"HOME AND AWAY" (working title)
This is a small-scale, student-supported, Digital Humanities research project aiming to explore the everyday life of an "ordinary" German during World War II based on his letters, photographs and diaries from the front.
"DIGITAL CONTINGENCIES"
together with Andreas Birk, Jacobs University;
project funded by the Jacobs Foundation ("Beyond Boundaries" framework)
You can find a complete project description here.
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Women's Warfare for Joy:
Experiences and Practices of Germany's Female Front Performers during World War II
This research project explores the experience and practices of female performers – such as singers, actors, or acrobats – who were members of front theater ensembles and traveling vaudeville troupes entertaining German soldiers in German-occupied Europe. A well-known example of such a performer is singer and actress Lale Andersen, whose story was the basis for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1980 movie Lili Marleen. In the center of my research are the following questions: How did these women experience their performances, travels, and lives in a war zone? How were they received by German soldiers and local populations of occupied areas, and what kinds of interactions did they have with these two groups? What exactly was the content of these women’s performances, and what was the relationship between this content, National Socialist ideology and the regime’s racial warfare and genocidal crimes?
My exploration of these women’s experiences aims to further deepen our understanding of Nazi gender conceptions and their adaptations and re-negotiations through female front artists and hopes to contribute to a growing body of literature on the presence of German women near or at the battlefields of World War II.
“A woman brings Joy to a lonely Post”: Report on a female touring artist. (Source: “Eva im Schnee: Eine Frau bringt Freude auf einsamen Posten, Arbeitertum, 1.3.1942.)
My exploration of these women’s experiences aims to further deepen our understanding of Nazi gender conceptions and their adaptations and re-negotiations through female front artists and hopes to contribute to a growing body of literature on the presence of German women near or at the battlefields of World War II.
“A woman brings Joy to a lonely Post”: Report on a female touring artist. (Source: “Eva im Schnee: Eine Frau bringt Freude auf einsamen Posten, Arbeitertum, 1.3.1942.)
"Valentin 3D" (principal investigator: Andreas Birk, Jacobs University)
For more details on this BMBF funded project on the digitization of the Bunker Valentin in Bremen-Farge, go here.
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