Viktoria Pötzl

Drawing on intersectional feminist approaches, Viktoria Pötzl’s research investigates the global relationship between gender, nationhood, and belonging. Before arriving to Grinnell in Fall 2019, she taught German studies, Jewish studies, and German language for over a decade across Europe, Russia, and the Middle East.

Her first monograph, Nation, Narration und Geschlecht Eine feministische Literaturanalyse der Werke Yael Dayans [Nation, Narration, and Gender: A Feminist Analysis of Yael Dayan’s Literature], was published by Neofelis in 2018. The book offered a personal, poetic, and an academic feminist literary analysis of the works of Israeli novelist, parliamentarian, and political activist Yael Dayan (b. 1939). Viktoria Pötzl analyzed how various forms of nationhood and belongings are represented in Dayan’s prose by tracing literary shifts in her novels as she aged from “a girl in khakis to a woman in black”—that is, from a supporter of Israel’s military interventions to an outspoken opponent of state violence. Dayan’s oeuvre complicates discourses of war, Arab-Jewish relations, national identities, the Shoah, sex and sexuality, ageism, and religion.

Pötzl’s current and second book project, Gendered Orientalism: Representations of Palestine and Israel in Jewish-Austrian Literature, explores the influence of gendered national narratives in Jewish-Austrian literary production from former Galicia to Vienna during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book interrogates how representations of Palestine and Israel shifted over time and how these representations have been imagined beyond the reductive binary of Zionism/anti-Zionism. Pötzl brings to light, moreover, a more nuanced understanding of Jewish national belongings and complicates the current historiography and literature of Zionism through an analysis of Jewish writing and thinking from Eastern and Central Europe. This project had received funds and awards from the Women in German (WIG) initiative, and the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). Pötzl published a portion of this research in 2020 with the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies in an article entitled: “From Pan-Asianism to Safari-Zionism. Gendered Orientalism in Jewish-Austrian Literature.”

In addition to that, Viktoria Pötzl’s work was also featured in Monatshefte, and the Journal of Austrian Studies, where she studied the works of Austrian female authors during the interwar years and their role in and contributions to Austria’s National Socialist cultural scene.  Her several book chapters focus on Jewish literary productions in relation to gender and nation.

Education:

MA, PhD (University of Vienna)

Monograph

Pötzl, Viktoria: Nation, Narration und Geschlecht. Eine feministische Literaturanalyse der Werke Yael Dayans. Neofelis Verlag. Berlin: 2018. (Gender, Nation, and Narration. A Feminist Literature Analysis of Yael Dayan’s Prose)

Reviewed by Katharina Wiedlack: “Kritische Liebeserklärung an Yael Dayan” (Critical declaration of love to Yael Dayan) in: WeiberDiwan, Sommer 2018. p. 14

Selected articles and book chapters

Pötzl, Viktoria: „Nation und Geschlecht“ In: Handbuch-Projekt zur deutschsprachig-jüdischen Literatur. Metzler Verlag [forthcoming 2025] 

Pötzl, Viktoria: “Antisemitische und Philosemitische Geschlechterkonstruktionen in Grete von Urbanitzkys Mirjams Sohn.” In:  Aneta Jachimowicz (Ed.): Frauen erzählen Geschichte. Historische Romane österreichischer Autorinnen von der Ersten zur Zweiten Republik. V&R Vienna University Press. 2022. pp. 201-212

Pötzl, Viktoria: “From Pan-Asianism to Safari-Zionism. Gendered Orientalism in Jewish-Austrian Literature.”  In: Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. vol 19, issue 2. Spring 2020. Taylor & Francis (Routledge). pp. 205-223.

Pötzl, Viktoria: “In-between Wars, In-between Genders: A queer reading on Maria von Peteani’s Der Page vom Dalmasse Hotel.” In: Monatshefte. vol.112.1. Spring 2020. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 38-55. 

Pötzl, Viktoria: “Lesbische Literatur und Zwischenkriegszeit. Mythos und Entmythifizierung am Beispiel Der wilden Garten von Grete von Urbanitzky” In: Journal of Austrian Studies. vol. 51, no 4: 2018. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 63–82.