Laura Katharina Mücke
Mainz
Host: Kristina Köhler
Kunsthistorisches Institut und Institut für Medienkultur und Theater
01.06.–31.07.2026
Research Project
Historische Öffentlich-keiten queeren. Eine Spurensuche nach Arbeiterinnenin der frühen Filmkultur
Our project “Queering Historical Publics: Tracing Working Women in Early Film Culture” investigates largely overlooked queer-feminist publics surrounding the medium of film in early 20th-century Germany. Within the framework of the Auerbach Fellowship, we aim in particular to examine the role of working class women in film-cultural publics. While at the intersection of social history and cinema history it has often been emphasized that working class women constituted a significant part of early cinema audiences, their participation in debates about cinema has mostly been ignored or problematically marginalized through the entanglement of derogatory gender and audience stereotypes (for example, the trope of the “naive female spectator”).
Drawing on historical sources, we instead seek to trace where and how working class women intervened in public negotiations about film and cinema. How did they reflect on cinema and films from their specific situated perspectives? In which modes of communication and formats (ranging from readers’ letters in film journals and aesthetic theories to the trade union press) did they express themselves, and in what ways? To what extent does the inclusion of these voices require us to rethink the concept of the public—both in its historical and theoretical modeling—differently than before? The project combines approaches from film and media studies, queer-feminist historiography, and archival research with theories of the public sphere and early film culture.
Vitae
Dr. Laura Katharina Mücke is Post-Doc in the research unit “Everyday Media and Digital Cultures”. PhD from University of Vienna: “Die Medien-Immersionen der Anderen. Feministische, kritisch-phänomenologische Perspektiven” (upcoming at Büchner 2026). Further academic affiliations: 2019–2022 University assistant PraeDoc “Theory of Film”, University of Vienna. 2016–2019 academic staff member in Film Studies, University of Mainz. Mücke is a member of the editorial board of the journal Montage AV and co-founder of the Initiative (FTMK) Mainz Unbefristet. This semester, she also teaches at the International Research Center Gender and Performativity (at University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna) and is an associated member of GRK 3064 "Technologies of Witnessing" (Mainz).
Key areas of Research
- critical phenomenology and politics of marginalized bodies
- theories of social and digital media, e.g. TikTok
- gender and queer theories
- digital citizenship, migration and postcolonial theory
- social aesthetic theories (19th, 20th and 21st centuries)
Selected Publications
Mücke, Laura Katharina (i.V.). Die Medien-Immersionen der Anderen. Feministische, Kritisch-phänomenologische Perspektiven. Marburg: Büchner.
Mücke, Laura Katharina (i.E.): „(Medienwissenschaftliche) Positionen zu TikTok. Was steht (wie) auf dem ‚Spiel‘? In: Dörre, Robert / Tuschling, Anna (Hg.): Handbuch Social Media. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Freitag, Florian / Mücke, Laura Katharina / Niedermüller, Peter (Hg.) (2025): Silence, Sounds, Music. Acoustic Dimensions of Immersion. London: Routledge.
Poljanšek, Tom / Mücke, Laura Katharina (2025): „Immersive Situativity. (Anthropological) Perspectives on Being in/out of Sync“. In: Philippe Bédard, Philippe / Thain, Alanna, Therrien, Carl (Hg.): States of Immersion: Bodies, Media Technologies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 33–54.
Mücke, Laura Katharina (2024): „#belarus2020. Kollaborative Bilder und weibliche* Verteilungsstrategien auf TikTok“. In: Moskatova, Olga / Mücke, Laura Katharina. (Hg.): Bild | Kanäle. Zur Theorie und Ästhetik vernetzter Medienkultur. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, S. 215–246.
Mücke, Laura Katharina (2023): „Agency in Fixation. In | Visibility and Personal as Public Space in Videoconferencing Arrangements“. In: Volmar, Axel / Moskatova, Olga / Distelmeyer, Jan (Hg.): Video Conferencing. Practices, Politics, Aesthetics. Bielefeld: Transcript, S. 189–208.
Mücke, Laura Katharina (2022): „Spurious Correlations. [Ein sinngenerierender Selbstversuch]“. In: Moskatova, Olga / Dies. / Tedjasukmana, Chris (Hg.): Messy Images. Unordnungen vernetzter Bilder. In: Montage AV, Zeitschrift für Theorie und Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation, 31/1.
Mücke, Laura Katharina (2022): „Sur | Face of An Other. Filmische Leinwände zwischen semipermeabler Projektionsfläche und ephemerer Dinglichkeit“. In: Bulgakowa, Oksana / Mauer, Roman (Hg.): Dinge im Film. Wiesbaden: Springer, S. 197–222.
Mücke, Laura Katharina (2021): „Politik(en) der Immersion. Machtdiskurse über immersierte Nutzer_innen und Film als Kontingenz in potentialis“. In: ffk Journal Nr. 6, Verfügbar: ffk-journal.de
Contact
Dr. Laura Katharina Mücke
Arbeitsbereich Alltagsmedien und Digitale Kulturen
Institut für Film-, Theater-, Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft
JGU Mainz
Wallstr. 11
55122 Mainz
Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies
E-Mail: lamuecke(at)uni-mainz(dot)de