Road to Brexit

Ina Habermann is Professor of English Literature at the University of Basel, Switzerland

• Introduction: Understanding the past, facing the future – Ina HabermannPart I Britain and Europe: political entanglements1 Not with a bang but a whimper: Brexit in historical perspective – Robert Holland2 ‘This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do’: hopes and fears for a united Europe in Britain after the Second World War – Lara Feigel and Alisa Miller3 EU enlargement and the freedom of movement: imagined communities in the Conservative Party’s discourse on Europe (1997–2016) – Marlene Herrschaft-Iden4 The discursive role of Europe in a disunited kingdom – Klaus StolzPart II British discourses of Europe in literature and film5 ‘Extr’ord’nary people, the Germans’: Germans as aliens in post-war British popular culture – Judith Vonberg6 ‘I don’t want to be a European’: the European Other in British cultural discourse – Menno Spiering7 The dystopian nightmare of a European superstate: British fiction and the EU – Lisa Bischoff8 A case for a Green Brexit? Paul Kingsnorth, John Berger and the pros and cons of a sense of place – Christian Schmitt-Kilb9 Brexit and the Tudor turn: Philippa Gregory’s narratives of national grievance – Siobhan O’ConnorPart III Negotiating borders in British travel writing and memoir10 Guards of Brexit? Revisiting the cultural significance of the white cliffs of Dover – Melanie Küng11 From Iron Curtains to Iron Cliffs: British travel writing between East and West – Blanka Blagojevic12 Fifty years of Unbelonging: a Gibraltarian writer’s personal testimonial on the road to Brexit – M.G. Sanchez

'The collection impresses by its interdisciplinary range. In this sense, it is an ideal specimen of Cultural-Studies scholarship, no matter whether all contributors would readily identify with this label or not. Academics from various disciplines – historians, political scientists, literary studies scholars, etc. – have come together and produced insightful and very readable essays on this eminently important issue which complement each other perfectly. This is essential reading for everyone interested in how the United Kingdom has ‘located’ itself in and/or vis-à-vis (continental) Europe.'Gerold Sedlmayer, Anglia – Journal of English Philology