University of Pennsylvania
Observable Type: Jewish Women and the Jewish Press in Weimar Germany
Through an examination of German and Yiddish-language Jewish periodicals in Weimar Germany (1919-1933), this dissertation investigates the problematics of Jewish visibility, and the ways women approached modernity and embodied markers of Jewish and gender difference. With volatile political and economic conditions, rising anti-Semitism produced an urgent need for Jews in Germany to acculturate and remain undetected to the untrained eye. While other scholars have identified an uncomplicated impulse to de-Judaization or self-abnegation, I demonstrate that Jewish periodicals systematically reflected a desire for Jewish recognizability vis-à-vis other Jews. The press trained readers in the art of encoding themselves with a complex set of subtle yet visible signifiers; audiences of Jewish women received instruction in covert self-styling, and recognition of other Jews based on distinct modes of presentation. By way of media disseminated to Jews in Germany, women acquired insight into possibilities for upholding traditions while simultaneously participating in the spectacles of modern German mass culture. The “Orthodox Bubikopf (pageboy-style wig) offers a potent example: by wearing this, religiously observant Jewish women found new ways of appearing as modern, emancipated new women.
Assistant Professor of German Studies, Gettysburg College
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Germanic Languages & Literatures, 2011. Her dissertation was awarded the Women in German Dissertation Prize in 2012.
M.A. University of Pennsylvania, Germanic Languages & Literatures, 2005
B.A. Wesleyan University, College of Letters (High Honors)
Research interests:
20th-century German literature, culture, film, and media; Weimar Republic; German-Jewish history; Yiddish literature in translation; Jewish American literature; women, gender, and sexuality studies; visual and consumer culture.
Recent Publications:
“Recognition for the ‘Beautiful Jewess’: Beauty Queens Crowned by Modern Jewish Print Media.” In Globalizing Beauty: Consumerism and Body Aesthetics in the Twentieth Century, edited by Hartmut Berghoff and Thomas Kühne, 131-50. German Historical Institute “Worlds of Consumption” Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
“Weimar Jewish Chic: Jewish Women and Fashion in 1920s Germany.” In Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce, edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon, 113-35. Studies in Jewish Civilization Series, Vol. 24. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013.
“Kosher Seductions: Jewish Women as Employees and Consumers in German Department Stores.” In Das Berliner Warenhaus: Geschichte und Diskurse / The Berlin Department Store: History and Discourse,edited by Godela Weiss-Sussex and Ulrike Zitzlsperger, 117-37. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2013.
“Was auf dem (jüdischen) Spiel stand. Die Preisausschreiben der jüdischen Presse in der Weimarer Republik.” In Nicht nur Bildung, nicht nur Bürger: Juden in der Populärkultur, edited by Klaus Hödl, 45-62. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2013. (In German.)
“Paths of Modernity: Jewish Women in Central Europe.” In The Wiley-Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism, edited by Alan T. Levenson, 422-40. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.