The Editors: Dr Steve Giles is Reader in German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. His publications include Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory: Marxism, Modernity and the ‘Threepenny Lawsuit’ (Peter Lang, 1998), Brecht on Art and Politics (co-edited with Tom Kuhn, Methuen, 2003), and numerous essays in sociological aesthetics, comparative literature and critical theory.Dr Maike Oergel is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen. National Myth in 19th-century English and German Literature (de Gruyter, 1998) and articles on the construction of modern national identities, Romantic literary theory, the historical novel and Anglo-German intellectual relations.