The Riddles of the Sphinx

All registrants will receive their link to join via ZOOM. Attendees will also receive access to the recording on the Monday after the event, available to watch back for 1 month.

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In this online event, coinciding with our major exhibition Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists, Anna Shechtman is in-conversation with Devorah Baum to discuss Anna’s book ‘The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle’.

The indisputable “queen of crosswords,” Anna Shechtman published her first New York Times puzzle at age nineteen, and later, helped to spearhead the The New Yorker’s popular crossword section. Working with a medium often criticized as exclusionary, elitist, and out-of-touch, Anna is one of very few women in the field of puzzle making, where she strives to make the everyday diversion more diverse.

In her fascinating book—part memoir, part cultural analysis—she excavates the hidden history of the crossword and the overlooked women who have been central to its creation and evolution, from the “Crossword Craze” of the 1920s to the role of digital technology today. As she tells the story of her own experience in the CrossWorld, she analyses the roles assigned to women in American culture, the boxes they’ve been allowed to fill, and the ways that they’ve used puzzles to negotiate the constraints and play of desire under patriarchy.

Joined by Devorah, they will discuss the feminist history and psychoanalytic character of the crossword puzzle as well as Anna’s personal experiences that shaped the book: positing the riddle of the sphinx as well as that of the body.
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Speakers:

Anna Shechtman is an Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at Cornell University, specializing in media studies and American literature. She is writing a two-volume history of the “media” and “data” concepts in the United States. Her research has been published in Critical Inquiry, Representations, and nonsite.org, among other journals, and her freelance essays and reviews have appeared in many outlets, including ArtForum, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she is an editor-at-large.

Devorah Baum is Professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton. She has published several works including: On Marriage, Feeling Jewish and The Jewish Joke: an essay with examples (less essay, more examples). Devorah has also written for The New York Times, Guardian, Tate Etc and the Financial Times.

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Tickets:

Suggested donation £10-£15.
Minimum donation £1.

The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular Government income. We are grateful to you for supporting our independent museum as generously as possible.