Rereading Monika Maron

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the writing of Monika Maron. Her biography charts a complex relationship with the GDR state, from initial ideological identification to sustained, radical rejection. Situating its reflections on her work against the backdrop of a changing critical landscape, this analysis takes account of the re-contextualisation of her writing necessitated by the collapse of the GDR. The author charts the development of a number of seminal themes in Maron's oeuvre. The search for an authentic form of expression in her earliest texts gave way to a focus on the writing and the rewriting of history. The demise of the political system in 1989 led to an exploration in her work of more intimate themes. Maron's post-Wende writing makes an important East German contribution to debates on memory transmission and generational forgetting. Her most recent novels are concerned with the rupture and the ultimate refashioning of biographies in a post-GDR age. Rereading her texts in a post-Wende light, the author explores the complexity of Maron's relationship with the state from which she emerged and demonstrates how this complexity manifests itself in her writing before and after 1989. This study offers new perspectives on Maron's work and illuminates the significance of her contribution to contemporary German literature.

The first volume in English about the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a cultural phenomenon, with essays by leading scholars providing a chronological and genre-based overview along with close readings of individual works. It addresses the history and context of GDR culture, including the two decades since its decline.

In his testimony on his survival in Auschwitz Primo Levi said "our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man". If language, if any language, lacks the words to express the experience of the concentration camps, how does one write the unspeakable? How can it then be translated? The limits of representation and translation seem to be closely linked when it comes to writing about the Holocaust – whether as fiction, memoir, testimony – a phenomenon the current study examines. While there is a spate of literature about the impossibility to represent the Holocaust , not much has been written on the links between translation in its specific linguistic sense, translation studies, and the Holocaust, a niche this volume aims to fill.

In diesem Band werden zum ersten Mal die Ansichten von 12 Forschern zum Œuvre der Berliner Autorin Monika Maron (1941) zusammengebracht. Die Beiträge entstanden im Rahmen eines internationalen Symposiums anlässlich des 60. Geburtstages der Autorin, das Ende März 2001 an der Universität Gent stattgefunden hat. Junge wie etablierte Wissenschaftler haben Einzelanalysen und Übersichtsartikel verfasst, die zusammen das gesamte Œuvre von Flugasche bis Pawels Briefe umspannen und zugleich einen Ausblick auf die Zukunft ermöglichen. Die gemeinsame ‘dialogische’ Ausrichtung der präsentierten Einblicke äußert sich darin, dass jeweils mit eigener Akzentsetzung die Grenzen des Textes nach außen hin überschritten werden. Dabei werden nicht nur die vielfältigen Wechselwirkungen zwischen Text und Zeit, sondern auch die bisher viel weniger thematisierte Bedeutung anderer Texte sowie die diversen Arten der Rezeption untersucht. Methodologisch reichen die Ansätze von der traditionellen Hermeneutik über historische Fragestellungen, Diskursanalyse und Rezeptionstheorie bis hin zu Überlegungen zur Ethik der Ästhetik. Eine umfangreiche Bibliographie, in der eine möglichst umfassende Übersicht über Verbreitung und Rezeption von Marons Werken geboten wird, schließt den Band ab. Monika Maron in Perspective dokumentiert so, in den Beiträgen wie in der Bibliographie, den heutigen Stand der Forschung und liefert zudem zahlreiche Impulse zu einer weiteren Auseinandersetzung mit dem Werk.

This volume introduces ten emerging voices in German-language literature by women. Their texts speak to the diverse modalities of transition that characterise society and culture in the twenty-first century, such as the adaptation to evolving political and social conditions in a newly united Germany; globalisation, the dissolution of borders, and the changing face of Europe; dramatic shifts in the meaning of national, ethnic, sexual, gender, religious, and class identities; rapid technological advancement and the revolutionary power of new media, which in turn have radically altered the connections between public and private, personal and political. In their literature, the authors presented here reflect on the notion of transition and offer some unique interventions on its meaning in the contemporary era.

Reconsidering the German tendency to define itself vis-à-vis an eastern Other in light of fresh debate regarding the Second World War, this volume and the cultural products it considers expose and question Germany's relationship with its imagined East.

Why did so many citizens of the GDR agree to collaborate with the Stasi? Reading works of literature since German unification in the light of previously unseen files from the archives of the Stasi, After the Stasi uncovers how writers to the present day have explored collaboration as a challenge to the sovereignty of subjectivity. Annie Ring here interweaves close analysis of literary fiction and life-writing by former Stasi spies and victims with documents from the archive, new readings from literary modernism and cultural theories of the self. In its pursuit of the strange power of the Stasi, the book introduces an archetypal character in the writing of German unification: one who is not sovereign over her or his actions, but instead is compelled by an imperative to collaborate – an imperative that persists in new forms in the post-Cold War age. Ring's study identifies a monumental historical shift after 1989, from a collaboration that took place in concert with others, in a manner that could be recorded in the archive, to the more isolated and ultimately less accountable complicities of the capitalist present. While considering this shift in the most recent texts by East German writers, Ring provocatively suggests that their accounts of collaboration under the Stasi, and of the less-than-sovereign subjectivity to which it attests, remain urgent for understanding the complicities to which we continue to consent in the present day.

Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies is a collection of essays by Canadian and international scholars on the topic of why and how the curriculum for post-secondary German studies should evolve. Its twenty chapters, written by international experts in the field of German as a foreign or second language, explore new perspectives on and orientations in the curriculum. In light of shifts in the linguistic and intercultural needs of today’s global citizens, these scholars in German studies question the foundations and motivations of common curriculum goals, traditional program content, standard syllabus design, and long-standing classroom practice. Several chapters draw on a range of contemporary theories—from critical applied linguistics, second-language acquisition, curriculum theory, and cultural studies—to propose and encourage new curriculum thinking and reflective practice related to the translingual and cross-cultural subjectivities of speakers, learners, and teachers of German. Other chapters describe and analyze specific examples of emerging trends in curriculum practice for learners as users of German. This volume will be invaluable to university and college faculty working in the discipline of German studies as well as in other modern languages and second-language education in general. Its combination of theoretical and descriptive explorations will help readers develop a critical awareness and understanding of curriculum for teaching German and to implement new approaches in the interests of their students.