國立政治大學英國語文學系

Speaker: Dr Helga Müllneritsch (Foreign Lang & Lit, NTU)

Title: “Between the Normative and the Private: Female Agency in Eighteenth-Century German-Speaking Countries"

Chair: Prof Shun-Liang Chao (English, NCCU)

Time: 10.10-12.00, 10 April 2025

Venue: Rm 204, Commerce Building, NCCU (政大商學院大樓204室)

Abstract:

This presentation highlights the value of everyday-life notes and artifacts in understanding the social and cultural contexts of the past. Centring on the Austrian Monarchy in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century, it emphasises the distinct characteristics of the Enlightenment in Austria and brings attention to the agency of several largely forgotten female authors. The focus will lie in particular on the Austrian writer Caroline Pichler’s Über die Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechtes (On the Education of the Female Sex, 1810), in which she attempts to build a basis for the public acceptance of working women, and contrasting it with what letters written by the Mozart family reveal about women’s work. By examining the material basis of their lives and works, this lecture seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the intellectual and cultural currents of the time, highlighting the importance of considering the agency and contributions of women in historical narratives.

Bio:

Dr Helga Müllneritsch is Assistant Professor in German at National Taiwan University. Prior to her current post, she's taught at University College Dublin, Uppsala University, and Bangor University. She hails from Graz, Austria and holds a PhD in German from University of Liverpool. She's the author of The Austrian Manuscript Cookery Book in the Long Eighteenth Century: Studies of Form and Function (2022), and has published widely on female agency and book history in the long eighteenth century in journals such as Publications of the English Goethe Society and 1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies.