The Women in German Dissertation Prize comes out of the Women in German Memorial Fund. This Fund was established in memory of those of our members who have died and whose presence and participation in WiG we want to commemorate in an active way each year. In 1997 we established this Dissertation Prize in their memory. It is now completing its fourth year.
The fund is replenished by contributions from our membership and we encourage each of you to consider donating an amountósmaller or larger, depending on your circumstancesóto keep it stocked. Donations can be sent to the WiG treasurer.
The terms of the WiG Dissertation Prize are as follows: Dissertations written by a WiG member that have been completed and filed in the preceding academic year are eligible, provided they are consonant with our mission statement. A dissertation can be nominated either by the candidate herself, by her dissertation director, or by another scholar familiar with her work.
The chair of the Dissertation Prize committee forwards all the eligible manuscripts she receives to a panel of three judges. The judges select the prize winner and the award is announced at the award ceremony held at the annual Women in German conference. For the 2000 contest, the judges were: Professor Rick McCormick (University of Minnesota), Professor Susan Cocalis (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and Professor Helga Kraft (University of Illinois, Chicago). I, Angelika Bammer (Emory University), was the committee chair.
The 2000 award for the best dissertation by a WiG member was given to Kerstin Barndt for her dissertation Sentiment und Sachlichkeit. Schreib-und Leseweisen der Neuen Frau am Ende der Weimarer Republik. Kerstin Barndt completed her dissertation at the Free University of Berlin; she holds a position at the University of Michigan and is currently on leave in Berlin. To her--and our collective--regret, Kerstin was unable to attend the WiG conference and accept the prize in person, but with a three-month old nursing baby, the trip from Berlin to southern Arizona was a bit too taxing at such relatively short notice. Thus, Kerstin had asked a friend and colleague, Professor Susanne Zantop (Dartmouth College), to accept the prize on her behalf. As it turns out, Susanne will be in Berlin in December, so she will be able to give the award certificate and the $500 check to Kerstin in person. On behalf of the Women in German Prize Committee and the collective membership of Women in German, I, as chair of the Committee, congratulate Kerstin on this award. I also extend our appreciation and thanks to Kerstinís dissertation advisorsóKlaus R. Scherpe, Claudia Albert, Hermann Haarmann, Irmela von der Luehe, and Anita Rungeófor their mentoring and intellectual guidance.
In his nominating letter, Kerstinís dissertation director, Professor Klaus Scherpe (Humboldt University) describes Kerstinís dissertation as follows:
Kerstin Barndt explores, and contributes to, a number of interlocking concerns at once. Far from limiting herself to a recapitulation of recent research on the links between the literary ìNew Objectivityî and the ìNew Womanî at the end of the Weimar Republic, Barndtís dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach to literary study. Noticeably inflected by her background in Anglo-American Cultural Studies and current debates on popular culture, her project productively reworks some received dichotomies in German Studies. Her readings of three novels by Irmgard Keun and Vicki Baum are situated against the backdrop of womenís history and culture since the beginning of the century, suggesting that literature always needs to be studied in its gendered historical and sociological contexts. Furthermore, Kerstin pays detailed attention to the long-standing imbrication of womenís culture with popular culture, specifically as it plays out in the publishing industry of the time. [...] [B]y shedding new light on the (limited) variety of subject-positions available to women readers at the end of the Weimar Republik, Barndt reveals the importance of the reader as she is courted not only by authors, but also by publishers, advertisers, and political parties. In order to substantiate this claim, Kerstin is able to present substantial original research in archival sources ranging from contemporary journals and magazines to daily newspapers and individual letters by readers.
And this is how the judges described the reasons for their selection of Kerstin Barndtís dissertation for the 2000 award:
Barndtís dissertation is an original contribution to the ever-growing body of work surrounding the discourse of the so-called ìNew Womanî in the literature and culture of the Weimar Republic. It is no easy feat at this point to contribute something new to the analysis of this well-researching topic: but Barndt has accomplished this. In part it is because she successfully demonstrates how new perspectives in the past ten years on Weimarís ìNew Objectivityî need to be confronted with feminist research on the discourse of the New Woman in popular literature and culture. Important recent work on New Objectivity has been done by scholars like Helmut Lethen and Martin Lindner, who for the most part read it as a predominantly masculine phenomenon. But this, Barndt demonstrates, can only be done by ignoring the role of women writers and readers in the development of a ìmiddlebrowî popular literature between high bourgeois art and mass culture at the end of the Weimar Republik.
Barndtís contribution to a new understanding of the ìNew Womanî continues the work begun by pioneering scholars like the historian Atina Grossman and film scholar Patrice Petro. Indeed, what Petro attempted in her book Joyless Streets with her theoretical conceptualization of, and archival research on, the role of the female spectator in Weimar cinema, Barndt attempts to do with the female reader in her analysis of popular novels by Vicki Baum and Irmgard Keun. Her readings are exemplary for the theoretical knowledge of current debates in culture studies she brings to them as well as for original archival research on the literary marketplace at the end of the Weimar Republik. Equally impressive is her skill at combining these elements into persuasive and close readings.
Her dissertation breaks new ground in the ongoing attempt to examine the relationship of gender to the development of popular culture in modernity.
Congratulations, Kerstin!