Mary Rhiel - Böcker

The Seductions of Biography is an important volume which sheds new light on a flourishing literary form, the biography. In postmodern culture, new methods and intentions emerge, as well as new obstacles, towards our understanding of biography as a genre. This book provides a thorough exploration of this genre, from a wide range of postmodern perspectives. The Seductions of Biography brings together a number of essays which reflect in culturally critical as well as autobiographical terms on current themes and practices of contemporary biography. Issues addressed by these essays focus on the postmodern dilemma itself--as new voices from excluded communities make themselves heard in biographical works, the decentralization of new issues, such as gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, becomes problematic. Contributors question the responsibilities a biographer has, both to the subject and the public, and consider also questions of morality and taste; for example, is it fair to use private tapings made by your subject's analyst? And how much do we really need to know about Eleanor Roosevelt's sex life? The impact of sexuality on our reading of public figures is addressed, as well as other issues which explore the popular and provocative nature of biography. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in scope, The Seductions of Biography will appeal to biographers, historians, cultural critics, and the vast population of avid biography readers. Contributors: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Clark Blaise, Marilyn L. Brownstein, Blanche Wiesen Cook, John D'Emilio, Jeffrey Louis Decker, Michael Eric Dyson, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Hayden Herrera, Maurice Isserman, Barbara Johnson, William S. McFeely, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Richard J. Powell, Phyllis Rose, Doris Sommer, Marita Sturken, Sherley Anne Williams, Jean Fagan Yellin

"Screening Riefenstahl" offers an opportunity to rethink the place of Leni Riefenstahl and her work in contemporary culture and in academic discourse.Leni Riefenstahl is larger than life. From the lure of her persona as it enters our homes via television to our pleasure in the recognition of film images at rock concerts, to her place as part of the history of the Nazi period, Riefenstahl lives on in our imagination and in our cultural productions. Thus, the editors' introduction to this volume examines the manner in which Riefenstahl 'haunts' debates on aesthetics and politics, and how her legacy reverberates in the contemporary cultural scene. The essays that follow explore our highly invested discursive struggles over the meaning of her persona and films in this particular historical moment: post-unification, post-twentieth century, post-Riefenstahl.The editors view the collection as a three-part framework. The essays in the opening section of the book show that Riefenstahl is still very much alive and well - and controversial - in popular culture.Fair game for the contemporary memory work, she is part of productions on the History Channel; her images provide inspiration for bands like Rammstein. Her films continue to determine the way in which we think about the Nazi period, providing instantly recognizable images and messages that often go unquestioned.We cannot separate these phenomena from Riefenstahl's years of avid self-fashioning. With that fact in mind, the second section of the book offers treatments of the shifting, mobile relationship between Riefenstahl's stubborn attempts to create and control her personae and her reactions to others' re-appropriations of the meanings of her life and work. Reading the texts and discourses surrounding 'Riefenstahl', these scholars treat her memories - and her repeated assertions about herself - as a springboard into understanding anew how we might approach her films in a productive way.The closing section of the volume comprises essays that go right to the heart of the matter: Riefenstahl's films and photography.The new contexts, theoretical discussions and emerging discourses that animate these essays include Scarry's treatise on beauty, justice and the global, the problems of history and memory, the place of Riefenstahl's filmmaking technique in contemporary cinema, and her appropriation of German musical traditions, to name only some of the critical trajectories addressed in these contributions.Fueled by the work of a diverse range of scholars, then, It insists upon a critical self-examination that maps a topography of how scholars and teachers avail themselves of Riefenstahl's corpus.