Origin Stories is a feature of Omnia in which we highlight the journeys of members of our faculty as they followed their paths from impressionable young students to world-class scholars working at the cutting edge of their fields.
Karen Redrobe calls herself “a scholar of the in-between.” Chair of Penn’s Department of the History of Art, she earned her Ph.D. in English literature but has made film her specialty. Her research deals with film theory, animation, and feminism, among other topics. She is author of Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis and Vanishing Women: Magic, Film and Feminism, which was based on her doctoral dissertation, winner of the Council of Graduate Schools International Distinguished Dissertation Award in 1999.
Redrobe came to Penn in 2004 and is currently the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Endowed Professor in Film Studies.
