2005-06-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe,Boulevard Comedy Theatre in Germany,Hardback,9781904303480,29.99,"Twenty major German cities have a total of twenty-four theatres specializing, at a high level of sophistication, in presenting light comedy. They have their own typical ambience, principles of artistic management and casting. There are playwrights, actors, directors and designers who work almost exclusively in the genre, called boulevard comedy, developing highly specialised approaches to their work. In almost all cases, the predominantly privately run boulevard comedy theatres in Germany have been able to attract larger audiences than municipal or state theatres in the same cities. The book provides a description and an analysis of this phenomenon, which is unique to Germany. Chapters focus on an analysis of ambience, artistic managers, artistic policies and artistic structures, on major characteristics of the plays presented on the stages of German boulevard comedy theatres, on aspects of translation and the cultural transfer of comedy and laughter and on aspects of production and reception, dealing in turn with actors, directors, media coverage and audiences.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-12-01,Lee M. Roberts,Germany and the Imagined East,Hardback,9781904303589,34.99,"German-speaking Europe is an array of images that have emerged from varied discourses about itself and its neighbors, and “Germany and the Imagined East” revolves around the exchange of views on and in the vast construct called “the East.” The world has been divided conceptually in countless ways, but the works in this volume treat aspects of Germany as both part of and also separate from any perception of an eastern border. From the former German Democratic Republic,“East Germany,” to Österreich—whose name loses its eastern association in the English version, Austria,—the East begins within the very world of the German language. But it is also the expanse off to the right of Germany, within which essays in this collection treat such political and cultural distinctions as former Yugoslavia, Romania and Russia in Eastern Europe, or Turkey and Persia in the Near East, spreading through India to China and Japan in the Far East. With a variety of perspectives on literature, film, philosophy, architecture, music and history, these essays comprise a multidisciplinary collage that invites scholars from all departments to explore the wealth of insights German Studies has to offer on East-West relations.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Gerd Bayer,Mediating Germany: Popular Culture between Tradition and Innovation,Hardback,9781847180339,39.99,"Popular culture in the German-speaking world has reacted in numerous ways to the demands of contemporary life, combining century-old traditions but also addressing current political and social debates. The essays collected in this volume offer case studies of popular fiction, theatre, hip-hop and rock music, events like the love parade, as well as describe new developments in documentary filmmaking. Read individually or as a whole, the chapters provide a detailed analysis of both the current issues in popular culture and the legacy of popular art forms throughout the twentieth century.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,David D. Kim,Georg Simmel in Translation: Interdisciplinary Border Crossings in Culture and Modernity,Hardback,9781847180605,39.99,"Though Georg Simmel considered himself a philosopher, his intellectual influence went well beyond the confines of one academic discipline at the turn of the last century. His writings on money, modernity, and the metropolis, as well as the artwork, female culture, and psychologism, left a significant mark on contemporaries like Walter Benjamin, Wilhelm Worringer, and Max Weber. Nevertheless, his name soon disappeared from public memory and scholarly discourse.

In Georg Simmel in Translation, scholars from the Humanities and the Social Sciences cut through time and space to illustrate ways in which Simmel was, and still is, carried from one context to another. From Imperial Berlin to contemporary Singapore, they trace Simmel’s transgression of disciplinary boundaries in culture and modernity. The collected essays also explore the transformed presence of his scholarship in the works of more well-known artists, writers, and intellectuals between the second half of the nineteenth century and today.





","""This is a most exciting collection of explorations into a whole range of fields inspired and guided by the work of Georg Simmel. In every instance, these adventures by an international ensemble of young scholars cut across intellectual boundaries to produce new and challenging connections . With their focus upon issues in gender, urban existence, individuality, modern art and philosophy they not only capture the continued relevance of Simmel’s works for cultural formations but also break new ground in their substantive fields. This is a welcome and stimulating contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship.""

David Frisby
Professor in Sociology
London School of Economics







",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe,Ein Kabinettstück der Schauspielkunst / A Showpiece of the Art of Acting: Ursula Dinkgräfes Bühnenlaufbahn / Ursula Dinkgräfe’s stage career,Hardback,9781847181770,29.99,"In diesem Buch zeichne ich die Theaterlaufbahn einer deutschen Theaterschauspielerin nach, Ursula Dinkgräfe, die in ihrer vierzigjährigen Zeit beim Theater, von 1947-1987, innerhalb der Theaterszene gut bekannt und hoch geschätzt war, die aber keinen Film-und Fernsehruhm auf sich zog. Dies Buch ist eine Ergänzung zur Starbiographie und schreibt ein bisher noch unberücksichtigtes Kapitel der deutschen Theatergeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts: denn die Geschichte des Theater ist nicht nur die Geschichte weniger Stars, sondern die Geschichte von sehr, sehr vielen, und auch sehr guten Schauspielern, über die die breite Masse nie etwas erfährt.

In this book I document the theatre career of a theatre actress in Germany, Ursula Dinkgräfe, who was well known and highly appreciated within the theatre scene of that country for the forty-year duration of her career from 1947 to 1987, but who did not achieve film and TV stardom. This book thus adds to the wider context of star biographies, and presents a hitherto unwritten chapter of German 20th century theatre history. The history of theatre is not only the history of a few stars, but also the history of very, very many, and indeed, very good, actors who never come to the attention of the wider public.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Florence Feiereisen and Kyle Frackman,From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context,Hardback,9781847181862,29.99,"From Weimar to Christiania is a new compilation of graduate student work in the fields of German and Scandinavian Studies.  Resulting from research presented at a unique graduate student conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, these essays utilize a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and represent an ambitious and successful effort to connect related yet distinct fields.  
This anthology is aimed at scholars within the broad areas of German and Scandinavian Studies.  All of the contributions speak to an appreciation of cultural studies as a diverse collection of theoretical tools, which provide the historian, political scientist, and literary and film scholars gathered here with the means to contextualize and investigate cultural productions, situations, and environments.  From Weimar to Christiania delivers compelling research that expands bodies of knowledge in northern European studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe,"Views, Positions, Legacies: Interviews with German and British Theatre Artists, 1985-2007",Hardback,9781847182944,34.99,"The proposed book collects 24 interviews that I conducted with German and British theatre artists over the period of 20 years. The first set of interviews focuses on British actors, directors and dramatists involved with Plays about Famous Artists. That section complements the material discussed in my book with CSP, Biographical Plays about Famous Artists. The second set of interviews focuses on German actors and directors involved with boulevard comedy theatre. That section complements the material discussed in my book with CSP, Boulevard Comedy Theatre in Germany. Interviews with two British theatre artists feature in the interviews in Part III: David Ian Rabey combines his job as a professor of Drama and Theatre at the University of Wales Aberystwyth with an active career as a theatre actor, director and dramatist. Mike Pearson is a performance practitioner and professor of Performance Studies in the same university department. The final part of the book provides a range of interviews both from the UK and from Germany, starting off with Sir Richard Eyre’s account of his seminal production of Hamlet at the Royal Court in 1980. German Director Heinz-Uwe Haus combines the legacy of Brecht (he trained with some of Brecht’s foremost disciples) and politics (Haus lived and worked in the former German Democratic Republic—the totalitarian regime’s repression influenced his everyday life and work considerably). Ursula Dinkgräfe, finally, represents both personal legacy and the numerous well-trained and highly capable and successful actors across the world who do not (want to) attain star-status.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,J. Chris Westgate,"Brecht, Broadway and United States Theater",Hardback,9781847183484,34.99," Not long after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, Bertolt Brecht’s name was on the lips of many writing about Broadway.  Invoked knowingly—but not always knowledgeably—“Brecht” became something between marketing strategy and erudite justification for another season of Broadway musicals, another ignominy endured by the German playwright whose epic theater has only seldom been understood in the United States.  To say that Brechtian and Broadway theatrical traditions represent divergence of philosophy, method, or ambition is to indulge—with the whimsy of Mark Twain—in understatement.  Nevertheless, many references to Brecht since 2001 imply compatibility instead of contradiction—a confusion or corruption that suggested the need of looking closely at what Brecht wrote and intended in his epic theater more than seventy years after his first—and, unfortunately, typical—experience with United States theater.
 Beginning with the 1935 production of The Mother and moving through recent productions of political theater, including The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Urinetown: The Musical, and My Name is Rachel Corrie, this anthology considers the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in terms of dramaturgy, performance, and reception.  The essays in this anthology explore the political, cultural, and economic constraints shaping many of the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in U.S. theater history.  This means looking at how, in many cases, epic theater has been co-opted and commodified by Broadway and what that commodification reveals about the culture of theater.  Simultaneously, this means theorizing how epic theater finds—or can find—ways of providing a necessary bulwark against Broadway escapism, and what this suggests for the future of political theater in the U.S.  What results is a dialectical history tracing Brecht’s encounters with Broadway, a history that opens-up and debates the complicated and often conflicted influence of Bertolt Brecht on United States theater.

“Dr. Westgate's book on Brecht and Broadway is an excellent study of the reception of Brecht's work in the American theater and academe.  Brecht, along with Moliere; Ibsen and Chekhov, is one of the most  frequently performed playwrights in translation in America.  A thorough investigation of the trajectory of Brecht stagings on Broadway  has  long been overdue.  I am very grateful that Dr. Westgate has taken on the task and arrived at such a splendid result. The book is a must reading for any serious Brecht scholar.”
—Carl Weber, Stanford Drama Department, Collaborator with Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble, Director of many Brecht stagings in the U.S.
   
“This is a provocative collection of essays outlining the sometimes unexpected connections between Brecht and the Broadway theatre.  Like Brecht himself, these essays are playful, argumentative, and productively dialectical in their contradictions.  The book is both entertaining and educational, and bound to provoke healthy debate.  I recommend it as a demonstration of the ongoing relevance of Brechtian theories of theatre to the analysis of mainstream commercial theatre.""
—Sean Carney, Associate Professor, McGill University





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,William Collins Donahue and Julian Preece,The Worlds of Elias Canetti: Centenary Essays,Hardback,9781847183521,39.99,"Though he died in the last decade of the twentieth century, the satirist, social thinker, memoirist, and dramatist Elias Canetti lives on into the present. Testifying to the author’s undeniable cultural “afterlife,” the essays gathered together here represent a wide swath of the latest Canetti scholarship. Contributors examine Canetti’s Jewish identity; the Marxist politics of his youth; his influence on writers as diverse as Bachmann, Jelinek, and Sebald; the undiscovered “poetry” of his literary testament (Nachlass); his status as a self-cancelling satirist; and his complex and sometimes ambivalent citation of Chinese and French cultural icons. In addition, this volume presents a treatment of Canetti as philosopher; as contributor to the great debate on the genesis of violence; as a chronicler of the WWII exile experience; as well as a personal reminiscence by one of the great Canetti scholars of our time, Gerald Stieg. The Worlds of Elias Canetti challenges conventional wisdom about this Nobel laureate and opens up new areas to scholarly investigation. 


“The Worlds of Elias Canetti convenes diverse disciplinary perspectives on one of the most enigmatic and ambidextrous authors of the twentieth century. An internationally renowned team of scholars places Canetti’s social thought and literary oeuvre within intriguing new contexts, highlighting as yet underexplored connections within areas such as philosophy, Jewish Studies, cultural anthropology, literary intertextuality, and beyond. Compellingly, this volume introduces us to a Canetti we have not yet known, and one who equally belongs to the twenty-first century. In its scope and originality, The Worlds of Elias Canetti sets a new standard—and not just for Canetti scholarship.”

Jochen Vogt, Professor of German Literature, University of Essen 





","""The Anthology constitutes a significant enrichment to the body of research on the Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti.""

Helga W. Kraft, University of Illinois at Chicago

""The editors have created a collection that displays the shape and balance of the best kind of critical anthology...the essays are of an impressively high standard, and there is an internal coherence and logic to this volume that can sometimes be hard to find in published conference proceedings. The esays address virtually all parts of Canetti's diverse ouvre and represent an excellent snapshot of contemporary scholarship on the author. They succeed in contextualising Canetti's writings in original, often provocative, and persuasive ways, while at times entering into productive dialogue - be the engagement direct or oblique - with one another.""

David Darby, University of Western Ontario, MLR, 104.4, 2009

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Shea Coulson,Adorno’s Aesthetics of Critique,Hardback,9781847183774,29.99,"Adorno's Aesthetics of Critique examines Theodor Adorno's mode of critique from the perspective of his aesthetics. This has two purposes. The first purpose is to determine the effect of the primary importance Adorno places on aesthetics in his philosophy as a whole and to determine how this primacy influences the way in which he reads the philosophical tradition. The second purpose is to understand the role of aesthetics in critical thinking generally and to reinvigorate Adorno's understanding of the subjective and objective dimensions of critique. The ultimate aim is to promote new interpretations of Adorno and to reassert his relevance for constructing effective modes of critical thinking.

The book proceeds through four main chapters that focus on four different dimensions of Adorno's thought: knowledge, history, culture, and art. The first chapter uses Adorno's aesthetic theory to re-read his interpretation of Kant's subject-object dynamic. This grounds the second chapter, on history, which proceeds through an analysis of Adorno's reading of Hegel. The third chapter uses the philosophical grounding of the first two to explore how knowledge and history interact within society as fundamental dimensions of ""culture"". The scope and meaning of culture and its relevance for critique form the primary focus of this chapter. The fourth chapter turns to art to highlight the relationship between the critical and artistic dimensions of aesthetics in order to facilitate a dialogue between them. This serves the purpose of asserting and outlining the relevance of aesthetics for critical thought in the humanities and social sciences, which forms the crux of the book.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Linda Risso,"Divided we stand: The French and Italian political parties and the rearmament of West Germany, 1949-1955 ",Hardback,9781847183644,39.99,"The history of German rearmament and the launch of the European integration process are fascinating as well as challenging. In the early Fifties, the fears about the rise of  a ‘new Wehrmacht’ and the need to defend the nation-state clashed with the ambition to build an effective Western European defence system and the desire to achieve economic and political integration.  These were deeply divisive issues and produced one of the most passionate political debates in post-WWII European history. There were fierce clashes in the various parliaments and in the streets of the main European towns rallies and demonstrations often degenerated into street fights with the police. Going beyond the traditional history of diplomatic relations, Risso’s book offers a comparative examination of the role of non-state actors, such as pressure groups and political parties, and of political actors, such as the military, in France and Italy.  Risso’s detailed study of how the main political groupings responded to the question of German rearmament, and of their frequent internal debates is based on a wide range of new primary sources from numerous European archives. This book therefore offers an innovative and stimulating examination of the impact that such debates had on society and on the French and Italian political systems as a whole. 











",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Dan Friedman,The Cultural Politics of Heiner Müller,Hardback,9781847183965,29.99,"Heiner Müller was perhaps the most politically and artistically sophisticated and provocative of Europe’s post-World War II playwrights. 
He was a communist whose work was banned for years by the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic where he lived and worked. Müller offended the bureaucrats and political thugs who ran East Germany with his brutal, beautiful and honest dissection of the culture and politics in Eastern Europe. At the same time, Müller infuriated (or at least annoyed) the anti-communists and liberals of the West because he refused to leave the GDR or become a “dissident.” 
Starting as a protégé of Bertolt Brecht, Müller evolved into one of the great innovative poets of the 20th century, writing texts for the stage that seem to defy the limitations of the theater. Not only do his later texts have no plot, they are often devoid of specific characters and even dialogue. His work is a bridge between modernism and postmodernism in the theatre as well as between the East-West conflicts that defined the Cold War and the North-South conflicts are emerging in the post-communist world.
In this unique collection, the first to focus on his cultural politics, some of the world’s leading Müller scholars and directors grapple with the political, artistic and ethical implications of Müller’s life and work at the start of the 21st Century.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Adrian Webb,The PDS – A symbol of eastern German identity?,Hardback,9781847183699,39.99,"Die Linke (the Left) is now Germany’s third largest political party and the fourth largest political grouping in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. Die Linke, however, is the result of a fusion in June 2007 between the left wing of the German social democratic party (SPD) and the Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS), the successor to East Germany’s former, effectively Communist, ruling party, the SED. In practice, the PDS contributed 60,000 of the new party’s 72,000 members, making Die Linke an essentially eastern German party. Moreover, the PDS had been unique in enjoying a level of electoral success denied to other Communist successor parties which had not turned themselves into mainstream social democratic parties within the new liberal democratic order.

This book, employing the period 2001–03 for its detailed analysis, suggests that this uniqueness is best understood as either an expression of eastern German “national” sentiment or as deriving from a reinterpretation of Marxism attuned to the interests of a democratic, twenty-first century society, and the book explores these alternative understandings in turn. Noting both the historic distinctiveness of German capitalism and the contradictions within German communism, it concludes that the PDS, now fused in Die Linke, remains nourished by the particularism of eastern Germany.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe,Brechtian Theatre of Contradictions: Providing Moral Strength under Conditions of Dictatorship: A Festschrift for Heinz-Uwe Haus,Hardback,9781847184252,39.99,"Heinz-Uwe Haus (b. 1942), trained in the former German Democratic Republic as an actor and theatre director, among others as master disciple with some of Brecht’s immediate students and collaborators. He directed at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and became the leader of the Academy founded in the GDR to train theatre directors. A passionate opponent of the totalitarian regime, he developed his theatre practice as an active device to provide moral strength, under conditions of dictatorship, for himself, those who worked with him, and those who saw his productions. He was involved politically in the movement that led to the collapse of the GDR.

Altogether, the material collected in this book, Haus’s own work, as well as commentaries by others from a range of perspectives, should serve not only as a documentation of the work of one major German theatre artist: it should support efforts to alert the present about aspects of the past that are all too easily and conveniently (both for all the wrong reasons), misrepresented, covered or hushed up, brushed aside and in due course forgotten. Theatre for Haus, during GDR times, was a means to survive, not only metaphorically. After liberation, post 1989, post GDR, theatre has lost nothing of its importance, quite the contrary. The book hopes to help understand both.






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Vrasidas Karalis,Heidegger and the Aesthetics of Living,Hardback,9781847185068,34.99,"The publication brings together contributions by many scholars, academics and researchers on the work of the German philosopher from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Prominent thinkers from various disciplines engage in a fascinating dialogue with the work of Martin Heidegger in an attempt to explain and critically evaluate his contraversial legacy.
The volume is an attempt to go beyond the polarised perceptions about the philosophy of Heidegger and present a neo-humanist reading of what can be still considered “livable” in it. Contributions also examine the consequences of Heidegger’s thinking for a wide range of modes of cultural production and aspects of philosophical enterprise.
Finally the volume attempts the first post-political interpretation of his work by focusing on the texts themselves for the conceptual values they formulate and the modes of thinking they established.
Contributors are: Gianni Vattimo, Jeff Malpas, Anthony Stephens , Peter Murphy, Elizabeth Grierson, Paolo Bartoloni, John Dalton, Colin Hearfield, Jane Mummery, Robert Sinnerbrink, Ashley Woodward, Peter Williams, George Vassilacopoulos and Vrasidas Karalis. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,"Jörg Esleben, Christina Kraenzle and Sukanya Kulkarni",Mapping Channels between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations,Hardback,9781847185877,34.99,"From the middle ages to the twenty-first century, India has held a fascination in the German imagination, not only as geographical location, but also as a philosophical and spiritual concept. Similarly, India has long held an interest in German language and culture, including wide recognition of several German authors, philosophers, and Indologists. This cross-cultural interest between the Indian subcontinent and the German-speaking world has manifested itself in literature, linguistics, the performing arts, religion, philosophy, history, politics, and many other fields. Concepts and names that mark some of the channels of exchange and communication between the two cultures include Balthasar Sprenger, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, Kalidasa’s Sakuntala, Herder, the Schlegel brothers, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heine, Nietzsche, Max Müller, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore, the ideology of the “Aryan,” Subhash Chandra Bose and his affiliation with Hitler, Gandhi, Annemarie Schimmel, Günter Grass, and others. In recent years, Orientalist Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Intercultural German Studies, and Transnational Studies have given new impetus and directions to the interest in Indo-German relations. The aim of this book is to achieve an overview over the current state and trends of research in this field.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Gerd Bayer,Mediating Germany: Popular Culture between Tradition and Innovation,Paperback,9781847187604,19.99,"Popular culture in the German-speaking world has reacted in numerous ways to the demands of contemporary life, combining century-old traditions but also addressing current political and social debates. The essays collected in this volume offer case studies of popular fiction, theatre, hip-hop and rock music, events like the love parade, as well as describe new developments in documentary filmmaking. Read individually or as a whole, the chapters provide a detailed analysis of both the current issues in popular culture and the legacy of popular art forms throughout the twentieth century.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Donald Backman and Aida Sakalauskaite,Ossi Wessi,Hardback,9781847186751,34.99,"Ossi Wessi includes the proceedings of the fourteenth annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference at the University of California, Berkeley (2006), which explored issues surrounding the Berlin Wall, both pre- and post-reunification, in language, literature, and visual media. The collected articles discuss the situation of the Berlin Wall, describing its portrayal as both a dividing and uniting boundary, and often discussing the continued existence of the Wall in the minds of Germany’s citizens. The multi-disciplinary range of approaches contained in this volume reveals how diverse the portrayals of the history of the Wall have been, as well as how controversial the division of Germany remains today. Topics covered in this collection include Wende Literature and film, linguistic changes and attitudes since 1989, the complicated history of the Neo-Nazis, and the visual arts. Although Ossi Wessi is by no means a comprehensive reference work, each of its essays serve as a though provoking springboard for further research.





","""With its broad range of topics, the well-researched and well-written 14 essays in the anthology give an excellent overview of and introduction to texts, films, and linguistic discourses on the Wall since reunification...Particularly useful and through provoking for scholars at all levels is the list of images and tables in chapters 8, 9, 10, and 12, that gives the book a hands-on quality and stimulates further research and updates as we commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 2009...This book could form the foundation for many research projects 20 years after the fall of the Wall.""

Barbara Mabee, Oakland University, German Studies Review, 33/1 (2010)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Pablo Muchnik,Rethinking Kant: Volume I,Hardback,9781847188212,39.99,"This collection of essays bears witness to the richness and vitality of Kantian studies in North America. It contains the bulk of the papers presented at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Eastern Study Group of the North American Kant Society (ENAKS), which took place at the University of Southern Maine in May 2007. It offers a sample of a whole generation of Kantian thought, ranging from recent Ph.Ds, to up and coming young scholars, to some well-established and influential players in the field. Gathering voices from philosophers at all levels of their professional development, the goal of the collection is to offer a glimpse at the current state of Kantian scholarship in the US.

The essays collected here cover some of the most important and controversial themes in Kant’s philosophy: questions of freedom, the relation between anthropology and morality, the notion of the highest good and Kant’s teleology, radical evil and revolution. The last section places Kant in the context of German Idealism and contemporary discussions in analytic philosophy and liberal political theory. Some critical, other exegetical or apologetic, all these essays show a sustained effort to Rethinking Kant and indicate his importance for current philosophical debates.






","
""We North American Kant scholars like to flatter ourselves that in the last generation the center of gravity in Kant studies has moved across the north Atlantic and settled in the New World. Whether or not this is a self-flattering illusion, it is one likely to be encouraged by reading the high quality Kant scholarship and lively controversies about Kant's philosophy that are present in this volume.""
-- Allen Wood - Stanford University

 “Pablo Muchnik’s collection is unique in bringing together new interpretations of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant from the best young scholars with the work of some of the most renowned mature scholars in this field.  The volume covers many aspects of Kant’s philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and anthropology as well as essays placing Kant’s philosophy in historical context.  In many cases the contributions of young scholars contest the received wisdom of the field. This collection is shaped by new and fresh interpretations that intentionally take on received wisdom in order to demonstrate what it is that is missing or lost in established positions. Even if, at the end of the day, some of our established positions seem to have the stronger set of reasons on their side, it is important that young scholars continue to probe their limitations so that we gain a clearer sense of what we gain and what we lose when we undertake the art of interpretation.”

Sharon Anderson-Gold, Professor, Department Head, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,John Alexander Williams,Berlin Since the Wall's End: Shaping Society and Memory in the German Metropolis since 1989,Hardback,9781847185358,29.99,"In the nearly nineteen years since the destruction of the Wall that divided East from West Berlin, Germans have struggled with the challenges of reunification. The task has been daunting—unifying two countries with a common language but mutually hostile political and economic systems. Contrary to the optimistic predictions of 1989/1990, reunification has aggravated many of Germany’s problems within the larger context of globalization. Berlin, divided epicenter of the Cold War, Germany’s largest city and the capital since 1999, has been forced to confront the challenges of reunification with particular urgency. This book presents the work of six scholars who met at Bradley University’s annual Berlin seminar in June, 2006 to discuss the recent past and the future prospects of the German metropolis. Two broad concerns--society and historical memory--emerged during the seminar and are reflected in these scholars’ writings. The first section of the book assesses how Berliners have reunified the city through urban planning and social, economic and cultural policies. These chapters also speak to pressing contemporary issues of immigration, citizenship and cultural diversity. The essays in the book’s second part trace how historical memory has been shaped and politically contested in German culture, both in the divided nation and since 1989. Berlin Since the Wall’s End casts light on a metropolis that has been scarred, but not destroyed, by the upheavals of recent history.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Gokce Yurdakul,From Guest Workers into Muslims: The Transformation of Turkish Immigrant Associations in Germany,Hardback,978-1-4438-0060-0,29.99,"The political representation of immigrant association is central for immigrants to become political actors in Germany. This book offers a comparative analysis of five Turkish immigrant associations to point out to the diverse approaches in terms of immigrant integration and citizenship rights. By exploring these associations’ views on integration/ assimilation, nationalism/ethnicity, secularism/Islam and their relations with the mainstream German political parties, this book attempts to show that immigrants are not victims of the political decisions of the German state. On the contrary, Turkish immigrant elites become important actors to negotiate rights and memberships in the name of this ethno-national group. This book suggests an approach that recognizes the agency of immigrants in the socio-political discourse and also in the governing process. 





","“Offering an important contribution to the growing literature on Turkish immigrants in Germany, Gökçe Yurdakul argues convincingly for the centrality to German political life of immigrant associations, demonstrating the range of techniques employed to influence larger social policy.  The book’s particular strengths are its in-depth description and the insightful analysis of a range of immigrant associations, encompassing both a political and religious spectrum.   Effectively disrupting conventional assumptions about immigrant passivity and lack of agency, it shows how, as participants and political agents, the members and leaders of the associations actively engage with the German political sphere.  Extremely readable, it successfully blends the political and the personal, displaying an impressive depth of knowledge and subtle grasp of the larger issues at stake both for German society in general, and immigrants in particular.  This book is a ‘must’ for scholars, students and activists concerned with immigrant political participation in Europe and the changing role of political Islam.”
Ruth Mandel, University College London
Author of Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany


“With profound knowledge about the genesis of Turkish migration to Germany, Gökçe Yurdakul unfolds a distinctive and lively picture of immigrant associations’ activities and their relations to the German state and society in her empirical study. Enriched by the analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of these organizations conducted since 2001, she shows that immigrants who lack German citizenship are not passive towards the German state´s political decisions on migration and integration. On the contrary each of them developed quite different patterns of integration. Focusing on Berlin, Yurdakul gives an impressive insight into the heterogeneity of Turkish immigrant associations and their conflicts and paradoxes on the headscarf debate which dominated the integration discourse in Germany in the last decade.” 

Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, University of Bremen
Co-author of Viele Welten leben. Zur Lebenssituation von Mädchen und jungen Frauen mit Migrationshintergrund





",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,David D. Kim,Georg Simmel in Translation: Interdisciplinary Border Crossings in Culture and Modernity,Paperback,978-1-4438-0202-4,19.99,"Though Georg Simmel considered himself a philosopher, his intellectual influence went well beyond the confines of one academic discipline at the turn of the last century. His writings on money, modernity, and the metropolis, as well as the artwork, female culture, and psychologism, left a significant mark on contemporaries like Walter Benjamin, Wilhelm Worringer, and Max Weber. Nevertheless, his name soon disappeared from public memory and scholarly discourse.

In Georg Simmel in Translation, scholars from the Humanities and the Social Sciences cut through time and space to illustrate ways in which Simmel was, and still is, carried from one context to another. From Imperial Berlin to contemporary Singapore, they trace Simmel’s transgression of disciplinary boundaries in culture and modernity. The collected essays also explore the transformed presence of his scholarship in the works of more well-known artists, writers, and intellectuals between the second half of the nineteenth century and today.






","""This is a most exciting collection of explorations into a whole range of fields inspired and guided by the work of Georg Simmel. In every instance, these adventures by an international ensemble of young scholars cut across intellectual boundaries to produce new and challenging connections . With their focus upon issues in gender, urban existence, individuality, modern art and philosophy they not only capture the continued relevance of Simmel’s works for cultural formations but also break new ground in their substantive fields. This is a welcome and stimulating contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship.""

David Frisby
Professor in Sociology
London School of Economics








",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Lee M. Roberts,Germany and the Imagined East,Paperback,978-1-4438-0511-7,17.99,"German-speaking Europe is an array of images that have emerged from varied discourses about itself and its neighbors, and “Germany and the Imagined East” revolves around the exchange of views on and in the vast construct called “the East.” The world has been divided conceptually in countless ways, but the works in this volume treat aspects of Germany as both part of and also separate from any perception of an eastern border. From the former German Democratic Republic,“East Germany,” to Österreich—whose name loses its eastern association in the English version, Austria,—the East begins within the very world of the German language. But it is also the expanse off to the right of Germany, within which essays in this collection treat such political and cultural distinctions as former Yugoslavia, Romania and Russia in Eastern Europe, or Turkey and Persia in the Near East, spreading through India to China and Japan in the Far East. With a variety of perspectives on literature, film, philosophy, architecture, music and history, these essays comprise a multidisciplinary collage that invites scholars from all departments to explore the wealth of insights German Studies has to offer on East-West relations.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Evan Torner and Victoria Lenshyn,Myth: German and Scandinavian Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-0555-1,34.99,"Myth presents the latest interdisciplinary research by graduate students in the fields of German and Scandinavian studies, compiling papers that were introduced at the eponymous 2008 graduate student conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Focusing on myths in and about German and Scandinavian societies, these essays provide exemplary analyses of how cultural and social practices mutually inform and influence each other.

This anthology is primarily intended for scholars across the disciplines looking at trends and narratives in northern Europe.  From history to film studies, theater and philology, the contributions represent the teeming variety of approaches to German and Scandinavian studies now emergent in the Academy.  Myth showcases not only new inquiries into diverse subject areas, but also new methods of inquiry for future interdisciplinary research.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Ulrike Garde and Anne-Rose Meyer,"Belonging and Exclusion:  Case Studies in Recent Australian and German Literature, Film and Theatre",Hardback,978-1-4438-1000-5,39.99,"The essays collected in this volume explore a wide range of aesthetic, philosophical and generic applications of the concepts of belonging and exclusion in the context of migration.  Organised in two sections, “Performing belonging” and “Narrating otherness”, this original study represents a timely interdisciplinary approach to a topic of great contemporary and future interest. It is the first cross-cultural analysis of how belonging and exclusion  are created and represented in literature, film and theatre against the background of the different historical and present conditions of migration and ‘multiculturalism’ in Australia and Germany. 

Academics from Australia and Germany, two countries described by some as opposite poles on the migration spectrum, uncover new correlations between different cultures and genres. The focus on artistic works offers snapshots, seldom available in everyday life, of belonging and exclusion in process. 

Written with both academics and students in mind, the essays discuss belonging and exclusion across a variety of genres, including the Bildungsroman, terrorism novel, children’s literature, and different kinds of film, cabaret and theatre.  Among the topical issues addressed are borders, bodies, education, exile, generations of migrants, globalisation, identity, language, memory, narrative strategies, photography, representation, lieux de mémoire, terrorism and transculturalism.

Given the dominance of socio-political and anthropological studies of belonging and exclusion, this cross-cultural study with its emphasis on aesthetics represents a unique approach and is of topical concern to scholars in the humanities. 






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Alfred J. Drake,New Essays on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory,Hardback,9781847189578,39.99,"New Essays on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory offers fifteen essays covering a variety of authors and topics related to the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Institut für Sozialforschung) that flourished from the 1920s in connection with the University of Frankfurt in Germany and then abroad. The volume offers reflections on the Frankfurt School’s critical dialogue with philosophical predecessors such as Marx and Nietzsche, elucidates key debates between Frankfurt School authors and contemporaries, and addresses the continuing significance of the Frankfurt School in the postmodern age, with reference to major thinkers such as Fredric Jameson, Antonio Negri, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan. Readers will find a lively but respectful debate on the strengths and limitations of Frankfurt notions about technology, “negative dialectics,” the Shoah, and the utopian dimension of political thought, among other concerns. The aim of contributors throughout has been to broaden readers’ understanding of the sophistication and integrity of Frankfurt School thought rather than reducing it to the level of the formulaic or polemical. Music theory, the representation of urban spaces in prose and image, and the theorization of childhood find a place in this appropriately diverse collection, with essays on Lewis Mumford and Siegfried Kracauer broadening its scope.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Pablo Muchnik,Rethinking Kant: Volume I,Paperback,978-1-4438-1432-4,19.99,"This collection of essays bears witness to the richness and vitality of Kantian studies in North America. It contains the bulk of the papers presented at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Eastern Study Group of the North American Kant Society (ENAKS), which took place at the University of Southern Maine in May 2007. It offers a sample of a whole generation of Kantian thought, ranging from recent Ph.Ds, to up and coming young scholars, to some well-established and influential players in the field. Gathering voices from philosophers at all levels of their professional development, the goal of the collection is to offer a glimpse at the current state of Kantian scholarship in the US.

The essays collected here cover some of the most important and controversial themes in Kant’s philosophy: questions of freedom, the relation between anthropology and morality, the notion of the highest good and Kant’s teleology, radical evil and revolution. The last section places Kant in the context of German Idealism and contemporary discussions in analytic philosophy and liberal political theory. Some critical, other exegetical or apologetic, all these essays show a sustained effort to Rethinking Kant and indicate his importance for current philosophical debates.








","
""We North American Kant scholars like to flatter ourselves that in the last generation the center of gravity in Kant studies has moved across the north Atlantic and settled in the New World. Whether or not this is a self-flattering illusion, it is one likely to be encouraged by reading the high quality Kant scholarship and lively controversies about Kant's philosophy that are present in this volume.""
-- Allen Wood - Stanford University

 “Pablo Muchnik’s collection is unique in bringing together new interpretations of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant from the best young scholars with the work of some of the most renowned mature scholars in this field.  The volume covers many aspects of Kant’s philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and anthropology as well as essays placing Kant’s philosophy in historical context.  In many cases the contributions of young scholars contest the received wisdom of the field. This collection is shaped by new and fresh interpretations that intentionally take on received wisdom in order to demonstrate what it is that is missing or lost in established positions. Even if, at the end of the day, some of our established positions seem to have the stronger set of reasons on their side, it is important that young scholars continue to probe their limitations so that we gain a clearer sense of what we gain and what we lose when we undertake the art of interpretation.”

Sharon Anderson-Gold, Professor, Department Head, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York







",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Jürgen Lawrenz,The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature: A Study of Leibniz’s Double-Aspect Ontology and the Labyrinth of the Continuum,Hardback,978-1-4438-1724-0,39.99,"This new, comprehensive study of Leibniz’s system of thought reveals a philosopher equally intrigued by the complexity of physical reality and the fascinations of his metaphysical laboratory. Many of his most important, but never previously published papers are evaluated in this book.

Too often put down as an arch-metaphysician, Leibniz is seen in these pages as a venturer of breathtaking boldness, his ambition being nothing less than to actually solve the enigma of existence. Accordingly his system embraced science equally with metaphysics; they complement and pollinate each other.

The outcome is a view of his system as a double ontology. Reality is the domain of the actual; metaphysics the laboratory of the possible. Metaphysics springs to life with his scintillating detective work on force, motion, time, space, limits, infinity, folds, fractals and many other issues that are ‘hot’ again today; while in all these a direct line is kept open to their impact on physical existents and our understanding of reality.

This book is equally suited to expert Leibnizians as to students of Early Modern philosophy; and it may be read with profit by anyone interested in this thinker, whom Bertrand Russell called “one of the supreme intellects of all time”.
","“Amongst his immediate philosophical precursors and contemporaries, Leibniz was the most informed in the history of philosophy and logic, the most scientifically innovative, and the most metaphysically dazzling—and difficult. Like few other studies, Jürgen Lawrenz’s appreciates all Leibniz’s beauty, originality and complexity. His book is an invaluable contribution to Leibniz studies which deserves to become the standard work in the field.”
—Wayne Cristaudo, Head of European Studies, University of Hong Kong

“[This work] offers a staunchly realist reading of Leibniz. Lawrenz provides one the most extended rebuttals of an idealist interpretation of Leibniz available, and this book will doubtless provoke much controversy.”
—Stephen Gaukroger, Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Sydney

“Jürgen Lawrenz adds to the recent reinterpretations of Leibniz’s philosophy with his provocative and illuminating view of Leibniz as a double-aspect ontologist. This is a clear and systematically argued work that should be of interest to all concerned with Europe’s complex philosophical heritage.”
—Paul Redding, Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Nancy Rupprecht and Wendy Koenig,Holocaust Persecution: Responses and Consequences,Hardback,978-1-4438-1863-6,39.99,"This anthology of selected, thematic articles is a unique approach to Holocaust Studies because it focuses on the responses to and consequences of Holocaust persecution rather than on the fact of it. After a brief overview of the Holocaust itself, the book is divided into two sections, “Responses to Holocaust Persecution” and “Consequences of Holocaust Persecution.” 

Each section of the book begins with a scholarly essay by an internationally recognized scholar. Robert Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories of the Holocaust’s Long Reach Into Arab Lands, contributes a scholarly essay to the Responses section of this volume called “Countering Holocaust Denial in the Middle East: A New Approach.” Satloff maintains that Holocaust denial in Arab regions may be more effectively countered if recognition is given to Arabs who helped Jews during the Holocaust and if the fate of Jews in Arab lands, particularly during World War II, is given a more thorough consideration. Two additional essays in this segment of the book focus on Arab or Muslim reactions to the Holocaust. In addition, the Responses section includes articles concerning both collaboration with the German occupiers and Jewish rescue of Jewish victims, as well as essays that discuss political and personal responses to Nazi persecution. 

Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of the magnum opus A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, is generally considered to be the world’s most important authority on the Second World War. He contributes the primary article in the Consequences section of this volume, “The Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials.” His essay argues that the evidence presented at the Nuremberg tribunal as well as the legal principles established at Nuremberg, have set important precedents in international law that also influence the course of contemporary politics as well as both Holocaust and genocide studies. Subsequent articles in this section of the book discuss the legal, personal, moral and political consequences of the Holocaust.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Melissa Etzler and Priscilla Layne,"Rebellion and Revolution: Defiance in German Language, History and Art",Hardback,978-1-4438-1935-0,39.99,"Rebellion and Revolution: Defiance in German Language, History and Art is a transnational collection of twelve essays by scholars of history, literature and film. It offers new perspectives on several of the key moments in history when the German revolutionary spirit was at its peak. Inspired by both the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the 40th anniversary of the student movements of 1968, this book contributes to current discourses on resistance by providing a retrospective look at events and time periods ranging from the German Peasants’ War of 1525 to the American War for Independence and the French Revolution in the 18th century; and from the tumultuous period of the Weimar Republic up until the final days of the German Democratic Republic. This book not only provides a new outlook on important historical moments and sociopolitical issues, rather the articles take a multidisciplinary approach to analyze a variety of artistic works inspired by historical rebellious movements. This book provides a variety of theoretical interpretations which will be useful to readers interested in historiography, gender studies, rhetoric, philosophy, film, music and literature.
","“This inspiring collection illuminates a topic whose relevance for today cannot be overstated. Its broad literary scope—Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Döblin, Brecht—and engagement with genres including visual culture, philosophy, social movements, and film illuminate a wide-reaching dialectics of revolution and society. Powerful and unpredictable, roiling beneath or erupting through, resistance profoundly constitutes our ever-changing world fabric. The trenchant and often surprising, firmly contextualized readings in this book explore culture as privileged site of rebellion in theory and praxis. As scholarly “angels of history,” they offer new ways of seeing, particularly in their expert scrutiny of “canonical” texts for variegated and sustained engagement with radical change.”
—Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Queen’s University

“This interdisciplinary volume challenges the widespread notion of German culture as inherently authoritarian and averse to revolution. Featuring an impressive range of approaches—historical, sociological, psychoanalytical, gendered, literary—it offers fresh perspectives on texts by such iconic German authors as Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, and Brecht and on actual moments of rebellion and revolution in German and European history, from the peasant revolt of 1525 to the student protests of 1968. While they recover what is revolutionary about these texts and historical moments, however, the book’s authors adeptly demonstrate the complexity and ambivalence with which the revolutionary idea itself is laden. The book shows how German culture grapples with revolution’s potential liberation and its potential violence, providing just the right balance of celebration and restraint. A laudable scholarly achievement.”
—Jill Suzanne Smith, Bowdoin College



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Amy Vail,The Last of Homer’s Children: Goethe Singing Epic,Hardback,978-1-4438-1938-1,39.99,"While Goethe loved Homeric epic, at the same time, the figure of Homer himself was a source of deep literary anxiety for him. Goethe could translate epic, even masterfully, but he shrunk back from attempting to compose a serious full-length epic of his own. “Who could vie with the great nonpareil?” he wrote.
            
Reading Wolf’s Prolegomena was a significant turning point for Goethe. So greatly had he revered his Homer, that at first, he angrily rejected the idea of an Iliad and Odyssey composed by a succession of illiterate rhapsodes.  Gradually, however, with the help of scholarly Weimar friends, he allowed himself to be convinced.

Once freed from the idea of a single, monolithic Homer, Goethe experienced a joyous creative rebirth. Why should he not be a rhapsode himself, if only the last of Homer’s children? The result was an idyll: Herman und Dorothea, which he adorned with nostalgic love, a hero and heroine on a truly Homeric scale, and a fruitful and thoroughly German landscape.  

With Hermann und Dorothea, Goethe honored not only Homer, but also his own people and times, celebrating what rhapsodes have always sung: the shadow of war and the love of home.



","“Amy E. K. Vail is sheds new light on Goethe’s responses to the Iliad and Odyssey, especially on his creation of Hermann und Dorothea, an epic perhaps as much Homeric as it is Goethean. Her study also revisits and gives a fresh reading to eighteenth-century German attitudes toward Homeric epic and on Goethe’s idiosyncratic and deeply personal engagement with classical texts. This book, to date the only full length study of Goethe’s reading’s of Homer, has profited greatly from the expertise of an outstanding Homeric scholar combined with that of an excellent reader of German eighteenth-century literature and Goethe.
	Amy Vail’s clearly articulated and systematically applied critical perspective  results in a perceptive and illuminating reading of Herman and Dorothea. Eloquently, convincingly, and with a wealth of insights, observations, and close readings drawn from a variety of Goethe texts, this book details how in his writings  Goethe brought to a creative and fruitful culmination all of his years of Homeric study.  The Last of Homer’s Children is a very important contribution to Homeric studies and to Goethe scholarship alike. For any scholar interested in understanding what E. M. Butler rhetorically called The Tyranny of Greece over German, Amy Vail’s perceptive and sensitive study is essential reading.”
—Barbara Becker-Cantarino is Research Professor in German at the Ohio State University; her publications contain articles on  Wilhelm Meister, demonism and infanticide in Faust,  Goethe as a critic of women writers ,  and Goethe and gender. Among her recent books publications are The Eighteenth Century. Enlightenment and Sentimentality, Vol. 5 of The Camden House History of German Literature, Boydell & Brewer: Rochester, NY, 2005, and Pietism and Women’s Autobiography. The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen, Written by Herself (1689/1719). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Herbert Schutz,"The Medieval Empire in Central Europe: Dynastic Continuity in the Post-Carolingian Frankish Realm, 900-1300",Hardback,978-1-4438-1966-4,44.99,"This book offers a concise yet detailed political history of medieval Central Europe as it traces the history of the Medieval Empire from its inception as a kingdom during the early 10th century, to its formation as Roman Empire, its support of the papacy, its struggle with the papacy for supremacy, the shift of its centre of gravity to Italy and its demise into particularist parts by the middle of the 13th century. It surveys the three dynasties which ruled the Post-Carolingian Empire and follows the political emergence of a disjointed region through its crystallization into an independent kingdom to become by the year 1000 the strongest military and political power in Europe, ultimately called upon to stabilize the political unrest in Italy. As Roman emperors the kings ordered the affairs of the city of Rome and bolstered the spiritual and political position of the popes until several competent popes turned the papal dependency into its primacy and enforced the subordination of the secular authorities. The Crusades helped to play great military and political power into papal hands, so that the secular authority declined, as the monarchy lost interest in Germany and became focused on Italy and especially on Sicily.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Dan Farrelly,"Between Myth and Reality: Goethe, Anna Amalia, Charlotte von Stein",Hardback,978-1-4438-2122-3,34.99,"“In 2004 Ettore Ghibellino published his provocative thesis that Goethe’s beloved was not Charlotte von Stein but the Dowager Duchess, Anna Amalia. Ghibellino claimed that Charlotte, the former lady-in-waiting of Anna Amalia, acted as a ‘straw woman’ and that the many letters, and the love they expressed, were really meant for Anna Amalia herself. Dan Farrelly, who translated Ghibellino’s book, has been preoccupied with this thesis since 2005. Here he has undertaken a meticulous re-reading of Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein from 1776 to 1786. He analyses the whereabouts of Charlotte and Anna Amalia at any given time, including their journeys, and concludes that Charlotte was the real addressee of the letters. This amounts to a refutation of one of Ghibellino’s central arguments. This book is to be recommended as a further contribution to discussion of Goethe’s early Weimar period.” 
—Ilse Nagelschmidt, Leipzig

“Although the image of Goethe in the popular imagination is quite different from the scholarly reception of Goethe’s life and work, the two worlds do cross over, and misconceptions about the poet are difficult to dispel once they become established in contemporary Goethean culture. In tackling Ghibellino’s recent misreading of Goethe’s relationship with Anna Amalia—which has recently merited attention in Die Zeit—Farrelly is able to give the high cultural and the colloquial equal credence. His combination of scholarship and a fundamental awareness of the plain sense of things has an intellectual hardness at its core. There is an unapologetic quality about Farrelly’s writing and a deep sense of intellectual responsibility and integrity.”
—Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Dublin
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Anton Weiss-Wendt,Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2368-5,39.99,"The eleven essays that comprise this book offer an integrated perspective on Nazi policies of mass murder. Drawing heavily on primary sources from European and American archives, the collection of essays provides novel interpretations of Nazi policies vis-à-vis ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities in the German-occupied territories, specifically Eastern Europe. The essays printed in this volume advance two main theses, drawing a line under the Functionalist-Intentionalist debate regarding the origins of Nazi genocide. In their dealing with the “lesser races,” the Nazis proved more flexible and less single-minded than has been conventionally believed. Faced with what they saw as a temporary military setback, the Nazis were willing to renegotiate their murderous policies, granting certain concessions to the minority groups otherwise slated for destruction. In the long run, however, the Nazis never abandoned the ideology of racial exclusiveness, which had contributed to their ultimate defeat. Another thesis concerns the complex ethno-political landscape of Eastern Europe that came under Nazi domination. German occupation authorities encouraged ethnic rivalries and grievances, which trace back to the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires and beyond. Hobbesian war of all against all that had ensued made it easier for the Nazis to apply a divide-and-rule policy. It also provided a fertile ground for collaboration, specifically in the mass murder of Jews. The book will appear to both academic and non-academic audiences interested in the subjects as diverse as genocide, ethno-nationalism, and minority studies.

","“This collection of essays presents original research on Nazi imperial policies toward various non-Jewish minorities in Europe. Adding definition to the hitherto vague categories of the Holocaust’s ‘other victims’ and ‘collaborators,’ this important volume illuminates how the Nazi ideologies of anti-Semitism and racism translated into a nefarious practice of divide et impera. Nazi rule across Europe exacerbated and instigated conflicts among minorities, fanning the flames of the Holocaust and seeding interethnic strife that persists to this day ... Essential reading for those interested in the history of mass violence in twentieth century Europe.”
—Wendy Lower, author of Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine

“Scholarly and popular interest in the persecution and all-encompassing murder of the Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies—usually referred to as the Holocaust or Shoah—has inadvertently overshadowed the crimes committed during the Second World War against other minority groups. The essays assembled in this book redraw the attention to a plurality of victim groups, situating each case in its ideological, geopolitical, and social contexts and relating it to the persecution of the Jews. The book as a whole urges the reader to rethink the Nazi policies of mass murder, as suggested in the thought-provoking introduction. Although one may well suggest very different readings, the overall attempt and each essay in its own right constitute a valuable contribution that should be taken into account in any further discussion of the Holocaust.”
—Dan Michman, author of Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches and Fundamental Issues

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,"Gerhardt Gallagher, Gisela Holfter and Mícheál Ó hAodha",Connections~Verbindungen: Irish-German Perspectives through Etching,Hardback,978-1-4438-2636-5,44.99,"When artist Gerhardt Gallagher came across a series of etchings by his German grandmother Margarethe, it launched a sequence of events, which led to an exhibition and then this book. Magarethe’s artistic career had been severely disrupted by two wars and Gerhardt conceived a project, which would allow Margarethe’s works to be exhibited in Ireland along with his own. Gisela Holfter of the Centre for Irish-German Studies in the University of Limerick, when approached, supported the project enthusiastically and when Micheal O’Haodha of the Glucksman Library saw the works hanging there he thought them worthy of publication. Together they created this volume connecting Irish and German cultures through the work of two artists, a family history and the artistic links between both countries.




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Herbert Schutz,"Romanesque Architecture and its Artistry in Central Europe, 900-1300: A Descriptive, Illustrated Analysis of the Style as it Pertains to Castle and Church Architecture",Hardback,978-1-4438-2658-7,54.99,"This book seeks to offer a detailed survey of the Romanesque Architectural style preserved in Central Europe. It traces developments of the style from earliest examples of the post-Carolingian period to the height of sophistication during the transition to Gothic. It begins with a survey of the remains and reconstructions of the palaces of the mighty. It then offers a selection of castles, both as ruins or restored facilities as they can be found in Germany, Austria and Alsace. Where possible the emphasis rests on seeking out the artistic ornamentation with which the builders enhanced the structures. The major part of the book deals with church architecture, where the structures are discussed as monumental statements of the faith with consideration given to their embellishments on towers and facades, friezes and apses, portals and colonnades, columns and capitals, screens, reliefs, fonts and statuary, wall painting and stained glass. Inescapable is the conclusion that these fortresses of God are sermons in stone in which the worshipper finds himself within the Imperium Christianum.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Jill E. Twark,"Strategies of Humor in Post-Unification German Literature, Film, and Other Media",Hardback,978-1-4438-2703-4,44.99,"The fourteen chapters in this anthology feature original analyses of contemporary German-language literary texts, films, political cartoons, cabaret, and other types of performance. The artworks display a wide spectrum of humor modes, such as irony, satire, the grotesque, Jewish humor, and slapstick, as responses to unification with the accompanying euphoria, but also alienation and dislocation. Kerstin Hensel’s Lärchenau, Christoph Hein’s Landnahme, and vignette collections by Jakob Hein (Antrag auf ständige Ausreise und andere Mythen der DDR) and Wladimir Kaminer (Es gab keinen Sex im Sozialismus) are interpreted as examples of the grotesque. The popular films Lola rennt, Sonnenallee, Herr Lehmann, NVA, Alles auf Zucker!, and Mein Führer—Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler are reexamined through the lens of traditional and more recent humor or comic book theories. The contributors focus on how each artwork enriches four prominent postwall German cultural trends: post-unification identity reconstruction, Vergangenheitsbewältigung (including Hitler humor), New German Popular Literature (Christian Kracht’s ironic subtexts), and immigrant perspectives (a “third voice” in the East-West binary reflected here pointedly in Eulenspiegel cartoons). To date, no other scholarly work provides as comprehensive an overview of the diverse strategies of humor used in the past two decades in German-speaking countries.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Herbert Schutz,"Romanesque Art and Craftsmanship in Central Europe, 900-1300: Artistic Aspects of the Style",Hardback,978-1-4438-2991-5,49.99,"As a sequel to the analysis of Romanesque church architecture as the Heavenly Jerusalem on earth, this book reviews the embellishing cloister arts during the Romanesque period in Central Europe. This book discusses the work in textiles, ivory, wood, precious metals, bronze, and illuminated manuscripts. Pertinent illustrations stress the themes common to those media, suggesting that the craftsmen knew one another’s work. Some may have worked in more than one medium.

Circumstances tended to preserve religious works. The book rests on the extensive use of detailed illustrative objects and images in their historical, spiritual and intellectual contexts.

The surviving wealth of Romanesque artifacts and images is so extensive, that only an eclectic treatment is possible. The artistry is of such high quality that one readily considers these objects of art as symbols of ethereal value. Thematically, many of the images are linked with underlying texts in typological and Christological relationships, clarifying the Scriptures as texts by other means.

Owing to their perishable, organic nature, some of the media, such as textiles and wood were more vulnerable to decay. Others have survived the centuries despite neglect and abuse. The work in precious metals, amplified by gem encrustation has suffered, as some objects were melted down to provide the raw material for new works, and as semi-precious stones, gems and pearls were looted. In later times of need, the confiscation of these treasures was a convenient means to replenish the coffers of the state, while bronzes helped satisfy the need for armaments.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Gisela Holfter,Heinrich Böll and Ireland,Hardback,978-1-4438-3195-6,39.99,"Nobel Prize winning author Heinrich Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) which was first published in 1957, has been read by millions of German readers and has had an unsurpassed impact on the German image of Ireland. But there is much more to Heinrich Böll’s relationship with Ireland than the Irisches Tagebuch. In this new book, Böll scholar Gisela Holfter carefully charts Heinrich Böll’s personal and literary connections with Ireland and Irish literature from his reading Irish fairytales in early childhood, to establishing a second home on Achill Island and his and his wife Annemarie’s translations of numerous books by Irish authors such as Brendan Behan, J. M. Synge, G. B. Shaw, Flann O’Brien and Tomás O’Crohan. This book also examines the response in Ireland to Böll’s works, notably the controversy that ensued following the broadcast of his film Irland und seine Kinder (Children of Eire) in the 1960s.

Heinrich Böll and Ireland offers new insights for students, academics and the general reader alike.
","“Holfter’s careful analysis of the book is a classic of academic approach and genuine feeling towards her subject. She deepens and broadens the appeal of the Irish Journal with sympathy and understanding . . . All in all Holfter’s scholarly work is excellent; the quality and clarity of her arguments are convincing.”
—John F. Deane, Irish Times, 21 January 2012

“I love when you get books like this that tell you about something that has been forgotten in some ways or has been falling between two stools . . . [Holfter] is very interesting about his life.”
—Sinead Gleeson on Arena, RTE Radio 1, 22 February 2012
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Dan Farrelly,"Between Myth and Reality: Goethe, Anna Amalia, Charlotte von Stein",Paperback,978-1-4438-3310-3,24.99,"“In 2004 Ettore Ghibellino published his provocative thesis that Goethe’s beloved was not Charlotte von Stein but the Dowager Duchess, Anna Amalia. Ghibellino claimed that Charlotte, the former lady-in-waiting of Anna Amalia, acted as a ‘straw woman’ and that the many letters, and the love they expressed, were really meant for Anna Amalia herself. Dan Farrelly, who translated Ghibellino’s book, has been preoccupied with this thesis since 2005. Here he has undertaken a meticulous re-reading of Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein from 1776 to 1786. He analyses the whereabouts of Charlotte and Anna Amalia at any given time, including their journeys, and concludes that Charlotte was the real addressee of the letters. This amounts to a refutation of one of Ghibellino’s central arguments. This book is to be recommended as a further contribution to discussion of Goethe’s early Weimar period.” 
—Ilse Nagelschmidt, Leipzig

“Although the image of Goethe in the popular imagination is quite different from the scholarly reception of Goethe’s life and work, the two worlds do cross over, and misconceptions about the poet are difficult to dispel once they become established in contemporary Goethean culture. In tackling Ghibellino’s recent misreading of Goethe’s relationship with Anna Amalia—which has recently merited attention in Die Zeit—Farrelly is able to give the high cultural and the colloquial equal credence. His combination of scholarship and a fundamental awareness of the plain sense of things has an intellectual hardness at its core. There is an unapologetic quality about Farrelly’s writing and a deep sense of intellectual responsibility and integrity.”
—Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Dublin
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Oliver Thorndike,Rethinking Kant: Volume 3,Hardback,978-1-4438-3345-5,39.99,"The series Rethinking Kant bears witness to the richness and vitality of Kantian studies. The series offers an alternative publishing venue of the highest quality, attractive to scholars who want to reach a readership of specialists and non-specialist alike. The collection is unique in its kind, for it garners papers from a whole generation of Kantian thought, ranging from doctoral students and recent PhDs to well-established thinkers in the field. This is the third volume in the series. It contains papers from three regional study groups of the North American Kant Society, and thus takes the pulse of current Kantian scholarship.
","“This is an excellent collection of original essays on Kant’s philosophy, some by leading scholars, others by up-and-coming junior people. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from anthropology, ethics, and right, to metaphysics and epistemology. In addressing deep and controversial issues in Kant’s philosophy and in taking up recent debates in Kant scholarship, these essays not only convey a sharp picture of the state of the art in Kant scholarship, but indeed contribute to the ongoing process of ‘rethinking Kant’. No serious Kant scholar can afford to miss this volume.”
– Marcus Willaschek, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

“Rethinking Kant: Volume 3 contains new essays by veteran Kant scholars and well-known philosophers as well as some impressive contributions by younger authors. Forging new connections between Kant’s early and late writings as well as between Kant and important predecessors such as Wolff and Baumgarten, this volume will be of particular interest to those who are concerned with the connection between the a priori and empirical (pure and impure) dimensions of Kant’s ambitious philosophical project.”
– Robert B. Louden, President, North American Kant Society, University of Southern Maine, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Rodney Symington,Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain: A Reader’s Guide,Hardback,978-1-4438-3357-8,44.99,"Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain presents a panorama of European society in the first two decades of the 20th century and depicts the philosophical and metaphysical dilemmas facing people in the modern age. In the years leading up to the First World War, the fundamental elements of human nature were thrown into sharp relief by the political tensions that resulted in the ultimate metaphor for the innate destructiveness of humankind: the War itself. If such a war is the true expression of human tendencies, what hope is there for the future? Through the figure of the main character of the novel, Thomas Mann explores the alternative philosophies of life available to human beings in the modern age, and invites the reader to undertake a personal odyssey of discovery, with a view to adopting a positive approach in an era that seems to offer no clear-cut answers.

This book is a comprehensive commentary on Thomas Mann’s seminal novel, one of the key literary artefacts of the 20th century. The author has taken upon himself the task of explaining all the references and allusions contained in the novel, and of providing readers who know little or no German with enough explanatory comment to enable them to understand the novel and extract the maximum reading pleasure from it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Gisela Holfter,Heinrich Böll and Ireland,Paperback,978-1-4438-3801-6,16.99,"Nobel Prize winning author Heinrich Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) which was first published in 1957, has been read by millions of German readers and has had an unsurpassed impact on the German image of Ireland. But there is much more to Heinrich Böll’s relationship with Ireland than the Irisches Tagebuch. In this new book, Böll scholar Gisela Holfter carefully charts Heinrich Böll’s personal and literary connections with Ireland and Irish literature from his reading Irish fairytales in early childhood, to establishing a second home on Achill Island and his and his wife Annemarie’s translations of numerous books by Irish authors such as Brendan Behan, J. M. Synge, G. B. Shaw, Flann O’Brien and Tomás O’Crohan. This book also examines the response in Ireland to Böll’s works, notably the controversy that ensued following the broadcast of his film Irland und seine Kinder (Children of Eire) in the 1960s.

Heinrich Böll and Ireland offers new insights for students, academics and the general reader alike.

","“Holfter’s careful analysis of the book is a classic of academic approach and genuine feeling towards her subject. She deepens and broadens the appeal of the Irish Journal with sympathy and understanding . . . All in all Holfter’s scholarly work is excellent; the quality and clarity of her arguments are convincing.”
—John F. Deane, Irish Times, 21 January 2012

“I love when you get books like this that tell you about something that has been forgotten in some ways or has been falling between two stools . . . [Holfter] is very interesting about his life.”
—Sinead Gleeson on Arena, RTE Radio 1, 22 February 2012

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Carolina Rodríguez-López and José M. Faraldo,Reconsidering a Lost Intellectual Project: Exiles’ Reflections on Cultural Differences,Hardback,978-1-4438-3649-4,34.99,"This book explores an aspect of the complex cultural history of 20th-century exile: the influences of transnational experiences on the views of emigrants and exiles concerning their own academic, scientific and intellectual cultures. These essays focus on the reflections of people who left their countries during the period of 1933–1945. Many of them reconsidered their own past in the old country and compared it with their actual experiences in the adopted homeland. The individual cases presented here share a similar theoretical framework. The book is divided into two sections: the first one focuses on the German and Spanish lost project, and the second one deals with the East European projects – focused on Polish and Rumanian examples above all.

From the perspective of transnational history, Merel Leeman analyzes the cases of two special exiles: George Mosse and Peter Gay. Spaniards’ American projects is the main topic of Carolina Rodríguez-López’s analysis of Spanish scholars in the US. Natacha Bolufer focuses on associations and newspapers like Liberación which paid special attention to Spanish leftists suffering from Franco’s political measures. José M. Faraldo looks at the cases of refugees from Eastern European countries – mainly from Romania and Poland – who escaped to Spain after the fall of the axis in 1945. Mihaela Albu describes the diversity and plurality of Romanian exiles in the Western world, in diverse countries of Europe and also in the US.

This book aims to encourage the dialogue and comparison among diverse exiles.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Jakub Kazecki,Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives,Hardback,978-1-4438-3899-3,39.99,"aughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives explores the appearances and functions of humour and laughter in selected novels and short stories based on autobiographical experiences written by authors during the war and in the Weimar Era (1919-1933).

The book focuses on popular and lesser-known works of German literature that played an important role in the socio-political life of the Weimar Republic: Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (1920), Advance from Mons 1914 by Walter Bloem (1916), The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig (1927), and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929). The author shows that these works often share surprisingly similar narrative strategies in describing humorous experiences and soldier laughter to justify direct violence and oppressive power structures, regardless of the books' ideological assignment and their popular and critical reception.

This book also examines the parodic imitations of All Quiet on the Western Front—the German text All Quiet on the Trojan Front by Emil Marius Requark (1930) and the American film So Quiet on the Canine Front by Zion Myers and Jules White (1931)—as significant polemical contributions that use humoristic strategies to stress or undermine the elements of the original text.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing