Queering Jewishness – Jewish Queerness. Discursive Constructions of Gender and ‘Jewish Difference’ in (Audio-)Visual Media

• Applicant: Dr. Veronique Sina
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 470414836

Departing from the question, which gender-coded images (Lowry 1999, Dyer 2003) of Jewishness are being (re-)produced and negotiated in contemporary (audio-)visual media, my research project explores the intersectional relationship between mediality, Jewishness and queerness from the interdisciplinary perspective of Jewish Visual Culture Studies. Within the framework of a discourse-analytically oriented study (Stiegler 2014, Landwehr 2018), a special emphasis is placed on the historically far-reaching gendering of ‘Jewish difference’ (Silverman 2011) and the anti-Semetic idea of a transgressive, deviant sexuality embodied by Jews. With the help of differentiated media analyses and by combining a theoretical framework from Media Studies, Visual Studies, Jewish Cultural Studies, Gender- as well as Queer Studies it is shown, how ‘being Jewish’ is coded as the ‘double Other’ in contemporary visual media and thereby marked as norm-deviant and queer. This marginalizing multi-layered entanglement needs to be explored in the context of its socio-cultural implications as well as its historical embeddings and contemporary manifestations.My project aims to address this othering process that becomes apparent in a complex and problematic relationship between revealing, visualizing and exposing gender-coded cultural Jewish identities in (audio-)visual media. In the light of current socio-political developments, which reveal a growing anti-Semitism as well as antigenderism, the intersectional analysis of the representation and negotiation of gendered Jewish difference in (audio-)visual media seems to be of particular importance and relevance. The project thus has the purpose to critically reflect on the structuring function of the analytical categories gender and queer for the media-discursive (re-)production of Jewish difference in (audio-)visual media. In addition, the project also aims at analyzing how, when, and under which circumstances these gendered codes of Jewish identity are being irritated and subverted.The socio-political impact of the project lies in the critical analysis of recurring discriminatory motifs and identity ascriptions that (re-)produce inequalities and exclusions in the field of tension between explicit and implicit anti-Semitism. By revealing disjunctions and dissonances as well as questioning (hetero-)normative attributions, the project also contributes to a critique of hegemonic power structures as well as to the revision of both anti-Semitic and marginalizing conceptions of 'Jewishness'.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants