KORD, Susanne 1959-

(Susanne Theresia Kord)

PERSONAL: Born October 22, 1959, in Kassel, Germany; daughter of Magdalena Pfannkuchen; married John Francis Landau, February 29, 1992. Education: Philipps-Universität (Marburg, Germany), M.A., 1984; University of Massachusetts, M.A., 1985, Ph.D., 1990.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of German, Gower St., University College London, London WC1E 6BT, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, assistant professor, 1990–93; Georgetown University, Washington, DC, began as assistant professor, became George M. Roth Distinguished Professor of German, 1993–c. 2003; University College London, London, England, professor of German, 2004–. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, visiting lecturer, 1988–90. Editor of journals, including German Quarterly.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association, American Association of Teachers of German, German Studies Association, Women in German.

AWARDS, HONORS: Robert L. Kahn Prize, Society for Contemporary American Literature in German, 1994; Brentano prize, Freie Universität Berlin, 1997, for "outstanding achievements in the advancement of women and knowledge of women's history."

WRITINGS:

CRITICISM

Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (title means "A Look behind the Wings: German-Language Women Playwrights in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries"), J. B. Metzler (Stuttgart, Germany), 1992.

Sich einen Namen machen: Anonymität und weibliche Autorschaft 1700–1900 (title means "Getting a Name for Themselves: Anonymity of Female Authorship"), J. B. Metzler (Stuttgart, Germany), 1996.

Little Detours: The Letters and Plays of Luise Gottsched (1713–1762), Camden House (Rochester, NY), 2000.

Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany: Milkmaids on Parnassus, Camden House (Rochester, NY), 2003.

(With Elisabeth Krimmer) Hollywood Divas, Indie Queens, and TV Heroines: Contemporary Screen Images of Women, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2005.

EDITOR

(With Richard Schade) The Lessing Yearbook XXVI, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1994.

(With Friederike Eigler; and contributor) The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1997.

Charlotte von Stein: Dramen, Gesamtausgabe (title means "Charlotte von Stein: Plays, Complete Edition"), Olms (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Burkhard Henke and Simon Richter) Unwrapping Goethe's Weimar: Essays in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge, Camden House (Rochester, NY), 2000.

Elsa Bernstein, Dammerung: Schauspiel in Funf Akten, Modern Language Association (New York, NY), 2003, translated by Kord as Twilight: A Drama in Five Acts, 2003.

OTHER

Contributor of articles to books, including Thalia's Daughters: German Women Dramatists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Women Writers in German-speaking Countries, and The Camden House Companion to the Sturm und Drang. Contributor to journals, including Eighteenth-Century Studies, German Quarterly, and Jerome Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: Susanne Kord has written extensively in both German and English about women in literature and the arts. Her topics include neglected female playwrights of centuries past, working-class women who penned poetry, and depictions of women in modern film. Her first book, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, which grew out of her university thesis, was described as a "seminal work on German women dramatists from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries" by Sarah Colvin in the Journal of European Studies. Kord followed this with Sich einen Namen machen: Anonymität and weibliche Autorschaft 1700–1900, which examines why there were so few women writers in Germany during the period covered. The author notes that many women stayed away from literary pursuits during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of their belief that a woman's proper role was a domestic one, while others wrote anonymously or pseudonymously, sometimes under male names. This work "is a meticulously researched piece of thinking," Colvin remarked. Colvin also called both of these books "pathbreaking studies."

Moving on to writing and editing English-language works, Kord, together with Friederike Eigler, edited The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature. This volume features numerous contributions by Kord as well as other experts, and it deals with a wide variety of literary topics as well as other aspects of culture, such as filmmaking; it also addresses political controversies. "The selection is broad and inclusive … and the treatment of topics for the most part eschews tendentiousness," related Carol A. Leibiger in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology. She concluded, "This work is an important addition to feminist literary and cultural scholarship within German Studies." Other books edited by Kord include collections of the works of German women playwrights, with commentary by Kord.

The German-language Charlotte von Stein: Dramen, Gesamtausgabe is the first complete edition of the work of a dramatist who has often drawn scholars' attention more for her friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe than for her plays. Kord's volume "will do much to establish Charlotte von Stein's reputation as a writer, rather than merely as a writer's lady friend," Colvin reported in Modern Language Review.

English-language volumes written by Kord include Little Detours: The Letters and Plays of Luise Gottsched (1713–1762), which seeks new recognition for a playwright who is sometimes dismissed by critics. John Guthrie, writing in the Journal of European Studies, disliked some aspects of Kord's interpretations, such as her portrayal of Gottsched's husband, Johann Christoph Gottsched; the critic found this depiction excessively negative and unsupported by evidence. However, he praised Kord for her efforts to "engage with Luise Gottsched's texts and attempt new readings of them." Kord has also written Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany: Milkmaids on Parnassus, an examination of poetry by domestic servants, farm workers, and other manual laborers, and of how their work was received by the literary elite; and, with Elisabeth Krimmer, Hollywood Divas, Indie Queens, and TV Heroines: Contemporary Screen Images of Women, an analysis of the attitudes conveyed by film and television portrayals of women in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, December, 2003, G.R. Wasserman, review of Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany: Milkmaids on Parnassus, p. 705.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, winter, 2001, Birgit Tautz, review of Unwrapping Goethe's Weimar: Essays in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge, p. 321.

German Quarterly, summer, 1999, Arndd Bohm, review of Sich einen Namen machen: Anonymität and weibliche Autorschaft 1700–1900, p. 294; summer, 2001, Sigrid Lange, review of The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature, p. 326; winter, 2004, Janet Besserer Holmgren, review of Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany, p. 100.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April, 1999, Carol A. Leibiger, review of The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature, p. 308.

Journal of European Studies, March, 1997, Sarah Colvin, review of Sich einen Namen machen, p. 17; June, 2000, Paul Bishop, review of Unwrapping Goethe's Weimar, p. 238; March, 2001, John Guthrie, review of Little Detours: The Letters and Plays of Luise Gottsched (1713–1762), p. 129.

Modern Language Review, July, 2000, Sarah Colvin, review of Charlotte von Stein: Dramen, Gesamtausgabe, p. 882; April, 2002, review of Little Detours, p. 480.

Publishers Weekly, December 20, 2004, review of Hollywood Divas, Indie Queens, and TV Heroines: Contemporary Screen Images of Women, p. 45.

Women and Language, spring, 2001, review of The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature, p. 39.