English Department - About Us

Mansi Tiwari is a research and teaching assistant at Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen’s Chair of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich. She holds a BA in English Literature and Linguistics, Comparative Literature Studies, and Banking and Finance, as well as an MA in English Literature and Linguistics and Economic History, both from the University of Zurich. In 2021, she completed her MA thesis titled Moving Beyond the Verbal and the Visual: Intermedial Ekphrasis in the 21st Century.

Next to her academic interests, Mansi has worked in communications and journalism and has participated in theatre and short film projects.

Mansi’s PhD project, tentatively titled Beyond the Human Eye: Seeing Subjects in the 21st Century, focuses on contemporary visual technologies and the emergence of new ways of seeing in the digital age. As part of this visual turn, literature has rekindled its interest in visual studies, visible in both critical and literary engagements with visuality. Within the field of visual studies, this dissertation is interested in examining the new parameters that define vision, visuality and the seeing subject in 21st century media. By placing literary texts and films that stage this new way of seeing in conversation, this dissertation aims to infer the epistemological boundaries of new scopic regimes.  

“The Present is out of Joint: Haunted Narratives and Disintegrating Temporalities in A Ghost Story and How to Be Both.” Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures Conference. (forthcoming).

"Beyond the Intermedial Gap: Ekphrasis in Fan Fiction.” Interdisciplinary Fan Fiction Workshop, University of Zurich. February 15, 2020.

“Is Climate Change Humanity's Epic Fail? Blade Runner 2049, an Epic of the Anthropocene.” Guest lecture and workshop with Pablo A Marca (Brown University). December 10, 2022.

"Rules of the Father: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Ruins of Neoliberalism in The Last of Us." Guest lecture by Prof. J. Jesse Ramírez (University of St. Gallen). October 25, 2021.

"Seriality and Digital Media." Virtual guest lecture and Workshop with Prof. Shane Denson (Stanford University). October 12, 2021.

“Shareland Doctoral Colloquium”. Organized by the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design (ETH Zurich). April 6, 2019.

• HS 2022: BA Seminar: The Epic through the Ages – The Genealogy of a Genre
• HS 2022 / FS 2023: English Literature: Textual Analysis (Group 8)
• FS 2022: BA Seminar: Ways of Seeing: The Poetics of Visuality
• HS 2021 / FS 2022: English Literature: Textual Analysis (Group 1)
• HS 2020 / FS 2021: English Literature: Textual Analysis (Group 4, 9)

You are welcome to email Mansi with any questions or concerns at mansi.tiwari@es.uzh.ch or sign up for office hours here.