Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Jewish Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Jewish Studies

"No Innocent Victim"?: Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During The Holocaust As Trope In Zeugin Aus Der Hölle, Kerstin Steitz Jan 2017

"No Innocent Victim"?: Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During The Holocaust As Trope In Zeugin Aus Der Hölle, Kerstin Steitz

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

This essay addresses how in the film Zeugin aus der Hölle, (1965, Witness out of hell) fictional sexualized violence against a female Jewish Holocaust survivor functions as a trope that exposes and rejects patriarchal and misogynist discourses of victimhood, perpetration, survivor shame, and guilt, which reviewers and scholars rightly have critiqued for such discourses’ re-victimizing and re-traumatizing effects upon victims. I argue that as a filmic trope sexualized violence served specific functions for its contemporaneous audience—Germans in the postwar 1960s. By means of the trope of sexualized violence, Zeugin aus der Hölle confronted contemporaneous West German audiences with gender-specific …


Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Upsherin, Alef-Bet, And The Childhood Navigation Of Jewish Gender Identity Symbol Sets, Amy K. Milligan Jan 2017

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Upsherin, Alef-Bet, And The Childhood Navigation Of Jewish Gender Identity Symbol Sets, Amy K. Milligan

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I introduce the theoretical framework of hairlore, discussing its challenges when applied to the hair of infants and very young children. I contextualize the ritual of upsherin, reviewing its history, describing contemporary applications, and discussing variations of the practice. Finally, I offer an analysis of upsherin, considering its role in the shifting relationship between mother and son, as well as in the maintenance of a gendered Orthodox symbol set, and discuss the possibility of egalitarian parallels for young girls. I ultimately argue that upsherin is ripe for adaptation by liberal Jewish communities in its celebration of …


Juristische Und Epische Verfremdung. Fritz Bauers Kritik Am Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess (1963–1965) Und Peter Weiss’ Dramatische Prozessbearbeitung Die Ermittlung. Oratorium In 11 Gesängen (1965), Kerstin Steitz Jan 2017

Juristische Und Epische Verfremdung. Fritz Bauers Kritik Am Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess (1963–1965) Und Peter Weiss’ Dramatische Prozessbearbeitung Die Ermittlung. Oratorium In 11 Gesängen (1965), Kerstin Steitz

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Beginning with the influences of Schiller's humanist ideals on Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer's expectations of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial as legal working through of the past, this article compares the Holocaust narrative created by the West German criminal trial to Peter Weiss's reworking of the transcripts Die Ermittlung. Oratorium in 11 Gesangen. The article aims to show that literature is able to convey and commemorate aspects of the Holocaust that German criminal law misrepresents and omits.