Frederika Tevebring
Associate Senior Lecturer
Department of Languages and LiteraturesAbout Frederika Tevebring
Research
My research investigates how the ancient past has been used in modernity within nationalist rhetoric and in debates surrounding gender and family formations. I am particularly interested in figures and tropes which have been described as obscene or primitive and that have challenged idealised notions of Ancient Greece. My forthcoming book, The Making of Baubo: Sex, Truth, and Modernity in the Ancient Archive (Ohio State University Press), discusses the mythical Baubo, said to have exposed herself before the goddess Demeter. The book examines how, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, German writers and classical scholars created a mythical figure with no counterpart in antiquity and how this figure came to be defined by obscene female sexuality. In my latest research project, I explore how, during the first half of the twentieth century, theories of prehistoric matriarchy were mobilised in radical political ideas about the future of family relationships and the division of labor.
Research Interests
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Reception of Greek art and mythology
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Psychoanalysis
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History of Archaeology and Museums / the politics around display and excavations
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Gender Studies and the history of sexuality
Background
I received my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 2017 from Northwestern University in Chicago. I also hold an M.A. (2011) in Religious Studies and a B.A. in classical Studies, both from Freie Universität, Berlin. I have been a postdoctoral fellow at the Warburg Institute in London and at King’s College London, and have taught at the University of Surrey.