October 9, 2024
Modern languages faculty publish volumes on women's literature, culture and politics
Rebecca Bender, associate professor of Spanish, and Necia Chronister, professor of German, recently published volumes on women's literature, culture and politics.
The two volumes examine women writers and activists in different time periods and countries, ranging from early 20th-century Spain to 21st-century Germany. They share an interest in the overlaps between women's writing, activism, and politics in periods of intense social and cultural change.
Bender edited and wrote the introduction for "Influencers, Activists, and Women's Rights: A Translation of Divorce in Spain," a volume of articles written by early 20th-century Spanish feminist Carmen de Burgos Seguí and translated by Slava Faybysh. Published within the MLA Texts and Translation series, the 214-page volume and its companion Spanish edition — "Influencers, activistas y los derechos de las mujeres" — capture the historic debate on divorce in Spain prior to the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, a key moment in the country's feminist movement. Originally causing a sensation in 1903, Burgos's call for public discourse on the then-illegal divorce sparked fierce debate among Spain's leading intellectuals. Burgos's work played a pivotal role in the eventual legalization of divorce in the 1930s, a victory that was later rolled back during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, 1939-1975. Bender's introduction offers key insights into Burgos's life and her impact on women's rights and Spanish feminism.
Read additional information about the volume.
Chronister co-edited the volume "Juli Zeh: A Critical Companion with Sonja E. Klocke and Lars Richter." The volume, published by De Gruyter, critically examines one of Germany's most popular, prolific and controversial contemporary writers. Once lauded for her literary complexity and integration of philosophical ideas within compelling narratives, Zeh's style and tone have shifted in her later work. Especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, her fiction has turned more populist, even fostering sympathy for right-wing extremists, and it consistently tops the bestseller lists in Germany. Chronister's volume brings together a range of early- to advanced-career scholars of contemporary German literature to address these developments in Zeh's work and to investigate the responsibilities of teachers and scholars to respond to her troubling politics.