Böcker av Kathrin Schmidt

This book engages with contemporary cultural production in Africa, focusing on theatre in Sierra Leone as main case study. The author provides coverage of, and insights into, such themes as cultural globalisation, commodification, the global creative economy, culture and development, international relations and contemporary cultural production in Sierra Leone within the context of local and global flows of people, media, images, technologies, finance and ideas.Combining the analysis of theatre in Sierra Leone and its aesthetics with its policy, structural and institutional context, this book highlights in much detail and nuance the interconnectedness between the micro- and the macro-levels of cultural production, between the local and the global, and between aesthetics, politics, policy, governance structures and institutions. This book links the particular findings from the author's fieldwork to larger issues of contemporary local cultural production within the context of globalisation, commodification and decolonisation; adds a postcolonial perspective to existing theories and approaches to cultural production, management and policy, which is still largely missing from the existing discourse; and also contributes to addressing the gap in the knowledge about the context of contemporary cultural productions in diverse African contexts.This book will be particularly useful for both theatre scholars with an interest in the political economy of theatre and, more broadly, those seeking to understand the nuanced challenges and opportunities faced by policymakers, artists and arts managers to embrace the cultural and creative industries in this context. It also offers excellent insights for policymakers who wish to improve their understanding and interventions beyond superficial 'best practice' snippets and simplified 'success stories'.

Helene Wesendahl wakes from a post-aneurysm coma paralysed, speechless and devoid of memory. With each re-learned movement, remembered word and returned fragment of forgotten biography, a life comes to light that she scarcely recognises, confronting her with a strange woman who was once herself. Through the awakening heroine''s eyes, we observe her own body (which seems to lead a life of its own as it laboriously undergoes rehabilitation), her fellow-patients, nurses and doctors, the reactions of a complicated family, and the sacrificial commitment of her husband. Helene''s crisis deepens with the gradual realisation that, owing to a passion for a mysterious woman, she was intending to leave this man who now cares so much ... In 2009 You''re not dying was the triumphant winner of the German Book Prize, pipping to the post the recent Nobel Prize-winner Hertha Muller, who was also shortlisted. Schmidt''s writing career is littered with multiple prestigious prizes for both her poetry and prose.  

This bilingual (German / English) chapbook of 20 poems makes for an exciting introduction to Kathrin Schmidt's work. Thanks to Sue Vickerman's daring translations, we are able to appreciate Schmidt's irrepressible poetic style as she ranges across the themes of gender, identity, the body, eroticism, her own personal history and language itself.