Mag.^a Dr.ⁱⁿ Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Privatdoz.

Department of Romance Studies
Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies

E-Mail: marlen.bidwell-steiner@univie.ac.at
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Marlen Bidwell-Steiner is a Senior Lecturer for Spanish and Gender Studies at the Department of Romance Studies, currently on leave for pursuing her research project “Casuistry and Early Modern Spanish Literature” (FWF P 32297), which is funded by the Austrian Science Funds and ongoing until September 2023. Its framework focusses on the hypothesis that early modern moral, legal and medical casuistry, with its testing of precepts amidst the vagaries of circumstance, helps shaping a mindset of literary argumentation and inquiry and vice versa. Casuistry in medicine and natural philosophy illuminates affect and emotion, a significant aspect of early modern literary works. In the period, imaginative literature becomes an ever more important medium for the self-fashioning of (pre)modern (gendered) identities. Moreover, an understanding of the “Querelle des sexes” as casuistic debate allows for a more subtle idea of gendered ideologies and its transformation into cultural practices.