The articulation of collective identity by means of a stereotyped repertoire of exclusionary characterizations of Self and Other is one of the longest-standing literary traditions in Europe and as such has become part of a global modernity. Recently, this discourse of Othering and national stereotyping has gained fresh political virulence as a result of the rise of "Identity Politics". What is more, this newly politicized self/other discourse has affected Europe itself as that continent has been weathering a series of economic and political crises in recent years. The present volume traces the conjunction between cultural and literary traditions and contemporary ideologies during the crisis of European multilateralism. Contributors: Aelita Ambruleviciute, Jurgen Barkhoff, Stefan Berger, Zrinka Blazevic, Daniel Carey, Ana Maria Fraile, Wulf Kansteiner, Joep Leerssen, Hercules Millas, Zenonas Norkus, Aidan O'Malley, Raul Sanchez Prieto, Karel Sima, Luc Van Doorslaer,Ruth Wodak

Identifies and analyzes thematizations of women and death from the past five centuries, illuminating the present and recent past. The theme of women and death is pervasive in the German culture of the past five centuries. With the conviction that only an interdisciplinary approach can explore a typology as far-reaching and significant as this, and in accordance with the feminist tenet that images are accountable for norms, this volume investigates how iconic representations of women and death came about and why they endure. Traditionally, representations of women as agents of death -- when they have been considered at all -- have been considered separately from women as victims, as though there was no shared thematic ground. Here, familiar depictions of female victims are examined alongside the more unsettling spectacle of women as killers, exposing cultural assumptions. Essays explore, among others, the themes of virgin sacrifice and female infanticides, "Death and the Maiden" in art, female vampires in literature, and women killersin the media. Others compare cultural practices such as female mourning across historical contexts, examining change and the reasons for it. The authors' judgments eschew the simplistic and programmatic, contributing not just to current research in German literature, but also to understanding of cultural history in general. Contributors: Stephanie Knoell, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Anna Linton, Bettina Bildhauer, Mary Lindemann, Helen Fronius, Anna Richards, Jurgen Barkhoff, Lawrence Kramer, Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius, Clare Bielby, Gisela Ecker. Anna Linton is Lecturer in German at Kings College London, and Helen Fronius is an AHRC Research Fellow and College Lecturer at Exeter College Oxford.

This volume brings together the proceedings of a symposium to mark the retirement of Eda Sagarra from the Chair of German (founded 1776) at Trinity College Dublin. It addresses the themes of her major research field, the 19th century as an epoch of literary, social and cultural history. The 'difficulties' of cultural memory of an era which - with varying emphases - has been characterized as the century of liberty, of ideologies, of sciences, of historicism or of realism, are examined from a variety of perspectives in the light of postmodern deconstruction of both literature and history.

The volume examines how historically and culturally effective Swiss myths have been re-formed and continued, handed down and criticised especially in more recent Swiss-German literature since the Second World War. With contributors including Adolf Muschg, Peter von Matt and German scholars from Ireland and Great Britainthis volumereflects on important literary contributions to historical and present-day processes of identity-creation, including Switzerland's role in the Second World War, its attitudes towards Europe, Switzerland as a multicultural entity or the many myths about this country.

The first book in English on the German Gothic in over thirty years, consisting of new essays investigating the internationality of the Gothic mode. The literary mode of the Gothic is well established in English Studies, and there is growing interest in its internationality. Gothic fiction is seen as transgressive, especially in the way it crosses borders, often illicitly -- for instance, in the form of plagiarized texts or pseudo-translations of nonexistent sources. In the 1790s, when the English Gothic novel was emerging, the real or ostensible source of many of these uncanny texts was Germany. Thisfirst book in English dedicated to the German Gothic in over thirty years is aimed at students and researchers in German Studies and English Studies, and redresses deficiencies in existing sources, which are outdated, piecemeal, or not sufficiently grounded in German Studies. The book examines the international reception of German Gothic since the 1790s heyday of the Gothic novel in Britain and Germany; traces a line of Gothic writing in German to thepresent day; and inquires into the extraliterary impact of German Gothic. Thus the essays do full justice to the Gothic as a site of conflict and exchange -- both between cultures and between discourses. Contributors:Peter Arnds, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Jurgen Barkhoff, Matthias Bickenbach, Andrew Cusack, Mario Grizelj, Joerg Kreienbrock, Barry Murnane, Victor Sage, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Catherine Smale, Andrew Webber Andrew Cusack is Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institut fur Kulturwissenschaft of the Humboldt-Universitat Berlin. Barry Murnane is Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

This volume presents the proceedings of a Coimbra Group conference on networking across borders and frontiers in European culture and society that took place at the University of Graz in September 2007. Organised by the Task Force on Culture, Arts and Humanities it brought together researches from ten different European countries and an array of disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences spectrum, from Cultural Anthropology, European Ethnology, History, Literary Studies and Fine Arts to Peace Studies, Sociology and Political Sciences. It explores the capacity of the frontier-network binary for describing and analysing historical, cultural and political processes in the formation of European cultures and societies past and present, and across national and disciplinary boundaries.