Jens Kugele – författare

The concept of Heimat with its seemingly pre- or anti-modern connotations of rootedness in a place of origin is central to a critical understanding of German history and culture. Over the course of the past fifteen years, scholars across a range of disciplines have found new ways to examine the changing notions of Heimat – its multifaceted cultural, literary, and visual history, its gendered connotations, and its national and ideological appropriations. This anthology is the first to examine cultural manifestations of Heimat by giving special consideration to issues of memory and space. The contributions to this volume challenge static notions of place often associated with Heimat. Instead, they explore the social and cultural production of places of belonging as they emerge in literary and visual narratives ranging from 1800 to 2000 and beyond. Although the anthology includes historical perspectives on Heimat, its overall objective is not to trace its cultural or literary history, but to place this complex term into new conceptual contexts. Drawing attention to manifestations of Heimat within German literary and cultural studies provides a rich ground for exploring the transformation of locality in trans/national contexts.

No detailed description available for "Migration".

How can we approach possible but unknown futures of the study of culture? This volume explores this question in the context of a changing global world. The contributions in this volume discuss the necessity of significant shifts in our conceptual and epistemological frameworks. Taking into account changing institutional research settings, the authors develop pathways to future cultural research, addressing the crucial concerns of the cultural and social worlds themselves. The contributions thereby utilize contact zones within a wide range of disciplines such as cultural anthropology, sociology, cultural history, literary studies, the history of science and bioethics as well as the environmental and medical humanities. Examining emerging inter- and transdisciplinary points of reference, the volume invites scholars in the humanities and social sciences to take part in a conversation about theories, methods, and practices for the future study of culture.

Recent debates on migration have demonstrated the important role of concepts in academic and political discourse. The contributions to this collection revisit established analytical categories in the study of migration such as border regimes, orders of belonging, coloniality, translation, trans/national digital culture and memory. Exploring notions, images and realities of migration in their cultural framings, this volume sheds light on the powerful work of these concepts. Including perspectives on migration from history, visual studies, pedagogy, literary and cultural studies, cultural anthropology and sociology, it explores the complex scholarly and popular notions of migration with particular focus on their often unspoken assumptions and political implications. Revisiting established analytical tools in the study of migration, the interdisciplinary contributions explore new approaches and point to the importance of conceptual nuance extending beyond academic discourse.

Given a proliferation of crises from climate change, public health emergencies, and new threats of global war, engaging the future and probing new conjunctures of inquiry is becoming increasingly urgent. This volume enlists the cultural imagination and the study of culture specifically, asking how they can contribute to ‘bouncing forward’ from a sometimes overwhelming sense of constant change and uncertainty, rather than ‘bouncing back’ to some previous status quo as in conventional resilience-thinking. How do future concerns mobilize transformations with regard to objects of study, critical methodologies, new forms of interdisciplinarity, or questions of research and/as activism? With a conceptual focus on narrativity, scenarios, and transformations in the study of culture, the volume addresses this question through a variety of productive lenses such as resilience-thinking, ‘imagineering’, or notions of time and risk criticism. In essence, the volume takes a two-pronged approach, demonstrating 1) how future narratives, scenarios, and transformations figure within various research objects and 2) how future challenges prompt a rethinking and recalibration of (new) conceptual and methodological apparatuses in the study of culture.