Wintermeyer, Nina
Dissertationsthema: Structures & Stories: Independent Feminist Publishing in the 21st Century (working title)
Kontaktadresse an der Universität Würzburg:
Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik
Am Hubland
97074 Würzburg
E-Mail an Frau Wintermeyer
Erstbetreuerin: Prof. Dr. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber
Zweitbetreuende:
JProf. Dr. Jennifer Leetsch (Univ. Trier)
Klasse in der Graduiertenschule: "Philosophie, Sprachen, Künste"
Promotion in der Graduiertenschule ab WS 2025/26.
Abstract:
Presses and publishing projects with women’s writing at their center inhabit a significant place in the broader field of publishing. This location is marked by both their historically pivotal character and impact on the field, as well as their persistence over time. Amid the success of female writers, institutionalized spaces of literary production, and (digital) self-publishing formats, these presses continue the work that feminists have begun in the 1970s. With this project I will investigate the incentives, structures, and dynamics of approximately three presses and how they shape their publications. I argue that they continue praxes from the 1970s/80s and offer a mode of work and publication that balances ideological and economic interests of writers and publishers by being less market-driven and more consolidated than (digital) self-publishing. For my investigation I employ an innovative multi-method approach that draws from qualitative sociological research ((semi-) structured interviews) and from literary studies ((para)text analyses). Interviews thus lay the groundwork, while a focus on the paratexts and materiality of their publications shows how they are shaped by the presses’ structures and the (hi)stories they tell. The envisioned contributions of this project are
a) an innovative multi-method investigation of the structures of contemporary feminist publishing,
b) a continuation of the research on and an argument for the relevance of these presses in the 21st century and
c) an analysis of how their publications are shaped by their work processes.
