Anne Duden’s reputation as one of the most innovative writers of her generation, established in 1982 with the experimental stories in Übergang, was confirmed in 1985 by Das Judasschaf, a novel interweaving an individual’s anguish with the cultural trauma of the German past. In her acclaimed poem cycles Steinschlag (1993) and Hingegend (1999) Duden pushes the limits of language in densely metaphoric evocations of landscapes and places of political and personal remembrance, mixing lament for ruined nature with grotesque comedy, mystic vision with horror. Duden is a distinguished practitioner of short forms. Her essays display the same intense engagement with the visual arts as informs her narrative texts. Her deep interest in music is echoed in the musicality of short prose poems. This volume presents for the first time a comprehensive collection of approaches to Duden's fiction, poetry and essays by international scholars. Topics include: the ethics and aesthetics of Duden’s engagement with German history; her constructions of female subjectivity; her criticism of western dualistic thinking with its devaluation of the body and exploitation of nature; her position within a modernist tradition with roots in the Romantic Age; the visual arts and poetic influences such as Hölderlin and Celan; the dilemmas of translating Duden’s highly individual style. Three essays on Steinschlag constitute the first systematic reading of this difficult, much praised cycle.

Over the past decade and a half, Germany has experienced a period of political and cultural turbulence which many have attributed to the combined challenges of unification and globalisation. In response to growing exposure to global markets, politics and migration debates about identity have increasingly been renationalised. At the same time, there has been a notable reappraisal in Germany (and in German Studies) of the regional and global as spaces for the construction of identity. This volume sets out to explore these complex and at times contradictory trends, focusing in particular on developments in Germany since the 1970s, although chapters treating earlier periods are also included. The volume brings together British, Irish, German, Canadian and American scholars working in the field, and resulted from a conference organised by Women in German Studies at the University of Bath. The first section is primarily concerned with the specifically German concept of locality known as Heimat and its changing relationship with the global. Included are explorations of the writings of Kafka, Bachmann, Johnson, Sell, Wolf, Brinkmann and Jelinek amongst others as well as films by Schlöndorff and Steyerl. The second section focuses on the impact of the global on institutions and rituals such as commemoration, memorialisation, and architecture, which have traditionally been influential in shaping national self-images. Overall, this volume concludes that the nature of the relationship to the local has fundamentally changed under the impact of globalisation.

Erstmals liegt mit Schaltstelle eine umfassende Studie zur zeitgenössischen deutschsprachigen Lyrik auf der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert vor. In einem breiten Spektrum an Beiträgen international renommierter Experten aus Deutschland, Großbritannien, den USA, Kanada, Italien und den Niederlanden präsentiert diese Untersuchung ausführliche Analysen zu bekannten Größen (wie Volker Braun, Ulrike Draesner, Durs Grünbein, Ernst Jandl, Barbara Köhler, Friederike Mayröcker, Brigitte Oleschinski und Raoul Schrott), eingehende Betrachtungen zur Lyrik des Körpers, zur Verwendung von Klischee-Bildern, zum Topos der Kindheit oder zur ‘neuen Schlichtheit’, sowie Beiträge zur jüngsten Generation von Dichterinnen und Dichtern, die im neuen Jahrhundert ihren Einstand gegeben haben. Untersuchungen zu individuellen Gedichtsammlungen ergänzen sich mit Abhandlungen, die Dialoge über die Jahrhundertgrenzen hinweg aufzeigen oder den Einfluß von Schlüsselfiguren wie Paul Celan und Gottfried Benn nachweisen. Zudem enthält der Band ein Interview mit Heinz Czechowski und neue Gedichte von acht führenden deutschsprachigen Lyrikerinnen und Lyrikern. Zu oft wird in Diskussionen zur Literatur in der Berliner Republik die Lyrik marginalisiert: dieser Band zeigt, daß sie im Gegenteil eine unerläßliche Rolle zu spielen hat. Für Wissenschaftler und Studierende der Germanistik, wie überhaupt für alle, die an den Entwicklungen auf dem Gebiet der modernen Lyrik interessiert sind, sollte diese Veröffentlichung zur Pflichtlektüre erhoben werden. Schaltstelle presents a pioneering examination of contemporary German poetry at the turn of the twenty-first century. Internationally recognised experts from Germany, UK, USA, Canada, Italy and the Netherlands offer a first assessment of the paths that German poetry has taken into the new millennium. Alongside in-depth analyses of established names are broader surveys of poetry of the body, the use of cliché, theories of metaphor, the topos of childhood, the ‘new simplicity’, and contributions dedicated to the youngest generation of poets making their debut in the new century. The volume also contains an interview with Heinz Czechowski, a substantial Bibliography and new poems by eight leading poets. Poetry is too often marginalised in discussions about literature in the Berlin Republic: this volume demonstrates that it has a vital role to play at their heart.

New perspectives on the relationship - or the perceived relationship - between the German language and the causes, nature, and legacy of National Socialism and the Shoah.

Six key texts by contemporary women writers are read afresh by leading critics, using insights from poststructuralist and new materialist feminist theory. Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Wolf, and Elfriede Jelinek have long been prominent in the fields of Austrian modernism, GDR writing, and avant-garde Austrian literature. The innovative work of Anne Duden, Herta Müller, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar sets out to challenge dominant models of German identity. Focusing on the body and suffering, they explore textual representations of trauma, national identity, and displacement. Haines and Littler's readings of these distinguished and complex female authors offer new avenues for discussion. Both critics and their subjects cast a sceptical eye over existing notions of subjectivity in relation to language, gender, and race. Together, they spark controversy and comment, in an increasingly important debate.

Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse offers an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of fundamental shifts in German cultural memory. Focusing on the resurgence of family stories in fiction, autobiography and in film, this study challenges the institutional boundaries of Germany's memory culture that have guided and arguably limited German identity debates. Essays on contemporary German literature are complemented by explorations of heritage films and museum discourse. Together these essays put forward a compelling theory of family narratives and a critical evaluation of generational discourse.

In Women Writers and National Identity, Stephanie Bird offers a detailed analysis of the twin themes of female identity and national identity in the works of three major twentieth-century German-language women writers. Bird argues for the importance of an understanding of ambiguity, tension and contradiction in the fictional narratives of Ingeborg Bachmann, Anne Duden and Emine Özdamar. She aims to demonstrate how ambiguity is itself central to the development of an understanding of identity and that literary texts are uniquely able to point to the ethical importance of ambiguity through their stylistic complexity. Bird gives close readings of the three writers and draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to elucidate the complex nature of individual identity. This book will be of interest to literary and women's studies scholars as well as Germanists.

German Text Crimes offers new perspectives on scandals and legal actions implicating writers of German literature since the 1950s. Topics range from literary echoes of the “Heidegger Affair” to recent incitements to murder businessmen (agents of American neo-liberal power) in works by Rolf Hochhuth and others. GDR songwriters’ cat-and-mouse games with the Stasi; feminist debates on pornography, around works by Charlotte Roche and Elfriede Jelinek; controversies over anti-Semitism, around Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser / The Reader and Martin Walser’s lampooning of the Jewish critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki; Peter Handke’s pro-Serbian travelogue; the disputed editing of Ingeborg Bachmann’s Nachlaß; vexed relations between dramatists and directors; (ab)uses of privacy law to ‘censor’ contemporary fiction: these are among the cases of ‘text crimes’ discussed. Not all involve codified law, but all test relations between state power, civil society, media industries and artistic license.

Interdisciplinary views of the debates over and transformation of German cultural identity since unification. The events of 1989 and German unification were seismic historical moments. Although 1989 appeared to signify a healing of the war-torn history of the twentieth century, unification posed the question of German cultural identity afresh. Politicians, historians, writers, filmmakers, architects, and the wider public engaged in "memory contests" over such questions as the legitimacy of alternative biographies, West German hegemony, and the normalization of German history. This dynamic, contested, and still ongoing transformation of German cultural identity is the topic of this volume of new essays by scholars from the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and Ireland. It exploresGerman cultural identity by way of a range of disciplines including history, film studies, architectural history, literary criticism, memory studies, and anthropology, avoiding a homogenized interpretation. Charting the complex and often contradictory processes of cultural identity formation, the volume reveals the varied responses that continue to accompany the project of unification. Contributors: Pertti Ahonen, Aleida Assmann, Elizabeth Boa, Peter Fritzsche, Anne Fuchs, Deniz Göktürk, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Anja K. Johannsen, Jennifer A. Jordan, Jürgen Paul, Linda Shortt, Andrew J. Webber. Anne Fuchs is Professor of German Literature at the University of St.Andrews, Scotland. Kathleen James-Chakraborty is Professor of Art History at University College Dublin, Ireland. Linda Shortt is Lecturer in German at Bangor University, Wales.

Since unification in 1990, Germany has seen a boom in the confrontation with memory, evident in a sharp increase in novels, films, autobiographies, and other forms of public discourse that engage with the long-term effects of National Socialism across generations. Taking issue with the concept of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung," or coming to terms with the Nazi past, which after 1945 guided nearly all debate on the topic, the contributors to this volume view contemporary German culture through the more dynamic concept of "memory contests," which sees all forms of memory, public or private, as ongoing processes of negotiating identity in the present. Touching on gender, generations, memory and postmemory, trauma theory, ethnicity, historiography, and family narrative, the contributions offer a comprehensive picture of current German memory debates, in so doing shedding light on the struggle to construct a German identity mindful of but not wholly defined by the horrors of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Contributors: Peter Fritzsche, Anne Fuchs, Elizabeth Boa, Stefan Willer, Chloe E. M. Paver, Matthias Fiedler, J. J. Long, Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Cathy S. Gelbin, Jennifer E. Michaels, Mary Cosgrove, Andrew Plowman, Roger Woods. Anne Fuchs is Professor of modern German literature and Georg Grote is Lecturer in German history, both at University College Dublin. Mary Cosgrove is Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh.