Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Boydell & Brewer
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Contested Selves
Life Writing and German Culture
-
Edited by:
-
With contributions by:
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2021
About this book
Investigates the field of German life writing, from Rahel Levin Varnhagen around 1800 to Carmen Sylva a century later, from Döblin, Becher, women's WWII diaries, German-Jewish memoirs, and East German women's interview literatureto the autofiction of Lena Gorelik.
In recent decades, life writing has exploded in popularity: memoirs that focus on traumatic experiences now constitute the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide. But life writing is not only highly marketable; it also does important emotional, cultural, and political work. It is more available to amateurs and those without the cultural capital or the self-confidence to embrace more traditional literary forms, and thus gives voice to marginalized populations. Contested Selves investigates various forms of German-language life writing, including memoirs, interviews, letters, diaries, and graphic novels, shedding light on its democratic potential, on its ability to personalize history and historicize the personal. The contributors ask how the various authors construct and negotiate notions of the self relative to sociopolitical contexts, cultural traditions, genre expectations, and narrative norms. They also investigate the nexus of writing, memory, and experience, including the genre's truth claims vis-à-vis the pliability and unreliability of human memories. Finally, they explore ethical questions that arise from intimate life writing and from the representation of "vulnerable subjects" as well as from the interrelation of material body, embodied self, and narrative. All forms of life writing discussed in this volume are invested in a process of making meaning and in an exchange of experience that allows us to relate our lives to the lives of others.
In recent decades, life writing has exploded in popularity: memoirs that focus on traumatic experiences now constitute the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide. But life writing is not only highly marketable; it also does important emotional, cultural, and political work. It is more available to amateurs and those without the cultural capital or the self-confidence to embrace more traditional literary forms, and thus gives voice to marginalized populations. Contested Selves investigates various forms of German-language life writing, including memoirs, interviews, letters, diaries, and graphic novels, shedding light on its democratic potential, on its ability to personalize history and historicize the personal. The contributors ask how the various authors construct and negotiate notions of the self relative to sociopolitical contexts, cultural traditions, genre expectations, and narrative norms. They also investigate the nexus of writing, memory, and experience, including the genre's truth claims vis-à-vis the pliability and unreliability of human memories. Finally, they explore ethical questions that arise from intimate life writing and from the representation of "vulnerable subjects" as well as from the interrelation of material body, embodied self, and narrative. All forms of life writing discussed in this volume are invested in a process of making meaning and in an exchange of experience that allows us to relate our lives to the lives of others.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Katja Herges
KATJA HERGES is a physician and holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Davis.
---
Contributor: Elisabeth Krimmer
ELISABETH KRIMMER is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis.
---
Contributor: Laura Deiulio
LAURA DEIULIO is Associate Professor of German at Christopher Newport University, VA.
---
Contributor: Katra A. Byram
KATRA A. BYRAM is Associate Professor of German at Ohio State University.
---
Contributor: Maureen Burdock
MAUREEN BURDOCK is a graphic storyteller, writer, and illustrator with dual master's degrees from the California School of the Arts and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of California, Davis.
---
Contributor: Aylin Bademsoy
Aylin Bademsoy is a PhD candidate in the German Department at UC Davis.
Reviews
The contributions to Contested Selves demonstrate most impressively that there is a strong nexus between life writing and politics. Neither politics nor life writing nor the nexus between the two will vanish any time soon; it is to be hoped that books such as Contested Selves will continue to shed light on them.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
v -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
vii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction
1 - Part I. Women’s Life Writing, Female Subjectivity and Agency
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1: “A Portrait of the Moment”: Rahel Levin Varnhagen’s Letters at the Boundary of Life Writing
31 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2: A Force of Nature: Narrative Strategies of Autobiography in the Work of Poet-Queen Carmen Sylva
51 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3: Writing the Cultural Memory of East Germany through Women’s Interviewliteratur
73 - Part II. Modern Life Writing and Aesthetics
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4: A Life of Its Own: Alfred Döblin on Autobiography and the Novel
93 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5: A Man of the Century in His Poems: Johannes R. Becher and the Creation of the Twentieth-Century Life Narrative
115 - Part III. Trauma and Vergangenheitsbewältigung
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6: Writing Two Selves: A Woman’s Struggle to Cope with War
129 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7: “Confrontation with My Complicity”: Paratextual Self-Encounters in Diaries of the Second World War
147 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8: Voices from an “Extinct Species”: Narrative Responses to Trauma in German Jewish Memoirs
167 - Part IV. Transnational and Transgenerational Life Writing in Contemporary Germany
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
9: The Case of the Disappearing Son: Gender, Genre, and German Postwar Cultural Memory in Niklas Frank’s Meine deutsche Mutter and F. C. Delius’s Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau
189 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
10: Lena Gorelik’s Autofictional Letter Lieber Mischa: A Guide to Being Jewish in Contemporary Germany
205 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
11: Shapeshifters: Metamorphosing Transgenerational Trauma through Comics
229 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
12: Homeland, Nation, and Gender in the Life Writing of German and Jewish Émigrés
248 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Bibliography
271 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes on the Contributors
297 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
301
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 23, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781800102385
Original publisher:
Camden House
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781800102385
Keywords for this book
German life writing; memoirs; interviews; letters; diaries; graphic novels; history; democratic potential; cultural traditions; narrative norms; memory; experience; narrative; emotional; political; cultural; personal; marginalized populations
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
