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A project by ≠igfem
Feministische Leseliste
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Mag.a TANJA RAICH, born in Merano (Italy) in 1986, lives in Vienna, where she works as an editor and author. She has served as a juror for Open Mike, the Franz Tumler Prize, and Literar Mechana, among others. In 2015, she launched a new literary series at Kremayr & Scheriau focusing on German-language debuts, where she was program director until 2020. She now heads the literature and children’s book program at Leykam Verlag. Her debut novel Jesolo (Blessing, 2019) was nominated for the Austrian Book Prize Debut and the Alpha Literature Prize. In 2022, she published the anthology Das Paradies ist weiblich (Kein & Aber, 2022) and her second novel Schwerer als das Licht (Blessing, 2022). In 2024, her new anthology Frei sein was published by Kein & Aber.
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“I am always amazed at how stubbornly the same classics remain in the school canon—Goethe, Fontane, Mann, and so on—even though people have been calling for years to read more female authors. In my view, the school canon completely disregards students’ interests. That makes me all the more pleased to be part of a working group developing a new feminist canon.”
TANJA OBEX, MA PhD is an educational scientist and university assistant in the Department of Music Education at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Her research focuses on pedagogical ethos, teacher professionalism, knowledge and science studies, education and decoloniality, and education for sustainable development.
“I am thrilled about this project! Offering a feminist reading list for teachers and reading these works with students helps make women more visible as literary creators and allows readers to adopt different perspectives. I see both as essential if the ideal of equality between men and women is to be more than just empty words.”
Dr. SANDRA FOLIE holds a PhD in literary studies and is a member of the project Black Narratives of Transcultural Appropriation at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin. Her research focuses on Afro-European literatures and intersectionality, both of which are closely tied to questions of canonization: Who is read in which context (and how), and why (or why not)?
“The absence of texts by women, BIPoC, and migrant authors deprives readers of a great deal—realities of life, themes, and perspectives, but also stylistic registers and modes of representation. This results in a distorted and limiting idea of what good, canonical, and valuable literature is—and what it is not. The project tackles this by critically examining existing canons and gathering suggestions for expanding them.”
Mag. JULIA PÜHRINGER is a journalist and film critic who enjoys thinking, writing, and asking questions. She contributes to tele, Falter, Der Standard, and an.schläge, among others. Whether in film, literature, or elsewhere, she is passionate about how women’s art is represented, received, and canonized.
Why is she involved in our project? She illustrates this with a quote from director Jutta Brückner: “A society that has no interest in the stories its women have to tell becomes impoverished, and its image of itself grows distorted.”
BEATE HAUSBICHLER, born in 1978 in Reith im Alpbachtal (Tyrol), lives in Vienna. She studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and has been an editor at the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard since 2008. Since 2014, she has headed its women’s politics section, dieStandard. Her most recent publications are Der verkaufte Feminismus: Wie aus einer politischen Bewegung ein profitables Label wurde (Sold Feminism: How a Political Movement Became a Profitable Label, 2021) and Geradegerückt: Vorverurteilt, skandalisiert, verleumdet – Wie Biografien prominenter Frauen verzerrt werden (Straightened Out: Prejudged, Scandalized, Slandered – How the Biographies of Prominent Women Are Distorted, with Noura Maan, 2023).
Mag. Dr. VERONIKA SCHUCHTER is a senior scientist at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Innsbruck. She studied German philology and earned her doctorate in 2012 with a dissertation on narratives of victims, heroines, and perpetrators in literature and film. Her research focuses on contemporary literature, literary education, and gender studies. For many years, she has examined power structures and socio-political issues in the literary world.
Mag. Dr. VERONIKA SCHUCHTER ist Senior Scientist am Institut für Germanistik der Universität Innsbruck. Sie studierte Deutsche Philologie und promovierte 2012 zum Thema Opfer-, Heldinnen- und Täterinnen-Narrative in Literatur und Film. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen im Bereich der Gegenwartsliteratur, Literaturvermittlung und Geschlechterforschung. Seit Jahren beschäftigt sie sich mit Machtstrukturen und gesellschaftspolitischen Themen im Literaturbetrieb.
“A feminist reading list is more than just a supplement to existing androcentric canons. For me, it’s about challenging traditional patterns of reception and encouraging young readers to look at literature—and the world behind it—from a wide range of perspectives.”
Assoz. Prof. Dr. RABEA KOHNEN is a medieval Germanist and has been an assistant professor with tenure track at the University of Vienna since 2019. Her research focuses on historical narratology, material philology, and cultural studies approaches to intersectionality. Her current book project examines the self-fashioning of medieval narrators and exegetes through the model of the voice and figure of Mary of Nazareth, asking in particular about the role of femininity in these constructions. In addition, Rabea Kohnen currently leads a project on the 12th-century Vorauer Handschrift 276 and another on the 16th-century publishing house of Sigmund Feyerabend.
“The ≠igfem reading list project is doing important groundwork in literary education. We can only effectively counter the still widespread notion that there are no female authors worth reading if children and young people are introduced to the works of authors of all genders and learn to appreciate them. Medieval scholarship has brought many women writers back from oblivion, and I am delighted to be part of this effort!”
DAGMAR KAINDL, born in Lower Austria in 1968, was culture editor at the weekly magazine NEWS (1993–2016) and led its literature department for sixteen years. Since 2017, she has contributed freelance to Buchkultur magazine. From 2011 to 2020, she served on the Literary Advisory Board of the Austrian Federal Chancellery.
“In a world where books by men are still more frequently published, reviewed, and canonized than those by women, it is crucial to create a platform that gives female authors a voice and offers girls and women a space to identify with. It is time to clear the way for women and non-binary people to take their rightful place in history! Schools bear a great responsibility in this regard, and providing them with the means to do so through a feminist literature list is an indispensable task.”
CLAUDIA SACKL, MA MA, is a research assistant at ISEK – Popular Cultures at the University of Zurich and a lecturer at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Vienna. From 2017 to 2023, she worked as a research assistant at STUBE Vienna, and from 2019 to 2023, she led its literary courses. Her research focuses on multimodal and transmedial narrative forms, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and their intersections with gender studies, queer theory, and ecocriticism. In her doctoral project, she studies contemporary German- and English-language Afro-diasporic literatures.
“I firmly believe that academia also has a responsibility to influence society. It is high time to bring more ‘disorder into literary history’ (Elahe Haschemi Yekani) and the canon! Intersectional feminist perspectives are essential in this endeavor.”
GERTRAUD KLEMM, born in Vienna in 1971, studied biology in Vienna and has been a freelance author since 2006. Many of her texts have received awards. She lives with her family in Lower Austria and writes plays, guest commentaries, essays, and novels. Her most recent publication is Einzeller (2023, Kremayr & Scheriau), and her current project is Das Ende des Phallozäns (The End of the Phallocene, July 2025, Matthes & Seitz).
“And yet it moves: the updated literature list exists, doing justice to literary reality and meeting the demands of the 21st century!”
Mag.a ILSE ROLLETT, born in 1961, studied German and Romance languages in Graz. A long-time feminist activist, she has been active in feminist adult education (communication, political education, and girls’ and women’s education). She co-founded the Frauenhetz women’s education center in Vienna, serves as a supervisor, and is course director for “Coaching and Philosophy.” She was a long-time secondary school teacher of German and, since 2011, has been principal of AHS Rahlgasse, with a strong focus on gender issues.
“As a Germanist, long-time German teacher, and school principal, I have repeatedly encountered debates surrounding an ‘official’ literary canon. The prevailing male canon and the neglect of many female authors have shaped the feminist discussion of recent decades. I was therefore all the more delighted about this initiative: to discuss and publish a purely female canon and finally make the many female authors visible.”
Dr. phil. ISABELLA MANAGÒ studied Studium Generale in Tübingen, followed by German language and literature, history, and Latin in Heidelberg. She earned her doctorate on “Contingency in Konrad von Würzburg’s Trojan War,” worked as a research assistant there, received a dissertation scholarship from the State Graduate Funding Program, and was an associate member of the literary studies doctoral program What is Tradition? Since fall 2020, she has been a postdoctoral university assistant at Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, where she participates in a cluster on Mediterranean histories of interpretation, and is working on her habilitation thesis on the representation of the Middle Ages in German-language fantasy novels.
“Our history is marked by the marginalization of women’s achievements or their attribution to men. The medieval author Marie de France wrote: ‘My name is Maria and I am from France. It may be that some writers claim my work for themselves. I do not want anyone to attribute it to them.’ For a long time, the literary canon was also a literary history of men about men. This project provides a valuable counterbalance, which is why I am happy to participate in it.”
MAGDA BIRKMANN has long shared her passion for literature. She spent seven years as a bookseller at Ocelot in Berlin and more recently has worked as the press and public relations officer for the Berlin Literature House Lettrétage, as well as a freelance literary mediator. Together with Nicole Seifert, she edits the rororo Entdeckungen book series at Rowohlt Verlag, which highlights neglected female authors of the 20th century. In 2024, she served as a juror for the German Book Prize, and in 2025 she will serve on the jury for the BücherFrauen Literature Prize.
“Not until the end of my school days did I realize that hardly any texts by female authors were included in German class. At the time, we took to the barricades and insisted on reading Christa Wolf’s Kassandra as our final book—a book that completely redirected my reading journey. Knowing that even fifteen years later, school curricula still largely present literature as a male domain makes me angry, sad, and exhausted—but at the same time, I am inspired by the network of literary activists who refuse to accept this injustice.”
KIRSTIN BREITENFELLNER born in Vienna in 1966, studied German language and literature, philosophy, and Slavic studies. She lives in Vienna, where she works as a literary critic and author of novels, poetry, children’s books, and nonfiction. She contributes to Falter and Poesiegalerie and also teaches yoga. After completing her studies, she collaborated with Ilse Korotin to compile the bibliography Frauenspezifische und feministische Hochschulschriften an österreichischen Universitäten 1968–1993 (Women’s Studies and Feminist Academic Writings at Austrian Universities 1968–1993). Her debut novel, Der Liebhaberreflex (The Lover’s Reflex), was published in 2004. In 2022, she released her fifth novel, Maria malt (Maria Paints), about the Austrian artist of the century, Maria Lassnig, followed most recently by her poetry collection Gedichte ohne Ich (Poems Without I) in 2024.
“A feminist reading list means that there are so many books by women that it takes expertise to identify the most important ones. And that’s a good thing.”
Dr. CHRISTA GÜRTLER, born in 1956, lives in Salzburg and works as a literary scholar, critic, and mediator. Her research focuses on Austrian literature, gender studies, and literature by women, including Ingeborg Bachmann and Elfriede Jelinek. Most recently, she co-edited the five-volume edition of Elfriede Gerstl’s works (Droschl Verlag, 2012–2017) and collaborated with Uta Degner on Elfriede Jelinek: Provocations of Art (De Gruyter, 2021) and with Liliane Studer on Gespenstischer Realismus: Texte von und zu Kathrin Röggla (Sonderzahl, 2021) as well as Gesammelte Erzählungen, volume 6 of the Marlen Haushofer collected works (Claassen, 2023).
“To date, only a few exceptional female authors have entered the literary canon and thus school curricula. Decades ago, I campaigned at university for a reading list that included numerous texts by women. Literature is becoming increasingly marginalized in schools, which is why I believe reading lists highlighting the many female voices in literature, past and present, are more important than ever.”
Mag.a Dr.in BIRGE KRONDORFER is a political philosopher and feminist activist. She lectures at international universities in philosophy, gender studies, cultural studies, political science, and education. She is also an adult educator, group trainer, and moderator, certified in supervision, mediation, and intercultural training. She has delivered lectures, seminars, and publications, and has been involved in editorial work with a critical perspective on gender relations theories and practices. She has conceived and organized numerous symposia, conferences, meetings, and demonstrations. Birge Krondorfer is a co-founder of the educational institution Frauenhetz, the platform 20000frauen, the Association of Feminist Scientists, and IFEB – Initiative for Feminist Adult Education. She has received the Käthe Leichter Prize (2009) and the Golden Medal of Honor of the Province of Vienna (2022).
SIMONE WEISS, MA, born in 1992, studied German philology and comparative literature at the University of Vienna. Since 2014, she has worked as a freelance staff member at STUBE (Study and Counseling Center of the Archdiocese of Vienna) and as a librarian at the Vienna City Libraries.
“For centuries, literary canons were shaped by men—and filled mostly with works written by them. Yet the sheer number of surviving titles by women from different eras shows how highly their contemporaries valued them; otherwise, their voices would have been lost. Still, too few of these works were ever granted the timeless recognition that a canon implies. It is long overdue to look at literature through a feminist—meaning truly egalitarian—lens. Today, the book market is larger and more overwhelming than ever before. That’s why, in my view, we need thoughtful guides for different age groups—maps that help us navigate the vast landscape of literature and rediscover what truly matters within it.”
Mag.a. Dr.in SABINE PROKOP, communication and cultural scientist, artist, systemic consultant, and science coach (www.wissenschaftscoaching.net). University lecturer in cultural studies, gender studies, media studies, and visual studies in Austria and abroad. Research and publications in media and communication theory as well as in science policy and feminist topics. Teacher training throughout Austria. Project management for the advancement of women and girls in Lower Austria and Vienna. Culture and event management. Co-founder of the Association of Feminist Scientists, 15 years on the board, and curator of the series “Discussing Feminisms.”
“I personally prefer reading texts and books by women* and am always thrilled when I discover new ones—and can share these discoveries with others!”
Mag. Dr. DANIELA STRIGL, Privatdoz., born in Vienna in 1964, is a literary scholar, essayist, and critic. She has been teaching at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Vienna since 2007 and completed her habilitation in 2018. She was awarded the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize in 2019 and is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Her publications include Wahrscheinlich bin ich verrückt… Marlen Haushofer – die Biographie (6th edition, 2020), Berühmtsein ist nichts. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Eine Biographie (2016), Alles muss man selber machen. Biography. Criticism. Essay (2018), and Gedankenspiele über die Faulheit (Mind Games about Laziness) (2021).
“Outstanding female authors exist in every epoch of literary history. You cannot completely reinvent a canon, but you can shape it: fill gaps, shift emphases, set accents. It cannot be done overnight, but at some point you have to start—for example, with a feminist reading list.”
LEA SUSEMICHEL studied philosophy and gender studies at the University of Vienna. As an author, journalist, lecturer, and speaker, she works on topics including identity politics and solidarity, feminist theory and movements, feminist art and aesthetics, and emancipatory media policy. Since 2006, she has been the editor-in-chief of the feminist magazine an.schläge. Her most recent publications, together with Jens Kastner, are Identitätspolitiken. Konzepte und Kritiken in Geschichte und Gegenwart der Linken (Identity Politics: Concepts and Critiques in the History and Present of the Left) and Unbedingte Solidarität (Unconditional Solidarity).
“I really don’t know what would have become of me without Ronja the Robber’s Daughter and Gretchen Sackmeier. Probably not a feminist. Girls urgently need more literary role models and a new literary canon! Hopefully, the feminist reading list will contribute to this.”
JULIA RITTER, MA, works in public relations and science communication. She studied theater, film, and media studies, as well as English with a focus on literary studies. Since 2020, she has been co-podcaster of Die Buch. Der feministische Buchpodcast (The Book: The Feminist Book Podcast).
“I support the reading list so that students can access a more diverse selection of books—on the one hand, to discover and deepen their enjoyment of reading, and on the other hand, to gain insight into the realities of life for women and other discriminated groups.”
Mag.a URSULA EBEL, born in Lilienfeld, Lower Austria, in 1986, is a literary mediator and literary scholar. She studied comparative literature and gender studies at the University of Vienna, Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Paris VII. She has been employed by the Austrian Society for Literature since 2011 and has served as deputy managing director since 2014. She was a project collaborator at the Institute of German Studies from 2020 to 2022 and is currently pursuing a doctorate on new realism in Austrian literature of the 1970s. She writes reviews for publications including Die Presse, Buchkultur, and the Buchmagazin des Literaturhauses Wien.
“There are many realities of life that we will never know, and even more that remain inaccessible to us. However, a few more become accessible when art and literature are more diverse, and the same stories are not repeated endlessly. That is why the Feminist Reading List project leads to an adaptation of self-perception. We would never encounter sentences such as ‘Words are liquid life, they seep into the crevices of everyday life’ by Sylvie Schenk if we always remain in the well-lit terrain of the book market.”
Mag. Dr. BEATRICE VON LÜPKE is a medieval Germanist. Since 2021, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, where she recently completed her habilitation on the medieval continuation of the Fall of Man narrative. Her research interests also include medieval theater, editorial philology, and medieval rhetoric and stylistics.
“In German class and during my German studies, I mainly read works written by men. This selection was never questioned, and so I only began to consider later in life how much this canon conveys one-sided perspectives and how it has shaped, if not distorted, my perception of representations of women and men. I am therefore all the more delighted about the ‘Feminist Reading List’ initiative and the opportunity to contribute to it!”
Mag.a JULIANE ZACH, born in Upper Austria in 1985, studied German language and literature and gained early professional experience through internships at various literary institutions. From 2013 to 2015, she worked in sales and marketing at Residenz Verlag. Since 2016, she has been responsible for literary education and reading promotion projects, as well as for supporting emerging children’s and young adult authors, at the Institute for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. In addition, she serves as an editor for 1001 Buch, the trade journal dedicated to children’s and young adult literature.
“High-quality reading material in educational institutions is essential. By quality, I mean diversity that meets both artistic and literary standards. For far too long, the selection of books for students has focused on works by male artists and about male heroes. It is not only important but long overdue that children and young people in schools encounter literature written by women — and about female role models — including the work of female authors, illustrators, and translators.”
HEIDI LEXE, Mag. Dr. phil., studied German language and literature as well as theater studies in Vienna. She has been working at STUBE since 1992, becoming its director in 2007 and head of the Department of Literature in Adult Education in 2019. She is the editor of the distance learning course Children’s and Youth Literature and lectures on children’s and youth literature at the Institute of German Language and Literature at the University of Vienna. She serves on the editorial boards and as a reviewer for the Austrian trade magazines 1001 Buch and bn-bibliotheksnachrichten, as well as for the weekly newspaper DIE FURCHE. She is a member of the German Society for Research in Children’s and Youth Literature and participates in numerous juries, including the Austrian Children’s and Youth Book Prize.
The CHICKLIT bookstore offers a wide and diverse selection of feminist, lesbian, queer, trans, and intersex literature, including nonfiction, children’s books, graphic novels, and feminist magazines such as an.schläge, Frauensolidarität, aep, Missy Magazine, Clio, and more. The collection features titles on topics including feminist and queer theory, history, LGBTIQA+ movements, Black feminism, anarchist feminism, self-help, and art. An intersectional approach shapes the curation of the bookstore’s selection, ensuring that a variety of perspectives are represented. The choice of children’s books and novels for adults is also guided by this principle, reflecting the richness and diversity of feminist literature.
Univ. Ass. Dr. LENA ZUDRELL studied German philology at the University of Vienna. From 2014 to 2018, she was a university assistant (prae doc) at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Vienna, where she has been working as a university assistant since 2018. Since 2021, LENA ZUDRELL has been a university assistant in the Department of German Studies at the University of Salzburg. She also serves as the bibliographer of the Bulletin Bibliographique of the International Arthurian Society. Her research and teaching focus on older German language and literature, particularly Arthurian epic poetry, courtly lyric and epic poetry of the High and Late Middle Ages, and historical narratology. As part of her postdoctoral research project, she is working on the topic “Constructions of Everyday Life: Realism as a Narrative Technique in Courtly Epic Poetry from 1250 onwards.”
Mag.a MAGDALENA MARTHA MARIA SCHNEIDER, born on November 14, 1985, in Vienna, and raised in South Tyrol, studied comparative literature at the University of Vienna and completed a university course in library and information studies. She has been working at the Vienna City Libraries since 2010, serving as head of the Library Education Center from 2013 to 2016 and head of the Central Library Education Department from 2016 to 2022. Since 2022, she has been the head of the Main Library on the Gürtel.
Mag. Dr. MARTINA KOPF, Privatdoz., is a senior lecturer in African literature. Her research focuses on development theory and critique in the writings of African authors (particularly from Kenya) as well as on the intellectual history of development in Africa. Her work also engages with Afro-feminist and intersectional feminist thought. After completing her doctorate in African Studies at the University of Vienna, she served as Africa editor at Südwind – Magazine for International Politics, Culture, and Development. She has been a fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Germany and a visiting professor at the Institute for International Development in Vienna, and has conducted research in Kenya, Senegal, and Cameroon.
Ass.-Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in KATHARINA WIEDLACK is an assistant professor of Anglophone Cultural Studies at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on American literature and cultural studies, American-Russian relations, queer and feminist theory, popular culture, and post-socialist, decolonial, and disability studies. Her dissertation, Queer-Feminist Punk: An Anti-Social History, was published in 2015 by the feminist publishing house Zaglossus.
