Browsing by Author "Baumeister, Anna-Lisa"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemRestricted
    Abjektion und Metamorphose - Metamorphose und Abjektion: Verekelungbilder des Weiblichen in zeitgenössicher österreichischer Literatur
    (University of Oregon, 2012) Baumeister, Anna-Lisa; Baumeister, Anna-Lisa; Ostmeier, Dorothee
    In this thesis, I examine the figure of the “disgusting woman” in contemporary Austrian literature. I begin by developing a theoretical orientation to disgust and the disgusting woman, drawing from works by Winfried Menninghaus, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, and Theodor Adorno. Next, I use this theoretical framework to interpret three prominent texts of contemporary Austrian literature: Barbara Frischmuth’s “Otter,” Christoph Ransmayr’s Die letzte Welt, and Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin. Ultimately, my analysis yields three compelling insights. First, through literary interpretation, disgust can be shown to operate at a cultural level to exclude and oppress women. Second, literary texts can describe and reveal, in a way purely theoretical works cannot, the visceral, embodied effects of disgust on human subjects—and on women in particular. Finally, and more optimistically, many of those cultural practices which exclude and oppress women might be transformed through critical engagement with the phenomenon of disgust.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Critical Climates: Sturm und Drang and the Radical Poetics of Nature
    (University of Oregon, 2020-09-24) Baumeister, Anna-Lisa; Klebes, Martin
    The dissertation develops a new reading of the status of nature in the Sturm und Drang period of the 1770s, in texts by authors ranging from the early Goethe, Schiller, and Herder, to J.M.R. Lenz, Friedrich Müller, and Karoline Flachsland. Against prevailing interpretations that dismiss Sturm und Drang’s nature-affinity as outdated, irrationalist, and apolitical, I reframe the period through attention to European colonial geopolitics, emergent natural sciences such as hydrology and meteorology, and innovative material writing practices. I propose a reading of Sturm und Drang as an unparalleled attempt to ground modern culture in nature, one noteworthy for its epistemic sensitivities and anti-essentialist commitments. In this way, I not only argue that the poetics of Sturm und Drang offers a radical environmental critique of the project of Enlightenment from within—one that speaks directly to pressing contemporary concerns. I also make a new case for the distinctiveness of the period from the episteme “around 1800,” highlighting its socio-critical focus and its international outlook.