This presents an account of current thinking on central issues within and beyond the humanities today. Brings together leading figures such as Sacvan Bercovitch, Helen Vendler, Anthony Appiah, Norman Bryson, Seyla Benhabib and Marjorie Garber.

This volume of presents an account of current thinking on central issues within and beyond the humanities. It brings together such leading figures as Sacvan Bercovitch and Helen Vendler, Anthony Appiah and Barbara Johnson, Seyla Benhabib and Norman Bryson, Martha Minow and Henry Louis Gates,Jr, Marjorie Garber and Susan Suleiman. It explores such questions as: What is culture? What are cultures? Are literary texts and cultural texts different? What do literary and other fields engaged in cultural work have in common? What can literary studies profitably do with other disciplines? and What can cultural studies tell us about culture ?

In August 1946, Marcel Duchamp spent five weeks in Switzerland, and stayed at the Hotel Bellevue (today, Le Baron Tavernier) near Chexbres, on Lake Geneva. It was here that he discovered the Forestay waterfall, which was to become the starting point for (and ultimately the landscape of) his enigmatic and final masterpiece, "Etant donnes: 1 la chute d'eau, 2 le gaz d'eclairage" ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"). Now, for the first time, the full significance of the choice of this waterfall is explored. Among the contributors to this volume are Caroline Bachmann, Stefan Banz, Etienne Barilier, Lars Blunck, Ecke Bonk, Paul B. Franklin, Antje von Graevenitz, Dalia Judovitz, Michael Luthy, Bernard Marcade, Herbert Molderings, Adeena Mey, Stanislaus von Moos, Francis M. Naumann, Mark Nelson, Molly Nesbit, Dominique Radrizzani, Roman Signer, Michael R. Taylor, Hans Maria de Wolf and Philip Ursprung.

Marcel Duchamp: one of his themes was the boundary between works of art and everyday objects, and with it, he set the art world in an uproar. Surely one of his most brilliant strokes of genius was the Fountain, a urinal he put on display. There are, of course, many more works that bear his signature, and the Duchamp Collection in Schwerin has ninety-two of them. Founded in 2009, the research centre has succeeded in establishing an interdisciplinary, globally connected network of researchers in Schwerin. Under the title Marcel Duchamp: Inventing the Presence, individual as well as groups of artworks from the Schwerin collection are examined from philosophical, art historical, and literary perspectives in volume five of the series Poiesis.