Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments vii
4. Introduction 1
5. 1: Tableaux of Terror: The Staging of the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 as Cathartic Spectacle 17
6. 2: The French Burn Paris, 1871 35
7. 3: Memory Politics: The Bombing of Hamburg and Dresden 53
8. 4: Observing the Observation of Nuclear Disasters in Alexander Kluge 73
9. 5: Rereading Christa Wolf’s Störfall following the 2011 Fukushima Catastrophe 90
10. 6: Narrating the Untellable: Yoko Tawada and Haruki Murakami as Transnational Translators of Catastrophe 106
11. 7: Beautiful Destructions: The Filmic Aesthetics of Spectacular Catastrophes 124
12. 8: Constellations of Primal Fear in Josef Haslinger’s Phi Phi Island 138
13. 9: Avalanche Catastrophes and Disaster Traditions: Anthropological Perspectives on Coping Strategies in Galtür, Tyrol 155
14. 10: Defining Catastrophes 172
15. Bibliography 191
16. Notes on the Contributors 217
17. Index 221