Esther Leslie is Professor in Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Among her publications are the books, Walter Benjamin (2007), Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (2005), Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde (2002), and Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (2000). She was also the translator for Walter Benjamin’s Archive (Verso, London 2007).