German Literature Commons^™

Divine Justice And Profane Power: Benjamin’S And Kafka’S Approach To Messianism, Solibakke Ivan Karl

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Intrinsically dialectical in nature, sudden messianic change and the resolute character of the law are so closely connected with one another that both concepts should be among the key factors shaping a broad understanding of global cultures today. Whether we await the coming of the messiah as the Jewish religion teaches or commemorate his having come and died as most Christian teachings hold, it appears that Walter Benjamin’s “now of a particular recognizability” (The Arcades Project 493) remains elusive, especially with respect to the correlation between the past and the future. In the spirit of temporal vectors that converge, Benjamin’s …

Tinkering With Tenure, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

Tinkering With Tenure, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

“Knaller-Sex Für Alle”: Popfeminist Body Politics In Lady Bitch Ray, Charlotte Roche, And Sarah Kuttner, Carrie Smith-Prei

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Germany has seen a recent upsurge in publications proclaiming that feminism is again an urgent matter for a new generation of women. Faced with the reactionary demography debate and the hegemony of second-wave feminism, young writers, musicians, journalists, and critics call for new models of feminism relevant to women today. As one of these viable models, popfeminism draws on dominant trends in mass culture, on pop’s forty-year history as a cultural prefix in Germany, and on traditional feminism in order to create a new, ostensibly apolitical, feminist subculture based in self-stylization and individual autonomy. Shared by many popfeminist sources is …

Intercourse As Discourse In Alexa Hennig Von Lange’S Relax, Corinna Kahnke

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

While gender has long been an abiding concern of Popliteratur, pop writers (in particular female authors) are often criticized for simply reflecting, if not positively endorsing, negative forms of postfeminism—an attitude that negates the accomplishments of emancipation by regressing to traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman. Some critics suggest that pop texts re-inscribe the gender binary by presenting, even glorifying, long-established gender roles. In response to such a reception, this article investigates Alexa Hennig von Lange’s iconic but much criticized novel Relax (1999) in order to illustrate the reflective and critical nature of Popliteratur. …

Introduction: Resignifications Of Feminism In Contemporary Germany, Hester Baer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

During the past decade, the German-speaking world has witnessed both a new wave of writing by women and a resurgence of interest in and debate about feminism…

Dialogues With Tradition: Feminist-Queer Encounters In German Crime Stories At The Turn Of The Twenty-First Century, Faye Stewart

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Pieke Biermann’s feminist crime collection Mit Zorn, Charme, und Methode (1992) and Lisa Kuppler’s gay and lesbian anthology Queer Crime (2002) engage in a common project, the rewriting of a popular genre to give voice to previously marginalized identities and perspectives. This article investigates the ways in which each volume negotiates the gendered conventions of crime fiction and its subcategories, feminist and queer crime. A comparative analysis of three mysteries from each collection demonstrates the converging and diverging tendencies of feminist and queer representation in turn-of-the-twenty-first century crime narratives. Feminist mysteries by Edith Kneifl, Birgit Rabisch, and Barbara Neuhaus shift …

Motherhood As Performance: (Re)Negotiations Of Motherhood In Contemporary German Literature, Alexandra Merley Hill

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

While the birth rate in Europe remains low, the role of motherhood is hotly debated in Germany—particularly in conjunction with the revival of feminism in that country. In the context of these debates, this article analyzes the representation of mothers in three contemporary novels by German authors: Himmelskörper (2003) by Tanja Dückers, Die Gunnar-Lennefsen-Expedition (1998) by Kathrin Schmidt, and Die Mittagsfrau (2007) by Julia Franck. All three books are informed by a feminist perspective, but only Die Mittagsfrau offers a new way of thinking about motherhood; while Dückers and Schmidt ultimately do not depart from the connection between motherhood and …

Eternal Interns: Kathrin Röggla’S Literary Treatment Of Gendered Capitalism, Florence Feiereisen

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In today’s Germany, university graduates and first-time job seekers find themselves in a different position than did those of previous generations—for many, obtaining a secure, full-time job has become a dream of the past. To boost their résumés, many enter a loop of internships and other similarly precarious states of employment. This article examines the way in which author Kathrin Röggla treats these insecure economic times in her 2004 novel Wir schlafen nicht, with a focus on sex and gender in the New Economy. Are jobs gendered, and what are the resulting effects for both men and women? I …

Generation Chick: Reading Bridget Jones’S Diary, Jessica, 30., And Dies Ist Kein Liebeslied As Postfeminist Novels, Brenda Bethman

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article examines Helen Fielding’s, Marlene Streeruwitz’s, and Karen Duve’s novels in the context of the literarisches Fräuleinwunder, the generic conventions of chick lit, and postfeminism, relating all three to the globalization of the book publishing industry and its effects on German-language fiction. I argue that Duve’s and Streeruwitz’s texts can be understood as responses to the Anglo-American chick lit that flooded the German-language book market in the 1990s, of which Fielding’s novel is one of the best-known. Close readings situate both German-language novels firmly within the generic conventions of chick lit, and then look at the ways the …

E.T.A. Hoffmann's Marketplace Vision Of Berlin, Alexander M. Schlutz

Publications and Research

This essay discusses E.T.A. Hoffmann’s late novella My Cousin’s Corner Window. On the one hand, Hoffmann’s text offers a narratological experiment on how to best represent the experience of seeing the modern city, and combines to that end Enlightenment, Romantic, and Modern aesthetics. On the other hand, the text paints a portrait of the people of post-Napoleonic Berlin at a time of intense state surveillance. Hoffmann defies such state control by means of an ironic meta-narrative perspective that remains invisible to the watchful eye of the censor.

Des Adlers Horst - Annotated Transcription, Johanna Schopenhauer

Prose Fiction

No abstract provided.

Strange Bedfellows And Their Grandchildren: German Literature As Evidence And Confession Of Reunification, Cory H. Rosenberg

Student Publications

From Hegel to Merkel, from Bismarck to BMW, German culture has defined and re-defined itself through a cycle of reaction; thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Modern Germany has certainly not escaped this pattern, existing in a very deep and surprisingly present way in reaction to the collapse of the East German state and the formation of a unified Germany. This paper examines the ways in which contemporary German authors evidence this reaction in their work. As a nation at the heart of the East/West divide throughout the Cold War, Germany provides an ideal lens through which to view the shifting cultural, economic, …

Feminism And Generational Conflicts In Alexa Hennig Von Lange’S Relax, Elke Naters’S Lügen, And Charlotte Roche’S Feuchtgebiete, Margaret Mccarthy

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The publication of Charlotte Roche’s controversial novel Feuchtgebiete, along with a wave of nonfiction popfeminist writings, prompted heated debates in 2008 among different generations of German feminists. Despite their attempts to call attention to historically persistent forms of sexism, popfeminists quite emphatically distanced themselves from Alice Schwarzer, the face of German feminism for over thirty-five years. Yet casting themselves as rebels who break away from Schwarzer’s second-wave feminism has necessitated that they suppress affinities and shared blind spots in order to underscore their ostensibly less dogmatic, more fun approach. Feuchtgebiete, Alexa Hennig von Lange’s Relax and Elke Naters’s …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Paul Kong. The Raiders and Writers of Cervantes’ Archive: Borges, Puig, and García Márquez by José Fernando Olascoaga

J. J. Long. W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity by Helen Finch

Andrew Baruch Wachtel. Plays of Expectations: Intertextual Relations in Russian Twentieth-Century Drama by Volha Isakava

David Jenemann. Adorno in America by Ruth Starkman

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry by Derek Hillard

Horacio Legras. Literature and Subjection: the Economy of Writing and Marginality in Latin America by Abraham Acosta

Hélène Cixous. Love Itself in the Letterbox by Natalie Edwards

Zulema Moret. Esas niñas cuando crecen, ¿Dónde van a …

Review Of Stefani Engelstein, Anxious Anatomy: The Conception Of The Human Form In Literary And Naturalistic Discourse, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

Immortal For Quite Some Time, Part 2, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

Immortal For Quite Some Time: Part One, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

Ein Kleiner, Schwarzer Punkt Am Weisslichen Himmel: Antarctica & Ice In German Expressionism, Joy M. Essigmann

Masters Theses

This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey …

Spuren Visionärer Multikulturalität: Fantasie Und Wirklichkeit In Campes "Robinson Der Jüngere": Auf Dem Weg Vom Kolonialismus Zum Kosmopolitismus., Claus Huxdorff

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to investigate the traces of multicultural implications in Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere 1779/80. On one level, Campe’s adaptation of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe appears to awaken or sustain potential colonial fantasies among its German readers. However, Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere does not follow colonial conventions, such as exhibited in Defoe, but instead depicts a society based much more on the concept of a common humanity shared by Europeans and Caribbean natives alike. It conceives of cooperation and exchange as a mutual gain for both parties. Robinson’s island functions as a kind of social testing ground offering …