"Gendering urban space and spatializing the modern female gender: A study of female images in Weimar mass media"
Abstract: The present thesis aims to examine the interplay between urban space and the female gender as presented in illustrated magazines during the interwar period. Drawing on the insights of Foucault and Butler, these two notions are analysed in my project as being constructed through the routinization of performative acts and containing a complex historicity. The thesis is composed of three main sections: firstly, an analysis of visual representations of "new women" as metaphors for cities and surrogates for newly constructed or renovated urban spaces; secondly, an examination of women's spatial bodily practices, such as dwelling and moving, respectively, in public and private spaces; and finally, an exploration of the ways these practices influenced the development of female citizenship under the Weimar Republic.
Peirou Chu is currently a third-year PhD candidate at ENS de Lyon. She completed her undergraduate degree in German Studies at the University of Shandong, which included an exchange year in Munich funded by the Bayerisches Hochschulzentrum für China. She earned her master's degree in Modern German History from University College London. She is one of the founders of the Junior Laboratory (Labo Junior) "Habiter/Wohnen," a project attached to ENS de Lyon, Sorbonne University, and Goethe University of Frankfurt, which focuses on the development of concepts of dwelling and concrete housing practices in the Franco-German context. Her research interests include gender history in the early 20th century, cultural history of the interwar period and historic public housing projects.