240053 PS Individuelle Schwerpunktsetzung - prüfungsimmament (4 ECTS) (2018W)

This seminar investigates female entrepreneurial activity in nineteenth century Vienna and pays attention to the intersections of gender with other differentiating categories. At the centre of the course stands the question of how individuals created spaces to exert agency on different levels of practise (local, regional, state)? The seminar readings and discussions will shed light on historiographical debates concerning women and agency. Female entrepreneurs will be investigated on the basis of specific case studies paying close attention to their familial and community relationships. It is important to point to the gendered norms and legal frameworks that conditioned female business activities, but also to explore practises that (re-)negotiated and sometimes challenged these norms.
In the first sessions students will become familiar with general debates of gender historical research in relation to the topic of the seminar through guided reading and discussion. The seminar attendees will consider how to approach entrepreneurship and the tensions of agency and structure theoretically and methodologically. Each student will individually choose a primary source from several already transcribed documents and learn to formulate a main research question for their seminar paper. In preparation for this step one session will be dedicated to the practicalities of archival research. Throughout the course seminar participants will gain the ability to analyse theoretical and empirical scholarship and develop analytical research skills through writing a paper on the basis of selected primary source material and the seminar literature. The participation in discussions and the completion of the research paper will contribute to the students’ greater capacities for written and oral presentation of ideas and intellectual debate.