A story of their own : 20th-century Jewish trans narratives in German and Yiddish
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- My dissertation sheds light on the relationship between storytelling and conceptions of gender variance in German and Yiddish trans narratives through the works of three Jewish 20th-century writers: Else Lasker-Schüler, N.O. Body, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Scholarship on trans narratives has emphasized the role that forms of scientific assessment of transgender individuals, such as medical questionnaires and the so-called "trans biography", have played in the formation of trans narratives throughout the 20th century. Considering the centrality of narrative self-making for trans identity since the beginnings of Western sexology—particularly in the German speaking context—I foreground storytelling and theories of storytelling as an effective methodology to approach trans Jewish identities. Grounded in feminist critique, queer theory, and phenomenologies of trans embodiment, my work shows that authors turn to classic narrative forms to tell stories of gender variance in a deeply relational way, privileging personal encounters with others as sites of gendered and sexual self-understanding. Rather than rooting transness in a deviated body and mind that needs to be revealed, examined, and rendered legible to cis culture by a medical authority, these authors build on the resources of Homeric epic, Yiddish folklore, and Biblical tales to highlight the—often intimate and idiosyncratic—intersubjective process of making meaning of gender. Classic forms of storytelling place at the fore aspects of embodiment that link characters to their social surroundings, such as speech, action, physical movement, and sensual perception. In doing so, these forms enable 20th -century authors to narrate transness through social encounters rather than a medical-scientific response and open up the possibility of understanding gender variance on a foundation of collaborative worldmaking. My work embraces storytelling as an ethical challenge to efforts for complete cultural legibility of minoritized embodiment, and not only finds new perspectives on narrating transness in the 20th century but also provides a new framework for thinking about the narration of identities at large.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Balling, Jonathan-Rafael Juval |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Daub, Adrian |
| Degree supervisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Daub, Adrian |
| Thesis advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Kronfeld, Chana |
| Degree committee member | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Degree committee member | Kronfeld, Chana |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of German Studies |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Jonathan-Rafael J. Balling. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of German Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/xy952yw8734 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Jonathan-Rafael Juval Balling
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...