Current Fellows

© Theresa Eisele
© Theresa Eisele

Theresa Eisele

Science/Romanticism

June, July, August 2021

Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Brandenburg

Theresa Eisele lives and works as an academic scholar of theater studies in Vienna and Berlin. She studied media and communication studies as well as theater studies in Leipzig and Madrid. In 2020/21 she is Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Theater Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Previously, she worked at the University of Vienna (tfm, 2016-2020) and at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig. She contributed to the Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and to the archival preparation for the anniversary of the Vienna Festival. Research stays also took her to Jerusalem. In 2011-2016 she was a fellow of the Dr. Hans Kapfinger Foundation in Passau as well as a freelance journalist—among others for the magazine Kreuzer.

Her work focuses on the theater history of Vienna in the 19th and early 20th centuries, historical anthropology, and Jewish history. Her dissertation, which is currently being completed, examines the theatrical negotiation of Jewish belonging around 1900 in Vienna. Thematically related is her book, published in 2021, Szenen der Wiener Moderne. Drei Artefakte und ihre Vorstellungswelten des Jüdischen (toldot. Essays on Jewish History and Culture, vol. 14, edited by Yfaat Weiss). Common to all works is the attempt to trace and historicize concepts of the theatrical in cultural and social formations.

During her stay in Wiepersdorf, Theresa Eisele would like to develop a publication project on the balloonist Wilhelmine Reichard (1788-1848). It will use Reichard's biography to tell a story of the spectacular around 1800, while also making tangible the increasing scientification of air space.