Böcker utgivna av Transcript Verlag

This book focuses on the pivotal role which space and spatiality assume in plot and narrative discourse of contemporary U.S.-American literary narratives. Embarking from a new, spatialized approach to cultural history and particularly narrative theory that might also prove useful for neighboring philologies, Marcel Thoene hypothesizes that the canon of novels selected represents a dialectic of simultaneous affirmation and subversion of the American space myth. This results in an integrative and emancipatory function of space reflecting the current dynamic toward a more transcultural, diverse and conflictive post-national U.S.-American society.

Houses, Secrets, and the Closet investigates the literary production of masculinities and their relation to secrets and sexualities in 18th and 19th century fiction. It focusses on close readings of Gothic fiction, Sensation Novels, and tales by Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, and Henry James. The study approaches these texts through the lens of domestic space, gender, knowledge, and power. This approach serves to investigate the cultural roots of the 'closet' - the male homosexual secret - which reveals a more general notion of male secrecy in modern society. The study thus contributes to a better understanding of the cultural history of masculinities and sexualities.

Working with nature - and not against it - is a global trend in coastal management. This ethnography of coastal protection follows the increasingly popular approach of "e;soft"e; protection to the Aotearoa New Zealand coast. Friederike Gesing analyses a political controversy over hard and soft protection measures, and introduces a growing community of practice involved in projects of working with nature. Dune restoration volunteers, coastal management experts, surfer-scientists, and Maori conservationists are engaged in projects ranging from do-it-yourself erosion control, to the reconstruction of native nature, and soft engineering "e;in concert with natural processes"e;. With soft protection, Gesing argues, we can witness a new sociotechnical imaginary in the making.

Geographies of Love is the first study to explore the cultural lifeworlds of British, Australian and Indian chick- and ladlit characters. Offering unique case studies including Bridget Jones's Diary, About a Boy and Almost Single, the book explores how women and men search for love and how they commit themselves to romances in specific spaces and places: the home and the office as well as shops, clubs and bars.This cross-disciplinary study provides scholars, students and keen readers with multiple points of access and easily-relatable situations. It applies the complex phenomenon of cultural geographies within the field of literary studies and sheds new light on a most passionate feeling.

How is transnational cooperation practically conducted in the East African country of Rwanda, and how is it organised? Can the worlds of development aid and private business be compared?In this ethnography, Robin Pohl identifies the organisational patterns used by Rwandan, European and Indian partners. Different types of agencies, companies or projects each relate foreign activities differently to their local environment. The effects of potential divisions at the global level turn into assets or liabilities on the operative level of transboundary cooperations, depending on their context.

Until recently still a blank spot on the world map of art, China today occupies one of the top positions in the rankings of the global art market and has moved into the center of the speculations and the covetousness of its protagonists. But what is really happening on the spot, beyond the ethnocentric distortions of the Western viewpoint? What social representations and uses of art can be identified?A research team from the University of St. Gallen has taken up such questions in an ethnographical field research project which enables the actors in this emergent and nonetheless already market-dominated art field to have their say.

Roman Charity investigates the iconography of the breastfeeding daughter from the perspective of queer sexuality and erotic maternity. The volume explores the popularity of a topic that appealed to early modern observers for its eroticizing shock value, its ironic take on the concept of Catholic charity, and its implied critique of patriarchal power structures. It analyses why early modern viewers found an incestuous, adult breastfeeding scene good to think with and aims at expanding and queering our notions of early modern sexuality. Jutta Gisela Sperling discusses the different visual contexts in which Roman Charity flourished and reconstructs contemporary horizons of expectation by reference to literary sources, medical practice, and legal culture.

Collective Actions is one of the most significant artistic practices to emerge from Moscow Conceptualism. The group's enigmatic idea of 'Empty action' is the focal point for Marina Gerber's exploration of this practice in relation to labour in the late Soviet Union. Based on interviews with members of the group (Monastyrski, Panitkov, Alexeev, Makarevich, Elagina, Romashko, Hänsgen and Kiesewalter) she exposes the relation between their jobs, their individual art practices and their contribution to the collective in the context of post-Stalinist debates on labour and free time. Departing from the mundane fact that Collective Actions' practice took place in free time from work for the Soviet State, Gerber identifies Empty action as a form of 'art after work'.