We want to celebrate the 8th of March by showing a selection of our researchers' work, which deals with gender in a variety of ways all year round. The topics range from the presentation of female victims in museums around the world to the role of women scholars before they could even study at universities and the representation of ghosts from a gender perspective. A big part of what we show here is research conducted by female scholars - in research projects, PhD theses and scholarly articles.

Patrick Aprent, Claudia Mayerhofer
Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert  

"Our article gives an overview on the topic of female theatre managers in the 19th century Habsburg Monarchy. Surprisingly many women held leading positions at the time, but their work has been omitted in the process of history writing. By comparing two microhistories of Anna Blumlacher (1823–1907), managing a travelling theatre operation for almost 25 years, and Alexandrine von Schönerer (1850–1919), owner and manager of the prestigious Theater an der Wien at the end of the 19th century, the text offers insights into their practice and the public perception of their work."  More

Markéta Bajgerová
Survivors, Victims, and Soldiers as Figures of Nationalism:  Representations of Women in the War of Resistance against Japan Museums in Mainland China  

"In the article I am exploring the relations between gender representations in war museums, international and domestic politics and socio-cultural realities in contemporary China. I am also applying a feminist criticism of the women’s representation in the museums, arguing that women’s depictions there are subjected to patriarchal, nationalist and militarist imaginings."

Zuzanna Dziuban
The ‘Spectral Turn’: Jewish Ghosts in the Polish Post-Holocaust Imaginaire  

"In my book on ghosts I looked at literary, cinametic, and theatrical representations of Jewish ghosts through a gender lense among others - especially in the context of traditional dybbuk stories, in which the politics of possession is gendered."  More

Johannes Mattes, Ottilie Manegold
Career paths of women in speleology: A historical analysis on the example of the Earth scientists Elise Hofmann & Maria Mottl  

"The article offers insights into the careers of two early female earth scientists from Austria and Hungary: Elise Hofmann und Maria Mottl. We show their research into caves, their fields of action and networks involved."  More

Monika Mokre
Negotiating Equality and Diversity: Transnational Challenges to European Citizenship  More
Gender, Citizenship, and political inclusion/ exclusion in the European Union: an intersectional approach More
„Young Strong Men Should be Fighting“ Zur Vulnerabilität gefüchteter junger Männer  More

" I regularly publish on questions of gender and intersectionality, mostly in the realm of migration, thereby not only focussing on women but also on cases in which men (male refugees) are underprivileged. Currently, I am working on a contribution to “The Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Citizenship”. Together with my co-author Salma Shaka I write an article on citizen regimes worldwide and, especially, gender-related problems of statelessness. Thereby, we use Palestine as a case study."

Ljiljana Radonić
Die friedfertige Antisemitin reloaded. Weibliche Opfermythen und geschlechtsspezifische antisemitische „Schiefheilung“  

"My book deals with women as Nazi perpetrators and the question if there is a specifially female form of antisemitism"  More

Ljiljana Radonić
Displaying Violence in Memorial Museums – Reflections on the Use of Photographs

"In my current (unpublished) article one of the things I analyze is how memorial museums display sexual violence, e.g. naked women during the Lviv pogrom in 1941 or naked “comfort women” in Chinese museums - with reference to Markéta’s Bajgerovás article on gender representations in Chinese museums." 

Patrick Aprent
Female Theatre Manager Anna Blumlacher (1823–1907)

Anna Blumlacher (1823–1907) was a theatre actress and manager. With a career spanning more than 80 years and visiting more than 90 theatre stages, she is an emblematic figure for the so-called “provincial theatre” in the 19ᵗʰ century Habsburg Monarchy. Based on in-depth analysis of primary sources, this dissertation project reconstructs and investigates the practice and biography of Blumlacher and other, comparable actors. The aim is to present new insights in the field of 19ᵗʰ century theatre history by applying new perspectives from gender history and the mobility studies.  More

Sandra Klos
Between documentation and self-fashioning. Autobiographies by members of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, 1870-1955

"In my PhD project, I critically analyze masculinities in relation to sports, alpinism, science, war, loss etc."  More

André Hertrich
Research on so-called "Comfort Women" in Japan

"In my research on Japanese memorial museums I am focusing on the gender aspect especially when looking at the Women’s Active Museum (WAM). This is a little museum in Tokyo dedicated entirely to the plight of the so called former “Comfort Women”, women and girls forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese miltary during World War II. In my work (an upcoming article) I am looking at WAM’s role in  challenging Japan’s governmental and societal denials of responsibility and guilt. In order to do so, WAM serves not only as a museum, but also an archive of testimonies and furthermore as a forum to foster self-empowerment of former “Comfort Women” and activists."  More

Frauke Kempka
Research on the Yûshûkan, the museum attached to the Yasukuni-Shrine in Tokyo

"I am working on the Yûshûkan, the museum attached to the Yasukuni-Shrine. This shrine in the center of Tokyo plays an important role for Japanese nationalists and right-wingers for justifying the war in Asia but also for the commemorations of Japan’s war dead by their bereaved family members. For a lecture on displays of masculinity I took a closer look at representations of masculinities within the exhibition by analyzing how cis-men - and cis-women’s behaviour towards them are being displayed. My findings show that there are both portrayals of soldiers as manly warriors and as loving family men or dedicated friends with women idolizing the former and being eternally grateful and faithful to the latter. However, both images of facets of masculinity eventually feed into a militarized masculinity that legitimizes violence and condones any kind of misdeed against those perceived as enemies or (non-Japanese) others that are given less relevance within the war-time national effort."  More

Livio Marcaletti
„Verteutschungen“ italienischer Oper zwischen Übersetzung und Bearbeitung (ca. 1600 – ca. 1750) 

"In my habilitation project, I analyze opera translations from Italian to German in 17th and early 18th century. Some of these translations, mostly reading translations, were apparently addressing a specific part of the audience/reader, that is, women. Translators assumed that many women, even from upper social classes, were not able to read foreign languages. Furthermore, special sections like introductory explanations of the opera plots were explicitly written for women, as not all of them had the necessary cultural background (ancient history, mythology). There are also rare cases of women translators who wrote opera libretti - while librettists were exclusively men, women could be translators in 18th-century Germany."  More

Johannes Mattes, Sandra Klos and Ottilie Manegold
Frauen in den wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Wiens

"Our project examines women’s contribution to and transformation of science and research (organization) in the realm of (popular)scientific societies"  More

Ljiljana Radonić, Zuzanna Dziuban, André Hertrich, Marlene Gallner, Frauke Kempka, Markéta Bajgerová, Eric Sibomana
Globalized Memorial Museums - Exhibiting Atrocities in the Era of Claims for Moral Universals

"In the ERC project the question about gender aspect is also a subject of analysis - we look at the representation of gender roles in museums and the extent to which they are taken critically or reproduce patriarchal order"  More

Eric Sibomana
Memorialization and Musealization of the 1994 genocide and Dead body politics in Rwanda

"A part of my PhD project looks at how women and their experiences are represented by/at the Rwandan genocide memorials/museums. While rape, a fate peculiar to women victims, is understood as a weapon of annihilation, Rwandan culture tabooizes anything related to sex. This leads to a “chosen amnesia” when it comes to representation of suffering inflicted on women victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Relatedly, women in Rwanda are referred to as the “heart of home” and belonging to a vulnerable category relying on man’s protection and defence. This widespread view of women makes it ‘abnormal’ to see a woman participating in any human rights abusing acts, such as genocide. Strikingly, the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum and Bisesero Genocide Memorial respectively challenge this cultural imagining of a woman, they portray her as perpetrator, and a resistant victim."  More