Carol Poore Books

Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture covers the entire scope of Germany's most tragic and tumultuous century--from the Weimar Republic to the current administration--revealing how central the notion of disability is to modern German cultural history. By examining a wide range of literary and visual depictions of disability, Carol Poore explores the contradictions of a nation renowned for its social services programs yet notorious for its history of compulsory sterilization and eugenic dogma. This comprehensive volume focuses particular attention on the horrors of the Nazi era, when those with disabilities were considered "unworthy of life," but also investigates other previously overlooked topics including the exile community's response to disability, socialism and disability in East Germany, current bioethical debates, and the rise and gains of Germany's disability rights movement. Richly illustrated, wide-ranging, and accessible, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture gives all those interested in disability studies, German studies, visual culture, Nazi history, and bioethics the opportunity to explore controversial questions of individuality, normalcy, citizenship, and morality. Carol Poore is Professor of German Studies at Brown University. She is also author of The Bonds of Labor: German Journeys to the Working World, 1890-1990 and German-American Socialist Literature, 1865-1900

"The Bonds of Labor is a book that augments both historical studies of class relations and the labor movement as well as literary studies of German themes and images by exploring the cultural history of responses to social inequities. This literary exploration of the industrial world will be important reading for scholars and students of German cultural and social history, German literature, and labor studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

It is generally unrecognized that German socialist immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century produced a large body of original literature (poetry, drama, fiction) and established a flourishing network of newspapers, theaters and other cultural organizations aimed at the large number of German-speaking workers in the United States. Based on extensive research in archives, this study presents the first comprehensive analysis of German-American socialist literature and culture, placing it within the context of both the German Social Democratic Party and the American labor movement, and focusing on modes of reception, the development of literary forms, the function of alternative perceptions of culture, and the relevance which this progressive heritage has today.