Women in the Metropolis

Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture

Katharina von Ankum

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520204645
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520917606
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Bringing together the work of scholars in many disciplines, Women in the Metropolis provides a comprehensive introduction to women's experience of modernism and urbanization in Weimar Germany. It shows women as active participants in artistic, social, and political movements and documents the wide range of their responses to the multifaceted urban culture of Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s.

Examining a variety of media ranging from scientific writings to literature and the visual arts, the authors trace gendered discourses as they developed to make sense of and regulate emerging new images of femininity. Besides treating classic films such as Metropolis and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, the articles discuss other forms of mass culture, including the fashion industry and the revue performances of Josephine Baker. Their emphasis on women's critical involvement in the construction of their own modernity illustrates the significance of the Weimar cultural experience and its relevance to contemporary gender, German, film, and cultural studies.


Bringing together the work of scholars in many disciplines, Women in the Metropolis provides a comprehensive introduction to women's experience of modernism and urbanization in Weimar Germany. It shows women as active participants in artistic, soci

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• ONE Gretchen, Girl, Garçonne? Weimar Science and Popular Culture in Search of the Ideal New Woman
• TWO Perceptions of Difference: Woman as Spectator and Spectacle
• THREE Female Flanerie and the Symphony of the City
• FOUR The Conspiracy of Women: Images of City Life in the Work of Jeanne Mammen
• FIVE The Misogynist Machine: Images of Technology in the Work of Hannah Höch
• SIX Metropolis and the Technosexual Woman of German Modernity
• SEVEN Femininity, the Primitive, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin
• EIGHT Gendered Urban Spaces in Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen
• NINE In the Mirror of Fashion
• TEN Lustmord: Inside the Windows of the Metropolis
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX