Margaret Littler - Böcker

Six key texts by contemporary women writers are read afresh by leading critics, using insights from poststructuralist and new materialist feminist theory. Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Wolf, and Elfriede Jelinek have long been prominent in the fields of Austrian modernism, GDR writing, and avant-garde Austrian literature. The innovative work of Anne Duden, Herta Müller, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar sets out to challenge dominant models of German identity. Focusing on the body and suffering, they explore textual representations of trauma, national identity, and displacement. Haines and Littler's readings of these distinguished and complex female authors offer new avenues for discussion. Both critics and their subjects cast a sceptical eye over existing notions of subjectivity in relation to language, gender, and race. Together, they spark controversy and comment, in an increasingly important debate.

This collection of essays demonstrates across a spectrum of cultural topics the productive intersection of feminism and German Studies. Taking gender as a central analytical catagory, the authors explore German literature from the Middle Ages to the present day, aspects of popular culture and film, and the impact of institutional and linguistic structures on womens's lives. Both in the variety of subjects treated and methodologies deployed, they reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary face of British German Studies today.