Del 220 - Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Contested Selves

Life Writing and German Culture

Inbunden, Engelska, 2021

AvKatja Herges,Elisabeth Krimmer,Dr Katja Herges,Elisabeth (Series Editor) Krimmer,Katja, Herges

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Investigates the field of German life writing, from Rahel Levin Varnhagen around 1800 to Carmen Sylva a century later, from Döblin, Becher, women's WWII diaries, German-Jewish memoirs, and East German women's interview literatureto the autofiction of Lena Gorelik.In recent decades, life writing has exploded in popularity: memoirs that focus on traumatic experiences now constitute the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide. But life writing is not only highly marketable; it also does important emotional, cultural, and political work. It is more available to amateurs and those without the cultural capital or the self-confidence to embrace more traditional literary forms, and thus gives voice to marginalized populations. Contested Selves investigates various forms of German-language life writing, including memoirs, interviews, letters, diaries, and graphic novels, shedding light on its democratic potential, on its ability to personalize history and historicize the personal. The contributors ask how the various authors construct and negotiate notions of the self relative to sociopolitical contexts, cultural traditions, genre expectations, and narrative norms. They also investigate the nexus of writing, memory, and experience, including the genre's truth claims vis-à-vis the pliability and unreliability of human memories. Finally, they explore ethical questions that arise from intimate life writing and from the representation of "vulnerable subjects" as well as from the interrelation of material body, embodied self, and narrative. All forms of life writing discussed in this volume are invested in a process of making meaning and in an exchange of experience that allows us to relate our lives to the lives of others.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2021-04-30
Mått152 x 229 x 23 mm
Vikt596 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieStudies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
Antal sidor280
FörlagBoydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN9781640141056

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Litteraturvetenskap inom Skönlitteratur

KATJA HERGES is a physician and holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Davis. ELISABETH KRIMMER is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis. LAURA DEIULIO is Associate Professor of German at Christopher Newport University, VA. KATRA A. BYRAM is Associate Professor of German at Ohio State University. MAUREEN BURDOCK is a graphic storyteller, writer, and illustrator with dual master's degrees from the California School of the Arts and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of California, Davis. Aylin Bademsoy is a PhD candidate in the German Department at UC Davis.

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionKatja Herges and Elisabeth KrimmerPart I. Women's Life Writing, Female Subjectivity and Agency1: "A Portrait of the Moment": Rahel Levin Varnhagen's Letters at the Boundary of Life WritingLaura Deiulio2: A Force of Nature: Narrative Strategies of Autobiography in the Work of Poet-Queen Carmen SylvaBeth Ann Muellner3: Writing the Cultural Memory of East Germany through Women's InterviewliteraturJulie ShoultsPart II. Modern Life Writing and Aesthetics4: A Life of Its Own: Alfred Döblin on Autobiography and the NovelMatthias Müller5: A Man of the Century in His Poems: Johannes R. Becher and the Creation of the Twentieth-Century Life NarrativeKristin EichhornPart III. Trauma and Vergangenheitsbewältigung6: Writing Two Selves: A Woman's Struggle to Cope with WarErika Quinn7: "Confrontation with My Complicity": Paratextual Self-Encounters in Diaries of the Second World WarKathryn Sederberg8: Voices from an "Extinct Species": Narrative Responses to Trauma in German-Jewish MemoirsJennifer Hansen-GlucklichPart IV. Transnational and Transgenerational Life Writing in Contemporary Germany9: The Case of the Disappearing Son: Gender, Genre, and German Postwar Cultural Memory in Niklas Frank's Meine deutsche Mutter and F. C. Delius's Bildnis der Mutter als junge FrauKatra Byram10: Lena Gorelik's Autofictional Letter Lieber Mischa: A Guide to Being Jewish in Contemporary GermanyLydia H. Heiss11: Shapeshifters: Metamorphosing Transgenerational Trauma through ComicsMaureen Burdock12: Homeland, Nation, and Gender in the Life Writing of German and Jewish ÉmigrésAylin BademsoyBibliographyNotes on the ContributorsIndex