Introductory description

From Medea to Kriemhild, Charlotte Corday to Irma Grese, violent women haunt the cultural imaginary as figures of horror and fascination. This module will use the exceptional figure of the female perpetrator as a frame for considering shifting ideas about women and society in modern German culture. We will begin by discussing canonical representations of violent women using short-texts and visual art, considering why the female perpetrator is such a prominent artistic motif and how her representation relates to anxieties about the gender hierarchy and social order. We will particularly investigate how traditional images of female perpetrators shape how society understands violence today. As we engage with more recent works, we will explore how feminist writers have revised and challenged stereotypical images of female perpetrators. To what extent do they construe violent women as symbols of transgression and power? Are they role models or outlaws? Are they deserving of sympathy or derision? Finally, how successful are these writers’ attempts to challenge stereotypes about violent women and demonstrate their concrete implications?

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1
Lecture and Seminar: Course Introduction: Framing the Female Perpetrator
The first session will introduce canonical representations of violent women using short-texts and
visual art (photocopies will be provided in class). Recurring representational trends (framing the
female perpetrator in maternal/ pathological/ sexual terms) will be introduced with reference to key debates in gender and feminist criminological theory. Discussions will explore why the female perpetrator became such a prominent artistic motif and how her representation relates to anxieties about the gender hierarchy and social order.

Weeks 2 and 3: Lecture and Seminar: Elisabeth Reichart's Februarschatten. During these sessions, students will engage with the representation of female bystanders and perpetrators in the Holocaust, especially against the background of broader trends in Austrian memory politics. Key concepts will include: symbolic violence; agency and responsibility; patriarchal violence; trauma.

Weeks 4 and 5: Lecture and Seminar: Women and the RAF. These sessions will introduce women’s role in the Rote Armee Fraktion through Margarethe von Trotta’s Die bleierne Zeit (1981) and Christine Brueckner's Wenn du geredet hättest, Desdemona (1983). We will examine how these works present the personal and political roots of left-wing terrorism through a gendered lens. We will primarily consider the framing devices used to humanize the female terrorist. Primary texts will be contextualized through a broader discussion of attitudes to violence within radical feminist movements.

Weeks 7 and 8 (Week 6 is Reading week): Lecture and Seminar: Feminist Mythmaking These two sessions will focus on Christa Wolf’s novel Medea. Stimmen (1996) and interrogate feminist motivations for re-writing patriarchal myths about female villains. Students will also be encouraged to question the limitations of these feminist revisions. During discussions, students will particularly examine the themes of motherhood and agency, as well as subjectivity and voice.

Weeks 9 and 10: Women and Political Extremism. These concluding sessions will explore contemporary discourses surrounding women involved in violent, far-right political movements. Focusing on David Wnendt’s film Die Kriegerin (2011) and Fatih Akin's Aus Dem Nichts (2017), it will return to the themes of motherhood, sexuality, and pathology and ask how far cultural discourses surrounding violent women have evolved. Emphasis will be placed on the representation of women’s political motivations for violence.

Term 3, week 1 and 2: Review (week 1) and drop-in session (week 2).

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Describe trends and recurrent motifs in the representation of violent women in contemporary German culture and explain how they relate to shifting ideas about gender in East Germany, West Germany, and Austria
• Exemplify how debates about female violence relate to wider socio-political phenomena (e.g. West German terrorism, the women’s movement, unification, the European migrant crisis)
• Critically reflect on what is at stake in cultural discussions about female violence
• Intercultural awareness, understanding and competence
• Knowledge, awareness and understanding of one or more cultures and societies, other than their own.
• Ability to access, read and critically analyse primary and secondary source materials in target language
• Familiarity with the methodologies and approaches appropriate to the discipline

Indicative reading list

Primary sources
Elisabeth Reichart, Februarschatten (Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 2011
Die bleierne Zeit (dir. Margarethe von Trotta, 1981; 106 minutes)
Christa Wolf, Medea. Stimmen (orig. Berlin: Luchterhand, 1996; Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2008)
Christine Brückner, Wenn du geredet hättest, Desdemona: Ungehaltene Reden ungehaltener Frauen (Berlin: Ullstein, 2017)
Die Kriegerin (dir. David Wnendt, 2011; 103 minutes)
Aus dem Nichts (dir. Fatih Akin, 2017; 106 minutes)

Secondary Reading
Bielby, Claire, Violent women in print: representations in the West German print media of the 1960s and 1970s (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012)
Birch, Helen, Moving Targets: Women, Murder, and Representation (London: Virago, 1993)
Bitzan, Renate, Michaela Köttig, and Berit Schröder, “Vom Zusehen bis zum Mitmorden: mediale Berichterstattung zur Beteiligung von Mädchen und Frauen an rechtsextrem motivierten Straftaten,” Zeitschrift für Frauenforschung und Geschlechterstudien 21.2-3 (2003):150-170.
Coulthard, Lisa, “Killing Bill: Rethinking Feminism and Film Violence,” in Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. by Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 153-175.
Evans, Owen. "Building Bridges: Fatih Akin and the Cinema of Intercultural Dialogue." Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2018. 145-167.
Fronius, Helen and Anna Linton (eds), Women and death: representations of female victims and perpetrators in German culture 1500-2000 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008)
Gilbert, Paula Ruth, “Discourses of female violence and societal gender stereotypes,” Violence against women 8.11 (2002): 1271-1300.
Jones, Jennifer. Medea’s Daughters: Forming and Performing the Woman who Kills (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2003)
Knight, Julia. Women and the New German Cinema (London: Verso, 1992)
Loreck, Janice, Violent Women in Contemporary Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
O’Neill, Maggie and Lizzie Seal. Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
Paul, Georgina, “Christa Wolf’s Medea. Stimmen (Medea. A modern retelling),” in The Novel in German since 1990, ed. by Stuart Taberner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 64-78.
Preece, Julian, Baader-Meinhof and the Novel: Narratives of the Nation / Fantasies of the Revolution, 1970-2010 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Röpke, Andrea and Andreas Speit, Mädelsache!: Frauen in der Neonazi-Szene (Berlin: C.H. Links, 2011)
Sjoberg, Laura and Caron Gentry (eds), Women, Gender, and Terrorism (Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2011) — Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking about Women's Violence in Global Politics (London: Zed Books, 2015)
Silberman, Marc, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995)
Stephan, Inge, Medea: multimediale Karriere einer mythologischen Figur (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006) — Musen & Medusen: Mythos und Geschlecht in der Literatur des 20. Jahrunderts (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of German culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of the German cultural imagination will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.