Sabine Egger - Böcker

A collection of scholarly articles and essays by dancers and scholars of ethnochoreology, dance studies, drama studies, cultural studies, literature, and architecture, Dance and Modernism in Irish and German Literature and Culture: Connections in Motion explores Irish-German connections through dance in choreographic processes and on stage, in literary texts, dance documentation, film, and architecture from the 1920s to today. The contributors discuss modernism, with a specific focus on modern dance, and its impact on different art forms and discourses in Irish and German culture. Within this framework, dance is regarded both as a motif and a specific form of spatial movement, which allows for the transgression of medial and disciplinary boundaries as well as gender, social, or cultural differences. Part 1 of the collection focuses on Irish-German cultural connections made through dance, while part 2 studies the role of dance in Irish and German literature, visual art, and architecture.

Elizabeth Shaw, who has until now remained all but unknown in her native Ireland, was one of the most celebrated children’s authors in East Germany, producing a series of masterful children’s books that have stayed in print since her death in 1992. She was also a deeply complex, passionate woman, a brilliant author, and a gifted artist beyond the confines of Children’s literature. Born in Belfast in 1920 to Irish parents, Shaw was a life-long outsider, sheltered from the poverty and violence of the city at the liberal, left-wing Royal Academy. At the age of 12, her family moved to Bedford in England, and she would eventally go on to attend the Chelsea School of Art, impressing her teachers and absorbing the social and political struggles of her time. In 1939, she was called up to the war effort and worked in the London telephone exchange. Having published sketches in 1940 and contributed to the London left-wing magazines Our Time and Lilliput, she exhibited works in 1943 at the Artists’ International Association in London. In 1944l, she met the Swiss-born émigré artist and communist René Graetz. They married in 1946 and, like other German exiles opposed to National Socialism, decided to help build a better, socialist Germany. Deeply inflected by the politics of East Germany, she worked as a caricaturist with Neues Deutschland, the newspaper of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party, before going on to write 23 enromously successful books for children, making her a household name across Germany. By times elusive, moving and deeply revealing, this is a finely tuned memoir by one of Ireland’s great forgotten artists - now illustrated with many never-before-published illustrations, and with an insightful and enligtening afterword by Fergal Lenehan and Sabine Egger which delves into the under-explored aspects of Shaw’s relationship to Stalinism, the GDR, and those around her.

The cultural, political, social and economic interaction between Ireland and Poland has a long and complex history. This volume hopes to contribute to an emerging debate around the issues concerned by looking at alternative frameworks for understanding the relationship between the two countries. While the topic has attracted growing interest among researchers from various disciplines in recent years, this is the first book dedicated to exploring this cultural relationship in the context of Polish migration to Ireland. The essays in this collection tease out significant strands that connect the two countries, including literature, visual media, education, politics and history. Examining Polish-Irish relations in their wider historical and cultural context allows for new definitions of Irish, Polish and European identities in the New Europe. Especially important in view of the challenges and opportunities that a multicultural Ireland faces after the hard landing of the Celtic Tiger, this book provides new perspectives on a substantial and vibrant cross-cultural relationship.