Dr Birgit Mikus
Birgit holds an M.A. in German Language and Literature and General and Applied Linguistics from the University of Bonn, Germany, and a D.Phil. in Medieval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford, on the depiction and narrative function of female political activists in German women’s writing in nineteenth-century Germany.
Her research focuses on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German literature and cultural history, women’s writing, history of feminism, political literature, scientific thought in literature of the Weimar Republic, philosophy of language, and the author Hedwig Dohm.
She has worked as the Project Administrator on the ERC-funded 15cBOOKTRADE Project, as Research Assistant on the HERA-funded Marrying Cultures and AHRC-funded Writing Brecht projects, and is the Editorial Assistant of Oxford German Studies.
Publications
The Political Woman in Print. German Women’s Writing 1845-1919 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014).
Entry for ‘Mathilde Franziska Anneke, Das Weib im Conflict mit den socialen Verhältnissen (1847)’, in Manfred Brocker (ed.), Geschichte des politischen Denkens III – Das 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 2021). Forthcoming.
‘Mathilde Franziska Anneke und ihre Texte – Menschenrechte literarisch’, in 200 Jahre Mathilde Franziska Anneke. Forschungsstand, Analysen und Ausblicke, ed. by Susanne Slobodzian, Karin Hockamp, and Wilfried Korngiebel (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2018), pp. 101–23.
‘Untangling the heroic from the sacrifice: Malwida von Meysenbug’s attempt to appropriate a common female topos in and for her political novel Phädra (1885)’, in Helden – Heroisierungen – Heroismen (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2018), pp. 25–37.
Birgit Mikus, Emily Spiers (eds), Fractured legacies: historical, cultural and political perspectives on German feminism, a special issue of Oxford German Studies, 45:1 (2016).
Birgit Mikus, Emily Spiers, ‘Split Infinities: German Feminisms and the Generational Project’, in: Fractured legacies: historical, cultural and political perspectives on German feminism, a special issue of Oxford German Studies, 45:1 (2016), 5–30.
‘Children of the Revolution? A case study of the missing next generation in women’s political writings in the nineteenth century and Hedwig Dohm’s novels’, The Feminine in German Culture: A Special Issue in Honour of Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, German Life and Letters, 67:4 (2014), 542–54.
‘“Sprechmaschine Du”: Sprachkritik in ausgewählten Romanen Hedwig Dohms’, German Life and Letters, 62:2 (2009), 115–39.
Contact
Email: birgit.mikus@voltaire.ox.ac.uk
Tel: 01865 284600