Elisabeth Lechner
> BOOK (April 2021) "Riot, don't diet! Aufstand der widerspenstigen Körper" bei Kremayr & Scheriau
> Interviews and Media appearances: linktr.ee/femsista
> PhD thesis "Beyond Disgust - The Popfeminist Politics of Body Positivity"
> All things Lookism, Body Shaming, Body Positivity and Body Neutrality
Formerly employed at the Austrian Chamber of Labour, Office for Digital Affairs
Overall Interests:
- CULTURAL STUDIES Popular Culture & Feminisms, Neoliberalism, Cultural Theory
- GENDER & BODY STUDIES Feminist Theory, Popular/Celebrity Feminism, Feminist History & New Trends, Postfeminist Media & Beyond, Sexualities, Embodiment, Body Positivity, Fat Acceptance, Menstrual Activism
- AFFECT THEORY, EMOTION STUDIES, esp. Body Shame, Disgust
- DIGITAL WORLDS - Platform Capitalism, Digital Activism & Online Discrimination
- INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY, CRITICAL WHITENESS STUDIES
- FILM & MEDIA STUDIES Film, Television, Visual Culture, Online Culture & Digital/Web Activism
- TRANSGRESSION in Popular Culture
Supervisors: ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Monika Seidl
> Interviews and Media appearances: linktr.ee/femsista
> PhD thesis "Beyond Disgust - The Popfeminist Politics of Body Positivity"
> All things Lookism, Body Shaming, Body Positivity and Body Neutrality
Formerly employed at the Austrian Chamber of Labour, Office for Digital Affairs
Overall Interests:
- CULTURAL STUDIES Popular Culture & Feminisms, Neoliberalism, Cultural Theory
- GENDER & BODY STUDIES Feminist Theory, Popular/Celebrity Feminism, Feminist History & New Trends, Postfeminist Media & Beyond, Sexualities, Embodiment, Body Positivity, Fat Acceptance, Menstrual Activism
- AFFECT THEORY, EMOTION STUDIES, esp. Body Shame, Disgust
- DIGITAL WORLDS - Platform Capitalism, Digital Activism & Online Discrimination
- INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY, CRITICAL WHITENESS STUDIES
- FILM & MEDIA STUDIES Film, Television, Visual Culture, Online Culture & Digital/Web Activism
- TRANSGRESSION in Popular Culture
Supervisors: ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Monika Seidl
less
InterestsView All (17)
Uploads
Sirens became an essential element of the literary imagination in many European literatures in Romanticism and have remained popular ever since. Also, in Russian and Polish culture, the image of the dangerously alluring and transgressive female nymph called “rusalka” is omnipresent. In this paper, the authors use a comparative approach to trace the evolution of the “rusalka” motif from its creation in the Romantic period to its transformed (and often highly sexualized) use in present-day popular culture. From works written by Pushkin, Lermontov, Mickiewicz as well as Bal’mont and Gumilev (amongst others), we move on to contemporary actualizations of the motif in the music videos and lyrics of a Russian girl group (“Фабрика”), a Polish pop performer (Doda Elektroda) and a Russian folk-metal band (“Alkonost”). We argue that the centuries-old popularity of the “rusalka” motif can be ascribed to the theme’s core semantics of female transgression and adaptability that lends itself especially well to the sphere of pop and its remixing and resignifying practices.
Auch soziale Medien potenzieren die gesellschaftlichen Widersprüche, die mit medialer Vervielfältigung einhergehen. Digitale Plattformen geben vielen Anlass zu Pessimismus. Autokratische Beeinflussung von Wahlprozessen geben ebenso Grund zur Sorge wie medienrechtliche Grundfragen, datenschutzrechtliche Versäumnisse und algorithmische Diskriminierung großer Plattformen mit faktischer Monopolstellung. Was tun, um alte Probleme auf neuen Plattformen so zu regulieren, dass deren demokratisches Potenzial entfaltet, digitale Teilhabe Realität und Risiken vermindert werden können?
von Davinia Stimson
GROßE TÖCHTER IST EIN JAHR ALT!! YAY!!!
Elisabeth Lechner (die ihr schon aus Folge 20 kennt) hat sich deshalb sofort gemeldet, um mich für die Geburtstagsfolge zu interviewen. (vielen Dank und Bussi, liebe Elli <3)
Elisabeth Lechner ist Doktorandin an der Universität Wien. Sie forscht und lehrt zum Thema Schönheits-und Körpernormen, Body Positivity Bewegung, Body Neutrality und Lookism. Was das alles bedeutet, erklärt sie uns in dieser Folge. Inklusive Tipps wie man am schnellsten zum Beach Body kommt - also tune in.
http://www.univie.ac.at/vda-humanities/2017/09/07/two-days-with-linda-williams-eminent-film-studies-scholar-pioneer-in-academic-pornography-studies-and-genuinely-great-feminist-idol/
http://www.univie.ac.at/vda-humanities/2017/09/04/elisabeth-lechner-vom-feministischen-potenzial-ekliger-weiblicher-koerper/
Link - Foto zum Vortrag.
Sirens became an essential element of the literary imagination in many European literatures in Romanticism and have remained popular ever since. Also, in Russian and Polish culture, the image of the dangerously alluring and transgressive female nymph called “rusalka” is omnipresent. In this paper, the authors use a comparative approach to trace the evolution of the “rusalka” motif from its creation in the Romantic period to its transformed (and often highly sexualized) use in present-day popular culture. From works written by Pushkin, Lermontov, Mickiewicz as well as Bal’mont and Gumilev (amongst others), we move on to contemporary actualizations of the motif in the music videos and lyrics of a Russian girl group (“Фабрика”), a Polish pop performer (Doda Elektroda) and a Russian folk-metal band (“Alkonost”). We argue that the centuries-old popularity of the “rusalka” motif can be ascribed to the theme’s core semantics of female transgression and adaptability that lends itself especially well to the sphere of pop and its remixing and resignifying practices.
Auch soziale Medien potenzieren die gesellschaftlichen Widersprüche, die mit medialer Vervielfältigung einhergehen. Digitale Plattformen geben vielen Anlass zu Pessimismus. Autokratische Beeinflussung von Wahlprozessen geben ebenso Grund zur Sorge wie medienrechtliche Grundfragen, datenschutzrechtliche Versäumnisse und algorithmische Diskriminierung großer Plattformen mit faktischer Monopolstellung. Was tun, um alte Probleme auf neuen Plattformen so zu regulieren, dass deren demokratisches Potenzial entfaltet, digitale Teilhabe Realität und Risiken vermindert werden können?
von Davinia Stimson
GROßE TÖCHTER IST EIN JAHR ALT!! YAY!!!
Elisabeth Lechner (die ihr schon aus Folge 20 kennt) hat sich deshalb sofort gemeldet, um mich für die Geburtstagsfolge zu interviewen. (vielen Dank und Bussi, liebe Elli <3)
Elisabeth Lechner ist Doktorandin an der Universität Wien. Sie forscht und lehrt zum Thema Schönheits-und Körpernormen, Body Positivity Bewegung, Body Neutrality und Lookism. Was das alles bedeutet, erklärt sie uns in dieser Folge. Inklusive Tipps wie man am schnellsten zum Beach Body kommt - also tune in.
http://www.univie.ac.at/vda-humanities/2017/09/07/two-days-with-linda-williams-eminent-film-studies-scholar-pioneer-in-academic-pornography-studies-and-genuinely-great-feminist-idol/
http://www.univie.ac.at/vda-humanities/2017/09/04/elisabeth-lechner-vom-feministischen-potenzial-ekliger-weiblicher-koerper/
Link - Foto zum Vortrag.
Focusing on British plus-size model Felicity Hayward and her campaign #selflovebringsbeauty, I will explore how and which kinds of representation of bodies could facilitate what kind of political activism in the context of body positivity. Based on a conception of bodies as non-binary, relational, and in the process of becoming-essentialised and fixed only temporarily for activist purposes (reclaiming 'the disgusting body' by actively promoting a resignified, positively connoted stable notion of it) or in a derogatory context (being pinned down by slurs and hate speech)-I will ask which bodies come to be constituted as (hyper-)visible activist bodies (mostly minimally unruly, attractive, white, upper-class ones like Felicity Hayward's) and draw attention to those vulnerable bodies that remain hidden below the threshold of visibility as unspeakable/unshowable because of their age, class, disabilities, race or ethnicity.
Vortrag und Diskussion zum Thema Popfeminismus.
Link zu Blog-Post von Sandra Folie, die die Diskussion zusammenfasst.
In my talk, I will trace the evolution of “White trash” up to current debates and demonstrate the term’s polysemy. Lena Dunham, a highly controversial public media persona, will be used as a case study to theorize the term’s contemporary meanings. I will show how discourses around feminism, diversity, class and racism intersect and how they influence/contradict each other. We will see that Dunham occupies a third space between feminist icon and “white trash”, that her works and performances oscillate between subversive and hegemonic positions and that her success arguably lies in playing with those boundaries.
Recently, there has been an intense public debate around the works of female artists in contemporary Western popular culture ranging from singers (e.g. Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus) to literary/multimedia personae like Lena Dunham (USA) and Charlotte Roche (GER). While Lena Dunham is best known for her TV-series Girls and her autobiographical essay collection Not That Kind of Girl, Charlotte Roche became famous for her novels (and the subsequent movies) Feuchtgebiete and Schoßgebete. In the media, there seems to be a heightened interest in categorising the two authors as either celebrated icons of a new generation of sex-positive feminists or shameful creators of disgusting pornographic texts.
Despite the heated media discussions, Roche’s and Dunham’s works have not received sufficient scholarly attention – especially the reasons for their success are still understudied. By using a comparative approach and by arguing for a common (albeit different) language of bodily resistance as their success strategy, the proposed paper will not only critically engage with public debates, i.e. situate their oeuvre vis-à-vis feminist discourses, but also account for their outstanding sales rates. I argue that both authors became famous by a) publicly sharing taboo aspects of women’s everyday life and sexuality through a very direct, self-confident language and b) employing different media languages (e.g. film, TV-series, novels, posts). The texts will be analysed within a popfeminist paradigm, touching upon topics such as food/body politics, corporeality and sexuality as well as female solidarity in the form of “sharing = caring?”. In conclusion, the paper will shed new light on the contradictory works of two bestselling popfeminist authors, who from within the popular sparked a viral debate about the state of feminism in the 21st century.
After the successful completion of this course, students will be able to critically examine the construction of unruly femininities in contemporary US culture, as they will have learned how to appropriately use a toolbox of genre-specific methods of visual analysis (e.g. semiotic analysis, mis-en-scène analysis for moving images, etc.).
We will use Anne Helen Peterson’s insightful contribution to celebrity studies "Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud. The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman" (2017) as a course reader (that will be accompanied by other course readings), as it consists of a series of well-rounded ‘critical media analyses’, making explicit the norms of ‘appropriate femininity’ that usually remain hidden. The essays in the book are excellent examples of intersectionality theory put into practice - teaching students how to notice and scrutinise cultural markers of difference like race, gender, class, sexuality, body type, ability/health, and age in a variety of different media and contexts (in advertising, TV series, reality TV, the music business, sports, politics, comedy as well as on social media). By focussing on concepts like transgression, excess, and abjection, we will make the rules of 'acceptable femininity' visible and, therefore, assailable. By introducing students to key texts in gender studies, celebrity studies, body studies, as well as fat studies and providing them with a toolkit for visual analysis, students will be able to discuss contemporary femininities in an informed, intersectional way after they have completed this class.
Art der Leistungskontrolle und erlaubte Hilfsmittel
In-class and online participation, mid-term test, group project, scrapbook (i.e. a continuous course log incl. two short essays, weekly entries, your group project proposal, and an analysis of an example of 'unruly femininity' of your choice)
Mindestanforderungen und Beurteilungsmaßstab
In-Class and Online Participation: 15 points
Mid-Term Test: 20 points
Group Project: 25 points
Scrapbook: 40 points (to be handed in until July 7th)
Overall Score of 100 Points.
Pass-Mark: 60 Points.
Scale:
1: 90-100 Points
2: 89-80 Points
3: 79-70 Points
4: 69-60 Points
5: 59-0 Points
All of these four course requirements (in-class participation, mid-term test, group project and the scrapbook) need to be fulfilled! Not showing up for the presentation of your group project or not handing in the scrapbook equals dropping out of the course and being assessed with a negative grade!
You can miss two sessions.
Prüfungsstoff
Course readings and the concepts and vocabulary of Gender Studies, Celebrity Studies and Body Studies as well as Visual Analysis introduced in class.
Literatur
Readings will be made available on Moodle and there will be a "Handapparat" in the library for this class.
Of course, this is NOT OBLIGATORY, BUT: For those of you who want to get started on the course reader (Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen) already, please get in touch! I ordered a copy for the library, but have also digitised the book and can share it! Just send me an email!
Other publications that will be considered:
- Kray, Christine A.; Carroll, Tamar W., and Hinda Mandell. Nasty Women and Bad Hombres. Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election. Boydell & Brewer, 2018.
- Mukhopadhyay, Samhita, and Kate Harding. eds. Nasty Women. Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America. Macmillan, 2017.
- Traister, Rebecca. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger. Simon & Schuster, 2018.
After the successful completion of this course, students will be able to critically examine the construction of unruly femininities in contemporary popular culture, as they will have learned how to appropriately use a toolbox of genre-specific methods of visual analysis (e.g. semiotic analysis, mis-en-scène analysis for moving images, etc.).
We will use Anne Helen Peterson’s insightful contribution to celebrity studies "Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud. The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman" (2017) as a course reader (that will be accompanied by other course readings), as it consists of a series of well-rounded ‘critical media analyses’, making explicit the norms of ‘appropriate femininity’ that usually remain hidden. The essays in the book are excellent examples of intersectionality theory put into practice – teaching students how to notice and scrutinise cultural markers of difference like race, gender, class, sexuality, body type, ability/health, and age in a variety of different media and contexts (in advertising, TV series, reality TV, the music business, sports, politics, comedy as well as on social media). By focussing on concepts like transgression, excess, and abjection, we will make the rules of ‘acceptable femininity’ visible and, therefore, assailable. By introducing students to key texts in gender studies, celebrity studies, body studies, as well as fat studies and providing them with a toolkit for visual analysis, students will be able to discuss contemporary femininities in an informed, intersectional way after they have completed this class.
Art der Leistungskontrolle und erlaubte Hilfsmittel
In-class and online participation, mid-term test, group project, scrapbook (i.e. a continuous course log incl. two short essays, weekly entries, your group project proposal, and an analysis of an example of 'unruly femininity' of your choice)
Mindestanforderungen und Beurteilungsmaßstab
In-Class and Online Participation: 15 points
Mid-Term Test: 20 points
Group Project: 25 points
Scrapbook: 40 points (to be handed in until February 10th)
Overall Score of 100 Points.
Pass-Mark: 60 Points.
Scale:
1: 90-100 Points
2: 89-80 Points
3: 79-70 Points
4: 69-60 Points
5: 59-0 Points
All of these four course requirements (in-class participation, mid-term test, group project and the scrapbook) need to be fulfilled! Not showing up for the presentation of your group project or not handing in the scrapbook equals dropping out of the course and being assessed with a negative grade!
You can miss two sessions.
Prüfungsstoff
Course readings and the concepts and vocabulary of Gender Studies, Celebrity Studies and Body Studies as well as Visual Analysis introduced in class.
Literatur
Readings will be made available on Moodle.
After the successful completion of this course, students will be able to critically examine the role of 'the body' in advertising. Using examples like Protein World's controversial "Are You Beach Body Ready?" London tube advert or Bodyform's 'provocative' advert for sanitary towels, we will approach the multidisciplinary field of 'body studies' through the body politics of advertising.
Using the methodological and theoretical input provided, students will be able to classify different genres of advertisements (e.g. subway ads, movie trailers & posters, online advertising on websites & social media, all kinds of print advertising, TV ads, etc.), discuss their content and form with technical vocabulary and reflect on the advertisements' frames of consumption in terms of time and space (e.g. sitting in a private living room watching TV, waiting for the subway looking at a public screen, or even on the move scrolling through your Instagram feed on your smartphone, etc.), thereby always focussing on the role 'the body' plays in them. In addition to familiarising themselves with selected tools of visual analysis, students will be able to notice and scrutinise cultural markers of difference like race, gender, class, ability/health, and age in advertising, as the course will provide a way into the complex, multidisciplinary field of 'body studies.'
Art der Leistungskontrolle und erlaubte Hilfsmittel
In-class and online participation, mid-term test, group project, scrapbook (i.e. a continuous course log incl. two short essays, weekly entries, your group project proposal, reflections on the guiding questions for the set readings and an analysis of an advertisement of your choice)
Mindestanforderungen und Beurteilungsmaßstab
In-Class and Online Participation: 15 points
Mid-Term Test: 20 points
Group Project: 25 points
Scrapbook: 40 points (to be handed in until July 15th)
Overall Score of 100 Points.
Pass-Mark: 60 Points.
Scale:
1: 90-100 Points
2: 89-80 Points
3: 79-70 Points
4: 69-60 Points
5: 59-0 Points
All of these four course requirements (in-class participation, mid-term test, group project and the scrapbook) need to be fulfilled! Not showing up for the presentation of your group project or not handing in the scrapbook equals dropping out of the course and being assessed with a negative grade!
You can miss two sessions.
Prüfungsstoff
Course readings and the concepts and vocabulary of Body Studies as well as Visual Analysis introduced in class.
Literatur
Readings will be made available on Moodle.
April 2017
The lecture series is serious, like Linda Williams’ seminal Porn Studies, about including “the critical and historical study of pornography in the academic curriculum”, which is “the study of pornography as a cultural form—not just as a legal or sociological issue” (“Porn Studies” 5). Spanning from Pompeii’s erotic frescos to the current debate on society’s ‘pornification,’ the series of diverse and yet thematically connected lectures will deconstruct common understandings of pornography by tracing the historical genealogy of the term and highlighting its cultural contingency at different points in time.
Students will be provided with a theoretical and methodological toolkit for understanding and examining topics related to pornography and the construction of pleasure and sexuality. The diverse talks will critically engage with historical as well as topical debates and provide students with an overview of the most important (theoretical) discourses in the interdisciplinary field of sexuality studies. By looking at discourses of ‘sexualisation’ and sexual empowerment, of gendered representations of sexual desire and of different discrimination practices (gender, age, ‘race’, sexual orientation, class, etc.) the lecture series will familiarize students with an intersectional awareness of different critical aspects of the consumption and interpretation of erotic media in an academic context.
07.03. Andrea Braidt (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
“Porn Studies: A Feminist Project”
14.03. Michaela Lindinger (Wien Museum)
“The Porn Capital: From the 'Viennese Sujets' to Hedy Lamarr. Vienna Porn Production 1870-1930”
21.03. Dieter Fuchs (University of Vienna)
“Mighty Aphrodite’: Pornography in Ancient Greece and Rome”
28.03. Sandra Mayer (University of Vienna)
“‘My Secret Life’: Victorian Erotic Memoir as Life Writing Genre.”
04.04. Elisabeth Lechner (University of Vienna)
“Discussing the Complexities of ‘Disgusting’ Sex in Lena Dunham’s Girls”
25.04. Eugenie Maria Theuer (University of Barcelona/University of Vienna)
“Definitely Not in Kansas Anymore: (Re)Appropriation, Affirmation and Subversion in Porn Parodies”
02.05. Sabine Harrer (University of Vienna)
“Vulvas on the Tablet: What Making Cunt Touch This Has Taught Us About Pleasure and Shame in Digital Gaming”
09.05. Iris Gemeinböck (University of Vienna)
“Literature(s) of Pleasure: Erotic Imaginations between Hegemony and Liberation”
16.05. Clarissa Smith (University of Sunderland)
“Talking about Pornography in Everyday Life: What Can Be Learned from Talking to Audiences”
23.05. Timo Frühwirth (University of Vienna)
“Pornography and the Politics of Space”
30.05. Alexandra Ganser (University of Vienna)
“Porn without Sex: Ruin, Torture, Real Estate and the Proliferation of the Pornographic Gaze”
13.06. Course Recap
20.06. Linda Williams (University of California, Berkeley)
“On the Academic Pleasures of Screening Sex: A Feminist Perspective on the Frenzy of the Visible”
Trash is everywhere: the superfluous, the unwanted, that which is too much, that which remains. Although there has been some interest in this subject particularly in recent years, artefacts, discourses, and practices on trash / rubbish / waste / garbage / junk / detritus have not yet been systematically approached on an academic level. Our international symposium seeks to explore the range of themes covered under the heading of ‘trash’ and the multiplicity of theoretical perspectives and methodological tools that can be applied in its analysis.
“Embodied Feelings” will be held in a master-class format: students and young researchers at the University of Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna are invited to present their research in 15-minute presentations, which will be discussed by Linda Williams and workshop participants. Presentations should provide think pieces on work in progress rather than closed arguments as the workshop is designed to generate peer exchange and feedback which can be incorporated into the work.
Link zum Doppelinterview: https://www.barfuss.it/leben/%E2%80%8Bwer-schön-ist-hat-es-einfacher
Link zum AK Policy Paper: https://wien.arbeiterkammer.at/interessenvertretung/arbeitdigital/policypapers/Policy_Paper_Digitale_Inklusion.html
Link zum Blogartikel: https://awblog.at/digitale-inklusion-als-hebel-gesellschaftlicher-teilhabe/
In a dialogue, the authors discuss controversies in feminisms and their hopes for feminist futures. The first sections dismantle oppositional catfight narratives regarding feminisms and highlight the misogynist and transphobic cultural-political work they perform. Feminists and trans activists find common cause in resisting the subordination and control of womxn’s and trans persons’ bodies. Later sections outline an activist approach to doing feminisms online, while asking participants to keep the capitalist embeddedness of social media in mind. Body-positive activism and body neutrality are explored as strategies of resistance. Rather than adhering to a narrative of opposition, the authors advocate for acknowledging the common ground that shared vulnerability holds for community building and mobilising political agency. Healing and points of joy are sought in connection.