Comparative Motherhood Studies

Starting from my series lecture at the University of Potsdam “Of Monsters and Mothers: The Invention of Motherhood in Literature, Art and Sciences” (2022) I established an international research network of scholars from different disciplines such as Religion Studies, Art History, Gender Studies, History of Science and Medicine, Comparative Literature and Law Studies coming together in my new edited volume “Vulnerability of Pregnant Bodies and Motherhood from Ancient Times to the Modern World” (Routledge 2025, co-edited with Davina Höll). For mankind is »of woman born« as Adrienne Rich, feminist, activist, mother, writer, and scholar put it fifty years ago (Rich 1976), it is now an urgent task to reconsider the political, cultural, religious and social consequences of this feministic statement. My approaches want to intensify the historical view of pregnant bodies as vulnerable bodies, for the concept of vulnerability emerged as a modern one. Thus, it is important to ask how far we have to go back in history to trace the lines of laboring bodies and mothering between resilience and suffering. Our volume will be the first account bringing together researchers presenting and discussing images, diaries, scientific works, fictions, narratives, popular culture magazines, moving pictures and many more to clarify the hidden paths of history. 

Global Literary History of Femicide

For several lectures and seminars on transareal feminism in Europe and Latin America (Potsdam, Rostock, Hannover) as well as public lectures in China at the Institute for Foreign Languages and Cultures (Hunan Normal University Changsha, 2024) I am working on a global literary history of femicide/feminicide. Literary history should be revisited to reveal the unwritten history of femicide starting with “1001 Nights” the tale of tales of World Literature in which Scheherazade saves her own life from death and ends her toxic relationship with her king and husband Schahriyar who killed every wife after the first night so that she could not betray him. This is the first account of a systematic procedure to kill women because of hate, jealousy, claim of ownership and political rights to do so without fearing consequences. 

This is my starting point to write the unwritten history of global femicide starting with the craft of story telling itself: the female power of telling fictions like a thread without beginning or end, like Penelope’s eternal weaving artwork in Homer’s Odyssee, the comparative research will revisited canonical literature and its popular stepchildren in archives yet unknown to unleash the violence against women hidden in short stories, novels, poetry, art and science.