Benbow, Heather Merle

Heather Merle Benbow is a Lecturer in German Studies in the School of Languages and Linguistics and co-convener of European Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She received her Ph.D. in German Studies from the University of Melbourne.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN GENDERED DISCOURSE IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY Literary, Philosophical, and Popular Portrayals of Female Orality

2009 0-7734-4722-9
This book examines at the gender dimensions of orality in German culture and thought around 1800. It uncovers oral resonances in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, demonstrates that pedagogical and didactic literature about women and girls is based on a suppression of female orality, contrasts medicalized models of (open) female and (closed) male bodies and reinterprets two classic literary heroines in terms of their oral conformity and excess.