Elissa Marder

Elissa Marder is a Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School (EGS) and holds multiple academic roles at Emory University, including Chair of the French and Italian Departments, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, and affiliation with the Philosophy and Women Studies departments. She previously directed Emory’s Psychoanalytic Studies Program (2001–2006) and serves on the executive committee of the International Society of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (SIPP&ISSP).

Her education includes a BA from Cornell University and a PhD from Yale University (1989), where she studied under Paul de Man, Shoshana Felman, and Jacques Derrida. Her research focuses on 19th/20th-century French literature, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and media technologies. Current projects include studies on Walter Benjamin, early 19th-century French literature, and the intersection of maternal imagery with photography.

Marder’s work bridges psychoanalysis and deconstruction, exploring themes like temporal disorders in modernity, maternal representation in media, and the uncanny in literature. She has authored two major books—Dead Time: Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity (2001) and The Mother in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2012)—and contributed chapters to volumes on Hélène Cixous, Walter Benjamin, and Avital Ronell. Her articles span journals such as Yale French Studies, Philosophy Today, and Camera Obscura.