Dr Heather Benbow
University of Melbourne
Heather Benbow is a lecturer in German Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and received her PhD in 2003. Her research mostly concerns questions of gender, race and nation in German thought around 1800. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on eighteenth- through twentieth-century German thought, literature and film in journals such as Body & Society, German Quarterly and German Studies Review. Her book, Gender and Orality in German Culture around 1800, is to be published with Edwin Mellen Press.
While at CRASSH Dr Benbow will work on a project investigating the preoccupation in German popular philosophy of the late eighteenth century with the treatment of women in different nations. The project will explore how the treatment of women becomes a measure of German cultural superiority, the ostensibly liberated Germanic women a symbol of pride for an imagined German nation. This project will contribute to our understanding of the history of the discipline of anthropology and will provide a valuable early-modern context for the always popular cross-cultural comparison of the treatment of women.
