William Collins Donahue Bücher

In Holocaust Lite stellt William Collin Donahue die These auf, daß Bernhard Schlinks viel gelesene und hoch gepriesene „Nazi-Romane“ sowie ihre Verfilmungen – Werke, die die Nazizeit und den Holocaust direkt ansprechen – letztlich dieser Thematik nicht gerecht werden können. Der Holocaust wird stattdessen gerade in diesen Werken – ihrer angeblichen „Direktheit“ zum Trotz – viel eher marginalisiert und dadurch für die weltweite Leserschaft (vielleicht vor allem für US-Amerikaner) erträglich bzw. „lite“ gemacht. Diese Studie untersucht das „Schlink-Phänomen“ nicht nur im deutschen kulturellen Kontext (z. B. in den Schullehrbüchern), sondern auch als „uramerikanisches“ Ereignis, das viel mehr die Holocaustmüdigkeit als den Holocaust selbst dokumentiert.

Holocaust as Fiction seeks to explain and critically evaluate the extraordinary success of Schlink's internationally acclaimed novel, The Reader, the widely read “Selb” detective trilogy, and two popular films based closely on his work. With the help of wide-ranging reception data, the work of Holocaust scholars, as well as cultural and legal reflections on the concept of guilt, Donahue elucidates not only these works, but the wider critical climate that has fostered their success.

Basil the demon king, regretful of the atrocities he has committed to maintain his hold on power in his underground kingdom, absconds to the Earth's surface. Living among humans, he quickly learns that Hell is a state of mind...

Nobel laureate Elias Canetti wrote his novel Auto-da-Fe ( Die Blendung ) when he and the twentieth century were still quite young. Rooted in the cultural crises of the Weimar period, Auto-da-Fe first received critical acclaim abroad--in England, France, and the United States--where it continues to fascinate readers of subsequent generations. The End of Modernism places this work in its cultural and philosophical contexts, situating the novel not only in relation to Canetti's considerable body of social thought, but also within larger debates on Freud and Freudianism, misogyny and modernism's "fragmented subject," anti-Semitism and the failure of humanism, contemporary philosophy and philosophical fads, and traditionalist notions of literature and escapist conceptions of history. The End of Modernism portrays Auto-da-Fe as an exemplum of "analytic modernism," and in this sense a crucial endpoint in the progression of postwar conceptions of literary modernism.

andererseits seeks to provide a forum for unique and exciting research and reflections on topics related to the German-speaking world and the field of German studies. Works come from a wide variety of genres including book reviews, poetry, essays, editorials, forum discussions, notes, lectures, and peer-reviewed academic articles.