CEU eTD Collection (2025); Commer, Anna-Lena: Follow Us into Basic Training: Post-Feminist Aesthetics and Militarization in Germany's Recruitment Campaign Die Rekrutinnen

CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
Author Commer, Anna-Lena
Title Follow Us into Basic Training: Post-Feminist Aesthetics and Militarization in Germany's Recruitment Campaign Die Rekrutinnen
Summary This thesis investigates how the German Bundeswehr’s YouTube series Die Rekrutinnen (2019) employs gendered representations to legitimize military service in a society with a historically skeptical stance toward militarism. Against the backdrop of increasing efforts to culturally rebrand the military and rising public discourse on remilitarization, this study analyzes how Die
Rekrutinnen mobilizes post-feminist sensibilities—such as individual empowerment, gender equality, and personal choice—to frame the Bundeswehr as a modern, inclusive, and morally progressive institution. Drawing on theoretical approaches from Critical Military Studies (CMS), post-feminist media theory, and postcolonial feminism, the thesis examines how representations of both femininity and masculinity function ideologically to depoliticize military service and obscure its structural violence.
Supervisor Sachseder, Carolin Julia (1.); Danet, Alina
Department Gender Studies MA
Full texthttps://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/commer_anna-lena.pdf

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