Carl Niekerk - Böcker

In this book, Carl Niekerk probes the origins of modern anthropology in the European Enlightenment, foregrounding how the knowledge transfer between an international array of natural historians and public intellectuals—including Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Voltaire; Denis Diderot; Johann Friedrich Blumenbach; Immanuel Kant; and Johann Gottfried Herder—shaped the emerging discipline and its central debates. Reexamining how these many voices crossed paths and diverged, Niekerk sharpens our understanding of how anthropology, as we know it today, came to be.As a “natural history of man,” anthropology during the Enlightenment argued that humans across the globe belonged to a single species and that human diversity could be explained as the product of time and space, climate and geography. While this knowledge could be emancipatory—fostering curiosity rather than superiority around questions of difference among some thinkers—it also contributed to the emergence of new notions, especially “race” and “culture,” that were used by many to justify slavery and the colonial project. With an emphasis on how we can use the ambiguities and deficiencies of the past to help guide our thinking and actions today, this book will appeal to a widely interdisciplinary audience, including anthropologists, historians and philosophers of science, intellectual historians, Germanists, and scholars of the European Enlightenment.

In this book, Carl Niekerk probes the origins of modern anthropology in the European Enlightenment, foregrounding how the knowledge transfer between an international array of natural historians and public intellectuals—including Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Voltaire; Denis Diderot; Johann Friedrich Blumenbach; Immanuel Kant; and Johann Gottfried Herder—shaped the emerging discipline and its central debates. Reexamining how these many voices crossed paths and diverged, Niekerk sharpens our understanding of how anthropology, as we know it today, came to be.As a “natural history of man,” anthropology during the Enlightenment argued that humans across the globe belonged to a single species and that human diversity could be explained as the product of time and space, climate and geography. While this knowledge could be emancipatory—fostering curiosity rather than superiority around questions of difference among some thinkers—it also contributed to the emergence of new notions, especially “race” and “culture,” that were used by many to justify slavery and the colonial project. With an emphasis on how we can use the ambiguities and deficiencies of the past to help guide our thinking and actions today, this book will appeal to a widely interdisciplinary audience, including anthropologists, historians and philosophers of science, intellectual historians, Germanists, and scholars of the European Enlightenment.

Examines literary, philosophical, and cultural influences on Mahler's thought and work from the standpoint of the composer's position in German-Jewish culture.Gustav Mahler's music is more popular than ever, yet few are aware of its roots in German literary and cultural history in general, and in fin-de-siècle Viennese culture in particular. Taking as its point of departure the many references to literature, philosophy, and the visual arts that Mahler uses to illustrate the meaning of his music, Reading Mahler helps audiences, critics, and those interested in musical and cultural history understand influences on Mahler's music and thinking that may have been self-evident to middle-class Viennese a hundred years ago but are much more obscure today. It shows that Mahler's oeuvre, despite its reliance on texts and images from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is far more indebted to fin-de-siècle modernism and to an eclectic, proto-avantgardist agenda than has been previously realized. Furthermore, Reading Mahler is the first book to make Mahler's position within German-Jewish culture its analytical center. It also probes Mahler's problematic but often overlooked relationship with the musical and textual legacy of Richard Wagner. By integrating newer approaches in humanistic research - cultural studies, gender studies, and Jewish studies - Reading Mahler exposes the composer's critical view of German cultural history and offers a new understanding of his music.Carl Niekerk is Professor in the Department of German, the Program in Comparative and World Literature, and the Program in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Examines literary, philosophical, and cultural influences on Mahler's thought and work from the standpoint of the composer's position in German-Jewish culture.Gustav Mahler's music is more popular than ever, yet few are aware of its roots in German literary and cultural history in general, and in fin-de-siècle Viennese culture in particular. Taking as its point of departure the many references to literature, philosophy, and the visual arts that Mahler uses to illustrate the meaning of his music, Reading Mahler helps audiences, critics, and those interested in musical and cultural history understand influences on Mahler's music and thinking that may have been self-evident to middle-class Viennese a hundred years ago but are much more obscure today. It shows that Mahler's oeuvre, despite its reliance on texts and images from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is far more indebted to fin-de-siècle modernism and to an eclectic, proto-avantgardist agenda than has been previously realized. Furthermore, Reading Mahler is the first book to make Mahler's position within German-Jewish culture its analytical center. It also probes Mahler's problematic but often overlooked relationship with the musical and textual legacy of Richard Wagner. By integrating newer approaches in humanistic research - cultural studies, gender studies, and Jewish studies - Reading Mahler exposes the composer's critical view of German cultural history and offers a new understanding of his music.Carl Niekerk is Professor in the Department of German, the Program in Comparative and World Literature, and the Program in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Essays showcasing Ali and Nino as particularly topical for today's readers both in and out of the classroom, and providing a number of diverse approaches to it.Ali and Nino is a novel published in German in 1937 under the alias "Kurban Said," a love story between a Muslim man and a Christian woman set in Baku, Azerbaijan, during World War I and the country's brief independence. Itwas a major success, translated into several other languages, but was forgotten by the end of World War II. Recent research by the journalist Tom Reiss has revealed the identity of the author as Lev/Leo Nussimbaum (1905-1942), aJewish man born in Baku who converted to Islam, worked as a journalist in Berlin, and died forgotten in exile. Reiss's discovery has spurred new interest in the novel, as has the fact that the book prefigures today's perceived conflicts between East and West or Islam and Christianity, but also suggests a more peaceful model of intercultural living in multiethnic Baku's melting pot of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The present volume collects twelve newessays on different aspects of the text by scholars from a variety of disciplines and cultural backgrounds. It is intended to showcase the suitability of Ali and Nino for inclusion in a curriculum focused on German, world literature, or area studies, and to suggest a variety of approaches to the novel while also appealing to its fans.Contributors: Sara Abdoullah-Zadeh, Cori Crane, Chase Dimock, Christine Rapp Dombrowski, Elizabeth WeberEdwards, Anja Haensch, Kamaal Haque, Lisabeth Hock, Ruchama Johnston-Bloom, Carl Niekerk, Elke Pfitzinger, Soraya Saatchi, Daniel Schreiner, Azade Seyhan.Carl Niekerk is Professor of German with affiliate appointmentsin French, Comparative and World Literature, and Jewish Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Cori Crane is Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of the Language Program in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature at Duke University.

The series Studien zur deutschen Literatur (Studies in German Literature) presents outstanding analyses of German-speaking literature from the early modern period to the present day. It particularly embraces comparative, cultural and historical-epistemological questions and serves as a tradition-steeped forum for innovative literary research. All submitted manuscripts undergo a double peer-review process.