Description
Of the hundreds of radio dramas contained within the written and audio archive of the North German Radio (NDR) in Hamburg, there remains scant evidence of works written by women. Aside from those well-known figures who attained prominence on the West German literary scene such as Ingeborg Bachmann and Ilse Aichinger, many of these women writers have been all but forgotten. Employing a feminist approach to “listening in” (Birdsall and Carmi 2022), this paper employs two approaches to reframe this history of radio drama. First, by rethinking how we define expertise, this paper highlights the critical, but traditionally behind-the-scenes roles that women played in radio production as script readers and sound editors. Secondly, it highlights the work of lesser-known women radio drama writers whose works reveal thematic connections and acoustic strategies that challenge our assumptions about the genre gleaned from the current male-dominated canon. In so doing, this paper reveals how women radio authors confronted the barriers of institutional hierarchies and argues for a critical reframing of authorship in the “Golden Age” of postwar German radio drama.
About the Speaker
Caroline A. Kita is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on German and Austrian literature in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, German-Jewish culture, music, aesthetic philosophy, theater, and radio drama. She is the author of Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater (Indiana University Press 2019) and co-editor of The Arts of Democratization: Styling Political Sensibilities in Postwar West Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Her most recent book, Border Territories: Listening to the Soundscapes of Postwar West German Radio Drama was sponsored by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2022) and is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
About the German Studies Seminar Series
The Newberry Library German Studies Seminar series provides a forum for scholarship-in-progress in the area of German studies. The seminar is particularly interested in papers that cross disciplinary boundaries and that reconceptualize the materials and conventions of German Studies as a field, including beyond the frames of the German language and nation state. Like all Newberry Scholarly Seminars, meetings are conversational and free and open to faculty, graduate students, and members of the public, who register in advance to request papers.
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This event is free, but all participants must register in advance. Space is limited, so please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
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