Professional paper

Influence of the American Feminism on German Studies

Azra Plićanić Mesić

Abstract

The article deals with the theoretic and methodological transformation of the American German Studies under the influence of the American feminism. Germanistik originally came into being in the context of the German national romanticism, in struggle for German cultural identity against Napoleon’s military and political domination. From early germanists till recent time this discipline has been dominated by an approach to national identity later denoted as essentialist. National-romantic German historiographers and other writers of the 19th century read the history of German literature as an expression of the primary unfolding of the German spirit (deutscher Geist). The American feminists are recently disputing such an attitude. However, they themselves abandoned from the middle of the 80-ies essentialism of their own, which reflected itself in understanding of “feminess” (Weiblickeit) as an unitarian, non-conflict category. Instead of sexual dichotomy, they accepted notion of gender, as a social and historical ever changing construction. They came to acknowledgement that the women are included or excluded from dominant orders in different ways depending on factors such as race, class, age, religion or sexual preference. This theoretical and methodological shift made it possible for the American feminist germanists to challenge not only conceptual frameworks of germanistics but prevailing image on German society and culture as well. In short, American-German Studies gradually have constituted themselves as a field whose multicultural emphases made it a dsicipline distinctly different from German Germanistik.

Keywords

GERMAN STUDIES; GERMANISTICS; FEMINISM

Hrčak ID:

14461

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/14461

Publication date:

30.6.2004.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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