Research Area E: Gender (and Intersectionality)

Research Area E investigates dependencies associated with gender, sexuality, status, class, ethnicity, religion, age and other historical, anthropological, and representational aspects relevant to explaining differences among persons and human groups, both in past and present societies. It examines how the dynamic and overlapping relationships between categorical markers of social difference and their associated normativities entangle themselves with broader social structures, which create, consolidate, strengthen, perpetuate or undermine social dependencies, often at the expense of the discrimination, undervaluation and invisibilization of other collectives and individuals throughout history.

Representative

Dr. James M. Harland

dharland@uni-bonn.de

Website¹

+49 228 73 62952

Who works in this research area?

Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Marion Gymnich²
Research Topic: Asymmetrical Dependencies ‘at Home’: Narratives of Domestic Service in British Literature and Non-fiction (1660-1900)

Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack³
Research Topic: Asymmetrical Dependency, Materiality and Gender in the longue durée: The Perspective from South America

BCDSS Professors

Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner⁴
Research Topic: Transformations of the Family and the Household in the Period 300–750 and how these are Reflected in Legal norms and Practices

Prof. Dr. Claudia Jarzebowski⁵
Research Topic: Global and Gender History in the Early Modern Period History of Dependency and Slavery

Investigators

Prof. Dr. Kristina Großmann⁶
Research Topic: Dependency and Agency in Globalized Resource Extraction in Southeast Asia – Towards a Material Intersectional Theory of Asymmetrical Dependencies

Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann⁷
Research Topic: The Documentary Film as Important Medium of the Exploration and Documentation of Relations of Asymmetric Dependency

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr. James M. Harland¹
Research Topic: At the Limits of Empire: The Transformation of Identity on the Roman Peripheries, c. 300–800

Dr. Emma Kalb⁸
Research Topic: Slavery and Embodied Difference in Early Modern South Asia

Eva Maria Lehner ⁹
Research Topic:Creolizing Identities. Dependency, Body Politics, Resistance

Dr. Viola Müller¹⁰
Research Topic: Labor conditions of free and enslaved workers in cities of the nineteenth-century Americas

Hanne Østhus
Research Topic: Asymmetrical Dependency, Gender and Labor in the Household

PhD Researchers

Malik Ade [PhD completed]
Research Topic: Kitchen Martyrs? Constructions of Household Dependencies in Nigerian Novels

Joseph Biggerstaff¹¹
Research Topic: Slavery, Dependency, and Capitalism in Barbados, 1680-1750

Giulia Cappucci¹²
Research Topic: Relations Between Enslaved Women and Female Slaveholders in the Roman Households: an Epigraphic Study

Katja Girr ¹³
Research Topic: Asymmetrical dependencies in science production: a case study of illegalized migration researchers’ emotions and vicarious trauma

Zeynep Y. Gökce¹⁴
Research Topic: Revisiting the Ottoman Households: The Maids and Mistresses

Danitza L. Márquez Ramírez¹⁵
Research Topic: Contested Tenures: The Making of Land Ownership and Dependency Relations in Colonial Peru (Cajamarca, 16th-18th Centuries)¹²

Lisa Phongsavath¹⁶
Research Topic: Daughters in Debt: Trading Girls and Girlhood in the Pre-Modern Tai States and Southeastern China

Julia Schmidt¹⁷
Research Topic: Antonia Forster. Eine intellektuelle Biographie mit Edition

Laurie Venters [PhD completed]
Research Topic: Jeopardy Chanced: The Sexual Agency of Female Slaves in Ancient Rome, with Comparisons to Han China

Thematic Year

Research Area E is setting the thematic focus for the BCDSS’s activities in 2023/24, guiding the focus of intellectual content for:

Invited fellows taking up residency at the Heinz Heinen Kolleg
BCDSS Annual Conference Event Series¹⁸
Speakers for our regular lecture series, the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lectures (JCMML)¹⁹

Working Groups

Goals

Research Area E applies an intersectional approach to the theoretical framework of the BCDSS. We look at both the disadvantaging and the privileging effects involved in all these dimensions of social asymmetry, while taking consciously critical standpoints in relation to sexism, classism, racialization, ableism, heteronormativity ..., in order to elaborate on the long and arbitrary legacy of exclusions and on the potential of (so called) marginalized social groups for social change.

Approach

This research area not only integrates marginalized perspectives but also demonstrates the necessity of understanding relations of power and asymmetry as constituted and co-constitutive factors in all forms of (strong) social dependency, relying on methodologies including, but not limited to,

Genealogical Approach
Social Justice and Anti-Discrimination
Critical Race Theory
Structural and Post-Structuralist Intersectionality
Gender History and Feminism
Postcolonial Theory