Dr. Irene Gammel will present a slide lecture, followed by a Q & A, on the life and work of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Freytag-Loringhoven, considered by many to be the mother of Dada, was a poetic and artistic innovator celebrated for her gender-challenging “lived performances,” as well as early found object sculpture.
 
Irene Gammel is a Professor of English and holds the Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture at Ryerson University, Toronto.  She is the author and editor of eight books, including the internationally-acclaimed Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity: A Cultural Biography (2002). Gammel is best-known for her scholarship on gender and modernism, her research having helped uncover the earliest roots of modern and feminist performance art.  Gammel’s latest book, Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven is co-edited with Suzanne Zelazo and will be published by MIT Press in October, 2011