Fulbright Lecture: Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and the Creation of Ideal Beauty

Welcome to the 2017 Fulbright Lecture at Uppsala University!

Each year the holder of the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in North American Studies at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University delivers the Fulbright Lecture. The incumbent and speaker this year is Professor Lois Banner from the University of Southern California. Her topic is: ?Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and the Creation of Ideal
Beauty.?

Lois Banner was a founder of the field of women's history in the 1970s. Along with Mary
Hartman, she founded the Berkshire Conference in Women's History, the biennial conference
that has been held ever since and that is considered the major event in the field. She was the
first woman president of the American Studies Association, and in 2006 she won the Bode-
Pearson prize of the American Studies Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field. She
is the author of ten books, including most recently her highly acclaimed Marilyn: The Passion
and the Paradox (2012), a biography of Marilyn Monroe.

Professor Banner describes the lecture in this way:
?Drawing from my best-selling biography of Marilyn Monroe and current work on Greta
Garbo, I will evaluate the lives and careers of these two iconic film stars. Revising all
previous authors, I will take a feminist perspective, focusing on their self-creation, their
innovative politics, and their ultimate failure.?

The lecture will be presented on Thursday, March 9 at 4:15 p.m. in the Ihre Hall (Ihresalen) in
campus Engelska Parken at Uppsala University (street address: Thunbergsvägen 3, Uppsala).

Most welcome!