Journal for the Study of British Cultures

The Journal for the Study of British Cultures (JSBC) is the journal of the German Association for the Study of British Cultures. It is published twice a year and, as of 2024, in the process of becoming a digital open-access publication.

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Universitätsverlag Winter

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Verlag Königshausen & Neumann

Gunter Narr Verlag

Vol. 28 (2021), No. 2

Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary British Cultures

Guest editors: Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, Lisa Kalkowski & James McKenzie

Articles:

  • Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, Lisa Kalkowski & James McKenzie, ‘Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary British Cultures: An Introduction’
  • Cyprian Piskurek, ‘Fear and Building in the United Kingdom’
  • Maria Verena Peters, ‘Fear of the Future: The Hideous Progeny of Neoliberalism’
  • Christiane Hansen, ‘Affective Disorientation: Fear, Anxiety, and Indifference in Sarah Hall’s Short Fiction’
  • Michael C. Frank, ‘“The Insecurity State”: Anti-Terrorism Legislation and the Politics of Fear in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire’
  • Rebekka Rohleder, ‘Destabilising Boundaries: Terrorism and the Politics of Urban Fear in Simon Stephens’s Pornography (2007)’
  • Kai Wiegandt, ‘Imagination of Disaster in the British Arts before the Grenfell Tower Fire: the Case of Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise (2015)’

Reviews:

  • Ina Habermann, ed. (2020), The Road to Brexit: A Cultural Perspective on British Attitudes to Europe
  • Christina Jordan & Imke Polland, eds. (2020), Realms of Royalty: New Directions in Researching Contemporary European Monarchies
  • Wieland Schwanebeck (2020), Literary Twinship from Shakespeare to the Age of Cloning
  • Annette Kern-Stähler & Nicole Nyffenegger, eds. (2019), Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England

Vol. 28 (2021), No. 1

Histories and Trajectories: British Cultural Studies in Germany

Articles:

  • Gerold Sedlmayr, ‘Editorial. The State of (British) Cultural Studies in Germany Today’
  • Christian Huck, ‘How Cultural Studies Came to Germany, or, Rather, The Events and Circumstances that Led to the Foundation of the German Association for the Study of British Cultures’
  • Kylie Crane, ‘Positioning Cultural Studies. A Response’
  • Gabriele Linke, ‘British Cultural Studies in Germany. Is There an East German Trajectory?’
  • Susanne Mühleisen, ‘Linguistics and Cultural Studies. A Story of Division and Common Ground’
  • Monika Seidl, ‘Vienna Calling. Cultural Studies in Austria’
  • Sebastian Berg, ‘Beyond Birmingham. Four Comments on “How Cultural Studies Came to Germany”’
  • Jonatan Jalle Steller, ‘Forging New Paths. Future-Proofing British Cultural Studies in Germany’

Vol. 27 (2020), No. 2

Gothic Ecologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Guest editors: Katharina Boehm & Stephan Karschay

Articles:

  • Katharina Boehm & Stephan Karschay, ‘Introduction: Gothic Ecologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present’
  • David Annwn Jones, ‘At the Tree-line’s Edge: Francis Mundy’s Needwood Forest and the EcoGothic Poetics of Resistance’
  • Steve Asselin, ‘Still Marked on Many Maps: Gothic Treatments of Landscape in Disaster Fiction’
  • Mark Schmitt, ‘Folk Horror as Dark Ecological Allegory in The Wicker Man and Apostle’
  • Cord-Christian Casper, ‘”Trembling on the Edge of Change”: Apocalyptic Fear in the Dark Mountain Project’
  • Jonathan A. Rose, ‘The Last of Us: Fungi, EcoGothic Zombies and Posthuman Hybrids in The Girl with All the Gifts’

Reviews:

  • Timothy Morton (2018), Being Ecological
  • Roman Bartosch (2019), Literature, Pedagogy, and Climate Change: Text Models for a Transcultural Ecology
  • Jürgen Kramer & Bernd Lenz, eds. (2020), How to Do Cultural Studies: Ideas, Approaches, Scenarios
  • Zoe Hope Bulaitis (2020), Value and the Humanities: The Neoliberal University and Our Victorian Inheritance
  • Jessica Fischer & Gesa Stedman, eds. (2020), Imagined Economies Real Fictions: New Perspectives on Economic Thinking in Great Britain
  • Ralph-Miklas Dobler, Silke Järvenpää, Rainer E. Zimmermann, eds. (2018), Signifikant: Jahrbuch für Strukturwandel und Diskurs

Vol. 27 (2020), No. 1

Age Matters: Cultural Representations and the Politics of Ageing

Guest editors: Thomas Kühn & Robert Troschitz

Articles:

  • Robert Troschitz, ‘Why Age Matters (and Should Be of Concern to Cultural Studies)’
  • Maria Gürtner, ‘Towards a Room of Her Own. ‘Dialogue Spaces’ and the Ageing Woman in Late Victorian and Edwardian Times’
  • Özlem Sarica, ‘“You’re getting too bloody old for this”. Female Detectives and Representations of Ageing in British Crime Drama’
  • Josephine Dolan, ‘Ageing Stardom. The ‘Economy of Celebrity’ and the Gendering of the ‘Third Age Imaginary’’
  • Sara Strauß, ‘Visualising Memory Loss. Contemporary Portraiture and the Politics of Representation’
  • Chris Gilleard, ‘Pain, Suffering and Abjection in the Fourth Age’

Reviews:

  • Margaret Morganroth Gullette (2017), Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People
  • Heike Hartung, ed. (2018), Embodied Narration. Illness, Death and Dying in Modern Culture
  • Simone Francescato, Roberta Maierhofer, Valeria Minghetti & Eva-Maria Trinkaus, eds. (2017), Senior Tourism. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Aging and Traveling
  • Barbara Black (2019), Hotel London. How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories
  • Christina Flotmann-Scholz & Anna Lienen, eds. (2019), Victorian Ideologies in Contemporary British Cultures
  • Sonja Frenzel & Birgit Neumann, eds. (2017), Ecocriticism. Environments in Anglophone Literatures

Vol. 26 (2019), No. 2

Literatures of Brexit

Guest editors: Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Joanna Rostek & Ina Habermann

Articles:

  • Anne-Julia Zwierlein and Joanna Rostek, ‘Literatures of Brexit: An Introduction’
  • Kirsten Sandrock, ‘Border Thinking, Brexit and Literature’
  • Christine Berberich, ‘Our Country, the Brexit Island: Brexit, Literature, and Populist Discourse’
  • Joanna Kosmalska, ‘The Response of Polish Writers to Brexit’
  • Merle Tönnies and Dennis Henneböhl, ‘Negotiating Images of (Un-)Belonging and (Divided) Communities: Ali Smith’s ‘Seasonal Quartet’ as a Counter-Narrative to Brexit’
  • Felicitas Meifert-Menhard, ‘Ian McEwan’s Brexit Politics in (a) Nutshell’
  • Christoph Reinfandt, ‘Brexit and the Lost Cause of Progressive Patriotism: Some Thoughts on Billy Bragg’

Reviews:

  • Robert Eaglestone, ed. (2018), Brexit and Literature: Critical and Cultural Responses
  • Christa Jansohn, ed. (2018), Brexit Means Brexit? The Selected Proceedings of the Symposium, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz 6-8 December 2017
  • Monika Pietrzak-Franger (2017), Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture: Medicine, Knowledge and the Spectacle of Victorian Invisibility
  • Eike Kronshage (2018), Vision and Character: Physiognomics and the English Realist Novel
  • Sarah Herbe and Gabriele Linke, eds. (2017), British Autobiography in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Vol. 26 (2019), No. 1

Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom

Guest editors: Joanna Rostek & Anne-Julia Zwierlein

Articles:

  • Joanna Rostek and Anne-Julia Zwierlein, ‘Introduction: Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom as Areas of Research in British Cultural Studies’
  • Marius Guderjan and Jessica Fischer, ‘Understanding Brexit: Agency in a Divided Britain’
  • Gerold Sedlmayr, ‘Communication Breakdown: The Brexit Referendum,British Austerity Policies and Their Negotiation in Culture’
  • Marlene Herrschaft-Iden and Philip Jacobi, ‘Laughing Out Loud Allowed? Pro-Brexit Voices in British Comedy’
  • Stephan Karschay, ‘Great Britain or Little England? Brexit and the London Olympics Opening Ceremony’
  • Barbara Korte and Christian Mair, ‘New-Old Rifts: Brexit and Resurfacing Racism in the United Kingdom’
  • Jana Gohrisch and Rainer Schulze, Representing the World in Language: Cultural Linguistic Perspectives on Brexit’

Reviews:

  • Patrick Diamond, Peter Nedergaard & Ben Rosamond, eds. (2018), The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Brexit
  • Tim Oliver (2018), Understanding Brexit: A Concise Introduction
  • Rüdiger Görner (2018), Brexismus oder: Verortungsversuche im Dazwischen
  • Peter Stäuber (2018), Sackgasse Brexit: Reportagen aus einem gespaltenen Land
  • Gesa Stedman & Sandra van Lente, eds. (2017), It’s Not Just the Economy, Stupid! Brexit and the Cultural Sector 
  • Ina Habermann, ed. (2018), The Road to Brexit: A Students’ Podcast Project
  • Tim Marshall (2018), Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls

Vol. 25 (2018), No. 2

Early Modern Spectacles

Guest editors: Susanne Gruss & Lena Steveker

Articles:

  • Susanne Gruss & Lena Steveker, ‘Introduction: Early Modern Spectacles’
  • Sanja Bentz, ‘Spectacular Scaffolds: Executions and Their Audiences during the Reign of Henry VIII’
  • Lukas Lammers, ‘Spectacular History: Resurrecting the Past’
  • Rosemary Moore, ‘Fugitive Sheets and the Spectacle of the Spatialized Body’
  • Jessica Apolloni, ‘Street Crime, Communal Justice, and the Spectacle of Law in London’s Popular Pamphlets’
  • Jana Mathews, ‘Spectacular Treason: Fireworks as Fantasies of Regicide after the Gunpowder Treason Plot’
  • Sheila T. Cavanagh, ‘“Pluck Out His Eyes”: The Appealing Disgust of Mutilation and Evisceration on the Early Modern Stage’

Reviews:

  • David Hawkes (2015), Shakespeare and Economic Theory
  • Cecile Sandten (2015), Shakespeare’s Globe, Global Shakespeares: Transcultural Adaptations of Shakespeare in Postcolonial Literatures
  • Sarah Schäfer-Althaus (2016), The Gendered Body: Female Sanctity, Gender Hybridity and the Body in Women’s Hagiography
  • Julia Kinzler (2018), Representing Royalty: British Monarchs in Contemporary Cinema, 1994-2010

Vol. 25 (2018), No. 1

Political Bodies

Guest editors: Gerold Sedlmayr & Cyprian Piskurek)

Articles:

  • Gerold Sedlmayr and Cyprian Piskurek, ‘Introduction’
  • Grant Farred, ‘The Terror of Trump: Through the Body of a Child – An Essay for Ezra’
  • Imogen Tyler, ‘Deportation Nation’
  • Robert Troschitz, ‘Perfect Worlds Need Perfect Bodies: Utopia and the Politics of the Body’
  • Johannes Schlegel, ‘Ascetic Bodies and the Care of the Self in Contemporary Culture’
  • Gero Guttzeit, ‘“So little suffices to make us visible one to the other” Invisibility, Monstrosity, and Whiteness in H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man‘
  • Natalie Roxburgh, ‘Constructing the Body Politic: Form, Disinterestedness, and the Modern State’

Reviews:

  • François Debrix (2017), Global Powers of Horror: Security, Politics, and the Body in Pieces 
  • Lauren B. Wilcox (2015), Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International Relations
  • Stefan Horlacher & Kevin Floyd, eds. (2017), Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and the US: Between Bodies and Systems 
  • Wolfgang Funk (2018), Gender Studies: Gender und gesellschaftlicher Wandel
  • Stuart Hall (2016),Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History
  • Stuart Hall (2017), Selected Political Writings: The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays
  • Stuart Hall with Bill Schwarz (2018), Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands

Vol. 24 (2017), No. 2

British Temporalities: The Times of Culture and the Cultures of Time

Guest editor: Ralf Schneider

Articles:

  • Ralf Schneider, ‘Time and the Study of British Cultures: An Introduction’
  • Dorothea Flothow, ‘Time in the Restoration Period: “Chronotypes” and “Temporal Communities”‘
  • Ellen Grünkemeier, ‘The Dominant Conceptualisation of Time: The Clock Begins to Tick in Industrial Capitalist England’
  • Georgia Christinidis, ‘The Temporality of Neoliberal Coming-of-Age Narratives’
  • Christoph Singer, ‘The Temporalities of British Detention: Chronic Waiting at the Colnbrook Detention Centre’
  • Mark Schmitt, ‘Beyond the Future: Crisis and Precarious Temporality in Post-Capitalist Discourse’

Reviews:

  • Joel Burges & Amy J. Elias, eds. (2016), Time: A Vocabulary of the Present
  • Zeno Ackermann (2015), Gedächtnis-Fiktionen: Mediale Erinnerungsfiguren und literarischer Eigensinn in britischen Romanen  zum Zweiten Weltkrieg
  • Anette Pankratz & Claus-Ulrich Viol, eds. (2017), (Un)Making the Monarchy
  • Jürgen Kramer & Claus-Ulrich Viol, eds. (2017), Psychoanalysis in Cultural Studies – Positions, Perspectives and Proposals
  • Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz & Ralf Schneider, eds. (2017), London Post-2010 in British Literature and Culture
  • Thomas Kühn & Robert Troschitz, eds. (2017), Populärkultur: Perspektiven und Analysen

Vol. 24 (2017), No. 1

British Cold War Cultures

Guest editor: Kathleen Stark

Articles:

  • Kathleen Starck, ‘”A Heavy Sense of Dread”: British Cold War Culture’
  • Rainer Emig, ‘The Cambridge Spies: Class, Gender, Sexuality and Politics in Cold War Britain’
  • Svenja Böhm, ‘“Smyert Shpionam – Death to Spies”: Cold War Representations of the Soviet Enemy in Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love‘
  • Hilary Duffield, ‘Worlds Out of Control: Invasion Narratives, Interspecies Conflict, and British Culture in the Early Cold War’
  • Matthew Worley, ‘No Doves Fly Here: British Punk and Cold War Dystopia’
  • Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier & James McKenzie, ‘Desire and Anxiety: Cold War Voyeurism in Contemporary TV Spy Series’

Reviews:

  • Jim Smyth (2016), Cold War Culture: Intellectuals, the Media
    and the Practice of History
  • Jonathan Hogg (2016), British Nuclear Culture: Official and
    Unofficial Narratives in the Long 20th Century
  • Sebastian Berg (2016), Intellectual Radicalism after 1989: Crisis
    and Re-Orientation in the British and the American Left
  • Petra Rau, ed. (2016), Long Shadows: The Second World War
    in British Fiction and Film
  • Kathleen Starck (2016), Of Treason, God and Testicles:
    Political Masculinities in British and American Films of the
    Early Cold War
  • Christoph Singer (2014), Sea Change: The Shore from Shakespeare to Banville

Vol. 23 (2016), No. 2

New Perspectives

Guest editor: Oliver Lindner

Articles:

  • Oliver Lindner, ‘Introduction’
  • Wieland Schwanebeck, ‘The Womb as a Battlefield. Debating Medical Authority in the Renaissance Midwife Manual’
  • Cornelia Wächter, ‘Imagining the Prison Officer. The Quare Fellow’
  • Christoph Singer, ‘The Temporalities of Waiting in Paul Graham’s Photo Series Beyond Caring’
  • Jonatan Jalle Steller, ‘Reading Conflicted Heroism. The Doctor as Maker in Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who’
  • Nicole Falkenhayner, ‘CCTV Beyond Surveillance. The Cultural Relevance of the Surveillance Camera and Its Images in Contemporary Britain’
  • Ariane de Waal, ‘Performing the ‘Ultimate Private Act’ in Public. The Biopolitics of Breastfeeding in London’

Reviews:

  • Merle Tönnies (2014), (En-)Gendering a Popular Theatrical Genre. The Roles of Women in Nineteenth-Century British Melodrama
  • Neil Rennie (2013), Treasure Neverland. Real and Imaginary Pirates
  • Ursula Kluwick & Virginia Richter, eds. (2015), The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: Reading Littorial Space
  • Christine Berberich, ed. (2015), The Bloomsbury Introduction to Popular Fiction
  • Toija Cinque, Christopher Moore & Sean Redman, eds. (2015), Enchanting David Bowie: Space/Time/Body/Memory

Vol. 23 (2016), No. 1

The ‘Popular’ and the Past: Popular Cultures of the Nineteenth Century

Guest editors: Doris Feldmann & Christian Krug

Articles:

  • Doris Feldmann & Christian Krug, ‘The ‘Popular’ and the Past: Popular Cultures  of the Nineteenth Century
  • Sabine Schülting, ‘“The O. K. thing on Sunday is walking in the Zoo”: Zoological Gardens, the Music Hall, and Popular Recreation in Victorian London
  • Joachim Frenk, ‘Punch’s (and Judy’s) Material Performances’
  • Anne-Julia Zwierlein, ‘The Lecturer as Revenant(e): Sensation and Conversion in Late-Victorian Popular Lecturing and Mass Print’
  • Katharina Boehm, ‘Popular Antiquities: Romantic Antiquarianism and the Historicisation of Merry England’

Reviews:

  • John Storey, ed. (2016), The Making of English Popular Culture
  • Nicholas Daly (2015),The Demographic Imagination and
    the Nineteenth-Century City: Paris, London, New York
  • Sabine Schülting (2016), Dirt in Victorian Literature and Culture: Writing Materiality
  • J. H. Stape, ed. (2015), The New Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad

Vol. 22 (2015), No. 2

European Britain

Guest editor: Rainer Emig

Articles:

  • Rainer Emig, ‘Introduction’
  • Eliza Richter, ‘Early Modern Definitions of Englishness and Continental Other  in William Haughton’s Englishmen for My Money (1598)’
  • Florian Kläger, ‘Insularity, Invasion and Identity. ‘European’ National Genesis in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century English Historiography’
  • Wolfgang Funk, ‘Chips from a German Workshop. Friedrich Max Müller’s Translation of Ideas between Germany and Britain’
  • Ingrid von Rosenberg, ‘Uneven Flows. Relations between Central European and British Architecture in the 1930s and since the 1980s’
  • Georgia Christinidis, ‘Our Island Story. Renegotiating National History’

Reviews:

  • Michael Pye (2014), The Edge of the World. How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are
  • Roland Sturm (2015), Die britische Westminsterdemokratie. Parlament, Regierung und Verfassungswandel
  • Roger Liddle (2014), The Europe Dilemma. Britain and the Drama of EU Integration
  • Márta Minier & Maddalena Pennacchia, eds. (2014), Adaptation, Intermediality and the British Celebrity Biopic

Vol. 22 (2015), No. 1

Ecologies: Nature, Culture, and Politics in Contemporary Britain

Guest editors: Sebastian Berg & Christian Schmitt-Kilb

Articles:

  • Sebastian Berg & Christian Schmitt-Kilb, ‘Introduction’
  • Peter Bennett, ‘Tilting at Wind Farms’
  • Martin Walter, ‘”At the Price of a Cappuccino”? Contemporary British Discourses of Eco-Consumerism’
  • Sabine Müller, ‘Questioning the “insuperable line”: Strategies of Non-Differentiation in Animal Rights Philosophy and Advocacy in Britain’s Past and Present’
  • Hanne Bolze, ‘Climate Change and the Novel: Maggie Gee’s The Ice People and Robert Edric’s Salvage’
  • Roman Bartosch, ‘Scaling the City: Urban Environments and Transcultural Consciousness in Zadie Smith’s NW and Ian McEwan’s Saturday’
  • Sonja Frenzel, ‘”Overall, this is a massive organism”: Discovering London at the Intersections of Nature and (Urban) Culture’
  • H. Gustav Klaus, ‘Remembering Stuart Hall (1932-2014) or, How Cultural Studies Came to Germany: A Personal Memoir’

Reviews:

  • Greg Garrard, ed. (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism
  • Louise Westling (2014), The Logos of the Living World: Merleau-Ponty, Animals, and Language
  • Helena Feder (2014), Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman
  • Dirk Wieman & Gaby Mahlberg, eds. (2014), Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism
  • Jürgen Kamm, Jürgen Kramer & Bernd Lenz, eds. (2013), Deconstructing Terrorism: 9/11, 7/7 and Contemporary Culture
  • Renate Bosch & Kylie Crane, eds. (2014), Visualising Australia: Images, Icons, Imaginations

Vol. 21 (2014), No. 2

Cultural Studies and Its Discontents: Polemics, Perspectives and Proposals

Guest editors: Bernd Lenz & Gesa Stedman

Articles:

  • Bernd Lenz & Gesa Stedman, ‘Introduction: Cultural Studies and Its Discontents: Polemics, Perspectives and Proposals’
  • Jürgen Kramer, ‘Finding Common Ground, Making Common Cause: Proposals for the Advancement of Anglophone Cultural Studies in Germany’
  • Ellen Grünkemeier, ‘The Cultural Practice of Saint Monday: A Self-Made Holiday for the Working Classes in Industrial England’
  • Holger Rossow, ‘Doing Cultural Studies and the Need for Interdisciplinarity: Towards an Interaction-Oriented Model of Cultural Studies’
  • Hugh Mackay, ‘Uses of Cultural Studies: Stuart Hall’s Project and Cultural Politics’
  • Alexander Dunst, Elahe Haschemi Yekani & Anja Schwarz, ‘The Here and Now of Cultural Studies’

Reviews:

  • Netzwerk Korper, ed. (2012), What Can a Body Do? Praktiken und Figurationen des Korpers in den Kulturwissenschaften
  • Ines Detmers & Birte Heidemann, eds. (2013), From Popular Goethe to Global Pop. The Idea of the West between Memory and (Dis) Empowerment
  • Doris Feldmann & Christian Krug, eds. (2013), Viktorianismus.Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung
  • Greta Olson (2013), Criminals as Animals from Shakespeare to Lombroso
  • Ina Schabert (2013), Shakespeares. Die unendliche Vielfalt der Bilder
  • Ralf Hertel (2014), Staging England in the Elizabethan History Play. Performing National Identity

Vol. 21 (2014), No. 1

Poverty

Guest editor: Gerry Mooney

Articles:

  • Gerry Mooney, ‘Introduction’
  • Hugh Mackay, ‘Obituary Stuart Hall’
  • Kathy Callahan, ‘Women, Crime and Economic Hardship in London at the End of the Long Eighteenth Century’
  • Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, ‘Deprived and Frail Men in Victorian Fiction’
  • Ellen Grünkemeier, ‘Accommodating the Poor: Poverty and Housing in Britain in the 1930s’
  • Sebastian Berg, ‘Is Poverty the ‘New Black’? The Class Dimension of ‘Nation’ in Contemporary British and Irish Political Discourse’
  • Janet Fink & Helen Loman, ‘Challenging Images? Dominant, Residual and Emergent Meanings in On-Line Media Representations of Child Poverty’

Reviews:

  • Stephanie Trigg (2012), Shame and Honor. A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter
  • Ellen Grünkemeier (2013), Breaking the Silence. South African Representations of HIV/AIDS
  • Eva Ulrike Pirker (2011), Narrative Projections of a Black British History
  • Christian Huck & Stefan Bauernschmidt, eds. (2012), Travelling Goods, Travelling Moods. Varieties of Cultural Appropriation (1850-1950)

Vol. 20 (2013), No. 2

Political Topographies

Guest editor: Ina Habermann

Articles:

  • Ina Habermann, ‘Introduction’
  • Michael Gardiner, ‘The British Reliance on Identity’
  • Merle Tönnies, ‘Northern Landscapes and Anti-Thatcherite Positioning: British Colour Photography of the 1980s’
  • Nadine Böhm-Schnitker, ‘There Is No Such Thing As Political Memory!?: The Iron Lady (2011) as ‘Psycho-geography”
  • Frauke Hofmeister, ‘A Fatal Attraction? Europe and the Failure of the English Regions’
  • Barabara Schaff, ‘Killing Fields and Poppy Fields: Towards a Topography of the Western Front in the British Cultural Memory’
  • Nora Pleßke, ‘HMY Britannia: The Spatial Semantics of the Royal Yacht’

Reviews:

  • Wolfram Schmidgen (2013), Exquisite Mixture: The Virtues of Impurity in Early Modern England
  • Gaby Mahlberg & Dirk Wieman, eds. (2013), European Contexts for English Republicanism
  • Gert Hofmann & Snježana Zorić, eds. (2012), Topodynamics of Arrival: Essays on Self and Pilgrimage

Vol. 20 (2013), No. 1

State of the Art

Guest editor: Gesa Stedman

Articles:

  • Gesa Stedman, ‘Editorial: Cultural Studies. State of the Art’
  • Sebastian Berg, ‘Locating the Political in Cultural Studies’
  • Rainer Emig, ‘Cultural Studies and Literary Studies: A Troubled Relation’
  • Jutta Schwarzkopf, ‘The Relationship of History to Cultural Studies’
  • Udo Göttlich, ‘Media and Communication Science in Germany and its (Inter)relations with Media and Cultural Studies’

Reviews:

  • Monika Seidl, Roman Horak & Lawrence Grossberg, eds. (2010), About Raymond Williams
  • Jürgen Kramer (2011), Taking Stock: 35 Essays from 35 Years of Studying English-Speaking Cultures   
  • Gabriele Linke, ed. (2011), Teaching Cultural Studies: Methods – Matters – Models
  • Jana Gohrisch & Ellen Grünkemeier, eds. (2012), Listening to Africa: Anglophone African Literatures and Cultures

Vol. 19 (2012), No. 2

Representing Terrorism

Guest editors: Jürgen Kramer & Bernd Lenz

Articles:

  • Jürgen Kramer & Bernd Lenz, ‘Introduction: Representing Terrorism’
  • Andrew Glazzard, ‘”That Horrid Science”: Fictional Representations of Terrorism in an Age of Scientific Anxiety’
  • Michael C. Frank, ‘It Could Happen Here: The What-If Logic of Counterterrorism and the Literary Imagination’
  • Birgit Neumann, ‘Screening Terrorism, the IRA and the “Troubles”: Gender Politics and the Politics of Terrorism in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game’
  • Heinrich Versteegen, ‘Turbans and Balaclavas: Images of Terrorism in British Political Cartoons’
  • Frauke Hofmeister, ‘Forgetting the Disturbance? Places Commemorating Terrorist Attacks in Contemporary Britain’

Books Reviewed:

  • Leonard Weinberg (2012), The End of Terrorism
  • Norbert Greiner & Felix Sprang (2011), Lesarten des Terrorismus
  • Fiona Tolan et al., Literature, Migration and the War on Terror
  • Joy Sather-Wagstaff (2011), Heritage that Hurts           
  • Martin Randall (2011), 9/11 and the Literature of Terror
  • Elleke Boehmer & Stephen Morton (2010), Terror and the Postcolonial

Vol. 19 (2012), No. 1

Big Brother is Watching You (Again): Britain under Surveillance

Guest editor: Anja Müller-Wood

Articles:

  • Anja Müller-Wood, ‘Introduction: How Powerful is Big Brother?’
  • Ben Harbisher, ‘The Bureaucratization of Dissent: Public Order and Protest in Modern Britain’
  • Nadine Böhm-Schnitker, ‘From Public Opinion to the Big Society: Modulations of Surveillance in the (Neo)Nineteenth Century’
  • Michael Krause, ‘Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four: Contempmrary Surveillance Narratives in England’
  • Lucia Krämer, ‘Faultlines of Cinematic Voyeurism in Andrea Arnold’s Red Road (2006)’

Reviews:

  • David Barnard-Wills (2012), Surveillance and Identity. Discourse,Subjectivity and the State
  • Julian Petley (2011), Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain
  • Gerold Sedlmayr (2011), The Discourse of Madness in Britain, 1790-1815. Medicine, Politics, Literature
  • Nadine Christina Böhm (2009), Sakrales Sehen. Strategien der Sakralisierung im Kino der Jahrtausendwende
  • Silke Stroh (2011), Uneasy Subjects: Postcolonialism and Scottish Gaelic Poetry
  • Susanne Gruss (2009), The Pleasure of the Feminist Text: Reading Michèle Roberts and Angela Carter
  • Christian Huck (2010), Fashioning Society, or, The Mode of Modernity: Observing Fashion in Eighteenth-Century Britain
  • Joanna Rostek (2011), Seaing through the Past: Postmodern Histories and the Maritime Metaphor in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

Vol. 18 (2011), No. 2

Birth & Death

Guest editors: Anette Pankratz & Claus-Ulrich Viol

Articles:

  • Pankratz, Anette and Claus-Ulrich Viol, ‘Introduction: Birth, Death and Culture’ (99)
  • Stratmann, Gerd, ‘Nobody’s Child, Everybody’s Child: Discourses of Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England’ (109)
  • Funk, Wolfgang, ‘A Time to Die: Debates on Euthanasia in British Culture’ (121)
  • Krause, Michael, ‘The Public Death of James Bulger: Images as Evidence in a Popular Tale of Good and Evil’ (133)
  • Tegethoff, Dorothea, ‘Pregnancy and Childbirth on TV in Germany and Britain’ (149)
  • Lenz, Christian, ‘Excuse Me, Has This Life Been Taken? Zombies, Hoodies and Permissible Killing in Contemporary British Horror Cinema’ (163)
  • Versteegen, Heinrich, ‘Dying with Laughter The Inherent Joke Structure of Death and Bereavement’ (175)

Reviews:

  • Michael Pierse (2015), Writing Ireland’s Working Class: Dublin After O’Casey
  • Holger Rossow (2019), Globalismus und New Labour: Zur diskursiven Konstruktion von Globalisierungsprozessen im Großbritannien der Blair-Ära
  • Richard Sharpley and Philip R. Stone, eds. (2009), The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practise of Dark Tourism
  • Claire Monk (2011), Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

Vol. 18 (2011), No. 1

Sports

Guest editors: Beate Rudlof & Christian Schmitt-Kilb

Articles:

  • Schmitt-Kilb, Christian, ‘Introduction’ (3)
  • Chill, Adam, ‘Ireland Forever! Irish Boxers and Britishness in the early Nineteenth Century’ (15)
  • Petzold, Jochen, ’”Play up! play up! and play the game!” The Militarization of Cricket in Victorian Boys’ Magazines’ (27)
  • Huck, Christian, ‘Football Documentaries: Creativity v Actuality/Liveness (41)
  • Piskurek, Cyprian, ‘Sing When You’re Standing: Football Chants and the State of Fan Culture’ (57)
  • Frank, Sybille, ‘From England to the World: Ethnic, National and Gender-Based Stereotyping in Professional Football’ (69)

Reviews:

  • Ben Carrington (2010), Race, Sport and Polities: The Sporting Black Diaspora
  • Peter Bramham and Stephen Wagg, eds. (2009), Sport, Leisure and Culture in the Postmodern City
  • Jeffrey Hili (2010), Sport in History: An Introduction
  • Tony Schirato (2007), Understanding Sports Culture
  • Dietmar Böhnke, Stefanie Brusberg·Kiermeier and Peter Drexler, eds. (2010), Victorian Highways, Victorian Byways: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
  • Ross P. Garner, Melissa Beattie and Una McCormack, eds. (2010), Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things: Cultural Perspeetives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures

Vol. 17 (2010), No. 2

Reading British Spaces

Guest editors: Merle Tönnies & Ina Grimm

Articles:

  • Tönnies, Merle and Ina Grimm, ‘Introduction: Mapping the Field’ (99)
  • Gunzel, Stephan, ‘On Reading Space’ (107)
  • Kilian, Eveline, ‘Culture, the Politics of Inclusion and their Spatial Dimensions: London’s South Bank’ (117)
  • Carter Wood, John, ‘Reading Spaces and Reading Violence in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ (133)
  • Burleigh, Peter and Andrea Ochsner, ‘British Culture and Topographies of Resistance Cross-dressing in Narrative Fiction and Photography’ (145)
  • Singer, Christoph, ‘Surveillance and the Web 2.0: Re-Presentation of the British Self in the Panoptic Gaze (159)
  • Emig, Rainer, ‘Lost PIaces – Productive Spaces?’ (173)

Reviews:

  • Wolfgang Hallet and Birgit Neumann (2009), Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur: Die Literaturwissenschaften und der Spatial Turn
  • Christoph Ehland (2007), Thinking Northern: Textures of Identity in the North of England
  • Ralph Pordzik (2009), Futurescapes: Space in Utopian and Science Fiction Discourses
  • Ina Habermann (2010), Myth, Memory and the Middlebrow: Priestley, du Maurier and the Symbolic Form of Englishness
  • Jürgen Kramer, Anette Pankratz and Claus-Ulrich Viol (2009), Mini & Mini: Ikonen der Popkultur zwischen Dekonstruktion und Rekonstruktion
  • Roslyn Jolly (2009), Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific: Travel, Empire, and the Author’s Profession

Vol. 17 (2010), No. 1

Documentary Cultures

Guest editors: Jürgen Kamm & Richard Kilborn

Contents:

  • Kamm, Jürgen and Richard Kilborn, ‘Editorial’ (3)
  • Black, Jeremy, ‘’Documentary Culture and the Historian: A Brief Statement (13)
  • von Rosenberg, Ingrid, ‘Speaking for Themselves: Documents of Working-Class Women’s Lives from the Twentieth Century’ (17)
  • Voigts-Virchow, Eckart, ‘Gestures towards Authenticity: Michael Winterbottom’s Documentary Fiction’ (33)
  • Rolinson, Dave, ‘A Documentary of Last Resort: The Case of Shoot to Kill’ (47)
  • Lohmeier, Christine, ‘Whose Queen Is She Anyway`: Documenting the British Royal Family for a German Audience’ (59)
  • Zoellner, Anne, ‘The Changing Face of UK Documentary Production: Commerce, Reflexivity and Professionalism (69)

Reviews:

  • Michael Chanan (2007), The Politics of Documentary
  • Brian Winston (2008 [1995]), Claiming the Real II. Documentary: Grierson and Beyond
  • Patrick Russell (2007), 100 British Documentaries. BFI Screen Guides
  • Sarah Casey Benyahia (2007), Teaching Film and TV Documentary. Teaching Film and Media Studies
  • Broderick Fox (2009), Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice
  • Annette Kern-Stähler (2008), “A Missionary Zeal”: Besatzung, Entnazifizierung und Umerziehung als Aktionsfeld und im Geschichtsbewusstsein britischer Literaten
  • Donald Roy (2009), Romantic and Revolutionary Theatre, 1789-1860
  • Bernhard Klein (2007), On the Uses of History in Recent Irish Writing

Vol. 16 (2009), No. 2

Postsecular Britain

Guest editors: Anton Kirchhofer & Richard Stinshoff

Articles:

  • Kirchhofer, Anton and Richar Stinshoff, ‘Introduction’ (107)
  • Bruce, Steve, ‘”We Don’t Do God”: The Long Divorce of Religion and National Identity in Britain 1832-2008’ (117)
  • Modood, Tariq, ‘Multicultural Equality, Liberal Citizenship and Secularism’ (131)
  • Wiemann, Dirk, ‘Bashing the Bishop, The Rowan Williams Row and the Unfinished Secularisation of Britain’ (151)
  • Huggan, Graham, ‘Ist the “Post-” in “Postsecular” the “Post-” in “Postcolonial”?’ (165)

Reviews:

  • Kenan Malik (2009). From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy
  • Renate Brosch, ed. (2008). Victorian Visual Culture
  • Marcus Schmitz (2008). Kulturkritik ohne Zentrum: Edward W. Said
  • Wolfram R. Keller (2008). Selves & Nations. The Troy Story from Sicily to England
  • Lena Steveker (2009). Identity and Cultural Memory in the Fiction of A.S. Byatt: Knitting the Net of Culture

Vol. 16 (2019), No. 1

Jewish Cultures

Guest editor: Claudia Sternberg

Articles:

  • Sternberg, Claudia, ‘Introduction’ (3)
  • Kushner, Tony, ‘Anglo-Jewish Museology and Heritage, 1887 to the Present’ (11)
  • Stähler, Axel, ‘Metonymies of Jewish Postcoloniality: The British Mandate for Palestine and Israel in Contemporary British Jewish Fiction’ (27)
  • Tucker, Judith, ‘Belated Landscapes: A Second-Generation Aesthetic Practice in a British Context’ (41)
  • Sternberg, Claudia, ‘British Jewish Cinema and the Diasporic Imagination: Crosscultural Encounters in the Films of Paul Morrison’ (57)
  • Wise, Yaakov, ‘The Rise of Strict Orthodoxy in Contemporary Anglo-Jewry and the Haredim of Manchester’ (73)

Reviews:

  • Meri-Jane Rochelson (2008). A Jew in the Public Arena. The Career of Israel Zangwill
  • Peter Ullrich (2008). Die Linke, Israel und Palästina: Nahostdiskurse in Großbritannien und Deutschland
  • Michel S. Laguerre (2008). Global Neighbourhoods: Jewish Quarters in Paris, London and Berlin
  • Christian Hoyer (2008). Salisbury und Deutschland: außenpolitisches Denken und britische Deutschlandpolitik zwischen 1856 und 1880
  • Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenberg (2008). Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851
  • Lena Cowen Orlin (2007). Locating Privacy in Tudor London
  • Anja Schwarz and Sabine Lucia Müller (2008). Iterationen: Geschlecht im kulturellen Gedächtnis
  • Robert J. C. Young (2007). The Idea of English Ethnicity

Vol. 15 (2008), No. 2

Censorship and Cultural Regulation in Contemporary Britain

Guest editors: Barbara Korte & Jochen Petzold

Articles:

  • Korte, Barbara and Jochen Petzold, ‘Censorship in Britain: Then and Now’ (97)
  • O’Sullivan, Emer, ‘Jenny and Abigail on the Rocks: Censorship and Children’s Literature in Britain’ (109)
  • Schnierer, Peter Paul, ‘The Uses of Censorship: Coward, Orton, Ravenhill and the Decline of the Unsayable’ (121)
  • Voigts-Virchow, Eckart, ‘Therapeutic Rape? From Censoring Plays to Censoring Display in Film and Television. The Case of Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle’
  • Pirker, Eva Ulrike, ‘A Discourse Oppressed? The Representation of Deaths in British Police Custody’ (147)
  • Steel, John, ‘Press Censorship in Britain: Blurring the Boundaries of Formal Censorship’ (159)
  • Frenk, Joachim, ‘Freedom Filtered: On Internet Censorship in the UK’ (171)

Reviews:

  • Donald Thomas (2007). Freedom’s Frontier: Censorship in Modern Britain
  • Jason McElligott (2007). Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England
  • Gunter Süß (2006). Sound Subjects: Zur Rolle des Tons in Film und Computerspiel
  • Oliver Marchart (2008). Cultural Studies
  • Susanne Cuevas (2008). Babylon and Golden City: Representations of London in Black and Asian British Novels since the 1990s
  • Anna Chalcraft and Judith Viscardi (2007). Strawberry Hill. Horace Walpole’s Gothic Castle
  • Wolfgang Hallet and Ansgar Nünning (2007). Neue Ansätze und Konzepte der Literatur- und Kulturdidaktik
  • Lothar Bredella and Wolfgang Hallet (2007). Literaturunterricht, Kompetenzen und Bildung

Vol. 15 (2008), No. 1

Transcultural Britain

Guest editors: Bernd-Peter Lange & Dirk Wiemann

Articles:

  • Lange, Bernd Peter and Dirk Wiemann, ‘Transcultural Britain: An Introduction’ (3)
  • Sedlmayr, Gerold, ‘”Yeahbutnobutyeahbut”: The Dismantling of Britishness in Little Britain’ (11)
  • Huck, Christian, ‘Postmaterial Britishness: Playing Football Like a Gentleman’ (25)
  • Wald, Christina, ‘Screening Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Transcultural Britain: Joe Wright’s Little England and Gurinder Chadha’s Global Village’ (43)
  • von Rosenberg, Ingrid, ‘Transformations of Western Icons in Black British Art’ (59)

Reviews:

  • Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla (2006), Studying Transcultural Literary History
  • Pennycook, Alastair (2006), Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows
  • Jowitt, Claire (2007), Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650
  • Tschirschky, Malte W. (2006), Die Erfindung der keltischen Nation Cornwall
  • Assmann, Aleida (2006), Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaft. Grundbegriffe, Themen, Fragestellungen
  • Tönnies, Merle and Claus-Ulrich Viol (2007), Introduction to the Study of British Culture
  • Linke, Gabriele and Holger Rossow (2007), Rhetoric and Representation. The British at War
  • Kramer, Jürgen (2006), Britain and Ireland. A Concise History
  • Wald, Christina (2007), Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia: Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama
  • Flothow, Dorothea (2006), Told in Gallant Stories. Erinnerungsbilder des Krieges in britischen Kinder- und Jugendromanen 1870-1939

Vol. 14 (2007), No. 2

Fashioning Society

Guest editors: Christian Huck & Susanne Scholz

Articles:

  • Huck, Christian, ‘Fashioning Society’ (89)
  • Church Gibson, Pamela, ‘The Deification of the Dolly Bird: Selling Swinging London, Fuelling Feminism’ (99)
  • Ross, Frances, ‘Unpicking the Cultural Threads of Change in England. The African and the West Indian Migrant Design Influence on Tailoring’ (113)
  • Friedl, Bettina, ‘Appearances. The Cultural Significance of Clothes in Henry James’ Early Short Fiction’ (125)
  • Ling, Weesie, ‘Chinese Dress in The World of Suzie Wong. How the Cheongsam Became Sexy, Exotic, Servile’ (139)
  • Coneskin, Becky, ‘Lee Miller’s WWII Reporting for British Vogue’ (151)

Reviews:

  • Walters, Linda & Abby Lillethun (2007), The Fashion Reader
  • Hughes, Clair (2006), Dressed in Fiction
  • Viol, Claus-Ulrich (2006), Jukebooks. Contemporary Fiction, Popular Music, and Cultural Value
  • Scholz, Susanne & Felix Holtschoppen (2007), MenschenFormen. Visualisierungen des Humanen in der Neuzeit
  • Avery, Todd (2007), Radio Modernism: Literature, Ethics, and the BBC, 1922-1938
  • Collier, Patrick (2006), Modernism on Fleet Street.
  • Beck, Rudolf & Konrad Schröder (2006), Handbuch der britischen Kulturgeschichte. Daten, Fakten, Hintergründe von der römischen Eroberung bis zur Gegenwart

Vol. 14 (2007), No. 1

Britain at War

Guest editors: H. Gustav Klaus & Christian Schmitt-Kilb

Articles:

  • Klaus, Gustav H. & Christian Schmitt-Kilb, ‘Editorial’ (3-7)
  • Bell, Bill, ‘Reading between the Lines. Literature on the Western Front 1914-1918’ (9-19)
  • Seidl, Monika, ‘”Merely a Place in Which to Eat and Sleep”? Bringing the War Home in Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s Second World War Films’ (21-28)
  • Korte, Barbara, ‘Blacks and Asians at War for Britain. Reconceptualisations in the Filmic and Literary Field?’ (29-39)
  • Schwarzkopf, Jutta, ‘Remebering Victory Without Discomfort. The Obliteration of British Women’s Involvement in the Military in Official Commemorations of the Second World War’ (41-52)
  • Emig, Rainer, ‘Institutionalising Violence, Destruction and Suffering. Pitfalls, Paradoxes and Possibilities of War Museums in Britain’ (53-64)
  • Wiemann, Dirk, ‘Britain at War with Itself. The Civil War Re-Enacted, Re-Appropriated and Re-Visited’ (65-76)

Reviews:

  • Dening, Greg (2004), Beach Crossings. Voyaging Across Times, Cultures and Self. (Peter Hulme)
  • Ambrosini, Richard & Richard Dury (2006), Robert Louis Stevenson. Writer of Boundaries. (Jürgen Kramer)
  • Burden, Robert & Stephan Kohl (2006), Landscape and Englishness. (Marion Gibson)
  • Thiele, Wolfgang, Joachim Schwend & Christian Todenhagen (2005), Political Discourse. Different Media – Different Intentions – New Reflections. (Anett Löscher)

Vol. 13 (2006), No. 2

Theorising Cultural Difference and Transdifference

Guest editors: Doris Feldmann & Ina Habermann

Articles:

  • Kramer, Jürgen, ‘Valedictory’ (98)
  • Feldmann, Doris & Ina Habermann, ‘Editorial’ (99-104)
  • Breinig, Helmbrecht & Klaus Lösch, ‘Transdifference’ (105-122)
  • Schulze-Engler, Frank, ‘What’s the Difference? Notes towards a Dialogue between Transdifference and Transculturality’ (123-132)
  • Taunton, Nina, ‘The Triumph of Age. All’s Well That Ends Well. Shakespeare and the Dramatisation of Transdifference’ (133-146)
  • Schneider, Ralf, ‘Literary Childhoods and the Blending of Conceptual Spaces. Transdifference and the Other in Ourselves’ (147-160)
  • Taneja, Leena, ‘Union and Separation. Transdifference in Gaudiya Vaisnava Theology’ (161-172)
  • Johnson, Phylis, ‘Hearing Transdifference. Sound, Strife and Sonic Processes of Cultural Negotiation’ (173-185)

Reviews:

  • Heyl, Christoph (2004), A Passion for Privacy. Untersuchungen zur Genese der bürgerlichen Privatsphäre in London, 1660-1800 (Christoph Henke)
  • Gohrisch, Jana, (2005), Bürgerliche Gefühlsdispositionen in der englischen Prosa des 19. Jahrhunderts (Rita Gerlach)

Vol. 13 (2006), No. 1

Cultural Exchange

Guest editor: Gesa Stedman

Articles:

  • Stedman, Gesa, ‘Editorial’ (3-6)
  • Panayi, Panikos, ‘Immigration and Food in 20th-Century Britain. Exchange and Ethnicity’ (7-20)
  • Berg, Maxine, ‘French Fancy and Cool Britannia. The Fashion Markets of Early Modern Europe’ (21-46)
  • Evangelista, Stefano, ‘A Colony of Hellas. 19th-Century England and the Legacy of Ancient Greece’ (47-62)
  • Stedman, Gesa, ”Powders, Trimmings, and Curl’d Wigs’. Gender and Cultural Exchange’ (63-78)

Reviews:

  • Kumar, Krishan (2003), The Making of English National Identity (Christian Schmitt-Kilb)
  • Dimmock, Matthew (2005), New Turkes. Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Tobias Döring)
  • Laqué, Stephan & Enno Ruge, eds. (2004), Realigning Renaissance Culture. Intrusion and Adjustment in Early Modern Drama
  • Höfele, Andreas & Werner von Koppenfels, eds. (2005), Renaissance Go-Betweens. Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe (Anja Hill-Zenk)
  • Fischer, Tilman (2004), Reiseziel England. Ein Beitrag zur Poetik der Reisebeschreibung und zur Topik der Moderne (1830-1870) (Barbara Schaff)
  • Zwierlein, Anne-Julia, ed. (2005), Unmapped Countries. Biological Visions in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (Virginia Richter)
  • McLeod, John (2004), Postcolonial London. Rewriting the Metropolis (Eveline Kilian)
  • Reichl, Susanne & Mark Stein, edc. (2005), Cheeky Fictions. Laughter and the Postcolonial (Silke Stroh)
  • Rippl, Gabriele (2005), Beschreibungs-Kunst. Zur intermedialen Poetik anglo-amerikanischer Ikontexte (Roger Lüdeke)

Vol. 12 (2005), No. 2

The Cults and Cultures of Music

Guest editors: Valentine Cunningham & Jürgen Schlaeger

Music is a part of culture that is “nigh on universal”, as one editor of this volume of JSBC states in his editorial. It is something that exists in nearly all cultures and can represent different meanings to different people – a system of representation that can be seen in various historical, societal and political contexts and that is subject to constant change. The contributors to this volume chose to write about music in the contexts of the court of Henry VIII, of radical sub-sultures in the 1790s, and of the strong mutual influences of music and literature.

Articles:

  • Cunningham, Valentine, ‘Editorial’ (99-104)
  • Rupp, Susanne, ‘Performing Court. The Music of Henry VIII’ (105-114)
  • Davis, Michael T., ‘”An Evening of Pleasure Rather Than Business”. Songs, Subversion and Radical Sub-Culture in the 1790s’ (115-126)
  • Cunningham, Valentine, ‘Jazz and the Oxford Boys’ (127-154)
  • Viol, Claus-Ulrich, ‘Between Agency, Authenticity, and Adorno. How Contemporary British Fiction Constructs and Interrelates with Popular Music’ (155-173)

Reviews:

  • McRobbie, Angela (2005), The Uses of Cultural Studies. A Textbook (Ina Habermann)
  • Nünning, Vera, ed. (2005), Kulturgeschichte der englischen Literatur. Von der Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart (Ralf Schneider)
  • Klaus, H. Gustav & Stephen Knight, eds. (2005), “To Hell with Culture”. Anarchism and Twentieth-Century British Literature (Gerd Bayer)
  • Brosch, Renate & Rüdiger Kunow, eds. (2005), Transgressions. Cultural Interventions in the Global Manifold (Eva Knopp)
  • Aron, Jane & Chris Williams, eds. (2005), Postcolonial Wales (Silke Stroh)
  • Steinberg, Philip E. (2001), The Social Construction of the Ocean (Bernhard Klein)
  • Calbi, Maurizio (2005), Approximate Bodies. Gender and Power in Early Modern Drama and Anatomy (Jonathan White)

Vol. 12 (2005), No. 1

Contemporary Welsh Culture

Guest editor: Russell West-Pavlov

This issue of JSBC concentrates on Welsh Cultures and identities both past and present. The authors deal with aspects as diverse as concepts of nation and race in a Welsh context, the importance of language to culture, various art forms like poetry, broadcasting and film, as well as questions of multiculturalism and diverse Welsh cultures. Welsh culture is described as being on the move, developing creative ways of the production of culture and presenting Wales and Welshness in their historical, societal and political contexts.

Articles:

  • West-Pavlov, Russell, ‘Editorial. Testaments or Testimonies? Welsh Culture and Society at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’ (3-8)
  • Morris, Nigel, ‘”Talk to Me in Your Language”. Broadcasting and the Context of Wales on Film’ (9-24)
  • Williams, Charlotte , ‘Emergent multiculturalism? Challenging the National Story of Wales’ (25-38)
  • McElroy, Ruth, ‘”For a Mothertongue is a Treasure, but Not a God”: Gwyneth Lewis and the Dynamics of Language in Contemporary Welsh Poetry’ (39-54)
  • Williams, Daniel, ‘Insularly English: Raymond Williams, Nation and Race’ (55-66)
  • Williams, Jeni, ‘”The Modern Eye Needs a Resting Place”: Making a Space for Art Outside the Metropolis’ (67-78)

Reviews:

  • Müller, Marion (2004), “These Savage Beasts Become Domestick”: The Discourse on the Passions in Early Modern England (Christian Schmitt-Kilb)
  • Hall, Catherine (2006), Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867 (Jürgen Kramer)
  • Robinson, Alan (2004), Imagining London, 1770-1900 (Eveline Kilian)
  • Stradling, Robert (2004), Wales and the Spanish Civil War. The Dragon’s Dearest Cause? (H. Gustav Klaus)
  • Kilian, Eveline (2004), GeschlechtSverkehrt. Theoretische und literarische Perspektiven des gender-bending (Christina Wald)

Vol. 11 (2004), No. 2

Consumption and Consumer Cultures

Guest editors: Joachim Schwend & Dietmar Böhnke

At times of globalisation and expanding markets, consumption and consumer cultures play an increasingly important role in the discussion of culture and society. Consumption behaviours shape and influence essential social processes and traits like identity construction and marketing in a way that shows how they are read as very distinct systems of commodification and communication. They express economic, cultural and social processes in the context of globalisation and the struggle over values and meaning.

Again, this issue of JSBC is a collection of papers read at the British Cultural Studies Conference, this time taking place in Leipzig in 2003. The authors discuss aspects of consumption as diverse as politics, beauty and food, among others. This volume contains contributions on identity construction in British, American and Japanese consumer cultures, the iconographies of selling nations, brands and lifestyles and their representations in global and regional markets.

Articles:

  • Schwend, Joachim, ‘Editorial’ (111-116)
  • Tönnies, Merle, ‘New Britain as Consumer Country and Commodity’ (117-128)
  • Versteegen, Heinrich, ‘The ‘Plain’ and the ‘Fancy’. Identities, Stereotypes and Branding in Contemporary British Food Culture’ (129-140)
  • Rosenberg, Ingrid von, ‘Beauty – Big Deal’ (141-154)
  • Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine, ‘Reading Rosamunde Pilcher from a Consumer Perspective’ (155-168)
  • Dannenberg, Hilary P., ‘Marketing the British Situation Comedy. The Success of the BBC Brand on the British and Global Comedy Markets’ (169-182)
  • Sherrington, Emlyn, ‘How Do You Sell a Nation?’ (183-194)
  • Breunig, Hans Werner, ‘John Locke and the Abhorrence of Consumerism’ (195-204)
  • Koenen, Anne, ‘”What Do You Keep Cows for?” Mail-Order Catalogues and Consumerism in Rural Areas of the US , 1900-1930’ (205-216)
  • Richter, Steffi, ‘Consumer Culture in Japan between the Wars. Between Firm and “Terminal Department Store”‘ (217-232)

Reviews:

  • Schmitt-Kilb, Christian (2004), “Never was the Albion without Poetry”. Poetik, Rhetorik und Nation im England der Frühen Neuzeit (Daniel Dornhofer)
  • McDonagh, Josephine (2003), Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900; Kipp, Julie (2003), Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic (Susanne Scholz)
  • Mersmann, Arndt (2001), “A True Test and a Living Picture”. Repräsentationen der Londoner Weltausstellung von 1851 (Virginia Richter)
  • Linke, Gabriele (2003), Populärliteratur als kulturelles Gedächtnis. Eine vergleichende Studie zu zeitgenössischen britischen und amerikanischen popular romances der Verlagsgruppe Harlequin Mills & Boon (Martina Iske)
  • Knight, Stephen (2004), Crime Fiction, 1800-2000. Detection, Death, Diversity (Christine Matzke)
  • Brydon, Diana, ed. (2000), Postcolonialism. Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (Mark Stein)

Vol. 11 (2004), No. 1

The Return of Class

Guest editor: Ingrid von Rosenberg

From the 1840s onwards, the existence of classes in Britain has been first realised, then generally accepted, and later heatedly debated. However, academic discussions of class aspects in British society suddenly stopped in the 1980s, after two decades of intense debate in sociology and cultural studies, giving way to a stronger focus on the study of gender and ethnicity. The 1990s, then, witnessed a revival of academic, political and public interest in British classes, which prompted the conference theme “The Return of Class” for the 13th British Cultural Studies Conference, held in Dresden in 2002.

This issue of JSBC is a collection of papers read at that conference. The contributers discuss class from sociologist as well as cultural studies perspectives, concentrating on new forms of old inequalities, on young women in Blair’s Britain, aspects of class and identity in 19th-century cartoons, as well as on political poetry, pop music and women’s novels and their different representations of the British class phenomenon.

Articles:

  • Rosenberg , Ingrid von, ‘Editorial’ (3-8)
  • Byrne, David, ‘Back to the Edwardians – Forward to the Future’ (9-22)
  • McRobbie, Angela, ‘Doing Away with Class? Female Success in Blair’s Britain ‘ (23-32)
  • Hußmann, Gabriele, ‘Of Nappies and Conveyor Belts. Work, Class and Identity in Working-Class Women’s Fiction’ (33-44)
  • Schmitt-Kilb, Christian, ‘”Class[ics] Society”. Class and Language in Tony Harrison’s The School of Eloquence and “v.”‘ (45-58)
  • Viol, Claus-Ulrich, ‘Sex, Drugs, and on the Dole. Class (Politics) in Contemporary British Pop Music’ (59-72)
  • Gohrbandt, Detlev, ‘Class and Value in British Caricature from Leech to Brock’ (73-88)
  • Stratmann, Gerd, ‘The Return of Class. A Conference Report’ (89-90)

Reviews:

  • Habermann, Ina (2003), Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England (Andrew Hadfield)
  • Aston, Elaine (2003), Feminist Views on the English Stage. Women Playwrights, 1990-2000 (Christina Wald)
  • Mergenthal, Silvia (2003), A Fast-Forward Version of England . Constructions of Englishness in Contemporary Fiction (Ina Habermann)
  • Döring, Tobias, Markus Heide & Susanne Mühleisen, eds. (2003), Eating Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Food (Rachel Rich)
  • Edmond , Rod & Vanessa Smith, eds. (2003), Islands in History and Representation (Jürgen Kramer)
  • Tönnies, Merle, ed. (2003), Britain under Blair (Joachim Schwend)
  • Nünning, Ansgar & Vera Nünning, eds. (2003), Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften. Theoretische Grundlagen – Ansätze – Perspektiven (Wolfgang Riedel)
  • Hallett, Wolfgang (2002), Fremdsprachenunterricht als Spiel der Texte und Kulturen. Intertextualität als Paradigma einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Praxis (Günter Nold)

Vol. 10 (2003), No. 2

London, the Metropolis

Guest editor: Jürgen Schlaeger

Metropolises like London have often been regarded as the embodiment of utopian visions of city life, commercial power and cultural development. They appear to represent the blessings and burdens of progress and industrialisation and their effects on the life of the individual. Metropolises are places of social movement, change and crisis, as well as of the latest fashions in culture, economy and technology. People believe they will find a society’s typical habits and lifestyles in its capital, but also specific features of both capital and nation as well as differences, shared cultural values together with examples of cultural diversity.

Whether metropolises really are the places where these things can be found is discussed in this issue of JSBC. The contributions compare London with other metropolises of (post-) modern times, such as Paris, Edinburgh, or Dublin, while investigating London’s presumed role as a model metropolis. The authors discuss ways in which London has inspired scholars and artists, what kinds of structures it represents, and how British history and heritage are constantly being re-constructed and re-invented in the capital. By looking at critical literature, the New Globe Theatre, and the Museum of London, the contributors use their insights to construct an image of London as a metropolis between fact and fiction.

Articles:

  • Schlaeger, Jürgen, ‘Editorial’ (145-147)
  • Borsay, Peter, ‘Metropolis and Enlightenment. The British Isles 1660-1800’ (149-170)
  • Eisenberg, Christiane, ‘The Culture of Modernity. London and Paris around 1900’ (171-186)
  • Teske, Doris, ‘A Master-Narrative of the City? The Role of the Museum of London and Its Real and Virtual Exhibitions within the Urban Landscape’ (187-199)
  • West, Russell, ‘Cultural Catachresis and Cultural Memory at London ‘s New Globe Theatre’ (201-216)
  • Schlaeger, Jürgen, ‘Peter Ackroyd’s London ‘ (217-226)

Reviews:

  • Hadfield, Andrew (2001), Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630. An Anthology (Thomas Healy)
  • Kamps, Ivo & Jyotsna Singh (2001), Travel Knowledge. European ‘ Discoveries’ in the Early Modern Period (Thomas Healy)
  • Turner, Katherine (2001), British Travel Writers in Europe 1750-1800 (Barbara Schaff)
  • Berghoff, Hartmut, Barbara Korte, Ralf Schneider & Christopher Harvie (2002), The Making of Modern Tourism. The Cultural History of the British Experience, 1600-2000 (Joanna Dybiec)
  • Sager, Peter (2003), Oxford & Cambridge. Eine Kulturgeschichte (Merle Tönnies)
  • Stedman, Gesa (2002), Stemming the Torrent. Expression and Control in the Victorian Discourses on Emotions, 1830-1872 (David Ellison)
  • Teske, Doris (2002), Cultural Studies: GB (Silvia Mergenthal)
  • Phipps, Alison (2002), Contemporary German Cultural Studies (Sarah Colvin)

Vol. 10 (2013), No. 1

Fictions of Memory

Guest editor: Ansgar Nünning

Whatever people remember plays an important role in their constructions of identity, be it individual or national identity. The way they interpret their memories always says something not so much about their past as about their present situation, as they tend to re-construct, manipulate and adapt recollections of the past to their present attitudes and perspectives. Thus, fictions of memory are constructed which can be found in literary texts as well as in the media and institutions, representing individual or shared memories and cultures.

This issue of JSBC deals with a variety of fictions of cultural memory, demonstrating the impact of memory on canon formation, English literary histories and national mentalities, as well as on the museumisation of memories and their complex constructions. By analysing literary narratives, theoretical constructs and the rhetoric of collective memory, the authors discuss the often conflicting ideas of memory on the one hand and general concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ on the other, trying to find out how the process of memory construction works and what impact it has.

Articles:

  • Nünning, Ansgar, ‘Editorial. New Directions in the Study of Individual and Cultural Memory and Memorial Cultures’ (3-9)
  • Grabes, Herbert, ‘Canon Making and Cultural Memory. The Creation of ‘English Literature’ through the Writing of Literary Histories’ (11-25)
  • Nünning, Vera, ‘A ‘Usable Past’. Fictions of Memory and British National Identity’ (27-48)
  • Erll, Astrid, ‘The Great War Remembered. The Rhetoric of Collective Memory in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End and Arnold Zweig’s Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa’ (49-75)
  • Henke, Christoph, ‘Remembering Selves, Constructing Selves. Memory and Identity in Contemporary British Fiction’ (77-100)
  • Humphrey, Richard, ‘Museumizing the Museum. The Museum Culture of Postmodern Britain in Historico-Cultural Perspective’ (101-124)

Reviews:

  • D’haen, Theo, general ed. (2002), Proceedings of the XVth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association “Literature as Cultural Memory”, Leiden 16-22 August 1997 (Astrid Erll)
  • Nalbantian, Suzanne (2003), Memory in Literature. From Rousseau to Neuroscience (Dorothee Birke)
  • Wolf, Philipp (2002), Modernization and the Crisis of Memory. John Donne to Don de Lillo (Hanne Birk)
  • Wood, Marcus (2000), Blind Memory. Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 (Bernhard Klein)
  • Middleton, Peter & Tim Woods (2000), Literatures of Memory. History, Time and Space in Postwar Literature (Bernhard Klein)
  • Hoesterey, Ingeborg (2001), Pastiche. Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature (Birgit Neumann)

Vol. 9 (2002), No. 2

The Family and Its Others

Guest editors: Jana Gohrisch and Gesa Stedman

The debate about modern and traditional families and the multi-faceted concepts of the family is a central concern in Britain today. Novels and films which depict the search for the family – or rather, for a suitable mate as the prerequisite of a proper family – are very popular, something which becomes obvious in the success of screen versions of, for example, Jane Austen’s novels and their modern rewritings. Families are idealised and constructed on the basis of current values and role models. Thus, the ideal family is often contrasted with its potential opposite, the dangerous social world that seems to fail to provide any sense of community, security and happiness. In fact, the structure and construction of the family have been constantly changing. Traditional gender and family role definitions are being questioned as new forms of family are experimented with and more and more Others of the traditional nuclear family are being developed.
Historical and contemporary concepts, political aspects and cultural constructions of the family are discussed in this issue of JSBC, which is based on the British Cultural Studies Conference held at Humboldt University, Berlin, in November 2001. It brings together essays by scholars from different disciplines such as history, sociology, literary and cultural studies, and demonstrates changes as well as continuity in the perception of the family and its Others.

Articles:

  • Gohrisch, Jana & Gesa Stedman, ‘Editorial’ (131-133)
  • Fink, Janet, ‘Private Lives, Public Issues. Moral Panics and ‘the Family’ in 20th-Century Britain’ (135-148)
  • Emig, Rainer, ‘The Family – a Sitcom?’ (149-157)
  • Maassen, Irmgard, ‘Whoring, Scolding, Gadding About. Threats to Family Order in Early Modern Conduct Literature’ (159-171)
  • Gohrisch, Jana, ‘The Cultural Construction of Happiness and Contentment in Mid-19th-Century Non-Fiction’ (173-184)
  • Tönnies, Merle, ‘Good/Bad Girls and Their Fathers. Female Sexuality, Patriarchal Power and the Direction of the Audience’s Sympathy in 19th-Century British Melodrama’ (185-195)
  • Brosch, Renate, ‘The Conversation Piece. A Model for the Representation of the Family’ (197-208)
  • Lewis, Jane, ‘Family Change and Family Politics in the UK’ (209-222)

Reviews:

  • Taunton, Nina (2001), 1590s Drama and Militarism. Portrayals of War in Marlowe, Chapman and Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (Rainer Emig)
  • Korte, Barbara & Ralf Schneider, eds. (2002), War and the Cultural Construction of Identities in Britain (Rainer Emig)
  • McBride, Ian, ed. (2001), History and Memory in Modern Ireland (Bernhard Klein)
  • Connolly, Claire, ed. (2002), Theorizing Ireland (Bernhard Klein)
  • Döring, Tobias (2002), Caribbean-English Passages. Intertextuality in a Postcolonial Tradition (Russell West)
  • Bal, Mieke, ed. (1999), The Practice of Cultural Analysis. Exposing Interdisciplinary Interpretation (Ina Habermann)
  • Morley, David & Kevin Robins, eds. (2001), British Cultural Studies. Geography, Nationality, and Identity (Jürgen Kramer)
  • Fleming, Dan, ed. (2001), Formations. A 21st Century Media Studies Textbook (Ellen Risholm)

Vol. 9 (2002), No. 1

Non-Thematic Issue

Guest editor: Bernd Lenz

What unifies the articles in this first non-thematic issue of JSBC is their concern with ‘the historical’, a focus which contributes to the debate on the relationship between history and cultural studies. The range of themes discussed here is diverse: it covers, for instance, architectural and literary issues such as Victorian controversies about the reading of buildings as texts and patriotic xenophobia in eighteenth-century British literature. Furthermore, there are contributions on Britain’s insular mentality and relationship to Europe, on the rhetoric of national character as well as on culture and value concepts. One article samples work in progress in the form of a chapter from a historical survey of the British Isles for students and invites the readers to comment on the author’s approach and his version of British history.

Articles:

  • Kramer, Jürgen, ‘Editorial’ (3-4)
  • Kamm, Jürgen, ‘Architectural Readings. Victorian Controversies on Building, Meaning, and the Nation’ (5-25)
  • Kramer, Jürgen, ‘The ‘Long’ Nineteenth Century (1789-1914). A Sample Chapter of A Very Short History of the British Isles’ (27-50)
  • Lenz, Bernd, ‘ “This Scept’red Isle”. Britain’s Insular Mentality, Interculture and the Channel Tunnel’ (51-67)
  • Nünning, Ansgar, ‘Historicizing British Cultural Studies. Patriotic Xenophobia and the Rhetoric of National Character in Eighteenth-century British Literature’ (69-93)
  • Schlaeger, Jürgen, ‘Cultures and Value’ (95-107)

Reviews:

  • Trigg, Stephanie (2002), Congenial Souls. Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern (Medieval Cultures 30) (David Matthews)
  • Jones, Ann Rosalind & Peter Stallybrass (2000), Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Andrew Gordon)
  • Wall, Cynthia (1998), The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London (Andrew Gordon)
  • Zwierlein, Anne-Julia (2001), Majestick Milton. British Imperial Expansion and Transformations of ‘Paradise Lost’, 1667-1837 (Nicholas von Maltzahn)
  • Aravamudan, Srinivas (1999), Tropicopolitans. Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 (Mark Stein)
  • Thomas, Helen (2000), Romanticism and Slave Narratives. Transatlantic Testimonies (Mark Stein)
  • Logan, Thad (2001), The Victorian Parlour (Sabine Schülting)
  • Davies, Alistair & Alan Sinfield, eds. (2000), British Culture of the Postwar. An Introduction to Literature and Society, 1945-1999 (Bernhard Klein)
  • Crane, Ralph & Radhika Mohanram, eds. (2000), Shifting Continents / Colliding Cultures. Diaspora Writing of the Indian Continent (Cross / Cultures 42) (Gerd Stratmann)

Vol. 8 (2001), No. 2

Anything Shows: Victorian Material Culture

Guest editor: Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador

Victorians had to cope with a world of new things, such as the electric telegraph, the omnibus or photography, innovations which not only exercised much fascination but also elicited a great deal of scepticism and criticism. In response to these challenges, people and things were categorised and conceptually re-organised. Property and class became influential factors in this systematisation of a world which appeared to be in constant and disturbing flux. The interpretation of material culture promises to offer deeper insights into Victorian times. Thus, critics working in the field of Victorian culture try to analyse the representations of subjects and objects, signs and things and the textualisation of material circumstances.
Victorian material culture is the focus of this issue of JSBC, which offers a variety of readings of Victorian ‘things’ such as soap, dolls, or crockery, involving several disciplines such as history, linguistics and literature in the interpretation of different ‘texts’ and signs. The contributions include articles on gendered, classified, colonised, singular and mass-produced objects and their representations.

Articles:

  • Rosador, Kurt Tetzeli von, ‘Editorial’ (115-120)
  • Schabert, Ina, ‘Bourgeois Counter-Art. Dolls in Victorian Culture’ (121-135)
  • Schülting, Sabine, ‘ “Pray, Did You Ever Hear of Pears’ Soap?” Soap, Dirt, and the Commodity in Victorian England’ (137-156)
  • Scholz, Susanne & Martina Stange, ‘Framed Subjects – Displaced Objects. Mantelpiece Decoration in Nineteenth-Century English Literature’ (157-174)
  • Mersmann, Arndt, ‘ “Diamonds Are Forever” – Appropriations of the Koh-i-Noor. An Object Biography’ (175- 191)
  • Frenk, Joachim, ‘Smashing Crockery. Undisciplined Tableware in Alice-Books’ (193-218)
  • Keown, Michelle, ‘The Cultural Politics of English as a World Language. A Conference Report’ (219-220)

Reviews:

  • Schiffer, Michael Brian (1999), The Material Life of Human Beings. Artifacts, Behavior, and Communication (Stefan Herbrechter)
  • Richards, Sarah (1999), Eighteenth-Century Ceramics. Products for a Civilised Society ( Doris Feldmann)
  • Bryden, Inga & Janet Floyd, eds. (1999), Domestic Space. Reading the Nineteenth-Century Interior (Ingrid von Rosenberg)
  • Mao, Douglas (1998), Solid Objects. Modernism and the Test of Production (Tobias Döring)
  • Barringer, Tim & Tom Flynn, eds. (1998), Colonialism and the Object. Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (Tobias Döring)
  • Emberley, Julia V. (1998), Venus and Furs. The Cultural Politics of Fur (Gesa Stedman)

Vol. 8 (2001), No. 1

British Asian Cultures

Guest editor: Bernd-Peter Lange

Calling Britain a multicultural society has become so commonplace as to attract suspicion about the hidden agenda behind that phrase. Indeed it has long turned into a facile stereotype that can be functionalised as a cover for ubiquitous social inequalities as well as a persistent racism. Salman Rushdie has simply called it a sham, a ‘token gesture towards Britain’s Blacks’. There is only a thin line between obsessive attempts to unearth Britishness or Englishness in public discourse and an equally holistic concern with a German Leitkultur. All the same, there have been some beneficial effects for Britain’s political culture in the conscious inclusion of minorities in the decision-making process. Nobody in the public mainstream would object to Lord Irvine’s incantation of a multicultural, multi-ethnic United Kingdom as a cornerstone of New Labour’s policies, and it is now a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that British culture consists of a plurality of communities whose differences will have to be respected in the everyday procedures of civil society. The present issue is concerned with the largest grouping within what has effectively become, in Rushdie’s phrase, a ‘New Empire in Britain’: British Asian cultures. The six essays collected here examine a wide range of interaction between British Asians and British majority culture, charting a cross-cultural history that leads from almost complete isolation to various kinds of fusion.

Articles:

  • Lange, Bernd-Peter, ‘Editorial’ (5-6)
  • Lange, Bernd-Peter, ‘Babus, Brown Sahibs, Migrants: Avatars of British Asian Culture’ (7-18)
  • Pandurang, Mala, ‘Self-discovery and Re-assertion: Post-immigrant Issues in the Novels of British Asian Women Writers’ (19-30)
  • Mahnke, Iris, ‘Indian Artists in London – the New Crown Jewels?’ (31-39)
  • Godiwala, Dimple, ‘Invention/Hybridity/Identity: British Asian Culture and Its Post-colonial Theatres’ (41-55)
  • Tönnies, Merle, ‘Emulating the Empire, Demonstrating Difference or Expressing Equality? Selling and Consuming Indian Food in Britain’ (57-71)
  • Viol, Claus-Ulrich, ‘Br-Asian Overground: Marginal Mainstream, Mixing, and the Role of Memory in British Asian Popular Music’ (73-90)

Reviews:

  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1999), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Nilufer E. Bharucha)
  • Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri (2000), Empire (Dirk Wiemann)
  • Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2000), Who Do We Think We Are? Imagining the New Britain (Gerry Smyth)
  • Ghuman, Paul A. Singh (1999), Asian Adolescents in the West (Sabine Hornberg)
  • Lau, Annie, ed. (1999), South Asian Children and Adolescents in Britain (Sabine Hornberg)
  • Fludernik, Monika, ed. (1998), Hybridity and Postcolonialism. Twentieth-Century Indian Literature (Klaus Börner)

Vol. 7 (2000), No. 2

Work – Leisure – Identity

Guest editor: Peter Drexler

Traditional certainties and concepts of work, workplace, full and lifelong employment, as well as notions of leisure, have been significantly eroded, even wholly redefined in recent years, and these shifts have in turn had a decisive impact on modern forms of cultural identity. Such transformations have been occasioned by dramatic economic, technological and political changes, in particular by the transition from industrial to information-based societies. Global capitalism has not only had disastrous effects on many national economies but also worked fundamental changes in the labour-markets of the world, affecting the lives of millions of people. Britain with its long history of industrialisation – and its more recent experience of de-industrialisation – presents a particularly challenging field of study. We believe that the topic of work – and ‘non-work’, in the form of unemployment or leisure – should not be left exclusively to sociologists and economists. Cultural studies also should apply its methods of analysis to these social and economic changes, by considering, for instance, the new living conditions of the people affected by these changes, and by discussing the new concepts of work resulting from them, or the models of creating work that is socially useful and might give self-respect to those concerned. It can further, we believe, help illuminate the specific role that work, unemployment and leisure play in the formation of cultural identity. In particular, it can examine the symbolic forms of representation – in literature, arts, the media – which contribute to this process.

Articles:

  • Drexler, Peter, ‘Editorial’ (93-4)
  • Williamson, Bill, ‘Learning the Language of the Job: Jobs and Identity in Twentieth Century Britain’ (95-110)
  • Rosenberg, Ingrid von, ‘Changing Attitudes to Unemployment: The 19980s and 1990s in Contrast to the 1930s’ (111-27)
  • Byrne, David, ‘Dispossession and Disempowerment: Cultural Voids after the End of Industry’ (129-39)
  • Tönnies, Merle, ‘Consuming Pleasure: Postmodern Forms of Leisure in Contemporary Britain’ (141-51)
  • Stein, Mark, ‘Undoing the Empire: Work and Leisure in the Gallery of Trade and Empire’ (153-67)
  • Moss, Sarah, ‘Sea Changes: A Conference Report’ (169-70)

Reviews:

  • Childs, Peter, and Mike Storry, eds. (1999), Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture (Gerd Stratmann)
  • Christopher, David (1999), British Culture. An Introduction (Claus-Ulrich Viol)
  • Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Verkehr / Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaft, Wien (1999), The Contemporary Study of Culture (Reinhold Schiffer)
  • Schiffer, Reinhold (1999), Oriental Panorama. British Travellers in 19th Century Turkey (Christoph Bode)
  • Bode, Christoph, and Ulrich Broich, eds. (1998), Die Zwanziger Jahre in Großbritannien. Literatur und Gesellschaft einer spannungsreichen Dekade (Vera Nünning)
  • Roche, Maurice, ed. (1998), Sport, Popular Culture and Identity (Christiane Eisenberg)
  • Hollows, Joanne (2000), Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (Anna Maria Stuby)

Vol. 7 (2000), No. 1

Scotland 2000: Remaking the Nation

Guest editors: Hans Kastendiek & Richard Stinshoff

Over the last decades a host of civic and ethnic nationalisms have re-emerged as serious political challenges to existing, sometimes even long-established state structures in western and eastern Europe. This may have baffled those who think that the process of globalisation has already inaugurated the era of post-nationalism. The explanation some sociologists of nationalism have offered runs counter to this notion: modern nationalism helps protect those socio-political identities that have come under threat from the relentless impact of structural changes in global capitalism. In this issue of JSBC, we want offer the example of Scotland as a particularly interesting case study in this context.

Scotland, often characterised as a ‘stateless nation’ after voluntarily giving up sovereignty and independence in 1707, has never abandoned its sense of national Scottish identity, and it has even managed to preserve and consolidate its civil society, i.e. a specific set of political, economic, religious, social and cultural institutions below the level of the British central state. And although Scotland’s cultural self-image, since the 1707 Acts of Union, has always been susceptible to the pressures of Anglicisation from beyond its southern border, ‘Scottishness’ has ultimately been able to stand its ground. Just how successful Scotland has been in preserving its sense of national identity through the ages became evident in the 1997 devolution referendum, when the Scottish electorate solidly and unequivocally supported the establishment of a Scottish parliament.

We are convinced that an exploration of the implications of devolution and the hopes and anxieties that it has raised and continues to raise both among the political elites and the people of Britain may fruitfully focus on the example of Scotland. The essays and analyses assembled in this issue perceive devolution as a process which has now reached a new and possibly decisive stage. Refraining, however, from any immature and inappropriate prognosis, the arguments put forth in this issue focus both on past and present manifestations of Scottish national identity and on the relevant agents and constellations in a process that will ultimately entail a comprehensive remaking of the Scottish state, its civil society and its relationship with the United Kingdom and Europe.

Articles:

  • Kastendiek, Hans, and Richard Stinshoff, ‘Editorial’ (3-7)
  • Harvie, Christopher, ‘Scotland Goes to the Polls: Election Campaigning and Cabinet-Making’ (9-18)
  • Finlay, Richard J., ‘The Scottish National Party: A Party Trapped by the Past?’ (19-28)
  • Schwend, Joachim, ‘Scottishness: The Representation of a Frame of Mind’ (29-38)
  • McCrone, David, ‘Being British: Changing National and State Identities in Scotland and Wales’ (39-49)
  • Lindsay, Isobel, ‘Anglo-Scottish Stereotypes: Popular Perceptions of National Identity’ (51-60)
  • Stolz, Klaus, ‘The European Myth in Scotland and the Scottish Model in Europe’ (61-73)

Reviews:

  • Attwooll, Elspeth (1997), The Tapestry of the Law. Scotland, Legal Culture and Legal Theory (Helmut Weber)
  • Civardi, Christian (1997), Le Mouvement ouvrier écossais 1900-1931. Travail, culture, politique (H. Gustav Klaus)
  • Stolz, Klaus (1998), Schottland in der Europäischen Union. Integration und Autonomie einer staatslosen Nation (Thomas Noetzel)
  • Klaus, H. Gustav (1998), Factory Girl. Ellen Johnston and Working-Class Poetry in Victorian Scotland (Gerd Stratmann)
  • Lewis, Jayne Elizabeth (1998), Mary Queen of Scots. Romance and Nation (Merle Tönnies)
  • Siebers, Winfried, and Uwe Zagratzki, eds (1998), Deutsche Schottlandbilder. Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte (Susanne Hagemann)
  • Easthope, Anthony (1999), Englishness and National Culture (Ingrid von Rosenberg)

Vol. 6 (1999), No. 2

Everyday Life

Guest editors: Susan Bassnett & Gisela Ecker

The pleasure and the pain of Cultural Studies today in its more recent manifestation derives from attempts to analyze the fuzziness of its boundaries: not quite sociology, nor social history, nor literary studies, nor political science, nor anthropology, nor even ethnography. Drawing on all these disciplines, Cultural Studies at the onset of the 21st century presents itself as an extremely heterogeneous field. Whereas in the early years of the development of the discipline, the predominantly Marxist approach of theorists such as Richrad Hoggart, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams meant that there was a clear political dimension, today the plurality of approaches has meant a relaxing of more rigidly defined boundaries and methodologies. The topic of this issue, Everyday Life, offers an example of that shift towards greater plurality. Everyday life – perhaps the most evanescent of terms, avoiding definition in a continuously sliding process of re-evaluation – is notoriously difficult to theorize. Seeking a means of analyzing it provides a perfect example of the pain of trying to determine exactly what our object of study might be, combined with the pleasure of playing with the plasticity of something that resists all attempts to concretize. What all the essays in this issue indicate is the richness that is available in the study of aspects of everyday life, and the extent to which such studies can shed light on social and cultural practices, both past and present, experienced and fictitious, thereby showing how great a pleasure it can ultimately be to play with a plastic, hybrid mass that resists categorization and definition. The essays present ways of dealing with the unspectacular, the ‘ordinary’ and so-called banal; they offer their own choices in the diverse field of theoretical approaches to the everyday and, with their emphasis on gender differences, they point to hitherto neglected areas within the wide world of the everyday.

Articles:

  • Basrnett, Susan / Gysela Ecker, ‘Editorial’ (119-21)
  • Ebel, Kerstin,‘Everyday Life Underground: Aspects of Culture on London’s Tube’ (123-36)
  • Klaus, H. Gustav, ‘Foregrounding the Kitchen: Everyday Domestic Life in Painting and Drama’ (135-51)
  • Gohrisch, Jana, ‘”Indifferent Differences”: Everyday Life in Jane Austen’s Emma’ (153-66)
  • Coward, Rosalind, ‘Diana Memorabilia: Gender and Taste in Contemporary Britain’ (167-74)
  • Krewani, Angela, ‘Soapy Desire: The Housewife in Television and Media Studies’ (175-84)
  • Bassnett, Susan, ‘What Exactly Is the Everyday?’ (185-94)

Reviews:

  • Nünning, Ansgar, ed. (1998), Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie. Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe (Wolfgang Riedel)
  • Kramer, Jürgen (1997), British Cultural Studies (Stephan Kohl)
  • Samuel, Raphael (1998), Theatres of Memory, vol. 2: Island Stories. Unravelling Britain (Jürgen Schlaeger)
  • Miller, Toby, and Alec McHoul (1998), Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Dagmar Buchwald)
  • Nettleton, Sarah, and Jonathan Watson, eds (1998), The Body in Everyday Life (Martina Stange)
  • Douglas, Mary (1996), Thought Styles. Critical Essays on Good Taste (Susanne Scholz)
  • Griffiths, Sian, and Jennifer Wallace, eds (1998), Consuming Passions. Food in the Age of Anxiety (Hein Versteegen)
  • Falk, Pasi, and Colin Campbell, eds (1997), The Shopping Experience (Merle Tönnies)
  • Baird, Nicola (1998), The Estate We’re In. Who’s Driving Car Culture? (Elmar Schenkel)

Vol. 6 (1999), No. 1

European Perspectives

Guest editor: M.A. Frankel

It was always the intention that JSBC should have a wider European perspective in mind in order to reflect that both attitudes to the status of British Studies and approaches to the teaching of and research into it were undergoing significant changes, not only in Germany, but across Europe and beyond. What has emerged is a fascinating and challenging diversity of approaches, striking as much for the degrees of overlaps as of difference. Above all, however, what unifies them is that they observe, reflect on and interpret British cultures from a vantage point outside the UK. We have much to learn from each other, but also much to contribute to, as well as learn from, developments in this field in the UK. It seems appropriate, therefore, that the journal should mark its first five successful years of publication by furthering this process with a look at developments in British Sttdies in other countries across Europe. For this issue, specialists from eight different countries were invited to contribute papers, the final list including one Scandinavian country (Denmark), three Romance countries (France, Italy and Spain), three from the former Communist bloc (the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia), and one (Turkey) from the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond into Asia. The result is a richly diverse set of papers which, while revealing a high degree of common ground, reflect the healthy pluralism which is characteristic of different approaches to British Studies between and within countries.

Articles:

  • Frankel, M.A., ‘Editorial’ (3-7)
  • Nováková, Sona / Judith Elliott, ‘The Prague-matic Approach: Teaching British Studies at Charles University’ (9-17)
  • Rasmussen, Jan Rahbek, ‘In Defence of Society: An Historian Reflects on British Studies’ (19-27)
  • Révauger, Jean-Paul, ‘Broadening the Scope of British Studies: The French Experience’ (29-37)
  • Pagetti, Carlo, ‘British Cultural Studies in Italy’ (39-47)
  • Slawek, Tadeusz, ‘A Culture of Permanence and a Culture of Season: British Cultural Studies – University Curriculum – Politics’ (49-59)
  • Korf, Elena / Irina Romanova, ‘British Studies in Russia: Making Waves?’ (61-69)
  • Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy, Chantal, ‘Cultural Studies or the Study of British Culture(s): The Personal, the Political and the Academic’ (71-84)
  • Mentese, Oya Batum, ‘The Experience of British Cultural Studies in Turkey’ (85-94)
  • Habermann, Ina, ‘Imagining Otherness in the 16th and 17th Centuries: A Conference Report’ (95-6)

Reviews:

  • Hand, Felicity / Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy, eds. (1995), Culture and Power (H. Gustav Klaus)
  • González, Rosa, ed. (1996), Culture and Power. Institutions (H. Gustav Klaus)
  • Jarrett, David / Tadeusz Rachwal / Tadeusz Slawek, eds. (1996), Writing Places and Mapping Words. Readings in British Cultural Studies (Bernhard Klein) 
  • Gavriliu, Eugenia (1996), English Culture in the Romanian Countries, 1790-1850 (Florin Manolescu)
  • Ciglar-Zanic, Jana, et al., eds. (1998), British Cultural Studies. Cross-Cultural Challenges (Bernhard Klein) 
  • Forbes, Jill / Michael Kelly, eds. (1995), French Cultural Studies. An Introduction (Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink) 
  • Forgacs, David / Robert Lumley, eds. (1996), Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction (Ernst Ulrich Große) 
  • Graham, Helen / Jo Labanyi, eds. (1995), Spanish Cultural Studies. An Introduction. The Struggle for Modernity (Hugh O’Donnell)
  • Jenkins, Brian / Spyros A. Sofos, eds. (1996), Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Claus-Ulrich Viol)

Vol. 5 (1998), No. 2

British Cinema

Guest editor: Peter Drexler

The renaissance of the cinema in the early nineteen eighties has engendered a highly diversified film scene in Britain, with the emergence of new areas of film-making such as woman’s, black, gay and lesbian, and art film, with the rise of Scottish and Welsh cinemas, and with the manifold crossovers between Irish and British cinema. From a distance, Britain in the late nineties appears to be the most energetic and exciting site of film-making in Europe, with British films, directors, actresses and actors reaping prizes at international film festivals, and with the British film industry receiving financial support from the new Labour government through Lottery money and tax-write-offs. However, the growing globalization of the film industry, not only with regard to funding and production but also to direction, casting and distribution makes it quite difficult to determine what a British film is. The diversity and hybridity of the film scene in present-day Britain is the leitmotif of all the contributions to this issue. They cover a wide range of subjects, ranging from questions of film policy and economy to models of teaching British film in the classroom, from general surveys to case studies and portraits of individual film makers. Jürgen Enkemann in his survey of British film of the nineties combines critical appreciation of individual films and film-makers, genres and new areas of film-making with an examination of the economic forces, political decisions and cultural responses that shape the contemporary film-scene in Britain. Eckart Voigts-Virchow’s examines the hybridity and vitality of British film comedy in the eighties and nineties, highlighting its mixing of traditional genres and extensions of the comic field into other areas of film-making. Colin McArthur’s comparison between the Scottish and Irish film milieux contains both an engaged critique of present-day Scottish film policies and an outline of how a European national cinema, that of the Irish Republic, can maintain its identity. Hans-Peter Rodenberg in his portrait of the Irish-born director Neil Jordan offers a case study of how such a negotiation can be achieved. Eleanor Byrne traces the process of Black British film coming into its own by focussing on the representation of whiteness in a number of key films in the eighties and nineties. Kirsten Wächter pays tribute to the œuvre of Derek Jarman, who died in 1994, and Rainer Schüren, in the concluding article, offers a model of using film in teaching cultural studies. 

Articles:

  • Drexler, Peter, ‘Editorial’ (107-10)
  • Enkemann, Jürgen, ‘Globalization, Sense of Place and Questions of Identity: British Film in the 1990s’ (111-27)
  • Voigts-Virchow, Eckart, ‘Anglian Antics: British Film Comedies of the Eighties and Nineties’ (129-41)
  • McArthur, Colin, ‘Artists and Philistines: The Irish and Scottish Film Milieux’ (143-53)
  • Rodenberg, Hans Peter, ‘Bridging the Abyss: Neil Jordan, the Irishman in British Hollywood’ (155-70)
  • Byrne, Eleanor, ‘See(k)ing in the Dark: Looking at White People in Black British Cinema’ (171-80)
  • Wächter, Kirsten, ‘Derek Jarman – the Last Renaissance Artist’ (181-94)
  • Schüren, Rainer, ‘Teaching Different Cultures through Film: Educating Rita and My Beautiful Laundrette’ (195-214)
  • ‘Filmography: Titles and Directors’ (215-22)
  • Riedel, Wolfgang, ‘Nature – Landscape – Environment: A Conference Report’ (223-5)

Reviews:

  • Bordwell, David / Noël Carroll, eds. (1996), Post Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies (Jörg Schweinitz)
  • Higson, Andrew, ed. (1996), Dissolving Views. Key Writings on British Cinema (Paul Davies)
  • Richards, Jeffrey (1997), Films and British National Identity (Jörg Helbig)
  • Street, Sarah (1997), British National Cinema (Jörg Helbig)
  • Cook, Pam (1996), Fashioning the Nation. Costume and Identity in British Cinema (Annette Kuhn)
  • Young, Lola (1996), Fear of the Dark. ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in British Cinema (Ursula von Keitz)
  • Land and Freedom [film, UK 1995, D: Ken Loach] (H. Gustav Klaus)
  • Frey, Walter, ed. (1996), Land and Freedom. Ken Loachs ‘Geschichte aus der spanischen Revolution’ (H. Gustav Klaus)
  • Chapman, James (1998), The British at War. Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Gerd Stratmann)
  • Typically British [film, UK 1995, D: Mike Dibb] (Angela Krewani)
  • Irish Cinema. Ourselves Alone? [film, UK 1995, D: Donald Taylor Black] (Angela Krewani)

Vol. 5 (1998), No. 1

National Identities

Guest editor: Gerd Stratmann

In 1967, Marshall McLuhan famously declared that ‘[e]lectric circuitry has overthrown the regime of “time” and “space” and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. … Ours is a brand new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village … a simultaneous happening.’ If anything, these words have increased in relevance in the electronic age of the internet and the microchip. Where, in this global maze of endlessly reproduced and ubiquitously available images, can we still identify the local cultural forms necessary to generate the collective dream known as national identity? As the papers in this issue demonstrate, a monolithic conception of ‘national identity’ – a singular expression of mind and feeling common to all citizens of the nation-state – has vanished forever, leaving in its wake a diffuse residue of cultural identities where people and groups of people define their ‘nationality’ in independence from, and often in imaginative contrast to, the political centres of national life. Certainly, the media – McLuhan’s principal concern – may help such developments along, even if they twist and corrupt any message they claim only to convey. This, at least, seems almost inevitable if the national identities of a European island group are processed by those media which are by their very structure and economic set-up identified as global players. Some of the fascinating (and alarming) contradictions and overlappings, of the checks and balances between the global and the national, are displayed in the following essays: explicitly in Gertrud Koch’s theoretical argument, but also in Colin McArthur’s, Peter Bennett’s and John Caughie’s ‘applied’ studies. Cultural identities, these studies prove – if any proof was needed -, can hardly be constructed in national terms any longer: what looks like expressions of, say, Scottish national feeling (Braveheart), genuine English nostalgia (national heritage films) or patriotic popular culture (Britpop) is ‘in reality’ the artificial product of a Hollywood-based cinema, the cynical concession to a cultural export market or the shrewd calculation of a global record company. The issue is completed by Iris Bünger’s study of the adventures of the media construct ‘Princess Di’ and by Jürgen Schlaeger’s examination of the role of literature in the formation of national identity. 

Articles:

  • Stratmann, Gerd, ‘Editorial’ (3)
  • Koch, Gertrud, ‘National Identity in the Age of Global Media’ (5-12)
  • Bennett, Peter, ‘Britpop and National Identity’ (13-25)
  • McArthur, Colin, ‘Scotland and the Braveheart Effect’ (27-39)
  • Bünger, Iris, ‘”Off With Her Talking Head”: The Construction of the Subject “Princess Diana” by British Newspapers’ (41-54)
  • Caughie, John, ‘A Culture of Adaptation: Adaptation and the Past in British Film and Television’ (55-66)
  • Schlaeger, Jürgen, ‘Literature and National Identity’ (67-80)
  • Stratmann, Gerd / Kirsten Wächter, ‘Representations of British National Identities in the Media: A Conference Report’ (81-82)

Reviews:

  • Payne, Michael, ed. (1996), A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory (Klaus Peter Müller) 
  • Bassnett, Susan, ed. (1997), Studying British Cultures (Susanne Scholz) 
  • Childs, Peter / Mike Storry, eds. (1997), British Cultural Identities (Gerd Stratmann) 
  • Gelder, Ken / Sarah Thornton, eds. (1997), The Subcultures Reader (Bernd-Peter Lange) 
  • Barnard, Malcolm (1996), Fashion as Communication (Julika Griem) 
  • Fitter, Chris (1995), Poetry, Space, Landscape. Towards a New Theory (Wolfgang Riedel) 
  • Bode, Christoph, ed. (1997), West Meets East. Klassiker der britischen Orient-Reiseliteratur (Reinhold Schiffer) 
  • Milligan, Barry (1995), Pleasures and Pains. Opium and the Orient in 19th Century British Culture (Christoph Bode)

Vol. 4 (1997), Nos. 1-2 

The Discovery of Britain

Guest editor: Manfred Pfister

Three points about our title. First, it is incomplete: it does not mention who is doing the discovering. It might conjure up images of weary travellers arriving in exotic lands – but only to disappoint and subvert such expectations. For the discovery here is a self-discovery: the discovery of Britain by Britons (and for Britons). The title is thus a paradox, conflating into one what are usually separate entities, the subject and the object of discovery. Second, the title is a metaphor: it projects the exploration of one’s own country onto the larger canvas of discoveries in foreign and distant lands. There is a specific historical point here: the beginnings of the ‘discovery of Britain’, of the first systematic attempts to describe it in its entirety from centre to margins, coincided – in the sixteenth century – with voyages of ‘discovery’ into the world beyond Britain, into the vast, oceanic spaces east and west of the old world. That the local is thus mapped onto the global is no mere coincidence: both projects are part of the nascent English nation state’s efforts to assert and expand its dominion, to open itself up to ‘traffic’ – in the full Elizabethan sense of this word -, to define its ethnic, cultural, and political identity, and to defend its self-proclaimed superiority against threatening images of the alien other. Third, the title is a metonym: ‘discovering’ Britain also means exploring Britain, mapping Britain, constructing Britain, making Britain – and, indeed, inventing Britain. All these semantic inflections run through the essays presented in this volume, and together they insist upon nationhood or national identity being a cultural construct that is historically variable, contestible, and open to constant negotiations and re-negotiations. 

The richness of the topic is reflected in the high number of contributions (12) to this first double issue of JSBC. The essays are arranged in roughly chronological order, beginning with a study of Elizabethan and Jacobean maps, topographies and chorographies – analysed as spatial and temporal representations that document the different (and often contradictory) images of nationhood emerging in early modern Britain (Klein). With the Act of Union (1707) that made Scotland into a part of the United Kingdom and with a dramatic increase in trade, industry and traffic, the eighteenth century then witnessed an unprecedented growth in domestic travelling and travel writing (Feldmann, Ghose, Kuczynski), discovering not only a new wealth of natural resources and economic activities but also, particularly in the second half of the century, the aesthetic pleasures of the ‘picturesque’ in the British landscape (Feldmann, Kuczynski, Bode). In the 19th century, British domestic travel writing and related forms of self-description became an important medium of the condition-of-England debate (Kohl, Tetzeli). Finally, in our century, there have been new departures in various directions: Englishness or Britishness has become a marketable commodity and travel writing has contributed to this commodification and its patriotic resonances (Seeber, Wright); tourism as a mass phenomenon has provoked alternative forms of ‘anti-tourism’ in which travelling as a cultural experience is reserved for a self-deserved elite of aesthetically sensitive individuals (Bode) or which goes out of its way to avoid the celebrated sights of picturesque Britain (Schmid, Wright); and, perhaps most importantly, Britain has become multicultural and offers new aspects to be discovered (Schmid) and new perspectives from which to explore it (Döring). 

Articles:

  • Pfister, Manfred, ‘Editorial’ (5-9) 
  • Klein, Bernhard, ‘Constructing the Space of the Nation: Geography, Maps, and the Discovery of Britain in the Early Modern Period’ (11-29) 
  • Feldmann, Doris, ‘Economic and/as Aesthetic Constructions of Britishness in Eighteenth-Century Domestic Travel Writing’ (31-45) 
  • Ghose, Indira, ‘The Fictive Stranger: Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World and Robert Southey’s Letters From England’ (47-61) 
  • Stratmann, Gerd, ‘Life, Death, and the City: The Discovery of London in the Early Eighteenth Century’ (63-72) 
  • Kuczynski, Ingrid, ‘A Discourse of Patriots: The Penetration of the Scottish Highlands’ (73-93) 
  • Bode, Christoph, ‘Putting the Lake District on the (Mental) Map: William Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes’ (95-111) 
  • Kohl, Stephan, ‘Imagining the Country as “The Country” in the 1830s: William Cobbett, William Howitt, William Turner’ (113-127) 
  • Tetzeli von Rosador, Kurt, ‘Into Darkest England: Discovering the Victorian Urban Poor’ (129-144) 
  • Seeber, Hans Ulrich, ‘Edward Thomas and the Discovery of England’ (145-162) 
  • Schmid, Susanne, ‘Exploring Multiculturalism: Bradford Jews and Bradford Pakistanis’ (163-179) 
  • Döring, Tobias, ‘Discovering the Mother Country: The Empire Travels Back’ (181-201) 
  • Pfister, Manfred, ‘”Writing the Obituaries”: An Interview With Patrick Wright’ (203-228)

Reviews:

  • Hansen, Klaus P. (1995), Kultur und Kulturwissenschaft. Eine Einführung (Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador)
  • Schwanitz, Dietrich (1995), Englische Kulturgeschichte (Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador)
  • Wallis, Helen (1994), Historian’s Guide to Early British Maps. A Guide to the Location of Pre-1900 Maps of the British Isles Preserved in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Gerd Stratmann)
  • Davids, Jens Ulrich / Richard Stinshoff, eds. (1996), The Past in the Present. Proceedings of the 5th Annual British and Cultural Studies Conference, Oldenburg 1994 (Ingrid von Rosenberg)
  • Korte, Barbara (1996), Der englische Reisebericht. Von der Pilgerfahrt bis zur Postmoderne (Reinhold Schiffer)
  • Maurer, Michael, ed. (1992), O Britannien, von deiner Freiheit einen Hut voll. Deutsche Reiseberichte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Judith Krafczyk)
  • Rogers, Pat (1995), Johnson and Boswell. The Transit of Caledonia (Stephan Kohl)
  • Crinson, Mark (1996), Empire Building. Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (Reinhold Schiffer)
  • Jacobs, Jane M. (1996), Edge of Empire. Postcolonialism and the City (Eleanor Byrne)
  • Taylor, John (1994), A Dream of England. Landscape, Photography and the Tourist’s Imagination (Barbara Korte)
  • Gervais, David (1993), Literary Englands. Versions of ‘Englishness’ in Modern Writing (Ute Berns)
  • Pendreigh, Brian (1995), On Location. The Film Fan’s Guide to Britain and Ireland (Kirsten Wächter)
  • Barnes, Julian (1995), Letters from London 1990-1995 (John Poziemski) 

Vol. 3 (1996), No. 2 

Masculinities

Guest editors: Susan Bassnett & Gisela Ecker

‘We don’t need another hero’ is the message spelled out by artists as diverse as Tina Turner and Barbara Kruger. Addressed to an unspecified public, the imperative speech act seems to convey a clear sense of who the speakers and their addressees are; yet who are ‘we’? Women? Or men? Or present day society at large? Such questions reveal the tensions between an apparent straightforwardness and the ambiguity of social semantics, exposing the discursive problem zones of contemporary culture and politics. One such problem zone, to which the present issue of JSBC is devoted, is masculinity. The groundswell of critical interest in the cultural texts that help to reinforce images of public manliness has been steadily increasing for some time now. What has begun to emerge is a notion of masculinity as a plural concept (hence the plural in the title of this volume), and as a far less stable category than has hitherto been assumed. Responding to this development, the articles in this issue draw their material from a wide range of sources, from Raleigh to Bacon, from Livingstone and Stanley to Chatwin, from Conrad to advertisements for Levi’s jeans. Contributors explore codes of manliness which contain a blend of self-control, understatement, disinterestedness, a yearning for adventure, for testing the limits of physical endurance and the seeming paradox of simultaneously craving for solitude and needing to belong to a world-wide gentleman’s club (Ghose/Pfister). Masculinity is revealed as a defensive construction (Kramer) that has cast off a gendered sexualised Other in a history of displacements that can be traced back at least as far as the early modern period (Scholz). In the nineteenth century, at the high point of British imperial expansion, a normative idea of masculinity was equated with national values, as is revealed in the way boys are taught to model themselves as soldier heroes, the stars of the imperial age (Dawson). These historical case studies are rounded off by a critical glance at some of the features of the present surge of interett in masculinity that requires us to question the emancipatory quality of some of this writing, asking whether the shift of attention away from women might not reflect a diminishing interest in feminism or even an anti-feminist backlash (Bristow).

Articles:

  • Bassnett, Susan / Gisela Ecker, ‘Editorial’ (99-102) 
  • Scholz, Susanne, ‘Questing for the Self: The Constitution of Masculinity in Early Modern Discourses of Discovery’ (103-116) 
  • Dawson, Graham, ‘Stars of Empire: Victorian Soldier Heroes and Boyhood Masculinities’ (117-131) 
  • Kramer, Jürgen, ‘Lying as Surviving in Heart of Darkness: Colonial Masculinity in Conrad’s Novella’ (133-147) 
  • Ghose, Indira / Manfred Pfister, ‘Still Going Strong: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Traveller in Victorian and Modern Travel Writing’ (149-164) 
  • Bristow, Joseph, ‘”Irresolutions, Anxieties, and Contradictions”: Ambivalent Trends in the Study of Masculinity’ (165-180) 
  • Busch, Alexandra, ‘Writings on Masculinity: A Select Bibliography’ (181-192)

Reviews: 

  • Connell, Robert (1995), Masculinities (Ilse Lenz) 
  • Seidler, Victor J. (1994), Unreasonable Men. Masculinity and Social Theory (Jana Gohrisch) 
  • Cornwall, Andrea / Nancy Lindisfarne, eds. (1994), Dislocating Masculinity. Comparative Ethnographies (Martin Middeke) 
  • Horrocks, Roger (1994), Masculinity in Crisis. Myths, Fantasies, & Realities (Franc Donohoe) 
  • Mac An Ghaill, Máirtín (1994), The Making of Men. Masculinities, Sexualities, and Schooling (Bettina Mathes) 
  • Dawson, Graham (1994), Soldier Heroes. British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (Ansgar Nünning) 
  • Gittings, Christopher E., ed. (1996), Imperialism and Gender. Constructions of Masculinity (Willy Maley) 
  • Sharpe, Sue (1994), Fathers and Daughters (Theresia Sauter-Bailliet) 
  • Budde, Gunilla-Friederike (1994), Auf dem Weg ins Bürgerleben. Kindheit und Erziehung in deutschen und englischen Bürgerfamilien, 1840-1914 (Peter Jelavich) 
  • Bettinger, Elfie / Julika Funk, eds. (1995), Maskeraden. Geschlechterdifferenz in der literarischen Inszenierung (Angelika Schlimmer)

Vol. 3 (1996), No. 1 

Regional Cultures: The Difference Within

Guest editor: Elmar Schenkel

Regionalism has become a wildly contested topic. A diffuse concept in constant need of specification and application, regionalism is not merely an issue of scale but a question of values and qualities. In theory, it is meant to enable the negotiation between the Scylla of an increasingly homogenized culture and the Charybdis of atomizing individualism. But, as Chesterton knew, fresh divisions will accompany any form of successful unification: ‘For another process is going on, parallel to the process of connexion of routes, and it is the disconnexion of ideas … For we are for the first time near enough to feel the full force of the differences: and that sort of silent shock of collision is occurring with the closer communications all over the world.’ (‘On the New Insularity’, 1931) Regional diversity defines the English sense of place. This sense is, as Martin Green suggests in his contribution, checked and cross-cut by other post-industrial and post-modern developments: ‘[A]mid a proliferation of points of identity the region is only one among many “place” identities, coming into visibility in a highly centralised nation-state “too late”.’ Against this historical delay, Green emphasizes the distinctive configuration of the English regions, their past and present histories, and the need of their assertion and celebration. Green’s discussion of the conceptual implications of regionalism is complemented by specific case-studies. Paul Goetsch looks at the rhetoric of space and region and their cliché-like transpositions in Victorian fiction. Two essays reflect contemporary economic and urban aspects of the region. Georg Weinmann examines King Coal’s decline in the last two decades, its effect on the self-awareness of the regions, and on the north-south axis. Eddie Cass discusses the revival of the inner city of Manchester and links his observations to the recent debate concerning the so-called heritage culture. Finally, Elmar Schenkel suggests that the essay, because of its amphibious nature as a genre, seems to be predestined to serve as a medium for such an equally amphibious concept as regionalism. 

Articles:

  • Schenkel, Elmar, ‘Editorial’ (3-4) 
  • Green, Michael, ‘De-centred Britain: Regional Imaginaries’ (5-14) 
  • Goetsch, Paul, ‘North and South in Victorian Fiction’ (15-29) 
  • Weinmann, Georg, ‘The Death of a King: Domestic Coal in the English Regions’ (31-43) 
  • Cass, Eddie, ‘Manchester, a New City? The Role of Urban Heritage and the Arts in a City Revival’ (45-58) 
  • Schenkel, Elmar, ‘Essaying the Region: W.H. Hudson and the Regional Essay’ (59-72) 
  • Kamm, Jürgen, ‘The City and the Country: A Conference Report’ (73-78) 

Reviews:

  • Jewell, Helen M. (1994), The North-South Divide. The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England (Ronald G. Asch) 
  • Haughton, Graham / David Whitney, eds. (1994), Reinventing a Region. Restructuring in West Yorkshire (Anne E. Green) 
  • Gold, John R. / Stephen V. Ward, eds. (1994), Place Promotion. The Use of Publicity and Marketing to Sell Towns and Regions (Peter M. Townroe) 
  • Currie, C.R.J. / C.P. Lewis, eds. (1994), English County Histories. A Guide (Gerd Stratmann) 
  • Northern Review. A Journal of Regional and Cultural Affairs (Gerd Stratmann) 
  • Hoggart, Richard (1994), Townscape With Figures. Farnham – Portrait of an English Town (H. Gustav Klaus) 
  • Kastendiek, Hans / Karl Rohe / Angelika Volle, eds. (1994), Länderbericht Großbritannien. Geschichte, Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft (Jürgen Kamm) 
  • Dyson, Anne (1994), Britain in View (John Poziemski) 
  • Oakland, John (1995), British Civilization. An Introduction (Claus-Ulrich Viol) 

Vol. 2 (1995), No. 2 

Regional Cultures: The Difference Between

Guest editor: Christopher Harvie

These days, to say (in Western Europe) that one is Scots, Welsh, or Irish, is usually to guarantee a warmth of response denied to the English. Is this part of a sinister continental conspiracy to reduce England to the dregs of football-patriotism, soap-operas and the tabloid press? Or is it that contemporary England seems simultaneously too variegated and too centralised an idea to grasp? Either way, the phenomenon requires us to consider Britain’s regions – both past and present – on their own merit. To do this is to quickly realise that on the ‘Celtic Fringe’ cultural studies is both history and immediate politics, and to realise that the comfortable elitist ideology which was marketed in post-war German textbooks of Englandkunde has vanished forever. Instead, while the last thirty years have seen an elite-composed culture of lose confidence, increasing ‘differences between’ the various nations and regions of the United Kingdom have risen from much of the subtlety of analysis, the capability of balancing discourse, class, ethnie, religion, topography, migrating to the margin. In the politics of the Welsh language, in the ‘revisionist’ trend in Irish historical scholarship, and in the renaissance of Scottish literary and historical study, academic vigour has evicted crude nationalist ideology. In this issue, five essays examine various aspects of the crucial ‘differences between’ nations and regions in the British Isles: Bernhard Klein looks at Elizabethan and Jacobean maps of Ireland to assess the contribution of cartography to the process of internal colonization; Eberhard Bort studies the drama of Northern Ireland to show how the popular culture of the theatre can create out of ethnic alienation a sense of moral debate which is the first stage to a recovery of civil society; Joachim Schwend analyses the uses and abuses to which partisan views of history have been put in the Anglo-Scottish relationship; Douglas MacLeod looks at Nazi attempts to exacerbate divisions within Britain by a radio offensive; and Marion Löffler shows the study of the Welsh language has contributed to a separatist mentalité that can be as distinct as that of the Irish Republic. Finally, Jochen Achilles, Horst W. Drescher, and Christopher Harvie offer a survey of the current opportunities to study British regional culture(s) from Germany. 

Articles:

  • Harvie, Christopher, ‘A Letter to the Scottish Minister of State’ (107-114) 
  • Klein, Bernhard, ‘English Cartographers and the Mapping of Ireland in the Early Modern Period’ (115-139) 
  • Bort, Eberhard, ‘Staging the Troubles: Civil Conflict and Drama in Northern Ireland’ (141-160) 
  • Schwend, Joachim, ‘The Past as a Burden: History in the Anglo-Irish Relationship’ (161-172) 
  • MacLeod, Douglas, ‘Germany Calling Scotland: The Buro Concordia and Scottish Nationalism in World War II’ (173-185) 
  • Löffler, Marion, ‘The Welsh Language in Wales: Public Gain and Private Grief?’ (187-200) 
  • Achilles, Jochen / Horst W. Drescher / Christopher Harvie, ‘The Study of the British Regions from Germany’ (201-217 )

Reviews:

  • Harrison, Richard T. / Mark Hart, eds. (1993), Spatial Policy in a Divided Nation (Heinz Zielinski) 
  • Harvie, Christopher (1994), The Rise of Regional Europe (Roland Sturm) 
  • Calder, Angus (1994), Revolving Culture. Notes from the Scottish Republic (H. Gustav Klaus) 
  • Dickson, Tony, / James H. Treble, eds. (1992), People and Society in Scotland, III, 1914-1990 (Horst W. Drescher) 
  • McCrone, David (1992), Understanding Scotland. The Sociology of a Stateless Nation (Edward J. Cowan) 
  • Scott, H. Paul, ed. (1993), Scotland. A Concise Cultural History (Gerd Stratmann) 
  • Wood, Ian S., ed. (1994), Scotland and Ulster (Priscilla Metscher) 
  • Welsh Writing in English. A Yearbook of Critical Essays (Ursula Kimpel) 
  • Trosset, Carol (1993), Welshness Performed. Welsh Concepts of Person and Society (Rob Humphreys) 
  • Dohmen, Doris (1994), Das deutsche Irlandbild. Imagologische Untersuchungen zur Darstellung Irlands und der Iren in der deutschsprachigen Literatur (Eoin Burke) 

Vol. 2 (1995), No. 1

Positions, Polemics, Proposals

Cultural Studies undeniably exists as a current critical practice, yet the debate over what it is and what it intends to achieve continues. For this reason, the third issue of JSBC combines three thematic essays that show cultural studies ‘at work’ with two papers that exchange polemical arguments on its current and (possible) future state. The first two essays implicitly challenge a widespread but misguided conviction that has only recently been affirmed by Simon During in his Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge 1993), where he boldly states that ‘[c]ultural studies is, of course, the study of culture, or, more particularly, the study of contemporary culture.’ (1, his emphasis) Pace During, both Susanne Scholz and Vera Nünning testify to the significance of the historical dimension in cultural studies. Scholz demonstrates how in early modern England the discursive practice of ‘history’ changes in relation to the slow emergence of nationhood as a new concept of collective political identity; Nünning describes how the semantic and cultural transformation from ‘honour’ to ‘honest’ in the 18th century explains the growing awareness and self-image of the new middling ranks. Complementing these historically oriented approaches, Klaus Peter Müller examines the relationship between literary and cultural studies by combining a theoretical analysis of the cultural construction of value and meaning with a reading of the interplay of fact and fiction(s) in contemporary English drama. In response to JSBC’s offer to serve as a forum for critical debate, Wolfgang Riedel takes issue with two contributions printed in our first issue, defining the specific aims of cultural studies in contrast to Hans Kastendiek’s comparative Landeskunde approach and Ulrich Broich’s defence of literary studies (see below). Finally, Dirk Hoerder, taking his cue from American studies, outlines approaches and perspectives that differ substantially from those that have recently been presented in a British cultural studies context. 

Articles: 

  • Kramer, Jürgen / Bernd Lenz, ‘Editorial’ (3-4) 
  • Scholz, Susanne, ‘Tales of Origins and Destination: The Uses of History in the Narrative of the Nation’ (5-17) 
  • Nünning, Vera, ‘From “Honour” to “Honest”: The Inventions of the (Superiority of the) Middling Ranks in Eighteenth-Century England’ (19-41) 
  • Müller, Klaus-Peter, ‘Facts and Fictions in Cultural Studies: The Cohesive Paradoxical Agency of Value and Meaning’ (43-59) 
  • Riedel, Wolfgang, ‘Cultural Studies: Positions and Oppositions’ (61-73) 
  • Hoerder, Dirk, ‘Cultural Studies: Problems and Approaches’ (75-80) 
  • Stinshoff, Richard, ‘British OR Cultural Studies – British AND Cultural Studies?: A Conference Report’ (81-87)

Reviews:

  • Clark, Robert / Piero Boitani, eds. (1993), English Studies in Transition. Essays from the ESSE Inaugural Conference (Gerd Stratmann) 
  • Byram, Michael, ed. (1994), Culture and Language Learning in Higher Education (Hein Versteegen) 
  • Bannet, Eve Tavor (1993), Postcultural Theory. Critical Theory After the Marxist Paradigm (Wolfgang Riedel) 
  • Inglis, Fred (1993), Cultural Studies (Klaus Peter Müller) 
  • Gray, Anne / Jim McGuigan, eds. (1993), Studying Culture. An Introductory Reader (Gerd Stratmann)

Vol. 1 (1994), No. 2 

Thatcherism

In the days of New Labour Margaret Thatcher may seem a distant, even unreal political figure, but the image of an increasingly selfish, greedy and unjust society will stick with the decade that bears her name. It emerges, for instance, in Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger (1992), beyond doubt one of the best historical novels written in the 1980s. Though set in the mid 18th century aboard a slave ship, it does not aim to hide its engagement with the Thatcher years: ‘Money is sacred, as everyone knows’, a protagonist affirms. ‘So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it.’ Unsworth claimed in an interview that it was ‘impossible to live in the Eighties without being affected by the sanctification of greed. My image of the slave ship was based on the desire to find the perfect symbol for that entrepreneurial spirit.’ The novelist and Booker-prize winner was not alone in his judgement. Four years earlier, the Observer warned that ‘Mrs Thatcher’s philosophy provides no inspiration, for it ignores the fact that a free market society inevitably produces victims who cannot be blamed and should not be punished for their failure … [H]er speeches lack one crucial word that she cannot bring herself to utter. The word is compassion.’ In post-Diana Britain, these concerns may no longer seem as urgent as they did over a decade ago but Thatcherism and what it stood for are still very much with us. This issue looks at the phenomenon from various disciplinary perspectives. A linguist (Diller) analyses Thatcher’s rhetoric explaining the political potency of different figures of speech; a political scientist (Noetzel) makes sense of the cultural debate over the trade unions by relating it to more general social transformations. Two further contributors assess the impact of the Thatcherite era on their particular fields of study, respectively English literature (Kohl) and history (Lahme). Our final author (Quadflieg) links historical, political and literary-critcal arguments to makes sense of a particular cultural problematic. 

Articles:

  • Kramer, Jürgen, ‘Editorial’ (89-92) 
  • Diller, Hans-Jürgen, ‘Thatcher in Bruges: A Study in Euro-rhetoric’ (93-109) 
  • Lahme, Rainer, ‘Consensus and Conflict: Margaret Thatcher and the Trade Unions’ (111-122) 
  • Kohl, Stephan, ‘Thatcher’s London in Contemporary English Novels’ (123-132) 
  • Noetzel, Thomas, ‘Political Decadence? Aspects of Thatcherite Englishness’ (133-147) 
  • Quadflieg, Helga, ‘Across Borders, Beyond Borders: Perspectives of a Multicultural Society’ (149-172)

Reviews:

  • Riddell, Peter (1991), The Thatcher Era. And Its Legacy (Reinhold Schiffer) 
  • Gamble, Andrew (1994), The Free Economy and the Strong State. The Politics of Thatcherism (Gerd Stratmann) 
  • Geelhoed, E. Bruce, with the assistance of James F. Hobbs (1992), Margaret Thatcher. In Victory and Downfall, 1987 and 1990 (Günther Lottes) 
  • Friedmann, Lester, ed. (1993), British Cinema and Thatcherism. Fires Were Started (David Rankin) 
  • Willman, Paul / Tim Morris / Beverly Aston (1993), Union Business. Trade Union Organisation and Financial Reform in the Thatcher Years (Gerd Stratmann)

Vol. 1 (1994), No. 1

German Perspectives of the Study of British Cultures

Traditionally, courses in Landeskunde or Kulturkunde – if offered at all as part of the English Studies curriculum at German universities – focused on contextual or ‘background’ knowledge for linguistic and literary studies. There were meant to provide a body of factual knowledge about British life and institutions, were taught principally by native speakers, and served a mere supplementary function. With few exceptions, there was little or no attempt to present any conceptual or systematic knowledge about foreign cultures (or even to analyse what constituted their ‘foreignness’), nor were the ‘facts’ and ‘figures’ taught about British cultures linked to issues that might be of relevance, let alone of interest, to German students of English. In recent years however, owing to a number of political and institutional changes, the value of a more methodologically sophisticated approach to the study of culture has been acknowledged across the discipline of German Anglistik; a shift that has put cultural studies firmly on the agenda. Yet what exactly is cultural studies? In the absence of a unified theory or method, the debate over the nature of this critical practice continues, and the first issue of JSBC intends to contribute to this debate from a German perspective. Five scholars of English explore the theoretical and practical relevance of cultural studies for their particular fields of study or theoretical emphasis. Hans Kastendiek describes the advantages and disadvantages of a comparative approach to British and American studies with a view to developing new models for practical teaching. Ulrich Broich critically assesses the state of cultural studies from the perspective of traditional literary studies while Gisela Ecker argues for the importance of acknowledging gender differences within other hierarchically conceived social structures such as class or culture. Friederike Klippel looks at the state of cultural studies in foreign language teaching and considers its value for the training of teachers. Finally, Susan Bassnett reverses the German perspectives by sketching what ‘teaching cultural studies’ means to a native English scholar. In the concluding review essay, Gerd Stratmann evaluates a spate of recent publications in the field of cultural studies for their usefulness in a German university context. 

Articles:

  • Kramer, Jürgen / Bernd Lenz, ‘Editorial’ (3-7) 
  • Kastendiek, Hans, ‘British and American Studies, Proposals for a Comparative Landeskunde Approach’ (9-19) 
  • Broich, Ulrich, ‘British Cultural Studies as a Challenge to Eng. Lit.’ (21-34) 
  • Ecker, Gisela, ‘Cultural Studies and Feminism: Some Notes on the Present Situation’ (35-47) 
  • Klippel, Friederike, ‘Cultural Aspects in Foreign Language Teaching’ (49-61) 
  • Bassnett, Susan, ‘Teaching British Cultural Studies: Reflections on the Why and the How’ (63-74) 

Reviews:

  • Stratmann, Gerd, ‘Review of Brantlinger, Patrick (1990), Crusoe’s Footprints. Cultural Studies in Britain and America; Turner, Graeme, (1990), British Cultural Studies. An Introduction; Easthope, Anthony (1991), Literary into Cultural Studies; Barker, Martin / Anne Breezer, eds. (1992), Reading into Cultural Studies; Grossberg, Lawrence / Cary Nelson / Paula A. Treichler, eds. (1992), Cultural Studies; During, Simon, ed. (1993), The Cultural Studies Reader’ (75-83)