Sara E. Jackson

Sara (S.E.) Jackson's first book, The Problem of the Actress in Modern German Theater and Thought (Camden House 2021), reconstructs the formative role that women played on and off the stage in shaping not only modernist theater aesthetics and performance practices, but also influential strains of modern thought. The book establishes how German and Austrian actresses presented a complex problem socially and theoretically as they gained prominence and influence at the turn of the century. Analyzing stage performances and writing by actresses in direct relation to canonical aesthetic and philosophical texts, Jackson argues that modern actresses had a consequential impact that resonated in and far beyond the theater. She is now working on several projects including a historically annotated translation of the actress Tilla Durieux's autobiography, and a second monograph, "Mothers, Monsters, Machines: Myth and/as Science of Woman," which examines a strategic interplay between scientism and myth in constructions of women and femininity in sciences, literature, and the arts from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. The book examines a diverse range of texts and other cultural products to investigate how hegemonic gender discourses incorporated both myth and science (intentionally and innately) to establish normal and deviant female identities, to explain women's behavior when it defied limiting categorizations, and to mask inconsistencies in the logic of such claims. Jackson is Co-Editor of Feminist German Studies.