Univ.-Ass.in Dr.in phil. Julia Ostwald
julia.ostwald@kunstuni-linz.at
University assistant
Since October 2024, Julia Ostwald has been a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project OLFAC (“Olfactormativity: Exploring The Intervening Performativity Of Smell“) in the Department of Cultural Studies
Fields of Research
- Performativity of Breathing and Smelling
- Body Politics and the Senses
- Theories of Ecology
- Aesthetics and Theory of the Voice in Dance
- Theory and Historiography of Dance and Choreography
- Transculturality and Stagings of Gender in the Scenic Arts
Short biography
Julia Ostwald has a background in dance practice (Tilburg, Lisbon) and theory (FU Berlin, Antwerp University). Her research focuses on historical and contemporary entanglements of aesthetics, sensual perceptions, and (body-)politics in the context of dance, movement, and choreography; currently with an emphasis on the respiratory and olfactory relationships between body and air from an ecological, performance and cultural studies perspective. Julia Ostwald was a senior scientist in Gender Studies at mdw-University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Before, she worked as a project assistant at the doctorate school gender_transcultural at Salzburg University, from where she also received her doctorate in dance studies (2021). She is the author of the book Choreophonien. Konstellationen von Stimme und Körper im Tanz der Moderne und der Gegenwart (2024) on the micropolitics of choreographing voice and body.
Julia was a guest lecturer at the Beijing Dance Academy, the Department of Theater, Film, and Media Studies at Vienna University, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She has also worked as a guest editor for the Flemish Centre of Expertise for the Cultural Heritage of Performing Arts and as a co-editor for the Vienna-based online journal corpusweb.net. She regularly collaborates on projects on the threshold between practice and theory with TQW Tanzquartier Wien.
Current research project
2024-2029 OLFAC: Olfactormativity – Exploring the Intervening Performativity of Smell (ERC Consolidator Project)
Project team:
Prof. Dr. Silke Felber (PI)
Dr. Freda Fiala (Postdoctoral Researcher)
Dr. Julia Ostwald (Postdoctoral Researcher)
Antonia Karácsonyi LL.B. (Project and Office Management)
Selected publications
Monographies
Julia Ostwald: Choreophonien. Konstellationen von Stimme und Körper im Tanz der Moderne und der Gegenwart, Bielefeld: transcript (series Critical Dance Studies, eds. Gabriele Brandstetter, Gabriele Klein) 2024 (=Dissertation).
Julia Ostwald: Tanz ausstellen | Tanz aufführen. Choreografie im musealen Rahmen, Munich: epodium 2016 (=Master thesis).
Co-edited Volume
Eva Hausbacher, Liesa Herbst, Julia Ostwald, Martina Thiele (Eds.): geschlecht_transkulturell. Aktuelle Forschungsperspektiven, Wiesbaden: Springer 2020.
Articles
Julia Ostwald: “Choreographic Magnetism. The Performance of Knowledge in the Field of Invisible Forces”, in: Kurt Vanhoutte, Eleonora Paklons (Eds.): Performing Magnetism in the Long Nineteenth Century: Transnational Perspectives, Leuven: Leuven University Press [forthcoming 2025] (peer-reviewed).
Julia Ostwald: „Japonist Drag: Performing Exoticisms in Entangled Dance Modernism“, in: Evelyn Annuß, Raz Weiner (Eds.): Facing_Drag in Popular Cultures and Performing Arts, Bielefeld: mdw press [forthcoming 2025] (peer-reviewed).
Julia Ostwald: „Denaturalisiertes Atmen: Ligia Lewis‘ Still not Still (2021) im Spiegel respirativer Zugehörigkeiten des frühen modernen Tanzes“, in: Anke Charton, Theresa Eisele (Eds.): Performances of Belonging. Verflechtungen von Theater, Gesellschaft und Moderne (=Forum Modernes Theater), Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto [forthcoming, 2025] (peer-reviewed).
Julia Ostwald: “Choreographed Speech Choirs and Utopian Visions of Europe: Modern Antiphony and Today’s Glossolalia”, in: Nicole Haitzinger, Alexandra Kolb (Eds.): Post-Utopia and Europe in the Performing Arts. Munich: Epodium 2022, 107-123 (peer-reviewed).
Julia Ostwald: „Von der krisenhaften Schönheit der Sirenen: Trajal Harrells Antigone Sr./Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (L)“, in: Rosemarie Brucher, Jenny Schrödl (Eds.): Gender + Kritik (= Forum Modernes Theater 32,1), Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto 2021, 99-113 (peer-reviewed).
Julia Ostwald: Thesen zum Polemischen der Stimme im Tanz, in: Nicole Haitzinger, Franziska Kollinger (Eds.): Harlekinaden. Beiträge zum Aspekt des Polemischen in den szenischen Künsten (= Tanz & Archiv 9), Munich: epodium 2020, 34-37.
Julia Ostwald: „Posthumane Stimm-Körper und die Produktion von Geschlecht“, in: Eva Hausbacher, Liesa Herbst, Julia Ostwald, Martina Thiele (Eds.): geschlecht_transkulturell. Aktuelle Forschungsperspektiven, Wiesbaden: Springer 2020, 235-250.
Julia Ostwald: „‘Speaking Dance‘: Transformationen zwischen Oralität und Aufzeichnung“, in: Susana Zapke (Ed.): Notation. Imagination und Übersetzung, Wien: Hollitzer 2020, 99-113.
Julia Ostwald, Nicole Haitzinger: Performative Queerness in Modernity: Ida Rubinstein as Saint Sébastien, corpusweb.net 2018.
Julia Ostwald: „Choreografien des Lachens und Lallens – Valeska Gert und die Emanzipation der Stimme im Tanz der Moderne“, in: Nicole Haitzinger, Franziska Kollinger (Eds.):
Moderne Szenerien. Skizzen zur Diversität von Tanz- und Musikkulturen (1910-1950), Munich: epodium 2016, 93-109.
Other Essays and Online Texts
Nicole Haitzinger, Julia Ostwald: “Editorial: Performative Arts and the Turn of an Era“, in: Corpus | Turn of an Era (corpusweb.net), 2023.
Julia Ostwald: “A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism”, in: TQW Magazin, 3.2.2018, tqw.at/a-kiss-is-the-beginning-of-cannibalism-boca-de-ferro.
