Women Writing War: From German Colonialism through World War I, Available 9/20

by | Sep 17, 2018 | WiGgies in Action

Drs. Barbara Kosta, Katharina von Hammerstein, and Julie Shoults’ Women Writing War: From German Colonialism through World War I will be published by De Gruyter on September 20. The edited volume, which grew out of a panel at WiG 2014, features essays by many WiGgies and explores “female-authored, German-language texts focusing on German colonial wars and World War I and the discourses that promoted or critiqued their premises.” Congratulations to the editors and contributors on this important volume! Check out the table of contents, below. Reminder: If you purchase a copy through Amazon, make sure to make Coalition of Women in German Inc your designated AmazonSmile charity.

Introduction: Women Writing War: From German Colonialism through World War I – Katharina von Hammerstein, Barbara Kosta, and Julie Shoults

Representations of Colonial Conflicts

“Who Owns Hereroland?”: Diverse Women’s Perspectives on Violence in the German-Herero Colonial War – Katharina von Hammerstein

Christian Love and Other Weapons: The Domestic Heroine of the Multiracial Colonial Mission “Family” as an Antiwar Icon in Hedwig Irle’s Mission Memoirs – Cindy Patey Brewer

Girls, Imperialism and War in Women’s Writing from the German-Herero War and WWI – Maureen O. Gallagher

Views from the Colonies on WWI

Woman on the Edge of Time: Frieda Schmidt and the Great War in East Africa – Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst

World War I in Samoa as Reported by Frieda Zieschank in the German Colonial Magazine Kolonie und Heimat – Livia Rigotti

Political Perspectives on Nationalism and WWI

Bertha von Suttner’s Die Waffen nieder! and the Gender of German Pacifism – Shelley E. Rose

Ricarda Huch’s First World War – James M. Skidmore

Hermynia Zur Mühlen: Writing a Socialist-Feminist Pacifism in the Aftermath of WWI – Julie Shoults

Constructing the Labor of War: Girls, Mothers and Nurses

Girls Reading the Great War: German and Anglo-American Literature for Young Women, 1914–1920 – Jennifer Redmann

Käte Kestien’s Als die Männer im Graben lagen: WWI Criticism through the Lens of Motherhood – Cindy Walter-Gensler

Three Nurses’ Life-Writing: Scrapbook, Portrait, and Construction of a Self – Margaret R. Higonnet

Narratives of Loss and Grief in Art and Literature

Writing and Reading Death: German Women’s Novels of World War I – Erika Quinn

War Widows’ Dilemma: Emotion, the Myths of War and the Search for Selbständigkeit – Erika Kuhlman

Intimations of Mortality from Recollections of Atrocity: Käthe Kollwitz and the Art of Mourning – Martina Kolb

Didem Uca Writes about Multilingual Theater Project for Fulbright Blog

by | Sep 12, 2018 | WiGgies in Action

In a post for the Fulbright Student Program Blog entitled “All the World’s a Stage: Theater as Community Engagement,” Didem Uca, PhD candidate (ABD) at the University of Pennsylvania, reflects on how the experience of writing and performing in an intercultural theater project during her time as a Fulbright Fellow in Berlin impacted her scholarship and teaching.

Collaborating with the cast and crew felt like putting theory into practice; it gave me first-hand experience of the kinds of transcultural labor performed by the writers and protagonists I examine in my research, simultaneously enriching my understanding of transnational, multilingual art forms and my own self-understanding as a Turkish-American PhD Candidate in German studies. Writing and performing in this production and even helping to create the sets has invigorated my desire to become an active participant in contemporary German culture rather than a mere observer. I also feel encouraged to incorporate the arts in my teaching, scholarship, and activist work so that students and members of the community may feel inspired to make German culture their own.

Read more here.

Dr. Vanessa Plumly Honored with AATG Award

by | Sep 12, 2018 | WiGgies in Action

Congratulations to Dr. Vanessa Plumly of SUNY New Paltz on receiving a German Embassy Teacher of Excellence Award from the American Association of Teachers of German! Award recipients are “outstanding up-and-coming teachers who may have started a new program or revitalized an existing one, and contribute to their AATG chapter.” Dr. Plumly will be honored at the AATG/ACTFL Convention in November.

Dr. Vanessa Plumly