Prof. Dr. Katharina Sykora received her doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1983, after which she worked as a research assistant in archives and museums. From 1994 to 2000, she was Professor of Middle and Contemporary Art History with a focus on gender studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. From 2001 to 2018, she was Professor of 19th and 20th Century Art History at the Institute of Art History at the University of Fine Arts Braunschweig. Between 2013 and 2018, she also held the post of head of the DFG Research Training Group "The Photographic Dispositive". Her research focuses on the construction of gender, authorship and affects in visual culture and the media comparison of photography, painting and film. Katharina Sykora also works as an exhibition curator.

Publications (Selection)

2016 | Valenzen fotografischen Zeigens, Kromsdorf/Weimar: Jonas Verlag
2016 | Migration as Agitation - The Photographic Beyond the Image, PhotoResearcher 26/2016
2009/2015 | Die Tode der Fotografie, Bd. 1: Totenfotografie und ihr sozialer Gebrauch;  Bd 2: Tod, Theorie und Fotokunst, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag
2013 | Figurenspiele. Texte zum Film, Marburg: Schüren-Verlag
2006 | Fotografische Leidenschaften, together with Ludger Derenthal and Esther Ruelfs,  Marburg: Jonas Verlag

Co-Curation (Selection)

1999 | Willy Maywald. Fotograf und Kosmopolit. Portrait – Mode – Reportagen, Museum für Fotografie Berlin
2012 | Vis à Vis. Ulrike Ottinger. Fotografin – Sammlerin, Das Verborgene Museum Berlin
2005 | Henri Matisse. Farbe – Figur – Raum, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
1999 | Puppen Körper Automaten. Phantasmen der Moderne, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen  

Awards (Selection)

2018 | Call as Distinguished Harris Professor at the Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
2007-2008 | Research Grant from the Opus Magnum der VW Stiftung (Pro Geisteswissenschaft)
2008 | Research Resident at the Rockefeller Center Bellagio, Italy
2004 | Max Kade Gastprofessur in Bloomington, Indiana

Project Description

Katharina Sykora plans the (re)edition of central texts on queer feminist, postcolonial and image-political debates on gender orders, geopolitics and cultural transfers, as they have been discussed in Ulrike Ottinger's feature films and documentaries for more than 40 years now. The texts will be commented on by German and US-American authors from today's perspective and supplemented by statements about their first Ottinger film, so that the historical contextualization of the reception of Ottinger's oeuvre leads to a (self-)reflection of their current perception.