Playing House

Alexandra Merley Hill is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Portland, where she teaches all levels of language, literature, and culture. Her research focuses on contemporary German-language literature by women, especially Julia Franck. She has published on literature and feminism in the Women in German Yearbook and in Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, and she co-edited Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century: An Introduction (2011) with Florence Feiereisen.

• Contents: Introduction: The ‘Fräuleinwunder’ and feminism – Roles: Theorizing performativity and performance – Lovers: The search for and failure of intimacy in Berlin literature – Daughters: Psychoanalytic theory, domestic space, and maternal desire – Mothers: Refuting psychoanalytic models, the bad mother, and ‘Maternal drag’ – Fathers and Sons: Absent fathers, sisters, and siblings, and looking for home.