The papers contained in this collection represent a cross-section of research and teaching interests at the turn of the millennium. The first section of the book concentrates on cinema studies, from the earliest reception of film to a focus on the cinema of the GDR. These papers show the importance of cinema studies in many German departments today. The inclusiveness of German cultural studies owes a great deal to Weimar theorists such as Walter Benjamin, who is also represented here in a study of his relationship to Jewish scholarship. A serious – though not over-earnest – analysis of German popular music since 1945 earns a place among these essays alongside a paper on the ‘higher’ cultural form of the novel, whose 1990s manifestations are reviewed here. Other contributions engage with equally important and topical Germanistic concerns: new and imaginative approaches to language teaching and learning.
