Bernadette Wegenstein, born 1969 in Vienna, is an Austrian linguist and an independent documentary filmmaker. She received her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Vienna University in 1998 with a dissertation on the representation of AIDS in the media and the Act Up movement, after studying semiotics at the Università degli studi di Bologna under Umberto Eco, and medical anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. As a post-doc she moved to the United States to study comparative literature and film at Stanford University, and has been living in the United States ever since.
She is a Research Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, where she also directs the Center for Advanced Media Studies. The author of the monographs Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory (MIT Press, 2006), The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty, (MIT Press, 2012), the editor of Reality Made Over: The Culture of Reality Television Makeover Shows (2008) and the web book Living Books About Life: Cosmetic Surgery (2011), she published numerous important articles on body criticism, performance art, and film theory, among which most recently together with Nora Ruck, “On Physiognomy, Reality Television, and the Cosmetic Gaze” in Body & Society, December 2011.
Bernadette Wegenstein lives in Baltimore together with her husband, William Egginton, a literary scholar and philosopher, and their three children.
She is a Research Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, where she also directs the Center for Advanced Media Studies. The author of the monographs Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory (MIT Press, 2006), The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty, (MIT Press, 2012), the editor of Reality Made Over: The Culture of Reality Television Makeover Shows (2008) and the web book Living Books About Life: Cosmetic Surgery (2011), she published numerous important articles on body criticism, performance art, and film theory, among which most recently together with Nora Ruck, “On Physiognomy, Reality Television, and the Cosmetic Gaze” in Body & Society, December 2011.
Bernadette Wegenstein lives in Baltimore together with her husband, William Egginton, a literary scholar and philosopher, and their three children.