Vivian Liska

Joep Leerssen

Vladimir Biti

The Clash of Projections

Idea of Europe

Steven E. Aschheim

In the past decades the “German-Jewish phenomenon” (Derrida) has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars from various fields: Jewish studies, intellectual history, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, critical theory. In all its complex dimensions, the post-enlightenment German-Jewish experience is overwhelmingly regarded as the most quintessential and charged meeting of Jews with the project of modernity. Perhaps for this reason, from the eighteenth century through to our own time it has been the object of intense reflection, of clashing interpretations and appropriations. In both micro and macro case-studies, this volume engages the multiple perspectives as advocated by manifold interested actors, and analyzes their uses, biases and ideological functions over time in different cultural, disciplinary and national contexts. This volume includes both historical treatments of differing German-Jewish understandings of their experience – their relations to their Judaism, general culture and to other Jews – and contemporary reflections and competing interpretations as to how to understand the overall experience of German Jewry.

The German-Jewish Experience Revisited

Mark H. Gelber

Dieser Band besteht aus 16 Beiträgen. Sie sind revidierte und erweiterte Fassungen der Vorträge, die 2004 im Rahmen internationaler Tagungen über Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) gehalten wurden, um seines hundertsten Todestages zu gedenken. Der Schwerpunkt des Bandes liegt auf literarischen und kulturpolitischen Fragestellungen zu Herzl sowie auf Themen, die mit der Rezeption seiner Werke sowie seiner Persönlichkeit zu tun haben. Andere Themen, die in diesem Buch diskutiert werden, sind u.a. Herzl zwischen Mythos und Messianismus, Herzls Nationalismus, Herzl und Afrika, Herzl als Dramatiker, Herzl im Film sowie die Herzl-Rezeption in Israel und in Europa.

Theodor Herzl: From Europe to Zion

Zwischen 1938 und 1944 schrieb Paul Celan in einem rumänischen Arbeitslager Gedichte, die er nach dem Krieg ordnete und in ein Notizbuch eintrug. Dieses wurde 1985 in einer Faksimile-Ausgabe veröffentlicht. Eine textnahe Studie untersucht die Strukturen und Schwerpunkte dieses Gedichtbands gegen den Hintergrund seiner Entstehungszeit und arbeitet jene Elemente heraus, die auf Celans späteres Werk vorausweisen. Celans Jugendgedichte wurden zumeist als epigonale Fingerübungen betrachtet. Ihre Bedeutung liegt jedoch gerade darin, dass sie dort, wo sie die überlieferten Formen und Metaphern aufgreifen, eine Geste der Verabschiedung vollziehen, die den Grundton der gesamten Celanschen Dichtung bestimmt.

Paul Celans Gedichte 1938-1944

Die Nacht der Hymnen

Arthur Cools

Kafka’s work has been attributed a universal significance and is often regarded as the ultimate witness of the human condition in the twentieth century. Yet his work is also considered paradigmatic for the expression of the singular that cannot be subsumed under any generalization. This paradox engenders questions not only concerning the meaning of the universal as it manifests itself in (and is transformed by) Kafka’s writings but also about the expression of the singular in literary fiction as it challenges the opposition between the universal and the singular. The contributions in this volume approach these questions from a variety of perspectives. They are structured according to the following issues: ambiguity as a tool of deconstructing the pre-established philosophical meanings of the universal; the concept of the law as a major symbol for the universal meaning of Kafka’s writings; the presence of animals in Kafka’s texts; the modernist mode of writing as challenge of philosophical concepts of the universal; and the meaning and relevance of the universal in contemporary Kafka reception. This volume examines central aspects of the interplay between philosophy and literature.

Kafka and the Universal

Manuela Consonni

The starting point for this compilation is the wish to rethink the concept of antisemitism, race and gender in light of Sartre’s pioneering Réflexions sur la Question Juive seventy years after its publication. The book gathers texts by prestigious scholars from different disciplines in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, with the objective or revisiting this work locating it within the setting of two other pioneering – and we argue, related – publications, namely Simone De Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe of 1949 and Franz Fanon’s Peau noire et masques blancs of 1952. This particular and original standpoint sheds new light on the different meanings and political functions of the concept of antisemitism in a political and historical context marked by the post-modern concepts of multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism.

Rethinking Antisemitism, Race, and Gender

Sartre, Jews, and the Other

Astradur Eysteinsson

The two-volume work Modernism has been awarded the prestigious 2008 MSA Book Prize! Modernism has constituted one of the most prominent fields of literary studies for decades. While it was perhaps temporarily overshadowed by postmodernism, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in modernism on both sides of the Atlantic. These volumes respond to a need for a collective and multifarious view of literary modernism in various genres, locations, and languages. Asking and responding to a wealth of theoretical, aesthetic, and historical questions, 65 scholars from several countries test the usefulness of the concept of modernism as they probe a variety of contexts, from individual texts to national literatures, from specific critical issues to broad cross-cultural concerns. While the chief emphasis of these volumes is on literary modernism, literature is seen as entering into diverse cultural and social contexts. These range from inter-art conjunctions to philosophical, environmental, urban, and political domains, including issues of race and space, gender and fashion, popular culture and trauma, science and exile, ­all of which have an urgent bearing on the poetics of modernity.

Modernism

deutsch-jüdische Literatur der Moderne

Fremde Gemeinschaft

Ástráður Eysteinsson

The two-volume work Modernism has been awarded the prestigious 2008 MSA Book Prize! Modernism has constituted one of the most prominent fields of literary studies for decades. While it was perhaps temporarily overshadowed by postmodernism, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in modernism on both sides of the Atlantic. These volumes respond to a need for a collective and multifarious view of literary modernism in various genres, locations, and languages. Asking and responding to a wealth of theoretical, aesthetic, and historical questions, 65 scholars from several countries test the usefulness of the concept of modernism as they probe a variety of contexts, from individual texts to national literatures, from specific critical issues to broad cross-cultural concerns. While the chief emphasis of these volumes is on literary modernism, literature is seen as entering into diverse cultural and social contexts. These range from inter-art conjunctions to philosophical, environmental, urban, and political domains, including issues of race and space, gender and fashion, popular culture and trauma, science and exile, all of which have an urgent bearing on the poetics of modernity.

Thomas Nolden

With contributions from a dozen American and European scholars, this volume presents an overview of Jewish writing in post--World War II Europe. Striking a balance between close readings of individual texts and general surveys of larger movements and underlying themes, the essays portray Jewish authors across Europe as writers and intellectuals of multiple affiliations and hybrid identities. Aimed at a general readership and guided by the idea of constructing bridges across national cultures, this book maps for English-speaking readers the productivity and diversity of Jewish writers and writing that has marked a revitalization of Jewish culture in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, and Russia.

Vivian Liska

About

Books

Join the club