Jenny Stümer is a researcher at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany and an honorary academic at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research explores the fortification of border walls through cinema and art practices and has appeared in Cultural Politics, New Global Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Parallax, and Cultural Critique.
The book is well researched, well written and coherent-the chapters 'speak to each other'. The author is very knowledgeable of the subject, and the book is clearly structured and free of jargon. The author is well-informed on the topic of walls and their representation in cinema and the art, very skillful in analyzing other visual media, and versed in political discourse and cinema history and theory. * Ewa Mazierska, Professor of Film Studies, School of Arts and Media, University of Central Lancashire, UK * Walled Life provides an incisive and timely look at the way that visual arts mediate our collective understandings of walls as barriers and mental constructions. From the Berlin Wall to Palestine and the Mexico/US border, Stumer skillfully reads the films and art that these physical and symbolic structures continue to inspire. * Michael Gott, Associate Professor of French and Niehoff Professor of Film & Media Studies, University of Cincinnati, USA * Even before the pandemic, numerous physical and psychological walls have been erected worldwide. Walled Life gives a magnificent explanation for this proliferation of walls and for the fantasies that uphold them. Essential reading for our times! * Renata Salecl, Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Law, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK and author of A Passion for Ignorance *