The Fate of Literary Studies in the Age of Digital Hyperculturality Rolf J. Goebel In his study Hyperkulturalität: Kultur und Globalisierung (2005), the Korean-German cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han develops the notion of hyperculturality. Akin to the digital hypertext, hyperculture denotes a rhizomatic space of de-substantialized dispersal; it is without memory; and it celebrates a post-auratic […]

The Documentary Tradition in the Digital Age Verena Kick This paper asks how and to what extent web-native documentaries (web docs) continue the documentary film tradition in the digital era. Web docs are not documentaries that are streamed online, rather, they operate within the framework of a website. Images, text, audio, video, animation, maps and […]

Remixing Werner Herzog: The Auteur in the Digital Age Tara Hottman Werner Herzog’s voiceovers have become some of the most well known of cinema—a feat that is quite remarkable for any director. For a German auteur filmmaker known for his search for ecstatic truths and his portrayals of genius, madness, the far ends of the […]

The Nature of Digital Images Carsten Strathausen “In the age of computers, the image is not one, meaning not identical with itself.” (D.N. Rodowick) D.N. Rodowick is not the only media theorist to claim that digital images are, essentially, lacking. According to contemporary media theory, what has changed in the digital era is nothing less […]

Kafka and the Kafkaesques: Close Reading Online Fan Fiction Bonnie Ruberg “Gregor pushed against the door and undid the lock with his jaws. As it swung open… his father grabbed a poker from the fireplace and stabbed it through Gregor’s shell again and again. ‘But what happened to Gregor?!’ shouted his mother. After Gregor died, […]

Artistic and Scholarly Practice in the Digital Age The Division for 20th-century German Studies at the MLA 2014 presents a series of three panels on digital practice, organized by Deniz Göktürk (University of California, Berkeley). You can view abstracts and, even more importantly, provide feedback for each of the papers by clicking on their titles. Digital […]

TRANSIT 8.2: Foreword Dear Readers, We are pleased to announce the publication of the second installment of texts in our 2012–13 volume, including a series of articles on “Participatory Media and Public Memory.” The impetus for this volume was our conviction that changing mediascapes and forms of communication are increasingly challenging traditional conceptions of the […]

“A Wall Victim from the West”: Migration, German Division, and Multidirectional Memory in Kreuzberg Jeffrey Jurgens Download PDF Abstract: Focusing on the 1975 drowning death of Çetin Mert, the five-year-old son of a Turkish guest worker family, this essay explores the varied ways that non-German migrants and other minority groups have figured in public memories of […]

Re-Imagining the Past in Transnational Online Communities Kaarina Nikunen Download PDF Abstract: This essay examines transnational online communities as sites of identity, belonging and memory. It looks at the ways in which memories are circulated, shared and created within these virtual spaces. It explores, with the guidance of previous research on diasporic online sites, the […]

Countermemory and the (Turkish-)German Theatrical Archive: Reading the Documentary Remains of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986) Lizzie Stewart Download PDF Editor’s Note: Due to copyright restrictions, images for this article are only available in the secure PDF. Abstract: Theatre history stands in a curious relation to the archive: created from physical, archival documents it […]