Petia Parpoulova, Comparative Literature

Contact pparpoul@u.washington.edu

The Ethics of Space in the Architecture, Film and Literature of the 1920s

My dissertation project is interdisciplinary and explores the
influence of architectural developments on the Surrealist and
Expressionist film and literature of the 1920s. I study the impact of
the trench experience in the Great War on the artistic production and
appropriation of space. My dissertation explores the relationship
between Joseph Roths literary re-working of the subjective
confrontation with trench space and his contemporaries post war
response to Viennas Ringstrasse and department store architecture, as
well as the fascination of Surrealist literature with the underground
architecture of C. N. Ledoux and the relationship between the
architectural concept of the facade and the representation of the
human face in the films of Man Ray. My studies of literature, film
and architecture seek to develop theoretical concepts such as Benjamin and 
Kracauers two dimensional screen space, Henri Lefebvres
representational space and Heideggers Bewandnisraum.