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Readings in the Anthropocene brings together scholars from German Studies and beyond to interpret the German tradition of the last two hundred years from a perspective that is mindful of the challenge posed by the concept of the Anthropocene. This new age of man, unofficially pronounced in 2000, holds that humans are becoming a geological force in shaping the Earth''s future. Among the biggest challenges facing our future are climate change, accelerated species loss, and a radical transformation of land use. What are the historical, philosophical, cultural, literary, and artistic responses to this new concept? The essays in this volume bring German culture to bear on what it means to live in the Anthropocene from a historical, ethical, and aesthetic perspective.

The literary and scientific renaissance that struck Germany around 1800 is usually taken to be the cradle of contemporary humanism. Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism shows how figures like Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe as well as scientists specializing in the emerging modern life and cognitive sciences not only established but also transgressed the boundaries of the "human.ΓÇá? This period so broadly painted as humanist by proponents and detractors alike also grappled with ways of challenging some of humanism''s most cherished assumptions: the dualisms, for example, between freedom and nature, science and art, matter and spirit, mind and body, and thereby also between the human and the nonhuman. Posthumanism is older than we think, and the so-called "humanistsΓÇá? of the late Enlightenment have much to offer our contemporary re-thinking of the human.

Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and countries, Thomas Mann and Shakespeare is the first book-length study to explore the always fascinating, if sometimes disturbing, connections between Shakespeare and Mann. It establishes startling resonances between the central works of these two authors, pairing, for instance, Der Zauberberg with The Tempest, Der Tod in Venedig with The Merchant of Venice, Tonio Kr├╢ger with Othello and Love''s Labour''s Lost with Doktor Faustus. Showing how the conjunction of Shakespeare and Mann affords new, alternative perspectives on fundamental issues such as modernity, irony, art, desire, authorship and religion, Thomas Mann and Shakespeare challenges the increasingly walled-in specialism of literary topics and periodization and demonstrates the scope for new ways of reading in literary studies.

Readings in the Anthropocene brings together a number of different scholars from German Studies disciplines and beyond to interpret the German tradition of the last two hundred years from a perspective that is mindful of the challenge posed by the concept of the Anthropocene. This new age of man, unofficially pronounced in 2000, holds that humans are becoming a geological force in shaping the Earth''s future. Among the biggest challenges facing our future are climate change, accelerated species loss, and a radical transformation of land use. What are the historical, philosophical, cultural, literary, and artistic responses to this new concept? The essays in this volume bring German culture to bear on what it means to live in the Anthropocene from a historical, ethical, and aesthetic perspective.

Reveals how East German writers' engagement with the rapidly changing built environment from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s constitutes an untold story about the emergence of literary experimentation in the post-War period.

The Roma are Europe''s largest minority, and yet they remain one of the most misunderstood and underrepresented. Scholarship on the Roma in German-speaking countries has focused mostly on the portrayal of "Zigeuner/Gypsies" in literature by non-Roma and on persecution during the Nazi period. Rarely have scholars examined the actual voices of Roma to glean their perspectives on their social interactions and customs. Without such studies the Roma appear passive in the face of their long and troubled history. With a basis in theories of intersectionality, subalternity, and cultural hybridity, Roma Voices in the German-Speaking World rectifies this image of passivity by analyzing autobiographies, folktales, and novels by Roma, thereby promoting a better understanding of the multifaceted and multifarious cultures alive today in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In documenting their voices, Roma writers unveil the large extent to which their personal lives, their social interactions with other Roma and non-Roma, and the images they project of their values and traditions are highly influenced by gender and ethnicity.

The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the New Poems opens up new perspectives on the relation between Rilke''s poetry and phenomenological philosophy, illustrating the ways in which poetry can offer an exceptional response to the philosophical problem of dualism. Drawing on the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, Luke Fischer makes a new contribution to the tradition of phenomenological poetics and expands the debate among Germanists concerning the phenomenological status of Rilke''s poetry, which has been severely limited to comparisons of Rilke and Husserl.Fischer explicates an implicit phenomenology of perception in Rilke''s writings from his middle period (1902-1910). He argues that Rilke cultivated an artistic perception that, in a philosophically significant manner, overcomes the opposition between the sensuous and the intelligible while simultaneously transcending the boundaries of philosophy. Fischer offers novel interpretations of central poems from Rilke''s Neue Gedichte (1907) and Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil (1908) and frames them as the ultimate articulation of Rilke''s non-dualistic vision. He thus demonstrates the continuity between Rilke and phenomenology while arguing that poetry, in this case, provides the most adequate response to a philosophical problem.

Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture challenges a model of literary production that persists in literary studies: the so-called Geniekult or the idea of the solitary male author as genius that emerged around 1800 in German lands. A closer look at creative practices during this time indicates that collaborative creative endeavors, specifically joint ventures between women and men, were an important mode of literary production during this era. This volume surveys a variety of such collaborations and proves that male and female spheres of creation were not as distinct as has been previously thought. It demonstrates that the model of the male genius that dominated literary studies for centuries was not inevitable, that viable alternatives to it existed. Finally, it demands that we rethink definitions of an author and a literary work in ways that account for the complex modes of creation from which they arose.

Sissi''s World offers a transdisciplinary approach to the study of the Habsburg Empress Elisabeth of Austria. It investigates the myths, legends, and representations across literature, art, film, and other media of one of the most popular, revered and misunderstood female figures in European cultural history. Sissi''s World explores the cultural foundations for the endurance of the Sissi legends and the continuing fascination with the beautiful empress: a Bavarian duchess born in 1837, the longest-serving Austrian empress, and the queen of Hungary who died in 1898 at the hands of a crazed anarchist.Despite the continuing fascination with "the beloved Sissi," the Habsburg empress, her impact, and legacy have received scant attention from scholars. This collection will go beyond the popular biographical accounts, recountings of her mythic beauty, and scattered studies of her well-known eccentricities to offer transdisciplinary cultural perspectives across art, film, fashion, history, literature, and media.

Among Western literatures, only the German-speaking countries can boast a list of world-class writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, Kleist, Kafka, Schmitt, and Schlink who were trained as legal scholars. This book traces a history of the sometimes fraught relationship between German law and literature in the modern period, from Grimm to Schmitt.

A exploration of Lou Andreas-Salome's critical and creative transformation of modern thought

German Aesthetics provides English-speaking audiences with accessible explanations of fundamental concepts from the German tradition of philosophical aesthetics. Organized with the understanding that aesthetic concepts are often highly contested intellectual territory, and that the usage and meanings of terms often shift within historical, cultural, and political debates, this volume brings together scholars of German literature, philosophy, film studies, musicology, and history to provide informative and creative interpretations of German aesthetics that will be useful to students and scholars alike.

Improvisation as Art traces how modernity's emphasis on inventiveness has changed the meaning of improvisation; and how the ideals and laws that led improvisation to be banned from "high art" in the eighteenth century simultaneously enabled the inventive reintegration of improvisation into modernism. After an in-depth exploration of contemporary theoretical contentions surrounding improvisation, Landgraf examines how the new emphasis on inventiveness affects the understanding of improvisation in the emerging aesthetic and anthropological discourses of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He first focuses on accounts of improvisational performances by Moritz, Goethe, and Fernow and reads them alongside the aesthetics of autonomy as it develops at the same time. In its second half, the book investigates how the problem of "planning" art receives a different treatment in German Romanticism. The final chapter focuses on the writings of Heinrich von Kleist where improvisation presents a central aesthetic principle. Kleist's figurations of improvisation recognize the anthropological predicament of the self in modern society and the social constraints that invite and often force individuals to improvise.