Gender – Page 3 – Weimar Studies Network

Fashion and the Modern Woman

The new study Dressing Modern Frenchwomen. Marketing Haute Couture, 1919–1939 sheds some light on the role of fashion in the construction of a new conception of women after the First World War:

‘At a glance, high fashion and feminism seem unlikely partners. Between the First and Second World Wars, however, these forces combined femininity and modernity to create the new, modern French woman. In this engaging study, Mary Lynn Stewart reveals the fashion industry as an integral part of women’s transition into modernity.’

>> Review (subscription only)

Women’s Autobiographies

This new encyclopaedia gathers over 2,200 women born between 1800 and 1900, like Lou Andreas-Salomé, Franziska zu Reventlow and Hedwig Dohm, and gives an overview over their autobiographical writing. Besides being an important milestone in the field of autobiography studies, Gudrun Wedels collection provides an excellent introduction to the lives and works of women who shaped Weimar society.

Gudrun Wedel: Autobiographien von Frauen. Ein Lexikon

WWI. in a Gender Context

While this upcoming conference is focusing on the period from 1914-1918, its range of topics might also be interesting for Weimar scholars:

The First World War in a Gender Context. Topics and Perspectives

Vienna, 29.09.2011 – 01.10.2011

This international conference intends to reflect on the necessity and potential of a gendered history of the First World War, focusing on five selected topics that appear to be constitutive for the field: the complex relationship between home front and front line, experiences of violence, forms of visualization of the war, peace efforts, and the impact of war on concepts of citizenship.

Weimar’s Masculine Women

Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, Katie Sutton’s The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918–1933.

>> Review (in German History, 2/2012)

The ‘New Woman’ worldwide

During the 1920s and 1930s, in cities from Beijing to Bombay, Tokyo to Berlin, Johannesburg to New York, the Modern Girl made her sometimes flashy, always fashionable appearance in city streets and cafes, in films, advertisements, and illustrated magazines. Dressed in provocative attire and in hot pursuit of romantic love, Modern Girls appeared on the surface to disregard the prescribed roles of dutiful daughter, wife, and mother. Contemporaries debated whether the Modern Girl was looking for sexual, economic, or political emancipation, or whether she was little more than an image, a hollow product of the emerging global commodity culture. The contributors to this collection track the Modern Girl as she emerged as a global phenomenon in the interwar period.

Alys Eve Weinbaum et al.: The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization

>> Review (in German)

New JAHRBUCH volume published

The new volume of the JAHRBUCH ZUR KULTUR UND LITERATUR
DER WEIMARER REPUBLIK (published April 2011) assembles articles on a recently discovered photograph by August Sander, Marieluise Fleißer’s short story ‘Abenteuer aus dem Englischen Garten’, Joseph Roth’s travel writing, the role of femininity and masculinity in ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ and the journalistic work of Hans Sahl.

Journal Review: Historical Social Research 2/2011

Cornelie Usborne, expert on abortion and gender politics in the Weimar Republic, has published an article on ‘Social Body, Racial Body, Woman’s Body. Discourses, Policies, Practices from Wilhelmine to Nazi Germany, 1912-1945’ in the current issue of Historical Social Research.