Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Elizabeth Berman is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Modern Culture and Media, and is pursuing an M.A. in German Studies through the Open Graduate Education program as well as a certificate in Science and Technology Studies. Her research and teaching engages broadly with critical theory and modern continental thought, spanning interests including trauma theory, bioethics and disability, philosophies of temporality, and film and media theory. She is currently examining how certain technologies — cinema, psychoanalysis, and narcotics — are figured as both curative and wounding, simultaneously alleviating and engendering anxieties about (in)finitude, (dis)enchantment, and the (im)possibility of repair. In addition to her research, she serves as an assistant editor for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and has taught on subjects including theories of reproduction, Holocaust film and literature, and surveillance studies. She holds an M.A. in Gender and Sexuality Studies from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she was also a lecturer and Fulbright research fellow, and B.A. degrees in History of Art and German Studies, also from Brown University.