MEDIEVAL CONVERSATIONS ANNOUNCES A DISCUSSION WITH AMY HOLLYWOOD

6:00 pm in 507 Philosophy Hall

"AMY HOLLYWOOD is one of the most significant feminist theorists working in religious studies. Her conceptual acuity and erudition are phenomenal, and I read her not only with great pleasure, but with the sure expectation that I will be productively transformed by what she has to say. Sensible Ecstasy not only makes a major contribution to the study of mysticism, but constitutes a new kind of feminist intervention into the philosophy of the subject." — Judith Butler Amy Hollywood is a historian of Christian thought specializing in mysticism, with strong interests in feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and continental philosophy. Her first book, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), is a study of the body and gender in late medieval Christian mysticism. It received the International Congress of Medieval Studies' Otto Grundler Prize for the best book in medieval studies. Her second book, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (University of Chicago Press, 2001) deals with Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray, and their fascination with excessive bodily and affective forms of Christian mysticism. Professor Hollywood is currently writing about memory, mourning, and Christian mysticism.