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The first book to offer a cutting-edge discussion of contemporary
travel writing in German, Anxious Journeys looks both at classical
tropes of travel writing and its connection to current debates. The
rich contemporary literature of travel has been the focus of
numerous recent publications in English that seek to understand how
travel narratives, with their distinctive representations of
identities, places, and cultures, respond to today's globalized,
high-speed world characterized by the dual mass movements of
tourism and migration. Yet a corresponding cutting-edge discussion
of twenty-first-century travel writing in German has until now been
missing. The fourteen essays in Anxious Journeys redress this
situation. They analyze texts by leading authors such as Felicitas
Hoppe, Christoph Ransmayr, Julie Zeh, Navid Kermani, Judith
Schalansky, Ilija Trojanow, and others, as well as topics such as
Turkish-German travelogues and the relationship of comics to travel
writing. The volume examines how writers engage with classic tropes
of travel writing and how they react to the current sense of crisis
and belatedness. It also links travel to ongoing debates about the
role of the nation, mass migration, and the European project, as
well as to Germany's place in the larger world order. Contributors:
Karin Baumgartner, Heather Merle Benbow, Anke S. Biendarra, John
Blair and Muriel Cormican, Nicole Coleman, Carola Daffner,
Christina Gerhardt, Nicole Grewling, Gundela Hachmann, Andrew
Wright Hurley, Christina Kraenzle, Magda Tarnawaska Senel, Monika
Shafi, Sunka Simon. Karin Baumgartner is Professor of German at the
University of Utah. Monika Shafi is Elias Ahuja Professor of German
at the University of Delaware.
Even in the harsh conditions of total war, food is much more than a
daily necessity, however scarce-it is social glue and an identity
marker, a form of power and a weapon of war. This collection
examines the significance of food and hunger in Germany's turbulent
twentieth century. Food-centered perspectives and experiences "from
below" reveal the social, cultural and political consequences of
three conflicts that defined the twentieth century: the First and
Second World Wars and the ensuing global Cold War. Emerging and
established scholars examine the analytical salience of food in the
context of twentieth-century Germany while pushing conventional
temporal frameworks and disciplinary boundaries. Together, these
chapters interrogate the ways in which deeper studies of food
culture in Germany can shed new light on old wars.
Even in the harsh conditions of total war, food is much more than a
daily necessity, however scarce-it is social glue and an identity
marker, a form of power and a weapon of war. This collection
examines the significance of food and hunger in Germany's turbulent
twentieth century. Food-centered perspectives and experiences "from
below" reveal the social, cultural and political consequences of
three conflicts that defined the twentieth century: the First and
Second World Wars and the ensuing global Cold War. Emerging and
established scholars examine the analytical salience of food in the
context of twentieth-century Germany while pushing conventional
temporal frameworks and disciplinary boundaries. Together, these
chapters interrogate the ways in which deeper studies of food
culture in Germany can shed new light on old wars.
During the first decade of this millennium Germany's largest ethnic
minority-Turkish Germans-began to enjoy a new cultural prominence
in German literature, film, television and theater. While
controversies around forced marriage and "honor" killings have
driven popular interest in the situation of Turkish-German women,
popular culture has played a key role in diversifying portrayals of
women and men of Turkish heritage. This book documents the
significance of marriage in 21st-century Turkish-German culture,
unpacking its implications not only for the cultural portrayals of
those of Turkish background, but also for understandings of German
identity. It sheds light on the interactions of gender, sexuality
and ethnicity in contemporary Germany. This book explores four
notions of marriage in popular culture: forced marriage; romantic
marriage; intercultural marriage; and gay marriage. Over five
chapters, the book shows that in popular culture marriage is
conventionally portrayed as little more than a form of oppression
for Turkish-German women and gay men. The state of Turkish
matrimony is seen as characterized by coercion, lack of choice,
familial duty and "honor," even violence. In German culture, by
contrast, marriage stands for individual choice, love and equality.
However, within comedy genres such as "chick lit", "ethno-sitcom"
and wedding film, there have been attempts to challenge the
monolithic power of these gender stereotypes. This study finds
that, in grappling with the legacy of these stereotypes, these
genres reveal a yearning within German popular culture for the very
kinds of "traditional" gender roles Turkish Germans are imagined to
inhabit. The book provides a comprehensive account of the multiple
ways in which the diverse portrayals of marriage shape views of
Turkish Germans in popular culture, and are also revealing of the
role of gender in contemporary Germany. It investigates some key
genres-autoethnography, chick lit, ethno-sitcom, wedding film,
"gay" Bildungsroman, documentary theater-within which questions of
gender and cultural difference are "framed". In new and innovative
close readings of literary, filmic, television and dramatic texts,
the work reveals the broad significance of cultural portrayals of
Turkish-German intimacy.
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