Willing Seduction

Barbara Kosta is Professor in the Department of German Studies and an affiliated faculty member of Women’s Studies and Media Arts at the University of Arizona, where she teaches courses on twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, culture, and film. She is the author of Recasting Autobiography: Women's Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film (1994), co-author of the first-year German textbook auf deutsch! (1990), and co-editor of Writing Against Boundaries: Gender, Ethnicity and Nationality in the German-speaking Context (2003).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1. Mass Entertainment and “Serious” CultureChapter 2. Distraction, Deception, and VisualityChapter 3. Disillusionment and Esprit: Weimar’s Modern WomanChapter 4. The Seductions of SoundChapter 5. The Actuality of The Blue Angel: Dietrich, Germany, and Mass CultureFade Out: The CreditsBibliographyIndex

“Kosta’s book not only adds new material…, but performs the invaluable tasks of synthesizing and building on the massive amounts of writing that has accrued around the film, its director, and stars. This makes the book ideal not only for the collections of German Studies and Film Studies scholars, but also as a text for undergraduate and graduate courses. Kosta writes with sophistication and with a secure grasp of a variety of theoretical registers.”  ·  German Quarterly“This interdisciplinary study will appeal to German and film studies scholars as well as readers interested in question s of gender, visuality, and the history of film.”  ·  Monatshefte“By setting the Blue Angel in its broader cultural context, Kosta captivates the reader and provides important insights into cultural debates during the Weimar Republic.”  ·  European History Quarterly