Product Description

Product Description
This collection analyzes some of the factors that contribute to racism and exclusion in Britain and Germany such as citizenship laws, racial violence, discrimination in education and employment, anti-semitism, and the rise of the far right. Strategies to combat racism, racist violence, and discrimination in Britain are described and analyzed and proposals for anti-discrimination legislation in Germany are considered.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Outstanding
A number of years ago, I read "The imperialist imagination: German colonialism and its legacy," by Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, eds.I was struck by one particular chapter by Tina Campt, Pascal Grosse, and Yara-Colette Lemke-Muniz de Faria titled "Blacks, Germans, and the Politics of Imperial Imagination, 1920-60."To that point, I had never seen a postwar analysis of race in German history.I found the chapter fascinating, and hoped I would have the pleasure of coming across other books that took the same scholarly approach.After the Nazi Racial State is an astoundingly good read.To begin with, its treatment of race is thought provoking.Rather than looking at race on a binary basis of color, the authors cast a wider net and view it from cultural, religious and ethic perspectives; indeed, you almost have to, considering the ways in which race was defined during the Third Reich.Mixed race children of occupation are covered, as are Jewish Holocaust survivors and Turkish guest workers.The research is thorough, the writing enjoyable (though Eley still takes me a while to wrap my head around), and the topic is sorely needed.If you are a professor, assign this book.If you are a student, read it.If you just love history and want to examine an area that hasn't been given nearly enough attention to date, buy it. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Wow!
Some of the styles in this book were obviously western-inspired, with their own twist. Very amusing book, although it could have done with some background info.

A Great Book
Judd Stitziel has written a fine book.Well researched and put together.This work is very interesting, informative and revealing.....much like the fashion itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

high rate of reading
Reuveni gives us an account of Weimar Germany. Describing the reading experiences that were common. Showing that there was a consistent "thirst for education", as remarked by the sociologist Adolf Weber in 1908 of both the urban middle class and the urban working class. Driven in part through the universal literacy efforts promoted by the central government since Bismarck.

The budget for reading was considerable, across the social and economic spectrum. Due to various causes. Including the rise of a leisure culture in the 1920s, and the reduction in the work week. Which gave more time for reading activities.

There was also a big commercialisation in reading. Notably at railway stations. Light reading material became easily available there for passengers. Something familiar to a modern reader waiting at an airport, or even in a supermarket. Book clubs also arose in the 1920s, that made available books at reduced prices, compared to regular bookstores. ... Read more

Product Description
This ethnography describes the intense contradictions that exist between the cultural values of American life and the cultural values needed to survive in combat, as represented through the experiences of forward-deployed U.S. Army units in Germany during the height of the Cold War. Living in constant military readiness, yet participating in peacetime community and family processes, Army personnel had to tolerate the contradictions and live by both sets of principles. In soldier perception, family life and community activities ought to have been guided by American rather than military values. Yet the military ran the community, and military activities penetrated and disrupted family life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Book for Undergraduate Classes
This is a first-rate ethnography of a little known but important community:forward-deployed American solidiers, stationed in Germany at the height of the Cold War.Hawkins mixes profound structural analysis with intimate conversational portraits, to paint a picture of a military community torn between the competing demands of army life and family responsibilities.I used the text in a large undergraduate class, "Cultural Anthropology."The students liked the book very much, and used it to test and apply the concepts they learned earlier in the semester, e.g., "social structure," "kinship," "marriage," "cultural psychology."All in all, we found it be an excellent teaching tool, not to mention an excellent ethnography.I recommend it highly.

Charles W. Nuckolls, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of Alabama ... Read more

Product Description
The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was a crucial moment not only in German history but also in the history of both crime fiction and criminal science. This study approaches the period from a unique perspective - investigating the most notorious criminals of the time and the public's reaction to their crimes. The author argues that the development of a new type of crime fiction during this period - which turned literary tradition on its head by focusing on the criminal and abandoning faith in the powers of the rational detective - is intricately related to new ways of understanding criminality among professionals in the fields of law, criminology, and police science. Considering Weimar Germany not only as a culture in crisis (the standard view in both popular and scholarly studies), but also as a culture of crisis, the author explores the ways in which crime and crisis became the foundation of the Republic's self-definition. An interdisciplinary cultural studies project, this book insightfully combines history, sociology, literary studies, and film studies to investigate a topic that cuts across all of these disciplines. ... Read more

Product Description
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume offers an overview of the role of writers, intellectuals, citizens, and the churches both before, but particularly after, 1989 in the GDR and the new Germany. Friedrich Schorlemmer provides the focal point, giving the book its coherence. Issues related to his role in the GDR church and citizens movement are examined, as well as his support for GDR writers both before and after unification, and his own writings on east and west German literature. After general surveys on intellectuals, civil rights groups, opposition movements, and churches in the transformation of east Germany the volume focuses on Friedrich Schorlemmer himself: a chapter on the significance of the role that he played is followed by interviews with him and an original essay by him, giving his personal view of the role of intellectuals, citizens, and writers in east Germany. The volume is rounded off by a chapter on the reactions of lesser known writers, and, finally, on the responses of prominent GDR writers to unification and on the changing role of writers in society.Combining literary and cultural with social and political analysis, this volume provides a lively and multifaceted picture of the new Germany. ... Read more

Product Description

This collaborative volume addresses a number of central questions from a variety of disciplinary and methodological angles: What do Germans envision when they speak of the "Americanization" of their culture? How do artists respond to today's media culture? Precisely what are we thinking of when using terms like "pop" or "popular" culture? How does "pop" culture in the German imagination relate to "U.S." culture? Can one still speak meaningfully of an "Americanized" German culture? What does this mean for German national identity during the 20th century, and for today's multi-ethnic German culture?
This volume fills a gap in existing scholarship by investigating for the first time German popular culture of the 20th century in its ambivalent representations of Americanization and globalization from a multidisciplinary, international perspective.
Agnes C. Mueller is Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Fritz Stern argues that the best way to describe the character of Imperial Germany after 1878 is "illiberal", which describes the German commitment in mind and policy against any further concession to democracy. Stern argues that from Bismarck to the end of World War II, German society embraced the impulse toward totalitarianism that this illiberal stance fostered. He also examines the efforts of German scholars to explain the phenomenon of Nazism, the attempt of the German people to come to terms with their past, and the failure of illiberalism in the 1950s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Recommended reading by Harvard University
I am an entering freshman and this book was recommended in the president's letter to the calss of 2003...it is wonderful~!

Masterful work with great insight into the heart of society.
Stern supplies great insight into the foundations of National Socialism in Germany and its results. However, of greater note, is Stern's ability to convey to his readers that modern nation states need reform and strong nationalistic tendencies to survive.Though I may disagree with many of the assertions in the essay collection, the book should be seen as a landmark analysis of a time that advanced ancient philosophies of government while engendering new forms with comparable impact on society. ... Read more

Product Description
This illuminating work describes--for the first time inEnglish--current research on the environmental background,physical human evolution, and cultural development in Central Europeand Moravia during the Pleistocene. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
In the turbulent decades after World War I, both France and Germany sought to return to an idealized, prewar past. Many people believed they could recapture a sense of order and stability by reinstituting traditional gender roles, which the war had thrown off balance. While French and German women necessarily filled men's roles in factories and other jobs during the war, those who continued to lead active working lives after World War I risked being called "modern women." Far from a compliment, this derogatory label encompassed everything society found threatening about women's new place in public life: a smoking, working woman who preferred independence and sexual freedom to a traditional role in the home. Society felt threatened by the image of the "modern woman," yet also realized that conceptions of femininity needed to accommodate the cultural changes brought about by the Great War.

In Modernizing Tradition, Adam C. Stanley explores how interwar French and German popular culture used commercial images to redefine femininity in a way that granted women some access to modern life without encouraging the assertion of female independence. Examining advertisements, articles, and cartoons, as well as department store publicity materials from the popular press of each nation, Stanley reveals how the media attempted to convince women that--with the help ofnewly available consumer goods such as washing machines, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners--being a mother or a housewife could be empowering, even liberating. A life devoted to the home, these images promised, need not be an unmitigated return to old-fashioned tradition but could offer a rewarding lifestyle based on the wonders and benefits of modern technology. Stanley shows that the media carefully limited women's association with the modernity to those activities that reinforced women's traditional roles or highlighted their continued dependence on masculine guidance, expertise, and authority.

In this cross-national study, Stanley brings into sharp relief issues of gender and consumerism and reveals that, despite the larger political differences between France and Germany, gender ideals in the two countries remained virtually identical between the world wars. That these concepts of gender stayed static over the course of two decades--years when nearly every other aspect of society and culture seemed to be in constant flux--attests to their extraordinary power as a force in French and German society. ... Read more

Product Description
The German-speaking world has spawned some of the most extreme contrasts between products of culture--the endlessly fascinating, if clichéd, Beethoven-Hitler dichotomy--and thus provokes compelling questions about culture and identity. A User's Guide to German Cultural Studies is an invitation to explore the rapidly expanding scholarship in cultural studies within the German context.
This collection brings together more than twenty-five essays from top-notch scholars and astute cultural critics who examine diverse questions in both broad outlines and specific instances. A literary scholar investigates multiculturalism in German literature; a political scientist asks which past Germans live with after reunification; a historian studies the revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829; a journalist wonders how we learn to stop hating the Germans.
More than just a sampler of current work, however, the volume aims at practical applications. Through introductory and linking comments by the editors, essays by expert practitioners, and a unique section devoted to resources for teaching, the book offers a variety of new approaches to studying and teaching German culture and illustrates by example the potential of cultural studies generally.
Previous cultural studies readers have fallen short of the interdisciplinary ideal they imagined for themselves. Growing out of long-term collaboration between its editors and contributors, A User's Guide to German Cultural Studies is a model for this kind of work. The essays speak to each other because their authors have done just that. Together they take advantage of a particularly auspicious moment to reconsider crucial theoretical and pedagogical issues relating to things German.
Scott Denham is Associate Professor of German, Davidson College. Irene Kacandes is Assistant Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College. Jonathan Petropoulos is Associate Professor of History, Loyola College in Maryland.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An outstanding record of a famous ship.
Not satisfied with having found the Titanic, this great explorer of Oceans set off in search of what many people believe to be the greatest Battleship ever built - the Bismarck.

Whilst we are treated, once again to excellent illustrations by Ken Marschall of the wreck itself, my own favourite series of images are across pages 218/9 and show the Bismarck sinking, how it turned upside down allowing the big guns to fall away from their mountings, how it then turned right side up as it continued it's voyage - 3 miles down, until it came to rest creating a massive underwater landslide. It is because there are no currents down there that that landslide was found - exactly as it was on the day it was created by this great ship in May 1941.

Having the achieved yet another outstanding feat of finding a famous - but elusive ship so far beneath the ocean's surface, Dr Ballard has, once again put together the most complete account of that search, discovery and final success. He also includes an extremely detailed, accurate and well portrayed account of the life and death of the ship itself. As with the Titanic, all the facts and historic photographs are there and, as I know from researching lesser ships, he really has done the most thorough job of work on all fronts.

From the book's front cover onwards we are, once again, treated to the most "outstanding" collection of artwork created by Ken Marschall. From thousands of photographic images taken far below the surface, Bob Ballard created montage after montage of the various sections and profiles of this great ship so that Mr Marschall was able to provide us with paintings which are as accurate as colour photographs.

Once again (and it will not be for the last time!) I congratulate Dr Ballard on an excellent and professional job of work. Altogether, the most outstanding book for which 5 stars are not enough.

NM

An outstanding record of a famous ship.
Not satisfied with having found the Titanic, this great explorer of Oceans set off in search of what many people believe to be the greatest Battleship ever built - the Bismarck.

Whilst we are treated, once again to excellent illustrations by Ken Marschall of the wreck itself, my own favourite series of images are across pages 218/9 and show the Bismarck sinking, how it turned upside down allowing the big guns to fall away from their mountings, how it then turned right side up as it continued it's voyage - 3 miles down, until it came to rest creating a massive underwater landslide. It is because there are no currents down there that that landslide was found - exactly as it was on the day it was created by this great ship in May 1941.

Having the achieved yet another outstanding feat of finding a famous - but elusive ship so far beneath the ocean's surface, Dr Ballard has, once again put together the most complete account of that search, discovery and final success.He also includes an extremely detailed, accurate and well portrayedaccount of the life and death of the ship itself. As with the Titanic, all the facts and historic photographs are there and, as I know from researching lesser ships, he really has done the most thorough job of work on all fronts.

From the book's front cover onwards we are, once again, treated to the most "outstanding" collection of artwork created by Ken Marschall.From thousands of photographic images taken far below the surface, Bob Ballard created montage after montage of the various sections and profiles of this great ship so that Mr Marschall was able to provide us with paintings which are as accurate as colour photographs.

Once again (and it will not be for the last time!) I congratulate Dr Ballard on an excellent and professional job of work. Altogether, the most outstanding book for which 5 stars are not enough.

NM

... Read more