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Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is German, has done his entire undergraduate studies in philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University. He also holds a habilitation from the EHESS in Paris. Having acquired Russian, he went for four years to Finland after completing his Ph.D. The University of Helsinki owns the largest Russian library outside Russia and the collaboration with a Finnish research group permitted him to do research on the formalist-semiotic tradition. His work on stylistics brought him to Japan. The starting point of his research on Japanese philosophy was Shuzo Kuki’s notion of ‘iki’ which he interpreted as an idea related to Western elaborations of the term style. He has also done research for several years on Chinese culture and philosophy in China (Zhejiang University), and taught at a historically black university in Alabama (Tuskegee University).
Botz-Bornstein is working on various philosophical topics, most often from an intercultural perspective. Given the importance that Islamic culture has begun to play on the international scene, he decided in 2009 to move to the Middle East (Kuwait). He has published on Islamic culture, religion, and politics.
Botz-Bornstein has published 12 authored books, 5 edited books, and 120 academic articles and book chapters.

**Book publications:**
Organic Cinema: Film, Architecture, and the Work of Béla Tarr
Place and Dream: Japan and the Virtual
Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Bergman, Kubrik, Wong Kar-wai
La Chine contre l’Amérique. Culture sans civilisation contre civilisation sans culture?
Vasily Sesemann: Experience, Formalism and the Question of Being
Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan
The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity
The Veil in Kuwait: Gender, Fashion, Identity (with Noreen Abdullah-Khan
Transcultural Architecture: Limits and Opportunities of Critical Regionalism
Veils, Nudity, and Tattoos: The New Feminine Aesthetics
Virtual Reality: The Last Human Narrative?
The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism (Lexington, 2018)

**Editor of:**
Parasite: A Philosophical Exploration (with G. Stamatellos) [on the film by Bong Joon-Ho]. Brill, 2022.
Plotinus and the Moving Image: Neoplatonism and Film Studies (with G. Stamatellos)
The Philosophy of Viagra: Bioethical Responses to the Viagrification of the Modern World
Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die For
Re-ethnicizing the Minds? Tendencies of Cultural Revival in Contemporary Philosophy (with J. Hengelbrock)
The Crisis of the Human Sciences: False Objectivity and the Decline of Creativity
Nature Culture, Memes

Experience

  • 2009–present
    Associate professor, Gulf University for Science and Tech
  • 2007–2009
    Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Tuskegee University

Education

  • 2000 
    EHESS Paris, Habilitation
  • 1993 
    Oxford University, Ph.D
  • 1990 
    Sorbonne Paris, Maitrise