Women authors in focus

In the winter semester 2025/26, the German and Romance Literary Studies departments are offering a special teaching focus: We read texts by women. (A few exceptions apply to introductory courses, for example.)
'Normal' is still the opposite, in school literature lessons, in literature encyclopaedias, in the educational canon. Time and again, students tell us that they have not studied a single text by a female author at school. University course programs are also still clearly male-dominated.

So it's about time!

A variety of exciting female authors and their texts from the Middle Ages to the present day need to be discovered. Anyone who sees herself or is read as a woman, we also read as such. Our seminars are about German pop authors and French classics, women in film history and literary prizewinners, Latin American storytellers, reformers, nomads and migrants, fairy tale authors, medieval writers and minstrels, modern children's book authors and radio play authors, punkers, gamers and philosophers.

In this way, the teaching focus should also encourage us to discuss current social phenomena - anti-feminist backlash movements, gender language struggles and new dynamics of misogyny.

We look forward to teaching and learning together!

List of seminars

(For more detailed information see course catalog)

• Justice and transition. Practices and narratives of gender, migration and development (Agnieszka Komorowska)
• Canon and women? (Christine-Marie Ansari)
• Women in Film History: Women Directors from Silent Film to the Present (Lisa Hinterleitner)
• Short narratives by women writers from Latin America (Jan-Henrik Witthaus)
• Border crosser! Reformer! Feminist? - Argula von Grumbach (Jessica Gorissen)
• Women write Arthur. Modern women authors and the renegotiation of the Arthurian world (Vivian Donath)
• Gender studies in literary studies (Lisa Wille)
• Dire le travail sexuel : subjectivités, récits et résistances dans la littérature et le cinéma français et québécois contemporains (Jacopo Romei)
• "Excellent: Literary prizewinners and their (con)texts (Sarah Engelhard)
• Écriture en mouvement: Voyageuses, Nomades, Migrantes (Agnieszka Komorowska)
• Migration literature by female authors (Christine-Maria Ansari)
• Contributors to the children's and household tales (Holger Ehrhardt)
• Literature in post-war Germany: Ilse Aichinger (Andreas Wicke)
• Clara Hätzlerin's book from the falconry digital (Vanessa-Nadine Sternath)
• Children's and youth literary texts by women for the German classroom (Christine-Marie Ansari)
• Le siècle classique au féminin: Women authors of the French classical period (Agnieszka Komorowska)
• Women authors of the 18th century (Lisa Wille)
• Video games and gender (Fabian Mehmel)
• Ava (Michael Mecklenburg)
• Office literature in Latin America and its backgrounds: Social inequality on the axis of social gender (Jan-Henrik Witthaus)
• Big City, Gender, Society: Women's Voices of the New Objectivity (Lisa Wille)
• Female figures and femininity in German fairy tales (Holger Ehrhardt)
• Austrian women authors - Aichinger, Bachmann, Ebner-Eschenbach, Jelinek, Streeruwitz (Stefanie Kreuzer)
• Hannah Arendt. Literature and Politics (Jennifer Pavlik)
• Le roman épistolaire au féminin (Kirsten Behr)
• Women sing? The paradox of the female voice in Minnesang (Jennifer Langer)
• The "grand old lady of German literature"? Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1901-1974) (Nikola Roßbach)
• Female Audio Culture. Radio play authors - podcasters - speakers (Jan Sinning)
• Breaking taboos and theater scandal: Elfriede Jelinek (Paul Bräutigam and Andreas Wicke)
• Literature by women in the 17th century (Nikola Roßbach)
• Anne Frank - culture of remembrance in the media network (Andreas Wicke)
• Women filmmakers in the picture! Marginalization (not) an issue? (Stefanie Kreuzer/Mirja Kutzer)
• Women authors from Kassel around 1900 (Nikola Roßbach)
• Mechthild von Magdeburg (Michael Mecklenburg)