Head: Prof Dr Karen Ellwanger, Prof Dr Silke Wenk

This field of research concerned a desideratum both in current theories of memory and commemorative politics, which mostly neglect the category of gender, and in gender studies in social and cultural sciences, which (especially after the "performative turn") largely ignores questions of memory and remembrance. The guiding question was in what way representations of the past and dominant forms of remembrance and commemorative politics are determined by gender-specific coding (or also reinforce this) and also have unintended effects in terms of power and power relations.
Problem areas were

• the significance of gender images in patterns of interpretation of the National Socialist genocide in practices and representations of commemoration and the communication of historical knowledge (for example, also in co-operations with the Ravensbrück Memorial),

• the gendering of material culture in museum presentations and the possibilities and limits of creating minoritised cultures of remembrance against the background of postcolonial criticism of identity concepts and policies,

• questions of memory and remembrance in the context of migration, globalisation and social movement

Key publications:

Wenk, Silke (2006): Visual Politics, Memory, and Gender. In: Ulrike Auga and Christina von Braun (eds.): Gender: Order and Disorder (print in preparation)

Wenk, Silke (2005): GenderMemory. Representations of Memory, Remembrance and Gender. FrauenKunstWissenschaft, No. 39, edited together with Josch Hoenes and others, Marburg

Eschebach, Insa/Jacobeit, Sigrid/Wenk, Silke (2002): Memory and Gender. Patterns of interpretation in representations of the National Socialist genocide, Frankfurt/M. and New York