Qinna Shen - Feminist Redemption of the Witch Grimm and Michelet as 19 Century Models (113.0 Kb)
Book downloads: 159
This article will focus on the reconfigurations of the image of the witch in Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie (1835) as well as Jules Michelet's La Sorciere (1862). It begins with the discussion of the prevalent negative perception of the witch during Jacob Grimm's lifetime in two iconic texts: Goethe's Faust and Jacob Grimm's own collection of fairy tales that he and his brother Wilhelm assembled. In light of his archival work in search of the German national past, Jacob Grimm arrived at a more sympathetic account of the w... More >>>Book can be downloaded.
Note that, unfortunately, not all my books can be downloaded due to the restrictions of copyright. However, most of the books on this site do not have copyright restrictions. If you find any copyright violation, please contact me at 
. I am very attentive to the issue of copyright and try to avoid any violations, but on the other hand to help all fans of magic to get access to information.
If you are having difficulty downloading books, or you are looking for a book that is not on the site (but maybe it is in my home library), please write me a email to
and I will try to help, I can send the book by e-mail
✦ A Call to the Kind-Hearted ✦
Since the dark moon of early 2008, darkbooks.org has endured as a sanctuary for those who seek forbidden knowledge and sacred fire. I give freely of my time to keep this library breathing — but time, like flame, is not without its fuel.
The keeping of this archive, the tending of the digital hearth, and the answering of messages from kindred spirits — all these I do between the labors of earthly survival. My days are divided between devotion and the demands of coin, for the mortal world does not pay in candles and dreams.
Should you find it within your heart to make a contribution, know that your gift lightens my burden and lengthens the hours I may spend among the tomes. Even the smallest coin, placed upon the altar of this work, helps keep the servers breathing and the gates open.
Let this work endure.
Let the library grow.
Let knowledge remain free as fire and as ancient as bone.
This article will focus on the reconfigurations of the image of the witch in Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie (1835) as well as Jules Michelet's La Sorciere (1862). It begins with the discussion of the prevalent negative perception of the witch during Jacob Grimm's lifetime in two iconic texts: Goethe's Faust and Jacob Grimm's own collection of fairy tales that he and his brother Wilhelm assembled. In light of his archival work in search of the German national past, Jacob Grimm arrived at a more sympathetic account of the witch. In Deutsche Mythologie, he asserts that the definition and perception of the witch has a history it is the Christian church that created a witch-phobic culture and labeled non-Christian and un-Christian practices as devilserving witchcraft. The political agenda of Deutsche Mythologie is in keeping with the Romantic nationalist sentiment. To enhance the cohesiveness of the German people, to generate the feeling of Germans as one nation and thus to facilitate political unification of the German principalities, Grimm foregrounds a shared German culture, language and identity through reclaiming pre-Christian tradition and primitive German religion. Second, the article analyzes Jacob Grimm's influence on Jules Michelet's La Sorciere, and outlines Michelet's atypical 19th-century anti-clerical and anti-medieval attitude that reflects the author's nationalist fervor. Lastly, the article ends with Michelet's influence on feminists who embrace the emblematic subversiveness that the witch brings with her.
About Author:
Dr. Qinna Shen is Visiting Assistant Professor in Miamy Univercity in Faculty & Staff Department. Dr. Shen is currently planning to write her next book on the history of film exchange between Germany and China. The book will focus primarily on genres, cultural politics, censorship, reception, as well as on German-Chinese co-productions.
Dr. Qinna Shen Education History:
- PhD. Yale University, German languages and literatures, 2008. Dissertation: "From Jacob Grimm to 'GDR Witches': Feminist Witchcraft and Magical Realism in East German Women's Writing." Dissertation Committee: Katie Trumpener (Chair), Carol Jacobs, and Brigitte Peucker
- M.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, German Languages and Literatures, 2002.
- Heidelberg University, Germanistik, Zwischenprufung+2 Hauptseminare, 1997-1999.
- Beijing Foreign Studies University, German Languages and Literatures, 1994-1997
MEMBERSHIPS IN PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
- German Studies Association
- Modern Language Association
- FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, RECOGNITIONS
2011 - DEFA-Foundation Stipend of EUR6000 for my book on DEFA fairy-tale films
2011 - DAAD Research Visit Grant
2004 - Stipendium des Ministeriums fur Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
2004 - Max-Kade Travel Grant, Department of German, Yale
2002-2004 - Hermann J. Weigand Fellowship, Department of German, Yale
2002-2004, 2007-2008 - University Henry H. L. Fan Fellowship, Yale
2001-2002 - University Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1994 - Third Place in the Humanities, National College Entrance Exams, Zhejiang Province, China
Dr. Qinna Shen TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS
- 20th and 21st-Century German Literature and Culture
- German Film and Transnational Cinema
- Folk and Literary Fairy Tales
- German Drama Production
- German-American Experience
- Asian German Studies
Dr. Qinna Shen Selected Publications:
Books
- The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2015.
- Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia. Ed. Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock. Volume 7 in the Series: Spektrum: - Publications of the German Studies Association. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014.
Qinna Shen Articles:
- "Deconstructing Orientalism. DEFA's Fictions of East Asia," Re-imagining DEFA. East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Context. Ed. Sean Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke. New York: Berghahn Books, forthcoming.
- "A Question of Ideology and Realpolitik: DEFA Documentaries on China," Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia. Ed. Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014. 94-114.
- "Factories on the Magic Carpet: Heimat, Globalization, and the 'Yellow Peril' in Die Chinesen kommen and Losers and Winners." Imagining Germany, Imagining Asia: Essays in Asian-German Studies. Ed. Veronika Fuechtner and Mary Rhiel. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013. 64-86.
- "The Story of Little Mook." "The Dress." Directory of World Cinema -- Germany. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. 56-59.
- "Revisiting the Wound of a Nation: The "Good Nazi" John Rabe and the Nanking Massacre." Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 47.5 (November 2011) 661-680.
- "The Ambiguity of Revolution: Wu-wei, Pathology and Criminality in Alfred Doblin's Die Drei Sprunge des Wang-lun. Chinesischer Roman." German Studies Review 34/3 (October 2011) 613-632.
- "Barometers of GDR Cultural Politics: Contextualizing the DEFA Grimm Adaptations." Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies. Vol. 25, No. 1 (2011). Detroit: Wayne State UP. 70-95.
- "DEFA Marchenfilme as Brechtian Parables: Gerhard Klein's Die Geschichte vom armen Hassan and Konrad Petzold's Das Kleid." The Brecht Yearbook 35: Brecht, Marxism, and Ethics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010. 112-131.
- "Shedding, Witchcraft, and the Romantic Subject: Feminist Appropriation of the Witch in Sarah Kirsch's Zauberspruche." Neophilologus. Netherlands: Springer (2009) 93:675-689.
- "Feminist Redemption of the Witch: Grimm and Michelet as Nineteenth-Century Models." Focus on German Studies. Cincinnati, Ohio: German Graduate Student Governance Association of the University of Cincinnati, Vol. 15 (2008) 19-33.
Source: http://www.miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/gramelac/about/faculty-staff/shen/index.html
