Liesl Allingham | Virginia Tech (original) (raw)
Papers by Liesl Allingham
German Studies Review, 2017
The Eighteenth Century, 2015
The German Quarterly, 2021
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures, Apr 3, 2014
This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By emplo... more This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By employing motherhood both to compel and to justify female mobility, these authors use the ideologies designed to restrict women to domesticity as the means to bridge the gendered boundaries between private place and public space. In the process, they rewrite motherhood, constructing a notion of ideal motherhood that is no longer biological, but rather depends on female engagement in mobile practices.
The German Quarterly, 2021
The Eighteenth Century, 2015
In “Novella without a Title,” Christoph Martin Wieland positions himself outside of the eighteent... more In “Novella without a Title,” Christoph Martin Wieland positions himself outside of the eighteenth-century debates on “the women question.” Written in 1805, when the two-sexed model of gender complementarity allegedly was firmly in place, Wieland’s cross-dressing and passing protagonist defies easy categorization. The novella presents a model of gender and sexual ambiguity that is echoed and reinforced by an analogous narrative crisis presented through the framing narrative. Thus it offers a more complicated vision of sexual and gender identity around 1800 than either historical gendered binaries, or contemporary theorists, such as Butler, Garber, and Halberstam can explain.
Goethe Yearbook, 2014
Gestern las ich Ossians Darthula, und er wirkte so angenehm auf mich; der alte Wunsch, einen Held... more Gestern las ich Ossians Darthula, und er wirkte so angenehm auf mich; der alte Wunsch, einen Heldentod zu sterben, ergriff mich mit groser Heftigkeit; unleidlich war es mir, noch zu leben, unleidlicher, ruhig und gemein zu sterben. Schon oft hatte ich den unweiblichen Wunsch, mich in ein wildes Schlachtengetummel zu werfen, zu sterben. Warum ward ich kein Mann! Ich habe keinen Sinn fur weibliche Tugenden, fur Weibergluckseligkeit. Nur das Wilde, Grose, Glanzende gefallt mir. Es ist ein unseliges, aber unverbesserliches Misverhaltnis in meiner Seele; und es wird und mus so bleiben, denn ich bin ein Weib und habe Begierden wie ein Mann, ohne Mannerkraft. Darum bin ich so uneins mit mir.1[Yesterday I read Ossian's Darthula and it had such an agreeable effect on me; the old wish to die a heroic death seized me with great fierceness; it was insufferable to me to be alive still, more insufferable to die a quiet and mediocre death. I have often felt the unfeminine desire to throw myself into the wild throngs of a battle, to die. Why was I no man! I have no appreciation for feminine virtues, for woman's happiness. Only the wild, the great, the glittering pleases me. There is an ill-fated but incorrigible misproportion in my soul: and it will and must remain this way, for I am a woman and have the desires of a man, without male strength. That is why I am so changeable and so divided in myself.2]In this quotation from a letter written to Gunda Brentano on August 29, 1801, Karoline von Gunderrode takes Ossian as an inspiration for her wish to challenge a specific gendered boundary: the boundary excluding women from warfare and glory. The disjuncture between a masculine-gendered mind and a feminine body felt so keenly by Gunderrode fuels her fascination and identification with Darthula, a princess turned cross-dressed warrior who dies on the battlefield. Through the many female warriors that Gunderrode creates or adapts in her work, she explores what Patricia Simpson terms a "female imaginary identity."3 The battlefield functions as an imaginary space to transcend gender difference, allowing women to claim and exercise otherwise traditionally masculine emotions like pride, anger, patriotism, courage, and hatred, a space where notions like heroism can be detached from gender (Simpson 106). Or, as Helene Watanabe-O'Kelly states, it allows women to "imagine a space for themselves in which they can think the unthinkable."4 As an imaginary space, at least for female warriors, the battlefield has the potential to overcome the disjuncture between masculine desires and the feminine body. Despite, or perhaps because of, Gtinderrode's frustration with gendered boundaries, in her 1804 epic poem "Darthula nach Ossian," the potentially liberating space of the battlefield does not enable a reconciliation of a "masculine" mind and a "feminine" body; it does not erase gendered boundaries.5 This, however, does not mean that the poem replicates the solidifying notions of gender complementarity that were so pervasive around 1800; as Elisabeth Krimmer states, it does not "construe men and women as polar opposites" (Krimmer 137). In one of the few critical analyses of the poem, Krimmer argues that Gtinderrode exposes the unreliability of traditional gendered signs and, moreover, that the body becomes an arbitrary sign (Krimmer 137 and 34).If the poem "Darthula nach Ossian" appropriates the female warrior to explore alternative feminine identities and challenge gendered signs, it does so through the lens of memory. Paul Connerton argues that bodily habits and commemorative ceremonies are the two primary practices that establish and transfer social or cultural memory.6 Both come into play in Gtinderrode's poem. In the first sections of this article, I investigate the body and bodily practices, extending Krimmer's argument to look more closely at how the cross-dressed warrior Darthula defies the notion of the body as a site of "identic intelligibility," to borrow Elaine Ginsberg's term. …
Women in German Yearbook, 2011
Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Floren... more Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Florentin (1801). While most critics read it as a reinscription of gender normativity, others claim that it challenges gender binaries. In this article I propose a third possibility: contrary ...
... I am grateful to all of the members of the Doktorandenseminar who provided discerning feedbac... more ... I am grateful to all of the members of the Doktorandenseminar who provided discerning feedback on Chapters I and III: Wendy Graham, Corinna Kahnke, Sonja Klocke, Mihaela Petrescu, and Faye Stewart. ... Cf. Wendy A. King. 8 Page 19. ...
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 2014
This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By emplo... more This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By employing motherhood both to compel and to justify female mobility, these authors use the ideologies designed to restrict women to domesticity as the means to bridge the gendered boundaries between private place and public space. In the process, they rewrite motherhood, constructing a notion of ideal motherhood that is no longer biological, but rather depends on female engagement in mobile practices.
German Life and Letters, 2013
Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture, 2011
Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Floren... more Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Florentin (1801). While most critics read it as a reinscription of gender normativity, others claim that it challenges gender binaries. In this article I propose a third possibility: contrary ...
This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By emplo... more This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By employing motherhood both to compel and to justify female mobility, these authors use the ideologies designed to restrict women to domesticity as the means to bridge the gendered boundaries between private place and public space. In the process, they rewrite motherhood, constructing a notion of ideal motherhood that is no longer biological, but rather depends on female engagement in mobile practices.
German Studies Review, 2017
The Eighteenth Century, 2015
The German Quarterly, 2021
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures, Apr 3, 2014
This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By emplo... more This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By employing motherhood both to compel and to justify female mobility, these authors use the ideologies designed to restrict women to domesticity as the means to bridge the gendered boundaries between private place and public space. In the process, they rewrite motherhood, constructing a notion of ideal motherhood that is no longer biological, but rather depends on female engagement in mobile practices.
The German Quarterly, 2021
The Eighteenth Century, 2015
In “Novella without a Title,” Christoph Martin Wieland positions himself outside of the eighteent... more In “Novella without a Title,” Christoph Martin Wieland positions himself outside of the eighteenth-century debates on “the women question.” Written in 1805, when the two-sexed model of gender complementarity allegedly was firmly in place, Wieland’s cross-dressing and passing protagonist defies easy categorization. The novella presents a model of gender and sexual ambiguity that is echoed and reinforced by an analogous narrative crisis presented through the framing narrative. Thus it offers a more complicated vision of sexual and gender identity around 1800 than either historical gendered binaries, or contemporary theorists, such as Butler, Garber, and Halberstam can explain.
Goethe Yearbook, 2014
Gestern las ich Ossians Darthula, und er wirkte so angenehm auf mich; der alte Wunsch, einen Held... more Gestern las ich Ossians Darthula, und er wirkte so angenehm auf mich; der alte Wunsch, einen Heldentod zu sterben, ergriff mich mit groser Heftigkeit; unleidlich war es mir, noch zu leben, unleidlicher, ruhig und gemein zu sterben. Schon oft hatte ich den unweiblichen Wunsch, mich in ein wildes Schlachtengetummel zu werfen, zu sterben. Warum ward ich kein Mann! Ich habe keinen Sinn fur weibliche Tugenden, fur Weibergluckseligkeit. Nur das Wilde, Grose, Glanzende gefallt mir. Es ist ein unseliges, aber unverbesserliches Misverhaltnis in meiner Seele; und es wird und mus so bleiben, denn ich bin ein Weib und habe Begierden wie ein Mann, ohne Mannerkraft. Darum bin ich so uneins mit mir.1[Yesterday I read Ossian's Darthula and it had such an agreeable effect on me; the old wish to die a heroic death seized me with great fierceness; it was insufferable to me to be alive still, more insufferable to die a quiet and mediocre death. I have often felt the unfeminine desire to throw myself into the wild throngs of a battle, to die. Why was I no man! I have no appreciation for feminine virtues, for woman's happiness. Only the wild, the great, the glittering pleases me. There is an ill-fated but incorrigible misproportion in my soul: and it will and must remain this way, for I am a woman and have the desires of a man, without male strength. That is why I am so changeable and so divided in myself.2]In this quotation from a letter written to Gunda Brentano on August 29, 1801, Karoline von Gunderrode takes Ossian as an inspiration for her wish to challenge a specific gendered boundary: the boundary excluding women from warfare and glory. The disjuncture between a masculine-gendered mind and a feminine body felt so keenly by Gunderrode fuels her fascination and identification with Darthula, a princess turned cross-dressed warrior who dies on the battlefield. Through the many female warriors that Gunderrode creates or adapts in her work, she explores what Patricia Simpson terms a "female imaginary identity."3 The battlefield functions as an imaginary space to transcend gender difference, allowing women to claim and exercise otherwise traditionally masculine emotions like pride, anger, patriotism, courage, and hatred, a space where notions like heroism can be detached from gender (Simpson 106). Or, as Helene Watanabe-O'Kelly states, it allows women to "imagine a space for themselves in which they can think the unthinkable."4 As an imaginary space, at least for female warriors, the battlefield has the potential to overcome the disjuncture between masculine desires and the feminine body. Despite, or perhaps because of, Gtinderrode's frustration with gendered boundaries, in her 1804 epic poem "Darthula nach Ossian," the potentially liberating space of the battlefield does not enable a reconciliation of a "masculine" mind and a "feminine" body; it does not erase gendered boundaries.5 This, however, does not mean that the poem replicates the solidifying notions of gender complementarity that were so pervasive around 1800; as Elisabeth Krimmer states, it does not "construe men and women as polar opposites" (Krimmer 137). In one of the few critical analyses of the poem, Krimmer argues that Gtinderrode exposes the unreliability of traditional gendered signs and, moreover, that the body becomes an arbitrary sign (Krimmer 137 and 34).If the poem "Darthula nach Ossian" appropriates the female warrior to explore alternative feminine identities and challenge gendered signs, it does so through the lens of memory. Paul Connerton argues that bodily habits and commemorative ceremonies are the two primary practices that establish and transfer social or cultural memory.6 Both come into play in Gtinderrode's poem. In the first sections of this article, I investigate the body and bodily practices, extending Krimmer's argument to look more closely at how the cross-dressed warrior Darthula defies the notion of the body as a site of "identic intelligibility," to borrow Elaine Ginsberg's term. …
Women in German Yearbook, 2011
Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Floren... more Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Florentin (1801). While most critics read it as a reinscription of gender normativity, others claim that it challenges gender binaries. In this article I propose a third possibility: contrary ...
... I am grateful to all of the members of the Doktorandenseminar who provided discerning feedbac... more ... I am grateful to all of the members of the Doktorandenseminar who provided discerning feedback on Chapters I and III: Wendy Graham, Corinna Kahnke, Sonja Klocke, Mihaela Petrescu, and Faye Stewart. ... Cf. Wendy A. King. 8 Page 19. ...
Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 2014
This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By emplo... more This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By employing motherhood both to compel and to justify female mobility, these authors use the ideologies designed to restrict women to domesticity as the means to bridge the gendered boundaries between private place and public space. In the process, they rewrite motherhood, constructing a notion of ideal motherhood that is no longer biological, but rather depends on female engagement in mobile practices.
German Life and Letters, 2013
Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture, 2011
Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Floren... more Scholars disagree on how to read the cross-dressing scene in Dorothea Schlegel's novel Florentin (1801). While most critics read it as a reinscription of gender normativity, others claim that it challenges gender binaries. In this article I propose a third possibility: contrary ...
This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By emplo... more This article examines the interrelationship of motherhood, cross-dressing, and mobility. By employing motherhood both to compel and to justify female mobility, these authors use the ideologies designed to restrict women to domesticity as the means to bridge the gendered boundaries between private place and public space. In the process, they rewrite motherhood, constructing a notion of ideal motherhood that is no longer biological, but rather depends on female engagement in mobile practices.