Cultural Studies of Modern Germany

Cultural Studies of Modern Germany PDF

Author: Russell A. Berman

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780299140144

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A study probing the ambiguities of German nationhood. Berman takes a theoretical perspective of cultural studies, exploring such themes as: the constitution of nationhood; what holds a citizenry together; and history's role in providing a framework for current identities and institutions.

Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany

Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany PDF

Author: Joy Wiltenburg

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2013-01-07

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 081393303X

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With the growth of printing in early modern Germany, crime quickly became a subject of wide public discourse. Sensational crime reports, often featuring multiple murders within families, proliferated as authors probed horrific events for religious meaning. Coinciding with heightened witch panics and economic crisis, the spike in crime fears revealed a continuum between fears of the occult and more mundane dangers. In Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany, Joy Wiltenburg explores the beginnings of crime sensationalism from the early sixteenth century into the seventeenth century and beyond. Comparing the depictions of crime in popular publications with those in archival records, legal discourse, and imaginative literature, Wiltenburg highlights key social anxieties and analyzes how crime texts worked to shape public perceptions and mentalities. Reports regularly featured familial destruction, flawed economic relations, and the apocalyptic thinking of Protestant clergy. Wiltenburg examines how such literature expressed and shaped cultural attitudes while at the same time reinforcing governmental authority. She also shows how the emotional inflections of crime stories influenced the growth of early modern public discourse, so often conceived in terms of rational exchange of ideas.

Contemporary German Cultural Studies

Contemporary German Cultural Studies PDF

Author: Alison M. Phipps

Publisher: Hodder Education

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780340764015

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As the study of German comes under the influence of other disciplinary approaches, the notion of culture has evolved from one focused largely on the arts to an approach which understands culture as the way of life of a people or a period. This introductory book examines contemporary German culture not only in the context of its intellectual life--the media, the arts, political figures and events --but also in the context of the theories and methodologies of cultural studies, anthropology, and sociology. Providing a critical assessment of the diversity of German culture and identity, Contemporary German Cultural Studies focuses on the contemporary period and at the same time considers the influence of the past and forces such as globalization. The emphasis is on the interpretation and analysis of the varieties of German cultures--the processes, the practices and the performances. The book also explores intercultural issues, including the implications of studying German culture from an anglophone perspective.

Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany

Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany PDF

Author: Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-14

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1351929143

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While the assumption of a sharp distinction between learned culture and lay society has been broadly challenged over the past three decades, the question of how ideas moved and were received and transformed by diverse individuals and groups stands as a continuing challenge to social and intellectual historians, especially with the emergence and integration of the methodologies of cultural history. This collection of essays, influenced by the scholarship of H.C. Erik Midelfort, explores the new methodologies of cultural transmission in the context of early modern Germany. Bringing together articles by European and North American scholars: this volume presents studies ranging from analyses of individual worldviews and actions, influenced by classical and contemporary intellectual history, to examinations of how ideas of the Reformation and Scientific Revolution found their way into the everyday lives of Germans of all classes. Other essays examine the ways in which individual thinkers appropriated classical, medieval, and contemporary ideas of service in new contexts, discuss the means by which groups delineated social, intellectual, and religious boundaries, explore efforts to control the circulation of information, and investigate the ways in which shifting or conflicting ideas and perceptions were played out in the daily lives of persons, families, and communities. By examining the ways in which people expected ideas to influence others and the unexpected ways the ideas really spread, the volume as a whole adds significant features to our conceptual map of life in early modern Europe.

Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society

Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society PDF

Author: Jürgen Kocka

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9781571811981

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"For students ... this is a good introduction ... The assorted essays ... successfully present Kocka's methodological emphases and his wide-ranging contributions to modern German social history." - Enterprise & Society "This fine volume brings together essays by one of the leading modern German historians, essays that give the reader an impressive overview of his work from three decades and introduce new generations of students to central questions of modern German social history." - Central European History "... a tour de force of societal history, reminding one both of how many insights Kocka has generated through application of Weberian analytical tools." - H-Net Reviews (H-W-Civ) "... a good introduction ... the assorted essays ... successfully present Kocka's methodological emphases and his wide-ranging contributions to modern German social history." - Enterprise & Society "... a seminal, critically important, uniquely informative contribution to the study of German history, business, entrepreneurship, and the working class." - The Midwest Book Review Jürgen Kocka is one of the foremost historians of Germany whose work has been devoted to the integration of different genres of the social and economic history of Europe during the period of industrialization. This collection of essays gives a representative sample of his effort to develop, by reference to Marx and Weber, new and powerful analytical tools for understanding the dynamics of modern industrial societies.

Reading Germany

Reading Germany PDF

Author: Gideon Reuveni

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9781845450878

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By closely examining the interaction between intellectual and material culture in the period before the Nazis came to power in Germany, the author comes to the conclusion that, contrary to widely held assumptions, consumer culture in the Weimar period, far from undermining reading, used reading culture to enhance its goods and values. Reading material was marked as a consumer good, while reading as an activity, raising expectations as it did, influenced consumer culture. Consequently, consumption contributed to the diffusion of reading culture, while at the same time a popular reading culture strengthened consumption and its values. Gideon Reuveni is Director of the Centre for German Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the co-editor of The Economy in Jewish History (Berghahn, 2010) and several other books on different aspects of Jewish history. Presently he is working on a book on consumer culture and the making of Jewish identity in Europe.

German Cultural Studies

German Cultural Studies PDF

Author: Rob Burns

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 9780198715023

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Major changes have been taking place in the context of German Studies in both secondary and higher eduction, with the focus shifting to a broader range of cultural forms. Based on the view that cultures are the products of class, place, gender and race, German Cultural Studies: AnIntroduction takes account of these changes and adopts an interdisciplinary approach in its wide-ranging study of German culture and society since 1871, emphasizing recent and contemporary developments.Chronological sections on Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic chart the growth of modernisation and the culture industry in Germany, and examine the extent to which culture in any given period functions as an instrument ofideological manipulation or critical enlightenment. Throughout, the emphasis is on the interactions of culture, society and ideology, and the role of culture in both public and private consciousnesses.Copiously illustrated, and with guidance for further reading, the volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern and contemporary German society and its culture.

The World of Children

The World of Children PDF

Author: Simone Lässig

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1789202795

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In an era of rapidly increasing technological advances and international exchange, how did young people come to understand the world beyond their doorsteps? Focusing on Germany through the lens of the history of knowledge, this collection explores various media for children—from textbooks, adventure stories, and other literature to board games, museums, and cultural events—to probe what they aimed to teach young people about different cultures and world regions. These multifaceted contributions from specialists in historical, literary, and cultural studies delve into the ways that children absorbed, combined, and adapted notions of the world.

Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany

Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany PDF

Author: William T. Markham

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2008-08-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0857450301

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German environmental organizations have doggedly pursued environmental protection through difficult times: hyperinflation and war, National Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism in the GDR, and confrontation with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. The author recounts the fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of these organizations from their origins at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, not only describing how they reacted to powerful social movements, including the homeland protection and socialist movements in the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, and the anti-nuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but also examining strategies for survival in periods like the current one, when environmental concerns are not at the top of the national agenda. Previous analyses of environmental organizations have almost invariably viewed them as parts of larger social structures, that is, as components of social movements, as interest groups within a political system, or as contributors to civil society. This book, by contrast, starts from the premise that through the use of theories developed specifically to analyze the behavior of organizations and NGOs we can gain additional insight into why environmental organizations behave as they do.