Outgoing Talk by Prof. Dr. Anastasia Glawion: Gender, Speech Acts and Power: Digital Analyses of Editorial Interventions in Fairy Tales
Outgoing Talk: Gender, Speech Acts and Power: Digital Analyses of Editorial Interventions in Fairy Tales
Prof. Dr. Anastasia Glawion
As part of the research colloquium “Measuring the Mind”, Prof. Dr. Anastasia Glawion will give a guest lecture at Universität Kassel, hosted by the Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies (FB 02).
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Anastasia Glawion (FAU Erlangen–Nürnberg)
Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Time: 4:15 PM – 5:45 PM
Series: Measuring the Mind
Host: FB 02 Humanities and Cultural Studies
Organizer: IfG, Department of SPW / History of Language (Prof. Dr. Lea Schäfer)
Location: Kurt-Wolters-Str. 5, Room 3044
Gender, Speech Acts and Power: Digital Analyses of Editorial Interventions in Fairy Tales
Between the first edition of 1812 and the last major edition of 1857, not only the style and target audience of the Children’s and Household Tales changed , but also normative conceptions of gender, morality, and social order. Building on Ruth Bottigheimer’s thesis of the increasing disciplining of female characters, this lecture examines how such shifts manifest themselves at the level of speech acts.
The study focuses on a pilot project on Rapunzel and Allerleirauh , in which direct and indirect speech, speech act verbs, and ascribed power positions were systematically annotated. The analysis shows that editorial interventions do not primarily alter the amount of speech, but rather its embedding and evaluation. Certain speech act verbs are increasingly used in a gender-specific way and linked to asymmetrical power positions.
Methodologically, this presentation combines manual annotation with digital tools such as CATMA, LERA, and automated speaker assignment. This demonstrates how digital methods can contribute to empirically testing and critically examining literary-historical assumptions about gender and power. The presentation concludes with an outlook on scalable annotations and the development of more precise categories for power positions in narrative texts.
The lecture is public.