bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Consequences of French Colonization for North African Jews: The Division of a Cohesive Minority
Authors: Wynchank Anny
Published: October 2010

Pendant deux millénaires, les Juifs du Maghreb vivaient presqu'en symbiose avec les Musulmans, constituant une communauté à la fois humiliée et protégée. La colonisation de l'Algérie par la France, et surtout le Décret Crémieux, qui accordait la nationalité française aux Juifs d'Algérie, provoqua une rupture à l'intérieur d'une communauté remarquable jusque-là pour sa cohésion. L'arrivée continue et en masse au Maroc, pays riche en possibilités, des Juifs algériens éduqués et assimilés à la culture occidentale et ses instruments économiques, bouleversa la composition démographique et socio-culturelle et le statut économique des Juifs du Maroc, d'Oujda, en particulier. En effet, les Juifs français s'arrêtaient de préférence dans cette petite ville marocaine, à la frontière algérienne. L'article examine la brèche socio-économique et culturelle qui s'élargit progressivement entre les deux groupes pendant les cinquante années du Protectorat français au Maroc. Ces différences expliquent pourquoi, au moment de l'indépendance du Maroc en 1958, la presque totalité des Juifs algériens d'Oujda alla en France. Les Juifs marocains émigrèrent vers Israël, réaffirmant ainsi la division qui avait marqué la communauté d'Oujda.
The Noble Savage Revisited: "Nature Alone" in the New World as Reported by Yves d'Evreux
Authors: Fishman Laura
Published: October 2010

L'idée du "bon sauvage" n'est plus en vogue. D'après l'interprétation dominante, le "bon sauvage" est une figure littéraire ou sentimentale. Néanmoins, la littérature française de voyage comprend beaucoup d'ambiguïté. Dans un livre qui renferme beaucoup de détails ethnographiques, le missionnaire capucin Yves d'Evreux, qui habitait pendant deux années chez les Tupinamba du Brésil, exprime de l'admiration et du respect pour les indigènes. Il approuve "la nature seule" qui les dirige, parce qu'il n'y a pas mal d'ordre naturel dans la société Tupinamba. Par conséquent, ces indigènes feront des bons associés aux Français dans leur mission coloniale, parce qu'ils sont de nature intelligents, laborieux, et respectueux. D'Evreux ne s'exprime pas en clichés qui présentent les indigènes commes des bêtes ou commes des enfants simples et contents. Il croit que les Tupinamba sont à l'égal des Français; il n'y a pas de distinction de race entre les deux groupes. D'Evreux croit que les Tupinamba ont connaissance naturelle de Dieu; quant à la conversion des indigènes au christianisme, et la destruction de l'influence du diable chez eux, il est optimiste.
The French West Indies During the Nine Years' War, 1688-1697: A Review and Reappraisal
Authors: Pritchard James
Published: October 2010

Pour la plupart, la Guerre de Neuf Ans en Amérique était d'importance secondaire auprès de la lutte européenne. Mais les activités militaires aux Antilles, où les Français affrontaient trois ennemis, étaient plus importantes qu'on ne l'admette d'habitude. La responsabilité de la sécurité locale face aux menaces hollandaises et anglaises était assignée aux colons, tandis que la métropole déclenchait trois expéditions à l'encontre des colonies espagnoles. N'occasionnant que quelques dégâts mineurs, les opérations navales aux Antilles ont néanmoins contribué de manière importante à la décision espagnole de quitter la guerre, ce qui était nécessaire à la paix.
Workers, Culture, and the Railroads in French Colonial Indochina, 1905-1936
Authors: Del Testa David W.
Published: October 2010

En exploitant leur importance stratégique et symbolique à l'entreprise coloniale en Indochine, les cheminots vietnamiens ont négocié un rapport mutuellement avantageux avec les Français. Ce processus de négotiation fournit un exemple des moyens par lesquels plusieurs vietnamiens se sont servis du colonialisme comme une occasion favorable. Tant que les Français considéraient les cheminots comme une aristocratie de travailleurs très importants au projet colonial, les cheminots restaient dociles. Cependant, aussitôt que les Français ont commencé d'ignorer leurs réclamations justes, les cheminots se sont transformés en activistes anti-coloniaux très forts. L'histoire des cheminots vietnamiens pendant l'époque coloniale illumine à la fois la complexité du colonialisme et l'ambivalence de beaucoup de Vietnamiens en ce qui les concernait.
Henry Sidgwick’s Moral Epistemology
Authors: Skelton Anthony
Published: October 2010

In this essay I defend the view that Henry Sidgwick’s moral epistemology is a form of intuitionist foundationalism that grants common-sense morality no evidentiary role. In §1, I outline both the problematic of The Methods of Ethics and the main elements of its argument for utilitarianism. In §§2-4 I provide my interpretation of Sidgwick’s moral epistemology. In §§5-8 I refute rival interpretations, including the Rawlsian view that Sidgwick endorses some version of reflective equilibrium and the view that he is committed to some kind of pluralistic epistemology. In§9 I contend with some remaining objections to my view.
Hutcheson’s Deceptive Hedonism
Authors: Dorsey Dale
Published: October 2010

Francis Hutcheson’s theory of value is often characterized as a precursor to the qualitative hedonism of John Stuart Mill. In this paper, I seek to argue that this reading is mistaken. The evidence for Hutcheson as a qualitative hedonist is strong and striking. The most commonly cited passages are taken from his posthumous opus, A System of Moral Philosophy . However, a closer look at Hutcheson’s moral psychology, including his account of the interplay between pleasure and the moral and evaluative senses, shows that we do no disservice by reading him as a purely quantitative hedonist. Hutcheson’s hedonism is for that reason deceptive, and deceptively simple.
Fichte and the Relationship between Self-Positing and Rights
Authors: Nomer Nedim
Published: October 2010

A common criticism of Fichte’s political thought is that it is not systematically connected to his idea of self-positing, which would amount to a rift in his practical philosophy. This criticism can be countered through an extensive analysis of Fichte’s view of rational society. This view involves not just a portrayal of the institutions essential to a just society but also an account of citizen participation. The idea here is that social and political progress derives from the people, either collectively or individually, rather than from institutions directly. This idea is crucial to recognizing the link between self-positing and membership in a political community in Fichte’s practical philosophy, because self-positing entails, I argue, participation in the determination of the social order.
Ethics of Survival: A Democratic Approach to the Politics of Life
Authors: Fassin Didier
Published: October 2010

Fassin interprets Jacques Derrida's final published interview calling for an "ethics of survival" to portend a new approach to biopolitics beyond current approaches, and explored through ethnographic interviews.
Two Regimes of Global Health
Authors: Lakoff Andrew
Published: October 2010

Lakoff distinguishes between and describes two contemporary regimes for envisioning and intervening in the field of global health: global health security and humanitarian biomedicine.
Human Rights Mainstreaming as a Strategy for Institutional Power
Authors: Koskenniemi Martti
Published: October 2010

Koskenniemi criticizes the recent proposal to "mainstream" human rights on the grounds that such mainstreaming is either useless or dangerous -- and in any case sacrifices the critical, utopian perspective human rights provides by remaining institutionally external.
Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects (A Note on Camps and Humanitarian Government)
Authors: Agier Michel
Published: October 2010

Agier offers an assessment of contemporary humanitarianism and appeals to humanity that juxtaposes a survey of camps with ethnographic reportage. According to Agier, contemporary humanitarianism must be understood as a new and unprecedented form of government that nevertheless leaves room for unsuspected political action.
Humanity without Feathers
Authors: Festa Lynn
Published: October 2010

Festa explores the appeal to humanity (especially to suffering humanity in sentimental mode) in the eighteenth century and in antislavery literature, suggesting that the paradoxes that continue to haunt it are rooted in the theories and practices of its inception.
Human Rights and Decolonization: New Perspectives and Open Questions
Authors: Eckel Jan
Published: October 2010

Eckel reviews Roland Burke's "Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights" (2010) and Fabian Klose "Menschenrechte im Schatten kolonialer Gewalt: Die Dekolonisierungskriege in Kenia und Algerien 1945-1962" (2009) by offering a general perspective on the place of human rights claims in anticolonialism and decolonization alike
Straparola: The Revolution That Was Not
Authors: Ben-Amos Dan
Published: October 2010

Inspired by Ruth Bottigheimer’s 2002 book, Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition , this article examines her proposition that the sixteenth-century Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola invented the “rise tale,” in which a lowly hero or heroine climbs the socioeconomic ladder with the help of a magical benefactor. It investigates Bottigheimer’s evidence for this claim as well as her argument that Straparola’s literary invention was a projection of the emerging Italian middle class in the sixteenth century. Contrary to Bottigheimer’s proposition, it is found that tales with similar form were told in classical Greece and in medieval Europe and that the belief in magical fairies was known in Europe long before Straparola’s time.
The Invention of Fairy Tales
Authors: Silva Francisco Vaz da
Published: October 2010

Ruth B. Bottigheimer has contended that a specific literary man invented the fairy-tale genre less than five centuries ago. This article is a critical examination of her claim. It interrogates the axioms underlying Bottigheimer’s proposition, probes the logical consistency of her account, and surveys Bottigheimer’s use of empirical evidence. It concludes that while Bottigheimer’s proposition is a healthy challenge to folklorists who would disregard literary texts as a matter of principle, her assumptions, reasoning, and conclusions leave much to be desired.
"Just as it was, or perhaps a little more perfect": Notes on Nabokov's Sources
Authors: Kuzmanovich Zoran
Published: October 2010

Juxtaposing the opening of The Gift 's second chapter with Speak, Memory 's account of Nabokov's first poem and Lolita 's couch scene reveals a surprising set of similarities. A preliminary study of these common points leads to some intriguing linkages and contradictions among Nabokov's roles as writer of fiction, autobiography, self-parody, and criticism. It also provides a new data set to be examined in light of the currently dominant critical paradigm, revises Nabokov's relations to other artists, and may even lead to consequences for his aesthetic theory.
Nabokov, Teleology, and Insect Mimicry
Authors: Alexander Victoria N.
Published: October 2010

Nabokov argued that a slight resemblance between one insect and another or between an insect and its environment could not be furthered by the function or purpose it served, leading gradually to mimicry. The subtleties of Nabokov's argument against Darwinian gradualism have been missed by most of his readers. He did not critique Darwinism in the same way that Creationists do. Nabokov did believe that natural selection could explain many adaptations and shifts in the direction of evolution, but he did not think it could explain mimicry. He realized there were other forces at work assisting natural selection, which were especially apparent in the case of "mimicry." Recent work in what is called "structural" and "neutral" evolutionary theory supports Nabokov's views, which seem to have been influenced by teleomechanism, a form of theoretical biology derived from Kantian teleology.
"The Amazing Music of Truth": Nabokov's Sources for Godunov's Central Asian Travels in The Gift
Authors: Zimmer Dieter E. , Hartmann Sabine
Published: October 2010

In Chapter 2 of his novel Dar/The Gift (1933-38), Nabokov had the protagonist's father undertake the explorative journey to Central Asia that he in his youth would have liked to undertake himself. It now can safely be said that none of the colorful and evocative detail of this imaginary travelogue is invented. To compose it, Nabokov must have closely and carefully studied more than twenty historical sources. Up to now, about 34 percent of the roughly 105 "items" that make up his text and that range from single facts to whole paragraphs had been traced to specific sources. This article brings the count up to 92 percent.
Murderous Desire in Lolita (With Related Thoughts on Mailer's An American Dream )
Authors: Whalen-Bridge John
Published: October 2010

"Murderous Desire in Lolita" considers Lolita as a transgressive fantasy and compares it with Norman Mailer's novel An American Dream . Engaging D. A. Miller's arguments from The Novel and the Police , the author argues that Mailer and Nabokov are each well aware that they write "under observation" but that each uses narrative contextualization to resist the metaphorical panopticon of literary form.
Perversion in Pnin (Reading Nabokov Preposterously)
Authors: Naiman Eric
Published: October 2010

"Perversion in Pnin (Reading Nabokov Preposterously)" explores the issue of perverse hermeneutics in Nabokov's most innocent novel. After noting the anxieties that surround sexually oriented readings of Nabokov's work, the article argues that Pnin contains a series of genital references, some of which involve a perverse reading of Gertrude's rendition of the scene of Ophelia's drowning. The slandering of Ophelia—embedded, among other places, in the descriptions of a planned parenthood clinic and a Soviet May Day parade—provides a counterpart for the slandering of Pnin by various narrators in the novel. The article contends that in its many images of twisting and winding, the novel thematises the struggle for control over the turns (versions) taken by the narrative. The squirrel, the novel's obviously emblematic beast, should be read as a symbol (or as a familiar) of the necessary pairing of the poetic and the perverse. Central to this argument is the concept of "preposterous oversight"—a phrase that hints at the necessarily perverse and obsessive voyeurism promoted by the novel as the key to its "true understanding" by the reader. The article concludes with the suggestion that the novel transposes the moral question of Ivan Karamazov's theological "revolt" into a metafictive, procedural key.
"Faragod Bless Them": Nabokov, Spirits, and Electricity
Authors: Trousdale Rachel
Published: October 2010

The references to Anna Karenin in Ada , which begin in the very first sentence of the book, help to explain the strange goings-on with electricity which occur throughout Ada . The absence of electricity from Antiterra indicates a spiritual poverty. Antiterra is hellish not just because of its inhabitants' brutality but because of its utter lack of spirituality, which is replaced by nostalgia and sex. The self-centered, incestuous nature of Van's love affair and his memories ensure that he can neither recapture the past nor create anything new. The failure of Van's paradise and the sterility of his attempt to regain it are encapsulated in the occurrences of electricity in the novel.
Nabokov's Wiener-schnitzel Dreams: Despair and Anti-Freudian Poetics
Authors: Blackwell Stephen H.
Published: October 2010

By the time Nabokov composed Despair in mid-1932, he had been nurturing a growing antipathy to Freudian psychoanalysis since emigrating to the West thirteen years prior. After examining the history of Nabokov's probable exposure to Freudian ideas and epigones in Russia, in Cambridge, and in Berlin, the author turns to Despair as the culmination of Nabokov's early anti-Freudian creative activity. Countering Freud's famed "Oedipus complex," Nabokov fills his novel with mythological and sexual imagery, especially from the myth of Cybele and Attis. In so doing he creates a potential interpretive structure that leads, ultimately, nowhere—except to the demise of his main character, who is also the novel's leading Freudian practitioner. The novel's almost absurd proliferation of phalluses, referring to Freudianism, is undermined by the self-castration theme, which seems to be Nabokov's way of illustrating how a flawed ideology does violence to itself.
The Juice of Three Oranges: An Exploration in Nabokov's Language and World
Authors: Senderovich Savely , Shvarts Yelena
Published: October 2010

This study presents a reconstruction of the workings of Vladimir Nabokov's language. Nabokov should be read not only on the level of narrative, but perhaps most plausibly on the level of recurrent motifs, contiguous allusions, and favorite verbal games. Reading on the micro-level and across his texts allows us to detect key motifs and to recognize the contours of different and more profound stories told within the surface stories. The context in which the orange motif acquires its Nabokovian meaning can be briefly defined as the fairground booth, the balagan , an overarching metaphor for the world within which all of Nabokov's stories take place. The balagan implies a false, unnatural and imposed life in which one is forced to play a prescribed role; only an artist, a creator, may stage his own spectacle, performing dazzling acrobatics, disavowing the heaviness of matter, and reaching celestial heights. The tension between these two aspects as expressed through the grotesque is the principal creative force in the world of the balagan . All Nabokov's novels and many short stories and plays make use of the orange motif dating back to Meyerhold's staging of Blok's Balaganchik in the Tenishev school in 1914 and Carlo Gozzi's The Love for Three Oranges , as well as to the magazine of the same title (1914-16). Concepts of Russian avant-garde theater, especially those of Blok, Meyerhold and Evreinov, are at the core of Nabokov's conception of the balagan , which seems to constitute the encompassing inner horizon of his world.
Hyperlinks, Chiasmus, Vermeer and St. Augustine: Models of Reading Ada
Authors: Schuman Samuel
Published: October 2010

In response to R. J. A. Kilbourn's essay " Ada in Chaismus: Chiasmus in Ada , ( NS 5), I offer a complementary, rather than contradictory, model. Kilbourn proposes reading the novel either from the center out to the beginning and ending, or from the two ends into the middle. My suggestion is that Nabokov seeks in the reader a mirror of his own Augustinian omniscience, wherein the whole, and all its parts, are apprehended simultaneously. Obviously, this strategy demands, in the real world, multiple re-readings. I suggest that as the reader approaches this omniscience, she or he moves ever closer to the position of textual divinity assumed by the author.
Ada 's Erotic Entomology
Authors: Ashenden Liana
Published: October 2010

Nabokov incorporates the natural world and natural science to a greater extent in Ada than in any other novel except The Gift . Ada Veen is an avid lepidopterist and botanist and her scientific interest drives the memoir's extensive biological content. Van Veen, by contrast, focuses humorously on the sexual connotations of insects and flowers (which are associated in his memory with Ada and the intense excitement of early sexual awakening). Indeed, the Ardis sections of the memoir almost embody in perverse literal form what Kinbote in Pale Fire describes as "the lust that Nature, the grand cheat, puts into us to inveigle us into propagation" (621). The extent to which Ada 's biological stories parody, reflect and counterpoint the human plot is astonishing; yet readers must pursue the offered glimpses of natural detail in order to uncover the intricate motifs and patterns involving insects in the incestuous relationships of the Veens.
Varieties of Determinism: Nabokov among Rorty, Freud, and Sartre
Authors: Andrews David
Published: October 2010

In 1989, Richard Rorty published an important, philosophically astute essay on Vladimir Nabokov entitled "The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty." Despite this essay's general excellence, however, it makes the curious mistake of all but dismissing Nabokov's notorious antipathy for Sigmund Freud as symptomatic of a jealousy borne of similarity . Though the author of the following essay has learned much from Rorty, he disputes Rorty's conflation of Nabokov, an optimist, with Freud, a pessimist. To this end, "Varieties of Determinism" explores the intellectual divide separating Nabokov from Freud by contrasting their divergent attitudes on determinism as said attitudes relate to art and science. The essay also seeks to explain why, in the context of his own project, Rorty makes the mistake of conflating two disparate figures in the first place. From there, the essay turns to a fourth writer, Jean-Paul Sartre. Another of Nabokov's bêtes-noires , Sartre is appropriate to this discussion insofar as his attitudes toward determinism resemble Nabokov's in key respects. In sum, "Varieties of Determinism" builds on "The Barber of Kasbeam" by placing its comments into sharper focus and by extending its discussion of Nabokov's metaphysical optimism into new areas: the scientism of Freud, the existentialism of Sartre, and the pragmatism of Rorty himself.
Recognizing Vladimir Nabokov's Legacy in Science: Where We Are Today; Where We Go From Here
Authors: Johnson Kurt
Published: October 2010

Nabokov's accomplishments in science are reviewed and assessment made of the direction of future scholarly interest in his work. Because Nabokov's 1940s seminal work on blue butterflies ("blues") of the world was not continued by others until the 1990s, the breadth of his accomplishments has only been recently recognized. Nabokov was a pioneer anatomist, originating many now standard anatomical terms and methods. He was one of the first lepidopterists to study the entire genital apparatus of butterflies in both sexes, to consider North American butterflies in terms of worldwide relationships, to argue for a balanced biological and morphological species definition, to seek a genealogical approach to classification, to stress the importance of life cycle and ecological studies in evaluating species, and to opine that biogeographic assumptions of his day seemed unsupported by anatomical studies of blues. All Nabokov's taxonomic works reflect these interests and expertise but his seminal studies of Latin American blues, where he contributed nearly the entire classification still used today, are the hallmark of his achievement. Modern DNA studies of North American blues support Nabokov's conclusions; DNA studies of his Latin American blues are in progress. Future interest in Nabokov's scientific work will most likely focus on assessing his theoretical and philosophical views and appreciating the multidisciplinary element of his intellect.
The "Right" versus the "Wrong" Child: Shades of Pain in Bend Sinister and Pnin
Authors: Sommers Elena
Published: October 2010

Trying to determine why Bend Sinister goes into such excruciating detail in its portrayal of violence against the most vulnerable, the article will analyze the means by which Nabokov communicates the most language-resistant phenomenon-the intense physical pain of another. The article will show how the writer deconstructs the process of torture in order for the reader to then reconstruct it in his imagination, the result of which is a literal, physical feeling of pain. Continuously upsetting the reader's world, in Bend Sinister Nabokov transforms a nanny, a nurse and a female doctor, the figures traditionally associated with nurturing and mothering, into the members of a fine-tuned murder team. Followed by a curious reader, the trio of the Bachofen sisters (Mariette, Linda, and Doktor Amalia) carefully and professionally carries out specifically assigned roles in the torture and murder of the eight-year-old David. The article will discuss the figure of Arvid Krug, "somebody else's child," "the wrong boy," and its significance in Nabokov's challenge to the reader's compassion.
Nabokov in Fat City
Authors: Galef David
Published: October 2010

Nabokov loved the casual abundance he found in America, but he also disliked its vulgarity and felt conflicted about this split. This ambivalence is revealed in his attitude toward the flesh, both his own and his characters'.
The Presence of Nabokov in Bitov's Fiction and Nonfiction: Bitov and Nabokov, Bitov on Nabokov, Nabokov in Bitov
Authors: von Hirsch Marina
Published: October 2010

This essay explores the existence of an exclusive and complex literary relationship between Andrei Bitov and Vladimir Nabokov, whom Bitov considers to be his closest spiritual antecedent. This relationship originated at the very start of Bitov's career, and since then has found numerous reflections in Bitov's densely intertextual fictional and discursive texts. These texts can be classified into four major categories: 1) commentaries to various works that synthesize fictional and critical discourse, among which the "Commentary" to Pushkin House stands out as the most informative example; 2) fictional texts with references and allusions to Nabokov; 3) discursive texts dedicated specifically to Nabokov; and 4) miscellaneous interviews and texts that mention Nabokov. Inquiry into some of these texts written by Bitov reveals extraordinary affinities-stylistic, linguistic, thematic, and philosophical-with Nabokov.
"Die Mauer stand bei mir im Garten": Interview mit Helga Schütz
Authors: Dodds Dinah
Published: October 2010

In an interview with Dinah Dodds on March 8, 1991, GDR writer Helga Schütz speaks about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two German states, the role of literature in a socialist society, and the position of women in the former GDR. Schütz was born in 1937 in Schlesien and grew up in Dresden. After her Abitur she studied drama theory at the Hochschule für Filmkunst in Potsdam-Babelsberg. She has written screenplays for documentary and feature films for the Potsdam-Babelsberg film studio Defa as well as numerous other literary works. Her short story "Festbeleuchtung" and the novels In Annas Namen and Julia oder Erziehung zum Chorgesang have appeared in the West. In 1984 she was a guest along with Irmtraud Morgner at the Women in German Conference in Boston. (DD)
Ein Pferd ohne Beine
Authors: Königsdorf Helga
Published: October 2010

In a 1982 publication, Helga Königsdorf wrote: "Schreiben wollte ich bereits als Kind, aber erst dreißig Jahre später war aus dem 'Will' ein 'Muß' geworden." Here she reflects on how the "Muß" has been affected by German unification.
"A Little Susceptible to the Supernatural?": On Christa Wolf
Authors: Love Myra
Published: October 2010

This article examines the thematization of prophecy, clairvoyance, and extraordinary or psychic healing in the writings of Christa Wolf. It situates Wolf's thematization of supernaturalist elements and paranormal abilities in relation to her critique of the normative "scientific," i.e., purely naturalistic or materialist Weltanschauung shared by capitalist and socialist patriarchal societies alike and points out the feminist implications of her treatment of intuitive, parapsychological, spiritual, and supernaturalist motifs. (ML)
Wieder in Leipzig
Authors: Krauß Angela
Published: October 2010

The first year of German unification coincided with Angela Krauß's appointment as writer-in-residence in Graz, Austria. In a note to the editors of this volume, she wrote: "Hier ein erster 'Rückkehrtext' nach meinem Grazer Jahr als Stadtschreiberin. Ab September bin ich wieder ganz in Leipzig—mit gemischten Gefühlen. Der kursiv gesetzte Abschnitt ist ein Zitat aus dem Vergnügen . Die Brikettfabriken werden jetzt geschleift."
"The Butterfly and the Kiss": A Letter from Bettina von Arnim
Authors: Goodman Katherine R.
Published: October 2010

"The Butterfly and the Kiss" has been excerpted from Bettina von Arnim's Die Günderode (1840). It is a particularly important passage from one of "Bettine's" letters to "Caroline," because it describes her relationship to writing, to language, and to nature. Arnim distances herself from the aesthetic expectations of her brother, romantic poet Clemens Brentano, and from certain aspects of romantic philosophy in general. She narrates her discovery of a new, more concrete source of writing outside of her own thoughts, in nature. (KG)
Editing from Life
Authors: Lefkowitz Deborah
Published: October 2010

My documentary film Intervals of Silence: Being Jewish in Germany grew out of innumerable conversations in which I found myself poised between my American Jewish background and the German Catholic background of the man I married. In these conversations, I was often expected to answer questions such as "How much anti-Semitism is there in Germany today?" or "Are young Germans interested in knowing about Jewish life?" My film, which contains more than 200 statements from sixty different German speakers, is the answer I would like to give. In this essay I focus on one scene in my film and discuss the editing process by which I translated the experiences of real life into film form. (D.L.)
The Feminist Reception of Ingeborg Bachmann
Authors: Lennox Sara
Published: October 2010

This essay examines the feminist reception of Bachmann's writing from the publication of Malina (1971) to the present. I argue that feminists' enthusiasm for Bachmann derived from the cultural climate out of which West German feminism emerged and produced readings that corresponded to the movement's theoretical assumptions. By the mid-eighties a feminist approach to Bachmann indebted to radical feminism and poststructuralism had gained dominance over Bachmann studies. Later feminists were more uncertain about how to read Bachmann. Some retained a poststructuralist method, others ignored gender, and a few devised new methods that move beyond the limitations of eighties feminism. (S.L.)
Mund-Artiges...
Authors: Schmitt Walfriede
Published: October 2010

Walfriede Schmitt has said that she wishes she could "really write," but her hectic lifestyle only allows for writing down ideas and images that come to her spontaneously. In a letter to the Yearbook editors she wrote: "Das Gedicht 'Mund-Artiges' ist mir im Auto auf dem Weg zum Rundfunkstudio 'eingefallen.' Der indirekte Anlaß war das Erleben der Gier der Bürger der ehemaligen DDR am Reichtum der BRD beteiligt zu sein und eine Rede Fidel Castros über die Situation in der dritten Welt."
Feministische Germanistik in Deutschland: Rückblick und sechs Thesen
Authors: Becker-Cantarino Barbara
Published: October 2010

Originating from a panel discussion at the Germanistentag 1991 in Augsburg, my position paper highlights recent developments in feminist studies and German literature with an eye towards historicizing gender, using the example of early modern German literature. I then present a six-point proposal for feminist studies (in regard to German literature), pleading for a continued feminist revision of literary interpretations, especially of "canonical" texts, and for a reconstruction of women's role in literature in order to newly conceive and write its history. Pointing to the obfuscation inherent in the ontological pursuit of Weiblichkeit (femininity), I argue for an open, relational concept of gender in a socio-historical frame, for further critical exploration of the complex power and bonding structures of patriarchy, and for an assessment of the increasing feminization of literary studies and the entire educational-cultural sector. (B.B.-C.)
Gespräch mit Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch
Authors: Kecht Maria-Regina
Published: October 2010

Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch wurde am 2. Oktober 1948 in Linz (Oberösterreich) geboren, wo sie auch aufwuchs. Von 1967 bis 1974 studierte sie an der Universität Salzburg Anglistik und Germanistik. Nach ihrer Promotion war sie vier Jahre lang als Assistentin am Institut für Amerikanistik an der Universität Innsbruck tätig. Zahlreiche Auslandsaufenthalte—u.a. in Israel, Korea, Indonesien—folgten. Von 1980 bis 1985 unterrichtete sie deutsche Sprache und Literatur an verschiedenen Universitäten und Colleges der Ostküste der USA. Seit 1985 lebt sie mit ihrem Sohn wieder in Linz. Ihre schriftstellerische Tätigkeit wurde 1985 mit dem Brüder-Grimm-Preis der Stadt Hanau und 1986 mit dem Literaturpreis des Claassen Verlags, der Claassen-Rose, und dem Landeskulturpreis Oberösterreichs ausgezeichnet. Dieser Dialog mit Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch wurde im Sommer 1989 in Linz, Oberösterreich begonnen und im Winter 1991 fortgeführt. (M.-R.K.)
Alterity—Marginality—Difference: On Inventing Places for Women
Authors: Brinker-Gabler Gisela
Published: October 2010

The essay takes as its point of departure modern theories of subject-decentering and the ways in which they pertain to the question of feminine alterity. It provides a survey of feminist responses in the United States to these theories, responses that take into account both the decentered subject and differences among women. The essay then focuses on three approaches, suggested by the writings of Lennox, Adelson, and Martin. Without assuming any common consensus, the author suggests a re-examination of values that inform progressive practice, in order to develop languages for change. (G.B.-G.)
"Language is Also a Place of Struggle": The Language of Feminism and the Language of American Germanistik
Authors: Joeres Ruth-Ellen B.
Published: October 2010

In an effort to probe some of the causes for the problematic relationship between feminist inquiry and American Germanistik , the essay suggests a possible origin in the attitudes of those who saw a need in the post-World War II era either to depoliticize German language and literature or to view the future in a sort of entrenched pessimistic light. The gendered aspects of such perspectives are discussed and the hypothesis is offered that such pessimism and depoliticization did/do not bode well for an optimistic, political feminist movement. The particularly American aspects of our field are stressed, especially in terms of American feminism and how it can enhance our own work as American Germanists. (R.-E.B.J.)
No Time for Mothers: Courasche's Infertility as Grimmelshausen's Criticism of War
Authors: Van Ornam Vanessa
Published: October 2010

This article examines the thematization of the heroine's barrenness in Grimmelshausen's Courasche in light of Renaissance medical texts in order to demonstrate that Courasche's infertility constitutes an anti-war argument on the part of her creator. The chaos of war is inconsistent with the conditions believed at the time to promote fertility; war is additionally depicted as leading to a weakening of the social reins of control. The unruly woman, who inverts the traditional gender hierarchy, represents a world turned upside down; here she is "unnaturally" infertile in part because she is "unnaturally" dominant, but the war is what has given her the opportunity to assert that dominance. (V.V.O.)
Whose Body is it?: Chaste Strategies and the Reinforcement of Patriarchy in Three Plays by Hrotswitha von Gandersheim
Authors: Sperberg-McQueen M.R.
Published: October 2010

Hrotswitha von Gandersheim strove in her plays to present positive models of female virtue. Her success in offering images of women that contrasted with those presented by Terence and by the Church Fathers has attracted considerable attention from critics, some explicitly feminist. While acknowledging Hrotswitha's achievement, this essay is critical of certain aspects of her plays, particularly ones related to character constellations and plot, that reinforce antifeminist, patriarchal values. The author argues that Hrotswitha, indebted to her sources as she was, dramatized narratives that assert male control of women, particularly with respect to the attributes and disposition of their bodies. (M.R.S-McQ)
Christa Wolf's Kassandra : Refashioning National Imagination Beyond the Nation
Authors: Eysel Karin
Published: October 2010

This essay traces Wolf's uncoupling of the classical Cassandra figure from national allegiances. I argue that from a modern, psychological, and female perspective Wolf not only lays bare the politics of nationalism, she also imagines a different community, transnational in character. Returning to the cradle of Western civilization, Wolf rewrites the legend of the siege and destruction of Troy in order to refashion the national imagination of the past and to imagine a new community beyond the nation. (KE)
The Battering and Meta-Battering of Droste's Margreth: Covert Misogyny in Die Judenbuche 's Critical Reception
Authors: Pickar Gertrud Bauer
Published: October 2010

Examination of Margreth Mergel's life as presented in Die Judenbuche not only clarifies the image of her as a victim of family and society, but by extension also raises questions about the negative treatment accorded her in secondary literature. Critics have tended to ignore the evidence presented within the text, accepting instead the societally generated stance of the work's fictive narrator at face value. They have consequently infused interpretations of Die Judenbuche with an insidious misogyny that maligns and marginalizes the figure of Margreth and also suggests the presence of a persistent bias in critical Germanistic scholarship. (GBP)
Political Bodies: Women and Re/Production in the GDR
Authors: von Ankum Katharina
Published: October 2010

The article analyzes the contradictory positions taken by the SED on the issue of abortion, reflecting the anti-feminist foundation of socialism in the GDR. Throughout the 1950s and 60s the SED engaged in an unabashed pronatalist discourse in an effort to reconstruct the family while simultaneously pulling women into the work force. By 1970, the SED had to acknowledge the failure of its propagandistic and legislative attempts to construct the socialist "working mother." The 1972 decision to legalize abortion resulted from economic constraints and marked a turning point within the SED's strategy to legislate women's place in the GDR, coincidentally providing women with the right of self-determination over their bodies. (KvA)
Women's Studies as Cultural Movement and Academic Discipline in the United States and West Germany: The Early Phase, 1966-1982
Authors: Allen Ann Taylor
Published: October 2010

The article compares the origins and early development of Women's Studies in West Germany and in the United States, focusing on differing patterns of institutionalization. While most American Women's Studies offerings were from the beginning located in academic institutions, many of the first German courses were taught outside of universities. The article outlines the discussions that were held in each country about the appropriate institutional setting for Women's Studies. It shows how the resulting processes of institutionalization were related to the administrative structures, purposes, and student constituencies of systems of higher education in the two countries. (ATA)
Women Writers and Women Rulers: Rhetorical and Political Empowerment in the Fifteenth Century
Authors: Morrison Susan Signe
Published: October 2010

The first prose novels in the German language have been attributed to two writers of the late Middle Ages, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken (c. 1393-1456) and Eleonore von Österreich (1433-1480). These Early New High German texts have been typed by scholars as Trivialliteratur , a classification this essay questions. Eleonore and Elisabeth transform their source texts, chansons de geste , to increase the political role for women. I argue that the authors' own international political skill and marital experience affected their revisions. Rhetorically, women are depicted as speaking honestly, unlike the characterization of women's speech so prevalent in medieval misogynistic texts. Finally, this essay suggests future theoretical approaches for analyzing these works. (SSM)
Margarethe von Trotta's Sisters: "Brides Under a Different Law"
Authors: Mouton Janice
Published: October 2010

Margarethe von Trotta's representation of the sister relationship suggests new ways of envisioning personal identity and personal relationships. Her telling of the female identity-formation story moves beyond the Freudian model and the traditional masculine and feminine positionings in narrative. It focuses on the sister attachment itself and on the relational "space between" the sisters, since it is here that the two subjectivities are formed and where the possibilities for a relationship of creative mutuality and independence are played out. (JMM)
Creativity and Nonconformity in Monika Maron's Die Überläuferin
Authors: Anderson Susan C.
Published: October 2010

Maron's novel Die Überläuferin represents the disintegration and regeneration of an individual's sense of identity. The narrative traces the process by which its heroine breaks free from her conformist ways of thinking and acknowledges her most feared desires. Fantasy is depicted as a means for recognizing and discarding an authoritarian society's underlying utilitarian principles that can confine and paralyze an individual. The article analyzes the images of walls, death, and rebirth as well as the function of fantasy and memory to demonstrate the destabilizing and self-emancipatory effects of creative action. (SCA)
Locating a Public Sphere: Some Reflections on Writers and Öffentlichkeit in the GDR
Authors: Mittman Elizabeth
Published: October 2010

The article examines some recent extra-literary writings by Christa Wolf and Helga Königsdorf in order to approach historical and theoretical questions about the constitution of Öffentlichkeit in the GDR. As the conditions for communication and publicity changed in 1989-90, these writers found themselves compelled to reflect, within the emerging new forums, upon their own status as carriers of a public sphere, and hence as institutions. A reading of their reflections reveals some of the structural contradictions that shaped GDR writers' self-understanding and literary production. (EM)
Vicki Baum and the "Making" of Popular Success: "Mass" Culture or "Popular" Culture?
Authors: King Lynda J.
Published: October 2010

This study examines the reasons for international literary star Vicki Baum's immense success. After first detailing the promotion of Baum and her works and briefly analyzing her 1928-29 novel stud. chem. Helene Willfüer , the study contends that advertising and writing for the marketplace were prerequisites to success, but did not ensure that she or her works would indeed become best sellers. Based on theories of "popular" rather than "mass" culture, it goes on to explore the delicate and complicated balance of power between producers and consumers that leads to popular success. (LJK)
Enacting the Different Voice: Christa Klages and Feminist History
Authors: Ward Jenifer K.
Published: October 2010

This article examines Margarethe von Trotta's first film, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1977), as an exemplary document of late 1970s feminist thought. It asserts that von Trotta's narrative can be understood in light of the early work of Carol Gilligan on gender and moral development, and goes on to argue that von Trotta uses this notion of a gendered moral code to critique and recuperate a Christian ethical stance through her characterizations. The article also re-evaluates the (German) reception of von Trotta and her film. (JKW)
Dankrede zum Grimmelshausen-Preis
Authors: Klüger Ruth
Published: October 2010

The following is the text of a speech given by Ruth Klüger on her acceptance of the 1993 Grimmelshausen prize, awarded for her autobiographical account weiter leben: Eine Jugend (1992). Her prefatory remarks are addressed to Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who wrote about her award in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (16 October 1993).
Gender Identities and the Remembrance of the Holocaust
Authors: Remmler Karen
Published: October 2010

In light of current debates about the construction and formation of female identities, this article raises questions about the continued dearth of critical writing on the significance of gender differences for both the remembrance and representation of the Holocaust. Focusing on the relationship between structures of memory and the portrayal of female bodies, the author analyzes Mali Fritz's account of her experiences as a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Essig gegen den Durst , and Marie Nurowska's novel Postscriptum für Anna und Miriam . She argues that both works undermine the public memory of their respective social context by writing against universalized images of suffering. (KR)
Patriarchy's Fragile Boundaries under Siege: Three Stories of Heinrich von Kleist
Authors: Gelus Marjorie
Published: October 2010

The works of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) mirror the deep anxieties of his age in the face of challenges to Enlightenment values, but, unlike those of his contemporaries, they dwell at morbid length on the threats to order, rather than constructing ideological antidotes to them. In these works, it is particularly women and their sexuality who embody the threat to one of patriarchy's foundational gestures: the drawing of boundaries that allow all that is Self to cohere by constituting an Other that is purged, at whatever level—the individual, the gender, the family, the tribe, the nation, the religion, the race, etc. Even the apparently most objective political upheavals—e.g., the French and Haitian revolutions—are thus filtered through this Kleistian lens of the embattled subject. (MG)
"Gender Censorship": On Literary Production in German Romanticism
Authors: Becker-Cantarino Barbara
Published: October 2010

The discourse on writing and sexual difference in German Romanticism functions as a discourse of censorship. A philosophical justification for excluding women from the "author function" (Foucault) and for subjecting their writing to male control was elaborated by Fichte in The Science of Rights . Goethe and other men of letters developed aesthetic norms for women's writing that were based on a male perspective of appropriate gender roles for women. Women authors' self-representation and literary activity were shaped by gender censorship that they were able to subvert only superficially by such means as public disclaimers, accommodation to male-defined standards, and anonymous or pseudonymous publication. (JC)
From the Prater to Central Park: Finding a Self in Exile
Authors: Shipley Suzanne
Published: October 2010

This study introduces the autobiographical writings of two Austrian Jewish women, Franzi Ascher-Nash and Stella Hershan, who left Vienna during the Hitler period and settled in New York. Five stages in their emigration experience emerge: astonishment at the rejection of Jews by Austrian society; a sense of losing a homeland; an attitude of discovery upon arrival in America; concern for the safety of family members left behind; and a redefinition of home in exile. It is hypothesized that these stages may be indicative of a broader response to exile, one perhaps shared by other female emigrants of this period for whom arrival in and assimilation to America was the decisive element in finding a self. (JC)
Anmut 's Gender: The "Marionettentheater" and Kleist's Revision of "Anmut und Würde"
Authors: Hart Gail K.
Published: October 2010

Schiller's famous essay "Über Anmut und Würde" establishes Anmut or Grazie as a feminine quality. Kleist, who seems to be parodying Schillerian argumentation on several levels, reduces Schiller's idealism to material terms by rupturing the link between Geist and Grazie , but he also cancels its association with women—de-humanizing and de-feminizing grace. By taking the arch-feminine virtue of Anmut and appropriating it to mindless or mechanized beings who are specifically gendered male, Kleist reinforces the exclusivity of the male homosocial bonds being developed between the narrator and Herr C... . (GKH)