migration, the Jewish-German tradition, literature and memory, autobiographics, and romanticism.

Brinker-Gabler received her Dr. phil. in German, Philosophy and Pedagogy from the University of Cologne in Germany and taught at the University of Florida (USA), the University of Essen (Germany), the University of Cologne (Germany), and as Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna (Austria). At Binghamton University she has taught courses on Modernisms and the Avant-gardes, Jena Romantics, Benjamin, Bachmann, Crossing Borders: Exile and Migration in Contemporary Europe, Literature and Memory, Auto/biographics, The Feminine-Figures and Styles from Medieval Mysticism to the Avant-garde.

She has published a study on Poetisch-Wissenschaftliche Mittelalter-Rezeption (1980), Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (1978, 5th revised and extended edition under the title: Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16.  Jahrhundert bis Heute, 2007); Lexikon deutschsprachiger Schriftstellerinnen, 1800-1945 (1986); and two volumes of critical writing on women authors from the Middle Ages to the present of German-speaking Europe: Deutsche Literatur von Frauen I and II (1980). She started and edited the book series Die Frau in der Gesellschaft-Texte und Lebensgeschichten for Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt in 1978. She also has published several women's autobiographies and anthologies on women's theoretical and political culture: Zur Psychologie der Frau (1978); Frauen und Beruf (1979); Frauen gegen den Krieg (1980); Fanny Lewald: Meine Lebensgeschichte (1980); Toni Sender: Autobiographie einer deutschen Rebellin (1981); and Kämpferin für den Frieden: Bertha von Suttner (1983). She published in English: Encountering the Other(s): Studies in Literature, History and Culture (1995); Writing New Identities. Gender, Nation and Immigration in Contemporary Europe (1997; with Sidonie Smith), and "If We Had the Word. "Ingeborg Bachmann: Views and Reviews (2004, with Markus Zisselsberger).

Her most recent publication is her book length study Image in Outline. Reading Lou Andreas-Salomé (Continuum, 2012). Some of her recent and forthcoming articles are: "Bild und Wort: Andreas-Salomé und Benjamin" (Ihr zur Feier: Lou Andreas-Salomé, Medien-Edition Welsch [Germany], 2011); "The New Nomads. Yoko Tawada lesen" (Die Lücke im Sinn. Vergleichende Studien zu Yoko Tawada, ed. Barbara Agnese, Christine Ivanovic, Barbara, Königshausen & Neumann [Germany], 2012); "Weiterdenken––Bachmann, the Public Intellectual." (Ingeborg Bachmann. Against the War, ed. Karl Ivan Solibakke, Karina von Tippelskirch, Königshausen & Neumann [Germany], 2012); "Benjamin: The Translator/Critic in the Age of Globalization" (Festschrift Raleigh Whitinger, forthcoming 2013).