Recent years have seen a wealth of new scholarship on the history of photography, cinema, digital media, and video games, yet less attention has been devoted to earlier forms of visual culture. The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic proliferation of new technologies, devices, and print processes, which provided growing audiences with access to more visual material than ever before. This volume brings together the best aspects of interdisciplinary scholarship to enhance our understanding of the production, dissemination, and consumption of visual media prior to the predominance of photographic reproduction. By setting these examples against the backdrop of demographic, educational, political, commercial, scientific, and industrial shifts in Central Europe, these essays reveal the diverse ways that innovation in visual culture affected literature, philosophy, journalism, the history of perception, exhibition culture, and the representation of nature and human life in both print and material culture in local, national, transnational, and global contexts.

A collection of new essays bringing into view the push and pull of the national and the international in the German-language cultural field of the period. The cultural formations of the so-called Age of Nationalism (1848-1919) have shaped German-language literary studies to the present day, for better or worse. Literary histories, German self-representations, the view from abroad - all of these perspectives offer images of a culture ever more concerned with formulating a coherent, nationally focused idea of its origins, history, and cultural community. But even in this historical moment the German-speaking territories were not culturally self-contained; international forces always played a significant role in the constitution of the so-called "German" literary and cultural field. This volume rethinks the historical period with fourteen case studies that bring into view the push and pull of the national and international in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, undertaking a reframing of literary-cultural history that recognizes the interrelatedness of literatures and cultures across political and linguistic boundaries. Viewing even overtly national literary and cultural projects as belonging to an international system, these case studies examine the interrelations, organization, and positioning of the agents, forces, enterprises, and processes that constituted the German-language literary-cultural field, locating these ostensibly national developments within an inter- or even anti-national context.

Building upon recent German Studies research addressing the industrialization of printing, the expansion of publication venues, new publication formats, and readership, Market Strategies maps a networked literary field in which the production, promotion, and reception of literature from the Enlightenment to World War II emerges as a collaborative enterprise driven by the interests of actors and institutions. These essays demonstrate how a network of authors, editors, and publishers devised mutually beneficial and, at times, conflicting strategies for achieving success on the rapidly evolving nineteenth-century German literary market. In particular, the contributors consider how these actors shaped a nineteenth-century literary market, which included the Jewish press, highbrow and lowbrow genres, and modernist publications. They explore the tensions felt as markets expanded and restrictions were imposed, which yielded resilient new publication strategies, fostered criticism, and led to formal innovations. The volume thus serves as major contribution to interdisciplinary research in nineteenth-century German literary, media, and cultural studies.

Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory gathers an international team of contributors from two continents whose innovative scholarship demonstrates a regard for comics and graphic novels as works of art in their own right. The contributions serve as models for further research that will continue to define the relationship between comics and other traditional "high art" forms, such as literature and the visual arts. Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies is the first English-language anthology that focuses exclusively on the graphic texts of German-speaking countries. In its breadth, this book functions as an important resource in a limited pool of critical works on German-language comics and graphic novels. The individual chapters differ significantly from one another in methodology, subject matter, and style. Taken together, however, they present a cross-section of comics and graphic novel scholarship being performed in North America and Europe today. Moreover, they help to secure a place for these works in a globalized culture of comics. This volume's contributors have helped create a new critical language within which this rapidly expanding medium can be read and interpreted.

Recent years have seen a wealth of new scholarship on the history of photography, cinema, digital media, and video games, yet less attention has been devoted to earlier forms of visual culture. The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic proliferation of new technologies, devices, and print processes, which provided growing audiences with access to more visual material than ever before. This volume brings together the best aspects of interdisciplinary scholarship to enhance our understanding of the production, dissemination, and consumption of visual media prior to the predominance of photographic reproduction. By setting these examples against the backdrop of demographic, educational, political, commercial, scientific, and industrial shifts in Central Europe, these essays reveal the diverse ways that innovation in visual culture affected literature, philosophy, journalism, the history of perception, exhibition culture, and the representation of nature and human life in both print and material culture in local, national, transnational, and global contexts.