While working on her master’s thesis at Carleton, Jane Freeland noticed that a lot of East German films portrayed abusive relationships.
“This struck me as interesting, since you don’t normally see this much domestic violence in the cinema,” said Freeland.
Intrigued, she decided to investigate approaches taken to address domestic violence in both East and West Germany between 1969 and 1990 for her PhD dissertation.
“What I argue in my research is that responses to domestic violence – whether the failure to take it seriously, or the campaigns against it – reveal something about how issues of women’s rights are heard and seen within society,” says Freeland.
She uses the example of East Berlin. “Under the socialist regime there, the legal system was designed to improve citizens’ commitment to socialism. This meant that when women attempted to divorce a violent husband, the court was often very concerned at the husband’s failure to respect his wife’s equality, as equality between men and women was really important for socialism. However, by concentrating on the husband, the question of women’s safety was often left off the court’s agenda, and women were often endangered by the court.”
Freeland then compares this to West Berlin where early domestic violence activists wanted to engage women in feminist politics.
One of the things the grad student says she likes about having pursued history at Carleton is the quality of supervision and support. “Jen Evans has been an amazing supervisor, and the other instructors I’ve had in history have all been great mentors. It’s really nice to be in a department where everyone is so encouraging and wants to see students succeed. I also think that the history program is really encouraging of innovative and theoretical approaches to thinking about the past, which makes it a really dynamic department to study in.”
Freeland finished her History PhD in Jan. and will be moving to Bristol, England the end of this month.
She was awarded the prestigious Newton International Fellowship which she will begin on March 1. This program is designed to bring young international researchers to the U.K. Freeland will build on her doctoral research by expanding it to look at other forms of everyday violence, like child abuse, race crimes and other forms of gender violence, such as rape and attacks on the gay community.
Says Freeland: “I’m interested in how these forms of violence have been addressed and discussed, and how these discussions are shaped by national ideals and values.”
