Anke Biendarra | University of California, Irvine (original) (raw)
Books by Anke Biendarra
How do we as scholars envision Europe? Participants in a two-day research symposium bring a varie... more How do we as scholars envision Europe? Participants in a two-day research symposium bring a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary responses to this complex question. Distinguished US scholars address the European continent, its history and culture, and its politics in essays that range from the intellectual
tradition to poetics and world literature, from the air war to plurilingualism, from religious symbolism to Europe’s colonial legacy. These contributions comprise a portrait or vision of Europe today; the challenges it faces, and the challenges we face in confronting it as a cultural and geopolitical entity.
"
Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness b... more Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness between contemporary German literature and globalization. In an interdisciplinary framework and through detailed readings of a wide variety of texts, the study shows how the challenges globalization has posed for Germany over the last two decades have been manifested and reimagined in aesthetic production. Analyses of the literary marketplace and public debates illuminate the more material sides of this development. The study also analyzes the ways in which German-language writers born between 1955 and 1975, such as Chr. Kracht, Th. Meinecke, J. Hermann, S. Berg, F. Illies, K. Röggla, J. v. Düffel, and G. Hens, respond to the pressures of globalizing factors, and how these have influenced notions of authorship and literary aesthetics. It shows how narratives dealing with the neoliberal work world, global travel, and the aftermath of 09/11 implicitly comment on contemporary debates on globalization, its socio-economic nature, and the impact for local culture. By presenting a literary history of the present, Germans Going Global deepens the reader’s understanding of contemporary Germany and its cultural production.
Papers by Anke Biendarra
Orbis Litterarum, Feb 1, 2006
Skip to Main Content. ...
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
Transit, Jun 22, 2007
The following interview was conducted in Berlin on September 11, 2007. Terézia Mora and I met at ... more The following interview was conducted in Berlin on September 11, 2007. Terézia Mora and I met at her newly established workspace in Prenzlauer Berg, in a quiet, nicely renovated Hinterhaus. The signs of Mora's recent move were still visible in the unpacked boxes and the general emptiness of the space. We talked for about ninety minutes about her biography, her work as a translator, and her own writing. The date of the meeting was coincidental, yet 09/11 did come up during the discussion, as an example that illustrates how the roles of authors as public intellectuals are being renegotiated in a younger generation of writers. My travel to Berlin and several author interviews there were made possible by a faculty research
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness b... more Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness between contemporary German literature and globalization. In an interdisciplinary framework and through detailed readings of a wide variety of texts, the study shows how the challenges globalization has posed for Germany over the last two decades have been manifested and reimagined in aesthetic production. Analyses of the literary marketplace and public debates illuminate the more material sides of this development. The study also analyzes the ways in which German-language writers born between 1955 and 1975, such as Chr. Kracht, Th. Meinecke, J. Hermann, S. Berg, F. Illies, K. Röggla, J. v. Düffel, and G. Hens, respond to the pressures of globalizing factors, and how these have influenced notions of authorship and literary aesthetics. It shows how narratives dealing with the neoliberal work world, global travel, and the aftermath of 09/11 implicitly comment on contemporary debates on globalization, its socio-economic nature, and the impact for local culture. By presenting a literary history of the present, Germans Going Global deepens the reader’s understanding of contemporary Germany and its cultural production.
German Life and Letters, Apr 1, 2002
Faserland (1995) exemplifies a new phenomenon in contemporary German literature. It cleared the w... more Faserland (1995) exemplifies a new phenomenon in contemporary German literature. It cleared the way for a younger generation of writers and their description of the formerly marginalised experiences of everyday life, whose narratives focus is on the communication between narrator and reader. Hitherto, discussion of this novel has largely concentrated on its connection with ‘pop literature’, whilst its literary qualities and conceivable links with (post)modern literature have been ignored. Walter Benjamin's typology of the flâneur is used to illuminate the novel's aesthetic strengths, its narrative voice and textual structure. In taking into account historical developments, the interpretation characterizes the narrator as a ‘popmodern flâneur’, whose gaze no longer falls upon the metropolis but upon a frayed microcosm of German society. It suggests that the narrative report is a fictitious and imagined journey, which reveals itself as the narrator's failed attempt to ascertain a concept of subjectivity. In a world that presents itself as a Vanity Fair, the narrator's language, which retreats to the empty style of a world of commodities, fails. The poetic project of mastering experiences through narrative is equally unsuccessful.
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
The German Quarterly, Jul 1, 2006
Bridge, Helen. Women's Writing and Historiography in the GDR. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. ... more Bridge, Helen. Women's Writing and Historiography in the GDR. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. 280pp. $74.00 hardcover. Fifteen years after German unification, the evaluation of the social and political role of GDR writers remains a challenging endeavor for scholars in German literature. Helen Bridge's monograph, a revised version of the author's dissertation, makes an original contribution to the scholarship on the GDR's cultural history. Situated at the crossroads of literary history, historiography, and women's studies, Bridge's aim is to illuminate the complex intertwinement between the discourses of literature, literary criticism, and history in the GDR. While all operated within the boundaries of official state policy, Bridge shows how literature from the 1970s on was more successful in challenging the ideological party lines of Marxist socialism than historiography. The author deliberately operates within a narrow definition of GDR literature, limiting herself to texts that were both written and published within its political entity and its concise historical and geographical boundaries. She does so by analyzing a multitude of fictional and non-fictional texts by well-known writers such as Christa Wolf and Irmtraud Morgner as well as more marginalized GDR women writers who deserve greater attention. Bridge's focus on female aesthetics is grounded in her assertion that GDR women's writing transformed approaches to history in the 1970s and 1980s. While responding to the social and political reality, their writing simultaneously reconfigured the discourses linked to it. To ascertain the scope of their impact, Bridge combines analyses on three different topics that previous scholarship had analyzed separately: literary representations of the Nazi past, biographical fiction, and mythical themes. Thus, she shows in the first chapter how women writers-her main examples are Wolf's Kindheitsmuster and Helga Schutz's Jette/Julia novels-introduced new perspectives on the female experience of fascism, thereby challenging the foundational narrative of antifascism in the GDR. The second chapter is concerned with biographical fictions about women, among others Sigrid Damm's Begegnung mit Caroline and Cornelia Goethe, Renate Feyl's Der lautlose Aufbruch, as well as Wolf's "Der Schatten eines Traumes" and Kein Ort. Nirgends. In her third chapter, Bridge treats fantastic approaches to history, concentrating mainly on Wolf's Kassandra and Morgner's novels Trohadora Beatrix and Amanda. She offers detailed readings on all these texts and serves the reader well with her insightful analyses and exhaustive consideration of existing scholarship. …
Die folgenden Interviews mit Durs Grünbein und Ingo Schulze sind im Rahmen einer Reihe von Verans... more Die folgenden Interviews mit Durs Grünbein und Ingo Schulze sind im Rahmen einer Reihe von Veranstaltungen anlässlich eines vom Goethe-Institut gemeinsam mit dem Literarischen Colloquium Berlin organisierten Schriftstelleraustauschs Berlin/Seattle geführt worden. Im Oktober 1998 kamen vier deutsche Schriftsteller (Marcel Beyer, Felicitas Hoppe, Durs Grünbein und Ingo Schulze) eine Woche lang nach Seattle, um aus ihren Werken zu lesen, amerikanische Schriftsteller kennenzulernen, an einem Universitätsseminar über deutsche Literatur nach der Wende teilzunehmen, und gemeinsam mit Wissenschaftlern aus Nachbardisziplinen auf einer Podiumsdiskussion über die Bedingungen zeitgenössischen Schreibens in der Bundesrepublik zu diskutieren. Der Gegenbesuch einiger Schriftsteller aus dem Pazifischen Nordwesten in Berlin wird im Frühjahr 1999 erfolgen. Das Interview wurde am 20. Oktober 1998 geführt. Sabine Wilke: Sind Ihre Texte auf Englisch übersetzt worden? Durs Grünbein: Grand Street hat ein paar Texte ins Englische übersetzt. Da ist auch eine Geschichte von Ingo Schulze abgedruckt. Wilke: Wir haben im Seminar Falten und Fallen, besonders "Mensch ohne Grosshirn," eingehend besprochen. Woher haben Sie das Material dazu genommen? Grünbein: Dieser Vorspruch ist von mir, aber das geht deutlich auf einen authentischen Fall zurück. Es gibt diesen Mann wohl noch: der lebt in Holland und hat in einem kleinen Verlag eine Broschüre herausgegeben. Mir hat einmal ein holländischer Freund gesagt, dass er ihn jahrelang in der Fussgängerzone in Amsterdam mit seinen Broschüren hat stehen sehen. Das war so ein Erweckungserlebnis. Diese "Freaks" gibt es hier in den USA ja auch, etwa Timothy Leary. Anke Biendarra: Ist der Vorspruch ein Zitat aus einer dieser Broschüren? Grünbein: Nein. Den Vorspruch habe ich zur Erläuterung geschrieben. Wilke: Was hat Sie an diesem Fall interessiert?
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
Peter Lang eBooks, Jul 11, 2016
The German Quarterly, 2018
How do we as scholars envision Europe? Participants in a two-day research symposium bring a varie... more How do we as scholars envision Europe? Participants in a two-day research symposium bring a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary responses to this complex question. Distinguished US scholars address the European continent, its history and culture, and its politics in essays that range from the intellectual
tradition to poetics and world literature, from the air war to plurilingualism, from religious symbolism to Europe’s colonial legacy. These contributions comprise a portrait or vision of Europe today; the challenges it faces, and the challenges we face in confronting it as a cultural and geopolitical entity.
"
Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness b... more Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness between contemporary German literature and globalization. In an interdisciplinary framework and through detailed readings of a wide variety of texts, the study shows how the challenges globalization has posed for Germany over the last two decades have been manifested and reimagined in aesthetic production. Analyses of the literary marketplace and public debates illuminate the more material sides of this development. The study also analyzes the ways in which German-language writers born between 1955 and 1975, such as Chr. Kracht, Th. Meinecke, J. Hermann, S. Berg, F. Illies, K. Röggla, J. v. Düffel, and G. Hens, respond to the pressures of globalizing factors, and how these have influenced notions of authorship and literary aesthetics. It shows how narratives dealing with the neoliberal work world, global travel, and the aftermath of 09/11 implicitly comment on contemporary debates on globalization, its socio-economic nature, and the impact for local culture. By presenting a literary history of the present, Germans Going Global deepens the reader’s understanding of contemporary Germany and its cultural production.
Orbis Litterarum, Feb 1, 2006
Skip to Main Content. ...
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
Transit, Jun 22, 2007
The following interview was conducted in Berlin on September 11, 2007. Terézia Mora and I met at ... more The following interview was conducted in Berlin on September 11, 2007. Terézia Mora and I met at her newly established workspace in Prenzlauer Berg, in a quiet, nicely renovated Hinterhaus. The signs of Mora's recent move were still visible in the unpacked boxes and the general emptiness of the space. We talked for about ninety minutes about her biography, her work as a translator, and her own writing. The date of the meeting was coincidental, yet 09/11 did come up during the discussion, as an example that illustrates how the roles of authors as public intellectuals are being renegotiated in a younger generation of writers. My travel to Berlin and several author interviews there were made possible by a faculty research
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness b... more Germans Going Global is the first monograph in English to address in depth the interrelatedness between contemporary German literature and globalization. In an interdisciplinary framework and through detailed readings of a wide variety of texts, the study shows how the challenges globalization has posed for Germany over the last two decades have been manifested and reimagined in aesthetic production. Analyses of the literary marketplace and public debates illuminate the more material sides of this development. The study also analyzes the ways in which German-language writers born between 1955 and 1975, such as Chr. Kracht, Th. Meinecke, J. Hermann, S. Berg, F. Illies, K. Röggla, J. v. Düffel, and G. Hens, respond to the pressures of globalizing factors, and how these have influenced notions of authorship and literary aesthetics. It shows how narratives dealing with the neoliberal work world, global travel, and the aftermath of 09/11 implicitly comment on contemporary debates on globalization, its socio-economic nature, and the impact for local culture. By presenting a literary history of the present, Germans Going Global deepens the reader’s understanding of contemporary Germany and its cultural production.
German Life and Letters, Apr 1, 2002
Faserland (1995) exemplifies a new phenomenon in contemporary German literature. It cleared the w... more Faserland (1995) exemplifies a new phenomenon in contemporary German literature. It cleared the way for a younger generation of writers and their description of the formerly marginalised experiences of everyday life, whose narratives focus is on the communication between narrator and reader. Hitherto, discussion of this novel has largely concentrated on its connection with ‘pop literature’, whilst its literary qualities and conceivable links with (post)modern literature have been ignored. Walter Benjamin's typology of the flâneur is used to illuminate the novel's aesthetic strengths, its narrative voice and textual structure. In taking into account historical developments, the interpretation characterizes the narrator as a ‘popmodern flâneur’, whose gaze no longer falls upon the metropolis but upon a frayed microcosm of German society. It suggests that the narrative report is a fictitious and imagined journey, which reveals itself as the narrator's failed attempt to ascertain a concept of subjectivity. In a world that presents itself as a Vanity Fair, the narrator's language, which retreats to the empty style of a world of commodities, fails. The poetic project of mastering experiences through narrative is equally unsuccessful.
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
The German Quarterly, Jul 1, 2006
Bridge, Helen. Women's Writing and Historiography in the GDR. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. ... more Bridge, Helen. Women's Writing and Historiography in the GDR. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. 280pp. $74.00 hardcover. Fifteen years after German unification, the evaluation of the social and political role of GDR writers remains a challenging endeavor for scholars in German literature. Helen Bridge's monograph, a revised version of the author's dissertation, makes an original contribution to the scholarship on the GDR's cultural history. Situated at the crossroads of literary history, historiography, and women's studies, Bridge's aim is to illuminate the complex intertwinement between the discourses of literature, literary criticism, and history in the GDR. While all operated within the boundaries of official state policy, Bridge shows how literature from the 1970s on was more successful in challenging the ideological party lines of Marxist socialism than historiography. The author deliberately operates within a narrow definition of GDR literature, limiting herself to texts that were both written and published within its political entity and its concise historical and geographical boundaries. She does so by analyzing a multitude of fictional and non-fictional texts by well-known writers such as Christa Wolf and Irmtraud Morgner as well as more marginalized GDR women writers who deserve greater attention. Bridge's focus on female aesthetics is grounded in her assertion that GDR women's writing transformed approaches to history in the 1970s and 1980s. While responding to the social and political reality, their writing simultaneously reconfigured the discourses linked to it. To ascertain the scope of their impact, Bridge combines analyses on three different topics that previous scholarship had analyzed separately: literary representations of the Nazi past, biographical fiction, and mythical themes. Thus, she shows in the first chapter how women writers-her main examples are Wolf's Kindheitsmuster and Helga Schutz's Jette/Julia novels-introduced new perspectives on the female experience of fascism, thereby challenging the foundational narrative of antifascism in the GDR. The second chapter is concerned with biographical fictions about women, among others Sigrid Damm's Begegnung mit Caroline and Cornelia Goethe, Renate Feyl's Der lautlose Aufbruch, as well as Wolf's "Der Schatten eines Traumes" and Kein Ort. Nirgends. In her third chapter, Bridge treats fantastic approaches to history, concentrating mainly on Wolf's Kassandra and Morgner's novels Trohadora Beatrix and Amanda. She offers detailed readings on all these texts and serves the reader well with her insightful analyses and exhaustive consideration of existing scholarship. …
Die folgenden Interviews mit Durs Grünbein und Ingo Schulze sind im Rahmen einer Reihe von Verans... more Die folgenden Interviews mit Durs Grünbein und Ingo Schulze sind im Rahmen einer Reihe von Veranstaltungen anlässlich eines vom Goethe-Institut gemeinsam mit dem Literarischen Colloquium Berlin organisierten Schriftstelleraustauschs Berlin/Seattle geführt worden. Im Oktober 1998 kamen vier deutsche Schriftsteller (Marcel Beyer, Felicitas Hoppe, Durs Grünbein und Ingo Schulze) eine Woche lang nach Seattle, um aus ihren Werken zu lesen, amerikanische Schriftsteller kennenzulernen, an einem Universitätsseminar über deutsche Literatur nach der Wende teilzunehmen, und gemeinsam mit Wissenschaftlern aus Nachbardisziplinen auf einer Podiumsdiskussion über die Bedingungen zeitgenössischen Schreibens in der Bundesrepublik zu diskutieren. Der Gegenbesuch einiger Schriftsteller aus dem Pazifischen Nordwesten in Berlin wird im Frühjahr 1999 erfolgen. Das Interview wurde am 20. Oktober 1998 geführt. Sabine Wilke: Sind Ihre Texte auf Englisch übersetzt worden? Durs Grünbein: Grand Street hat ein paar Texte ins Englische übersetzt. Da ist auch eine Geschichte von Ingo Schulze abgedruckt. Wilke: Wir haben im Seminar Falten und Fallen, besonders "Mensch ohne Grosshirn," eingehend besprochen. Woher haben Sie das Material dazu genommen? Grünbein: Dieser Vorspruch ist von mir, aber das geht deutlich auf einen authentischen Fall zurück. Es gibt diesen Mann wohl noch: der lebt in Holland und hat in einem kleinen Verlag eine Broschüre herausgegeben. Mir hat einmal ein holländischer Freund gesagt, dass er ihn jahrelang in der Fussgängerzone in Amsterdam mit seinen Broschüren hat stehen sehen. Das war so ein Erweckungserlebnis. Diese "Freaks" gibt es hier in den USA ja auch, etwa Timothy Leary. Anke Biendarra: Ist der Vorspruch ein Zitat aus einer dieser Broschüren? Grünbein: Nein. Den Vorspruch habe ich zur Erläuterung geschrieben. Wilke: Was hat Sie an diesem Fall interessiert?
De Gruyter eBooks, Oct 12, 2012
Peter Lang eBooks, Jul 11, 2016
The German Quarterly, 2018
German Studies Review, 2014
This article describes why the Polish government has pushed for an invocation to Christian tradit... more This article describes why the Polish government has pushed for an invocation to Christian traditions in the European Union Constitution. It is argued that this is a rather 'unfortunate' outcome of the political alliance between the Catholic Church and the Polish left, especially between President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). This alliance allowed the SLD to legitimize their rule in the post-socialist Poland, and it was a result of a political competition between them and the post-Solidarność elites. As a result, John Paul II became the central integrative metaphor for the Polish society at large, which brought back in the marginalized as well as allowed the transition establishment to win the EU accession referendum in 2003. The article (which was written when Leszek Miller was still Prime Minister) demonstrates how this alliance crystallized and presents various elements of the cult of the Pope in Poland that followed. Finally, it argues that the worship of the Pope is not an example of nationalism, but of populism, understood not as a peripheral but as a central political force, and advocates for more research on the 'politics of emotions' at work in the centers and not in peripheries.
Wahrheit und Täuschung. Beiträge zum Werk Jenny Erpenbecks. Eds. Friedhelm Marx and Julia Schoell. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2014.
Wahrheit und Täuschung. Beiträge zum Werk Jenny Erpenbecks. Eds. Friedhelm Marx and Julia Schoell. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014.
Visions of Europe: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Contemporary Cultural Debates. Eds. Anke S. Biendarra and Gail K. Hart. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014
Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century. Eds. Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner., 2011
Globalisierung und Gegenwartsliteratur. Konstellationen – Konzepte – Perspektiven, 2010
Der Vereinigungsschock – Zehn Jahre danach. Eds. Wolfgang Schluchter and Peter Quint, 2001
Anke Biendarra führte dieses Gespräch mit Thomas Meinecke am 28. Oktober 2006 in Cincinnati (USA).
Antje Rávic Strubel ist eine der erfolgreichsten deutschen Schriftstellerinnen der jüngeren Gener... more Antje Rávic Strubel ist eine der erfolgreichsten deutschen Schriftstellerinnen der jüngeren Generation. Sie wurde 1974 in Potsdam geboren und wuchs südlich von Berlin in Ludwigsfelde auf. Nach dem Abitur machte sie eine Ausbildung zur Buchhändlerin, bevor sie in Potsdam und New York Literaturwissenschaften, Amerikanistik und Psychologie studierte. In schneller Abfolge publizierte sie die Bücher Offene Blende (2001), Unter Schnee (2001), Fremd Gehen. Ein Nachtstück (2002) und Tupolew 134 (2004). Letzteres wurde von der Kritik als Roman gefeiert, den man lesen müsse, um das Leben in der DDR in den 70er Jahren zu verstehen (Christoph Bartmann, SZ). Für Tupolew 134 erhielt Strubel den Förderpreis des Bremer Literaturpreises und den Marbacher Literaturpreis. Im letzten Jahr veröffentlichte Strubel den Roman Kältere Schichten der Luft (2007), für den sie ebenfalls mehrere bedeutende Preise erhielt. Ebenfalls erschien Vom Dorf (2007), eine Sammlung schräger Weihnachtsgeschichten und Gebrauchsanweisung für Schweden (2008), ein unkonventioneller Reiseführer.
Neben ihren vielfältigen literarischen und journalistischen Arbeiten beschäftigt Antje Strubel sich mit Literaturübersetzungen. 2007 publizierte sie die deutsche Übersetzung von Didions gefeiertem Das Jahr des magischen Denkens; dieser Tage erscheint der Prosaband Wir erzählen uns Geschichten, um zu leben.
Antje Rávic Strubel lebt in Potsdam, wo am 14. September 2007 auch das folgende Gespräch stattfand.
A conversation with the author Terézia Mora. The following interview was conducted in Berlin on S... more A conversation with the author Terézia Mora. The following interview was conducted in Berlin on September 11, 2007.
Gregor Hens zählt zu den weithin beachteten deutschen Autoren der jüngeren Generation. 1965 in Kö... more Gregor Hens zählt zu den weithin beachteten deutschen Autoren der jüngeren Generation. 1965 in Köln geboren, begann Hens nach dem Abitur ein Studium der Anglistik und Germanistik in Bonn, das er an der University of Missouri, Columbia fortsetzte. Von dort führte ihn der Weg nach Berkeley, wo er 1995 in Sprachwissenschaft promovierte, bevor er eine Stelle an der Ohio State University antrat. Dort ist er seit 2001 ordentlicher Professor der Germanistik. Neben seinen Forschungs- und Lehrtätigkeiten und Übersetzungen ist Hens mit mehreren literarischen Arbeiten hervorgetreten. 2006 erschien sein viertes Buch, der Roman In diesem neuen Licht. Zuvor veröffentlichte er mit großem Erfolg seinen Debüt-Roman Himmelssturz (2002), den Erzählband Transfer Lounge. Deutsch-amerikanische Geschichten (2003), sowie den Roman Matta verlässt seine Kinder (2004). Gregor Hens lebt in Columbus und Berlin, wo am 12. September 2007 auch das folgende Gespräch stattfand.
Ist alles so geblieben, wie es früher war? Essays zu Literatur und Frauenpolitik im vereinten Deutschland. Ed. Sabine Wilke , 2000
New German Review 13, 1997
Gegenwartsliteratur. A German Studies Yearbook 10, 2012
German Quarterly 82.3, 2009
Modern Austrian Literature 40.3, 2007
The Germanic Review 82.1, 2007
Gegenwartsliteratur V, 2006
German Quarterly, Jan 1, 2006
The German Quarterly, Jan 1, 2006