Marianne Hirsch

William Peterfield Trent Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University. Her research on “postmemory” – the transmission of traumatic memories of political violence across generations – and her analysis of the dynamics of gender and social difference, have defined an important global intellectual agenda committed to social justice. As president of the Modern Language Association, she led a successful campaign to revise the association’s scholarly structure, reflecting current academic practices. During her editorship of the flagship journal PMLA, she helped foster humanistic scholarly work that is engaged in the contemporary world and available to a broad public. She is one of the founders of Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, which enables scholars, artists and activists worldwide to collaborate on projects that address global inequality and imagine alternative social structures for a more equitable future.