Nature Technology And Cultural Change In Twentieth Century German Literature

This book traces shifting attitudes towards science and technology, nature and the environment in Twentieth-century Germany. It approaches them through discussion of a range of literary texts and explores the philosophical influences on them and their political contexts, and asks what part novels and plays have played in environmental debate.

This volume surveys the contribution of German literature and culture to the evolution of ecological thought from the age of Goethe to the present. In a broad spectrum of essays from different periods, disciplines, and genres, it conveys both the uniqueness and the transnational significance of German ecological thought.

This book tells the story of the rise of the modern German environmental imagination with particular emphasis on its narrative and visual components.

Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse offers an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of fundamental shifts in German cultural memory. Focusing on the resurgence of family stories in fiction, autobiography and in film, this study challenges the institutional boundaries of Germany's memory culture that have guided and arguably limited German identity debates. Essays on contemporary German literature are complemented by explorations of heritage films and museum discourse. Together these essays put forward a compelling theory of family narratives and a critical evaluation of generational discourse.

In Media, Modernity and the Dynamic Plant, Janet Janzen traces the motif of the “dynamic plant” through early 20th century German culture. In examples from film and literature, she demonstrates a shift in the perception of plants to living beings.

In Ecocritical Explorations, Patrick D. Murphy explores environmental literature and environmental cultural issues through both theoretical and applied criticism. He engages with the concepts of referentiality, simplicity, the nation state, and virtual reality in the first section of the book, and then goes on to interrogate these issues in contemporary environmental literature, both American and international. He concludes his argument with a discussion of the larger frames of family dynamics and un-natural disasters, such as hurricanes and global warming, ending with a chapter on the integration of scholarship and pedagogy in the classroom, with reference to his own teaching experiences. Murphy's study provides a wide ranging discussion of contemporary literature and cultural phenomena through the lens of ecological literary criticism, giving attention to both theoretical issues and applied critiques. In particular, he looks at popular literary genres, such as mystery and science fiction, as well as actual disasters and disaster scenarios. Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies is a timely contribution to ecological literary criticism and an insightful look into how we represent our relationship with the environment.

Departing from the recent critical literature on the emergence of a new German Jewry, this volume proposes a new perspective on the post-1980s phenomenon of re-emerging Jewish culture in Germany as a case study for wider developments in Europe and the international context.