Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Gender as a Category of Knowledge

PhD Project:

Description of the Project

In a novel, Jakob Endorfer (1760 – 1807) would be an antihero. In our non-fictional world, he was a marginal figure who found his way into the archives due to a series of social deviances and legal actions. The »mad monk« Endorfer staggered through the foci of the ongoing reforms and discourses of his time: pedagogical reform, the fight against superstition and belief in the devil, secularization of monasteries, the disciplining of all »useless subjects« as begging vagabonds in workhouses and, last but not least, the inception of asylums for specialized medical treatment – all of which were on the agenda of enlightened Bavaria on the end of the 18th century.
Endorfer’s case appears as a chronology of deviances that serves as a heuristic frame to uncover the overlap and transformation of different discourses and techniques of enhancement (e.g. education, counseling, punishment, or healing) for the sake of the perfectibility of society.

Particulars

Studied History and German Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. 2005 – 2007 fellowship at the research training group »Gender as a Category of Knowledge«. 2008 – 2009 worked in the department of communications of the Goethe-Institut Berlin. 2009 – 2012 academic assistant at Universität Zürich with a project of the Schweizer Nationalfonds. Since 2012 academic assistant at the Graduate Campus of Universität Zürich.

Selected Publications

zus. m. Lina Gafner u. Iris Ritzmann (Hg.): Therapie in Federstrichen – Aspekte des Gesundheitsmarkts in ärztlichen Praxisjournalen des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts. In: Gesnerus. Swiss Journal of the History of Medicine and Sciences 69/1 (2012). S. 5 – 11.

Schwangerschaft. In: Friedrich Jaeger (Hg.): Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Bd. 9: Naturhaushalt – Physiokratie, Stuttgart 2009. S. 956 – 962.

»Der Mensch will seinesgleichen haben«. Katholische Aufklärung im Umgang mit Teufelserscheinungen und anderen Formen von Abweichung. In: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 26 (2007). S. 6 – 27.

Krise ohne Alternative ? Das Ende des Alten Reiches 1806 in der Wahrnehmung der süddeutschen Reichsfürsten, Berlin 2006.

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