Patricia Melzer is Associate Professor of German and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Temple University. In 2019-20, she was a faculty fellow at the Temple University Center for the Humanities (CHAT) and in 2013-14, a Mellon Regional Faculty Fellow at the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on feminist and queer theories and cultural texts, and women in radical social movements in Germany. Her first book Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought was published by Texas University Press in 2006 and since then her work has appeared in journals such as International Feminist Journal of Politics, The German Studies Review and Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Her second book Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women’s Political Violence in the Red Army Faction, examines the participation of women in the left-wing terrorist groups RAF and Movement 2nd June in the 1970s and 1980s. The book focuses in particular on the implications of women’s political violence for feminist theories of violence. It was published by New York University Press in 2015.
“‘Death in the Shape of a Young Girl’: Feminist Responses to Media Representations of Women Terrorists During the ‘German Autumn’ of 1977.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 11:1 (March 2009): 35-61 Melzer-IFJP
“Maternal Ethics and Political Violence: The ‘Betrayal’ of Motherhood among the Women of the RAF and 2 June Movement.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 47:1 (February 2011): 81-102 Melzer-Seminar
“’Women of Peace’ We Are Not”: Feminist Militants in the West German Autonomen and the Women’s Movement. German Studies Review 40:2 (2017): 313-332 Melzer-GSR40.2
