Beyond the National: Sarah Khan and the Globalization of German Literature (original) (raw)

2018

This paper argues that German literary studies was, from its inception, an entirely nationalist and nation-building endeavor, perhaps the quintessential nationalist project. Among the discipline's foundational premises are its belief in and commitment to a diversity of culturally individuated national communities (rather than one uniform humanity), a non-hierarchical plurality of vernaculars (rather than classical languages), and historically inflected and culturally expressive aesthetic forms (rather than transhistorically and transregionally valid templates of excellence). Three disciplinary activities of early Germanistik—Germanic historical linguistics, vernacular canon formation, and national literary history—are introduced as key instruments of nationalization. In conclusion, the paper claims that contemporary German Studies in the US, thankfully a reflective and critical enterprise, nonetheless remains institutionally completely dependent on the paradigm of the linguistically and culturally defined nation.

Cosmopolitical and Transnational Interventions in German Studies

Transit, 2011

Academic disciplines develop, reform, and redefine themselves through critical innovations and interventions. Especially in the case of disciplines based in the humanities and social sciences, the impact of historical forces on the political present and future of the very subjects of inquiry-individuals, societies, cultural practices, institutions, and the plethora of aesthetic expressions, including art, architecture, cinema, literature, performative traditions, and more recently, digital and internet-based media-shapes and informs disciplinary practices and agendas. No unique "-ism," no singular practitioner/scholar, no specific "school of thought," no thematically unified bibliography, no singular "turn" (linguistic, cultural, historical, spatial, ethical, material-the list goes on!) indeed no fashionable "trend" ever gains ultimate, absolute, and therefore impenetrable dominance in the life of an academic discipline. The significance of a particular mode of critical thought within a discipline at a given point in history is in fact a manifestation of that specific discipline's dialogue with the historical and political realities in which it exists, which it in turn attempts to understand, analyze, critique, and influence. The existence of an academic discipline, in other words, is a function of its geo-political inhabitance. And in order to pursue such existence, rather than merely to assure it (for better or worse), it is imperative for the practitioners of a discipline to identify hitherto unexamined, under-represented, or under-discussed themes, issues, and texts, and/or to revisit those that have been frequently examined, well discussed and perhaps even over-represented, in order to revamp and reshape the theoretical underpinnings of the modes of inquiry that have been pursued. To be sure, innovation in academic disciplines cannot be identical to the corporate model of "new, improved, and (therefore) better!" In fact, what distinguishes academic/scholarly inquiry in fields such as the humanities and social sciences from other modes of innovation is not so much the ability to constantly generate a new product, a new theory, or a "new light fixture" that sheds the proverbial "new light" on a problem, but the courage to question and critique the perceived "newness" of a mode of inquiry through a constant engagement with the old, the past, the historical in the process of reshaping, redefining, indeed re-determining the new, the present, the contemporary. The essays collected in this Special Topic, "Cosmopolitical and Transnational Interventions in German Studies," attest to the truth of these observations in many ways. As editors, we see it as our role to serve as moderators and facilitators of a multidirectional dialogue (a poly-logue if you will), a collaborative thought process that began at the 49 th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association (Oakland, October 2010). 1 These essays represent a continuation of this conversation. They offer for consideration a set of theoretical approaches and strategies that position "German-speaking nations" (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), as geo-political units and as cultural-linguistic spaces, on the multidirectional itineraries of migration of human beings and ideas, focused on, but not limited to, the labor migration to Germany in the second half of the twentieth century. However, locating a nation or a set of nations on the criss-crossing itineraries of migration can hardly augment the "transnational" or "cosmopolitical" dimensions-to be explained shortly-of interventions if the linguistic qualifier itself is not subject to reasoned scrutiny. Germanistik as a discipline specific to studies of literature and cultures of German-speaking countries was a widely accepted 1 https://www.thegsa.org/conferences/2010/index.asp (accessed May 27, 2011). The interdisciplinary series of panels "Cosmopolitical and Transnational Interventions" consisted of six panels with a total of twenty-two presentations. The panels were organized under the following rubrics:

UC Berkeley TRANSIT Title Cosmopolitical and Transnational Interventions in German Studies Publication Date

2010

Thirtieth Annual Bibliography 2016 (Contemporary German Literature Collection)

2017

The Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature was founded in 1984 at Washington University in St. Louis by Paul Michael Lützeler, Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities. The Center promotes teaching and research of modern German literature through the University Libraries' Contemporary German Literature Collection. The largest of its kind in North America, this distinctive collection of monographs and literary journals is housed in the John M. Olin Library on level B in the call number range PT2660-PT2728. Collection materials are made available to scholars at other universities via interlibrary loan. In addition, the Collection can be utilized in person. Each year, Washington University's Germanic Languages and Literatures Department, in cooperation with the University Libraries, compiles a bibliography of items added the previous year. Organized by author or editor, entries include local call numbers as well as subject and genre descriptors. Additional information, including links to summaries and reviews, can be found in the Libraries' Catalog (http://catalog.wustl.edu). Current and past issues of the bibliography are available at http://german.wustl.edu/kade/bibliography.

German Studies.pdf

While German scholars dominated the field in the 19 th century and continued well into the 20 th -even after World War II -, scholars from other nations were also busy building on the ground-breaking efforts of their German colleagues and, beyond that, establishing their own identities and approaches which came into full fruition, in the United States, especially, in the last quarter of the 20 th century and the first years of the 21 st . This essay will concentrate on the development of the field in Germany and, to a lesser extent in the United States, Great Britain and France.

Beyond the National: Sarah Khan and the Globalization of German Literature (original) (raw)

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