Dr. Babs Boter, PhD, is a teacher at the Department of Gender Studies, Utrecht University

 

Research Project:

Dr. Boter’s current research  focuses on processes of gendering in narrative constructions of North America (1870-1950). Dutch travelers of the U.S., both male and female , portrayed (or produced) “Occidental” culture (Mathy 1993) both as an icon of modernity and equality, and as a monstrous “Other of Europe”  that was uncivilized, materialistic and cruel as measured by the treatment and position of (white) women, African Americans and American Indians. Unable to neatly position America in the evolutionary sequence from primitivism to progressivism as rationalized by 19^th century anthropologists, the travelers rather ambivalently position themselves vis-à-vis America’s marginalized subjects. Differently rooted in pre-existent discursive schemas, and variously persuaded to stretch and move beyond these discursive constraints, male and female writing subjects rather disparately express this ambivalence.

 

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