Description
Book Synopsis Cultural Studies have been preoccupied with questions of national identity and cultural representations. At the same time, feminist studies have insisted upon the entanglement of gender with issues of nation, class, and ethnicity. Developments in the wake of German unification demand a reassessment of the nexus of gender, Germanness and nationhood. The contributors to this volume pursue these strands of the cultural debate in German history, literature, visual arts, and language over a period of three hundred years in sections devoted to History and the Canon, Visual Culture, Germany and Her "Others," and Language and Power.
Contributors: L. Adelson, A. Taylor Allen, K. Bauer, R. Berman, B. Byg, M. Denman, E. Frederiksen, S. Friedrichsmeyer, E. Kaufmann, L. Koepnick, B. Kosta, S. Lefko, A. M.O'Sickey, B. Mennel, H. M. Müller, B. Peterson, L. Pusch, D. Sweet, H. Watt, S. Zantop.
Trade Review "This fascinating and informative collection of twenty-two mostly original essays showcases feminist German Studies at its finest ... Decentering Germany in our own scholarly work will help us to further challenge the settled definitions of gender and Germanness which this volume so splendidly details." · Women in German
Table of Contents Introduction: Looking for Germania
PART I: EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY
Chapter 1. The Beautiful, the Ugly, and the German: Race, Gender and Nationality in Eighteenth-Century Anthropological Discourse
Susanne Zantop
Chapter 2. Sophie La Roche as a German Patriot
Helga S. Watt
Chapter 3. Romantic Nationalism: Achim von Arnim’s Gypsy Princess Isabella
Sara Friedrichsmeyer
Chapter 4. How to Think about Germany: Nationality, Gender, and Obsession in Heine’s “Night Thoughts”
Russell A. Berman
Chapter 5. The Fatherland’s Kiss of Death: Gender and Germany in Nineteenth-Century Historical Fiction
Brent O. Peterson
PART II: RETHINKING HISTORY AND CANONS
Chapter 6. The Challenge of “Missing Contents” for Canon Formation in German Studies
Elke Frederiksen
Chapter 7. Feminism and Motherhood in Germany and in International Perspective 1800-1914
Ann Taylor Allen
Chapter 8. “Truly Womanly” and “Truly German”: Women’s Rights and National Identity in Die Frau
Stefana Lefko
Chapter 9. The Ladies’ Auxiliary of German Literature: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Quest for a National Literary History
Patricia Herminghouse
PART III: VISUAL CULTURE
Chapter 10. En-Gendering Mass Culture: The Case of Zarah Leander
Lutz P. Koepnick
Chapter 11. Nazism as Femme Fatale: Recuperations of Cinematic Masculinity in Postwar Berlin
Barton Byg
Chapter 12. Visualizing the Nation: Madonnas and Mourning Mothers in Postwar Germany
Mariatte C. Denman
Chapter 13. Framing the Unheimlich: Heimatfilm and Bambi
Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey
Chapter 14.
Rape, Nation, and Remembering History: Helke Sander’s Liberators Take Liberties
Barbara Kosta
PART IV: GERMANY AND HER “OTHERS”
Chapter 15. “Germany is Full of Germans Now”: Germanness in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy and Chantal
Ackerman’s Meetings with Anna
Barbara Mennel
Chapter 16. Bodies for Germany, Bodies for Socialism: The German Democratic Republic Devises a Gay (Male) Body
Denis Sweet
Chapter 17. Patterns of Consciousness and Cycles of Self-Destruction: Nation, Ethnicity, and Gender in Herta Müller’s Prose
Karin Bauer
Chapter 18. Germania Displaced? Reflections on the Discourses of Female Asylum Seekers and Ethnic Germans
Magda Mueller
Chapter 19. GERMANIA – Just a Male Construction? Gender, Germanness, and Feminism in East German Women
Writers
Eva Kaufmann
Chapter 20. The Price of Feminism: Of Women and Turks
Leslie Adelson
PART V: FATHERLAND AND MOTHER TONGUE
Chapter 21. Language is Publicity for Men – but enough is enough!
Luise Pusch
Chapter 22. The New Duden: Out of Date Already?
Luise Pusch
Contributors
Index
