Examines the heightened role of politics in contemporary German and Austrian cultural productions and institutions and what it means for German Studies.

Explores the changing relationship between memory and the archive in German-language literature and culture since 1945.

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.

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.

Intended to encourage and disseminate lively and open discussion of themes pertinent to German Studies, viewed from all angles (literary, artistic, musical, theoretical) Edinburgh German Yearbook takes particular interest in cultural problems and issues arising out of politics and history. Volume 2 examines the meanings and significance of 'masculinity' in German culture, from medieval mystics to the cultural impact of young male immigrants living in Germany today.

The first full-length study to bring together the fields of Health Humanities and German studies, this book features contributions from a range of key scholars and provides an overview of the latest work being done at the intersection of these two disciplines. In addition to surveying the current critical terrain in unparalleled depth, it also explores future directions that these fields may take. Organized around seven sections representing key areas of focus for both disciplines, this book provides important new insights into the intersections between Health Humanities, German Studies, and other fields of inquiry that have been gaining prominence over the past decade in academic and public discourse. In their contributions, the authors engage with disability studies, critical race studies, gender/embodiment studies, trauma studies, as well as animal/environmental studies.

Urban neighbourhoods have come to occupy the public imagination as a litmus test of migration, with some areas hailed as multicultural success stories while others are framed as ghettos. In an attempt to break down this dichotomy, Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood filters these debates through the lenses of geography, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. By establishing the interdisciplinary concept of the 'transnational neighbourhood', it presents these localities – whether Clichy-sous-Bois, Belfast, El Segundo Barrio or Williamsburg – as densely packed contact zones where disparate cultures meet in often highly asymmetrical relations, producing a constantly shifting local and cultural knowledge about identity, belonging, and familiarity. Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood offers a pivotal response to one of the key questions of our time: How do people create a sense of community within an exceedingly globalised context? By focusing on the neighbourhood as a central space of transcultural everyday experience within three different levels of discourse (i.e., the virtual, the physical local, and the transnational-global), the multidisciplinary contributions explore bottom-up practices of community-building alongside cultural, social, economic, and historical barriers.

Focusing on "Sadness and Melancholy in German-language Literature and Culture," volume 6 investigates the often subversive function and meaning of sadness and melancholy in German-language literature and culture from the seventeenth century to the present where, arguably, it has fallen from the heights of melancholy genius and artistic creativity of earlier epochs to become the embarrassing other of a Western civilization that prizes happiness as the mark of successful modern living. Interrogating the distinction between sadness as an anthropological constant and melancholy as a shifting cultural discourse, the contributions explore how different authors use established literary and cultural topoi from melancholy discourses to comment on topics as diverse as war, religion, gender inequality, and modernity. As well as essays on canonical figures including Goethe and Thomas Mann, the volume features studies of sadness in lesser-known writers such as Betty Paoli and Julia Schoch. -- From publisher's website.

Motion picture production, distribution, exhibition and reception has always been a transnational phenomenon, yet East Germany, situated at the edge of the post-war Iron Curtain, separated by a boundary that became materialized in the Berlin Wall in 1961, resembles nothing if not an island, a protected space where film production developed under the protection of government subsidy and ideological purity. This volume proposes on the contrary that the GDR cinema was never just a monologue. Rather, its media landscape was characterized by constant dialogue, if not competition, with both the capitalist West and socialist East. These thirteen essays reshape DEFA cinema studies by exploring international networks, identifying lines of influence beyond national boundaries and recognizing genre qualities that surpass the temporal and spatial confines. The international team of film specialists present detailed analyses of over fifty films, including fiction features, adaptations of literary classics, children's films, documentaries, and examples from genres such as music, sci-fi, Westerns and crime films. With contributions by Seán Allan, Hunter Bivens, Benita Blessing, Barton Byg, Jaimey Fisher, Sabine Hake, Nick Hodgin, Manuel Köppen, Anke Pinkert, Larson Powell, Brad Prager, Marc Silberman, Stefan Soldovieri, and Henning Wrage.