Jane Freeland
Doctoral Candidate
Current Program
Ph.D. Candidate
Supervisor
Dr. Jennifer Evans
Research Interests
Women’s and Gender History, Post-1945 European History, Contemporary issues of gender violence and legal reform
Selected Publications
“Creating Good Socialist Women: Continuities, Desire and Degeneration in Slatan Dudow’s The Destinies of Women,” Journal of Women’s History (forthcoming).
“Morals on Trial: State-Making and Domestic Violence in the East German Courtroom,” Perspectives on Europe, Vol. 44(1) (2014): 55-60.
“What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Domestic Violence? State-Making and Gender Violence in a Divided Berlin, 1969-1990,” Perspectives on Europe, Vol. 43(1) (2013): 96-100.
Selected Conference Presentations
“Domestic Abuse, Women’s Lives and Citizenship in East and West Germany,” Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Washington DC, part of a panel series on Gendering Post-1945 German History: Entanglements, October 1-4, 2015.
“Engaging Citizens in Domestic Violence Intervention and Divided German State Making,” Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe Workshop, NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, September 11, 2015.
“East German Women Activists against Gender Violence: Creating Subjectivities and Negotiating Citizenship,” New Subjectivities, New Emotions, New Politics: Oppositional Politics and Counter Cultures across the Iron Curtain during the Long 1970s, International Workshop, Center for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, Europe University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany, Co-Organized by the European History Research Centre, University of Warwick and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, Europe University Viadrina, June 12-13, 2015.
“The Neighbors Might Hear: Transnational Connections and the Domestic Violence Shelter Movement in West Germany,” Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Kansas City, MO, Panel Co-Organiser, September 18-21, 2014.
“Negotiating a Space for Women in the State: Domestic Violence in East Germany, 1971 1990,” Physical Violence Workshop, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania, Organised by the Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Potsdam, May 14-15, 2014.
“Blurred Houses: Domestic Violence Shelters in Divided Berlin and Contested Visions of the German State,” German Historical Society, Annual Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London, September 12-14, 2013.
Teaching Experience
HIST 2510: Nineteenth Century Germany (Winter 2015)
LAWS 4106: Law and Violence (Winter 2013)
Description of Research
“Domestic Violence in Divided Berlin, 1969-1990”
My doctoral research investigates the approaches taken to address domestic violence in East and West Berlin between 1969 and 1990. I am particularly interested in the contested interactions between the state and the women’s movement in responding to gender violence and the way both Germanys created a language to define domestic violence, which not only reflected and reinforced their self-definition as liberal or socialist states, but did so in a way that had important consequences for women and marginalized communities. Through an analysis of official state and grassroots responses to domestic violence, I also aim to determine how feminist ideas traversed the East-West border as a way of understanding how the two states were entangled. This both provides a lens into the daily life of the German Democratic Republic, and builds on the literature examining the processes whereby West Germans ‘learned’ liberalism after 1945.