Vita
Vittoria Borsò, born 1947 in Pisa, was a Full Professor for Romance Literature and Cultural Studies at the Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf until spring 2013. After studying Romance Literature and German Studies, she started to work as an Assistant Professor at the University of Mannheim in 1982. She gained her doctorate one year later with a dissertation published in 1985 (see publication list). She continued working as an Assistant Professor until she was offered a chair at Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf in 1992, briefly after she habilitated in Mannheim (habilitation published in 1994, see publication list). She was promoted from Associate Professor to a Full Professorship in 1998. Vittoria Borsò has published widely in German, English, Italian, and Spanish and has been a Research Fellow and/or Visiting Professor in several Universities in the USA (Stanford University, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UC Texas, Texas A&M), Mexico, Argentina, Spain and Italy. From 1998 to 2002, she was Dean of the Humanities at Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf. In 2006, she became Director of the graduate program “Interculturality and Communication” with the University Triest, Italy. Since 2008, she acts as a Member of the Steering Committee of the UC-Research Group on Cultural and Mexican Studies, which was reformed to an Intercampus Research Group in 2009. She also directed the graduate program “European Cultural Studies” with the University of Palermo, Italy, in 2009. In 2011, she became Vice-Director of the DFG (German Research Foundation) Research Training Group 1678 “Materialität und Produktion” as well as member of the DFG Review Board for Literatures of Europe and America.
Dated from 2014
Fields of Research
Theory of memory and media; memory and migration; topology and literary topographies; lit-erature/cinema and history
IKKM Research Project
Beyond cultural memory: The Making of Memory on the mediatic threshold between contingency and selection
Publications
Monographs
Das andere denken, schreiben, sehen. Schriften zur romanistischen Kulturwissenschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript 2008.
Mexiko jenseits der Einsamkeit. Versuch einer interkulturellen Analyse – Kritischer Rückblick auf die Diskurse des Magischen Realismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert 1994.
Metapher: Erfahrungs- und Erkenntnismittel. Die metaphorische Wirklichkeitskonstitution im französischen Roman des XIX. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1985.
Edited Books
with Michele Cometa: Die Kunst das Leben »zu bewirtschaften«. Bìos zwischen Politik, Ökonomie und Ästhetik. Bielefeld: Transcript 2013.
with Yasmin Temelli and Karolin Viseneber: México: migraciones culturales – topo-grafías transatlánticas. Acercamiento a las culturas desde el movimiento. Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert 2012.
with Christoph Kann: Geschichtsdarstellung. Medien – Methoden – Strategien. Köln: Böhlau 2004.
with Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann et al.: Schriftgedächtnis – Schriftkulturen. Stuttgart: Metzler 2002.
with Gerd Krumreich and Bernd Witte: Medialität und Gedächtnis. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur kulturellen Verarbeitung europäischer Krisen. Stuttgart: Metzler 2001.
Articles
“Der Engel der Geschichte zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Gedächtnistheoretische Umschreibungen der Katastrophe (Italien, Frankreich, México, Cono Sur)“. In: Thomas Klinkert (ed.): Katastrophen und Geschichte (forthcoming).
“Medialität und Gedächtnis II: Für die Plastizität des Medialen – wider die unerbittlichen Medien des Gedächtnisses.“ In: Sonja Klein et al. (ed.): Gedächtnisstrategien und Medien im interkulturellen Dialog. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2011, pp. 107-124.
“Medialität und Gedächtnis: Das Unbehagen und die Chance der Differenz. In: Franziska Sick; Beate Ochsner (ed.): Medium und Gedächtnis. Von der Überbietung der Grenze(n). Frankfurt a.M.: Lang 2004, pp. 71-96.