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Jaclyn Kurash Dissertation Final Version.pdf (5.54 MB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
Mechanical Women and Sexy Machines: Typewriting in Mass-Media Culture of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
Author Info
Kurash, Jaclyn Rose
ORCID® Identifier
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6002-3712
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1440348446
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Abstract
This dissertation is an investigation of portrayals of the female typist and the typewriter in popular literature, film, and advertising of Germanys interwar period. This study offers a departure from the dominant narratives that posit the technologized woman as a product of male anxiety or a conflation of woman and machine. Alternatively, I find that early images of typewriting women are better understood in terms of feminist theories of the body and the cyborg that highlight the intimate connection between the body and machine. I argue that the Weimar typist-typewriter assemblage is a fusion of a specific type of New Woman and machine within the Weimar cultural imaginary, a merger of the organic and the mechanical that I call the New Woman-Machine. Through this concept, I attempt to highlight the existence of a different narrative about women and machines as visions of productivity, automatism, machine skill, and discipline. Beginning with analyses of two popular, late-Weimar novels written by former professional typists, Irmgard Keun’s Gilgi—eine von uns (1931) and Christa Anita Bruck’s Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen (1930), I show that the authors depict typewriting as a form of automatic writing, which serves as a coping mechanism for their protagonists. Then, the study turns to an investigation of German typewriter advertisements, in which female embodiment of the machine is promoted through images of the docile, disciplined female body engaged in mechanical production. The study’s final thrust is made up of an interrogation of popular romantic comedies of the late-Weimar era, in which the typewriting woman becomes a source of visual pleasure that celebrates machine skill, speed, and productivity within women’s embodiment of the machine. My study, thus, comes to the conclusion that such images offered real women of the Weimar era powerful alternative identities in their relationship with technology.
Committee
John Davidson (Advisor)
Katra Byram (Committee Member)
Jill Galvan (Committee Member)
Pages
359 p.
Subject Headings
Film Studies
;
Foreign Language
;
Gender Studies
;
Germanic Literature
Keywords
New Woman
;
Neue Frau
;
typewriter
;
Schreibmaschine
;
Weimar Republic
;
cyborg
;
the body
;
Gender Studies
;
film
;
Irmgard Keun
;
Wilhelm Thiele
;
advertising
;
womens work
;
white-collar worker
;
technology
;
writing
;
mechanical woman
;
machine culture
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Citations
Kurash, J. R. (2015).
Mechanical Women and Sexy Machines: Typewriting in Mass-Media Culture of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
[Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1440348446
APA Style (7th edition)
Kurash, Jaclyn.
Mechanical Women and Sexy Machines: Typewriting in Mass-Media Culture of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933.
2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1440348446.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Kurash, Jaclyn. "Mechanical Women and Sexy Machines: Typewriting in Mass-Media Culture of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1440348446
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
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Document number:
osu1440348446
Download Count:
1,045
Copyright Info
© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.