LFU:online

> Understanding of historical contexts and recognizing patterns of gender relations in war and postwar situations

> Analysis of various types of documentation and memory (texts, photos, films)

> The role of central and eastern European women and their active participation in armed conflicts

Women’s situations, roles and actual involvement in wars are multiple and yet often differ from the traditionally more well-known accounts of men. The range may cover concrete war heroines and pitiful, traumatized victims. Furthermore, there are perceptions of women in war – which are essentially characterized by gender relations – that may be at odds with everyday life experiences as well as with collective memory (a case in point would be attitudes towards children born during occupation). We’ll explore and discuss eyewitness accounts, historical research, gender theory and contemporary films (Komissar’, Anonyma, Grbavica) of wartime in (Soviet) Russia, Germany and Yugoslavia largely from a women’s perspective.

Interdisciplinary methods of historical, literarary and cultural studies (including film and media criticism)

Gender theory

Final written exam

Albahari, David: Warum? In: Die andere nebenan. Eine Anthologie Südosten Europas, hg. von Richard Swartz, Frankfurt am Main 2007

Aleksievič, Svetlana: Der Krieg hat kein weibliches Gesicht. Aus dem Russ. von Johann Warkentin. Hamburg 1989

Ceram, C. W.: Eine Frau in Berlin: Tagebuchaufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945 (Anonyma). Nachw. von Kurt W. Marek. Frankfurt am Main 2003

Drakulić, Slavenka: Als gäbe es mich nicht (Kao da me nema), Berlin 1999