Ansgar Nünning Book order

This volume offers an overview of key concepts and topics in English and American Studies. The contributors cover established areas of research, yet combine these with contemporary terms, methodologies and literary and cultural examples. They offer concrete analyses to demonstrate how to approach texts and cultural artefacts from innovative perspectives and employ conceptual tools and theories that have become central to the field. These include a range of recognized, and growing, research areas and topics: ‘genre theory’, the ‘spatial turn’, narratologies of time and experimental form, ‘poverty studies’, Marxist literary criticism, the New Historicism and many more. Contributions geared towards readers interested in didactics, specifically in how to bring innovative cultural-studies perspectives into language instruction, round out the spectrum of areas the volume covers. The book not only offers insight into current trends in research, but it also provides readers with points of reference within the diverse offerings and directions that comprise English and American Studies. It aims to assist students in their independent work – for instance, in the preparation of exam topics, term papers and final theses – and to motivate young scholars in choosing and developing research questions and interests to pursue within their academic careers.

At times of crisis and revolution such as ours, diagnoses of crucial junctures and ruptures – ‘turning points’ – in the continuous flow of history are more prevalent than ever. Analysing literary, cinematic and other narratives, the volume seeks to understand the meanings conveyed by different concepts of turning points, the alternative concepts to which they are opposed when used to explain historical change, and those contexts in which they are unmasked as false and over-simplifying constructions. Literature and film in particular stress the importance of turning points as a sensemaking device (as part of a character’s or a community’s cultural memory), while at the same time unfolding the constructive and hence relative character of turning points. Offering complex reflections on the notion of turning points, literary and filmic narratives are thus of particular interest to the present volume.

This volume explores the aesthetic and political dimensions of cultural worldmaking, i. e. the cultural contexts and functions of processes of symbolization, and the power relations this implicates. Focussing on the aesthetic practices and politics of worldmaking, the contributions illustrate that an alliance between theories of symbol systems and the study of literature, culture and media is an important force in literary and cultural studies. Such an alliance opens up productive new possibilities for the analysis of both the relation between aesthetic ways of worldmaking and their cultural contexts, and the epistemological, historical, and cultural dimensions of symbol systems. The essays showcase innovative discussions of the diverse media that are employed to create the worlds that we regard as reality and examine how ways of worldmaking respond to conflicting interests, needs and norms. Moreover, the contributions to the volume shed new light on the diachronic development of cultural ways of worldmaking and in so doing trace their changing functions.

Sicher im Studium Die Reihe mit dem Grundlagenwissen sämtlicher Teildisziplinen des Studienfachs Anglistik / Amerikanistik Fragestellungen und wissenschaftliche Zusammenhänge des Faches Bietet Orientierung und kompaktes Wissen Einführung in die zentralen Themen und Methoden des Faches und in die englische / amerikanische Literaturgeschichte Für die gezielte und schnelle Vorbereitung auf Hochschulprüfungen übersichtlich und leicht verständlich Zu den Autoren: Vera Nünning ist Professorin für Englische Literaturwissenschaft an der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Ansgar Nünning ist Professor für Englische und Amerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. 

Contents Ansgar Nünning & Jürgen Schlaeger „Quo vadis, Anglistik?“ Recent Trends in and Challenges for English Studies Bernd Kortmann English Linguistics Today – Its Current Situation and Future Perspectives Ursula Lenker & Hans Sauer English Historical Linguistics in the German-Speaking Countries: Continuations and New Departures Andrew James Johnston The Crisis of Medieval English Studies in Germany: Problems and Perspectives Andreas Höfele Wallflower or Gold Standard? Shakespeare Studies in Germany Doris Feldmann Beyond Difference? Recent Developments in Postcolonial and Gender Studies Hubert Zapf New Directions in American Literary Studies: Ecocriticism and the Function of Literature as Cultural Ecology Roy Sommer From Cultural Studies to the Study of Culture: Key Concepts and Methods Angela Krewani The Beginning of a Wonderful Friendship? English and Media Studies Thomas Rommel New Directions in Digital Studies Jürgen Schlaeger The Future of English Studies in Europe

Exploring the complex relationship between literature and memory, the volume addresses a theme that over the last two decades has become one of the central issues in literary and cultural studies. Literature is one of the media that play a crucial role in the process of representing and constructing individual and collective memories. Throughout literary history, fictional texts have engaged in a discussion of the implications, the problems, and the purposes of remembering. Literature participates in the processes of shaping collective memories and of subversively undermining culturally dominant memories by establishing counter-memories, which seek to consider, for example, gender-conscious or ethnic perspectives on past events. The 25 articles explore various facets of the relationship between literature and memory from a number of different theoretical vantage points. Particular attention is paid to genre-specific ways of representing and constructing memories.