{"title":"Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility: Introduction","authors":"Gero Guttzeit","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140269657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article discusses Morten Tyldum’s film The Imitation Game in terms of its media-specific representation of social closure at three spatio-temporal levels. They involve Alan Turing’s boarding school in the late 1920s, Bletchley Park, the home of the cryptanalysts during the Second World War, and a homophobic Britain of the early 1950s. The paper borrows from an expanded neo-Weberian theoretical frame and attempts to address power-based processes of social closure by means of an approach that relates the storyline to selected semiotic modes used by the film language. The analysis foregrounds some scenic juxtapositions and modal ties to illustrate how the two codebreakers, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), cope with an exclusionary society, its homophobic legislation, sexist attitudes, and, in the case of young Alan, its practice of physical bullying.
{"title":"Modes of Social Closure in Morten Tyldum’s Film The Imitation Game","authors":"Norbert Schaffeld","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2026","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article discusses Morten Tyldum’s film The Imitation Game in terms of its media-specific representation of social closure at three spatio-temporal levels. They involve Alan Turing’s boarding school in the late 1920s, Bletchley Park, the home of the cryptanalysts during the Second World War, and a homophobic Britain of the early 1950s. The paper borrows from an expanded neo-Weberian theoretical frame and attempts to address power-based processes of social closure by means of an approach that relates the storyline to selected semiotic modes used by the film language. The analysis foregrounds some scenic juxtapositions and modal ties to illustrate how the two codebreakers, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), cope with an exclusionary society, its homophobic legislation, sexist attitudes, and, in the case of young Alan, its practice of physical bullying.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139200345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Aiming to contribute to the historiography of English Studies, this essay explores the research agenda and collective work of a particular network of academics that made a committed and systematic effort to implement working-class literature and culture as a new research field in (GDR) English Studies. Set up as a “Research Group on Working Class Literature” in 1965, its key actors were a group of academics based at the Humboldt University or Pädagogische Hochschule Potsdam who had come to the GDR from the UK or US as immigrants or remigrants. The driving force was Dr. Mary Ashraf, whose papers contained in the Bundesarchiv [Federal Archives] shed light on the Group’s work. On the basis of these archival papers and the Group’s publications, this essay studies the programmatic and conceptual nature as well as the praxeological dimension of their work, including their teaching legacy.
{"title":"Mary Ashraf and the “Research Group on Working Class Literature”: The Programmatic Pursuit of a New Research Field in the GDR Anglistik","authors":"Helga Schwalm","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Aiming to contribute to the historiography of English Studies, this essay explores the research agenda and collective work of a particular network of academics that made a committed and systematic effort to implement working-class literature and culture as a new research field in (GDR) English Studies. Set up as a “Research Group on Working Class Literature” in 1965, its key actors were a group of academics based at the Humboldt University or Pädagogische Hochschule Potsdam who had come to the GDR from the UK or US as immigrants or remigrants. The driving force was Dr. Mary Ashraf, whose papers contained in the Bundesarchiv [Federal Archives] shed light on the Group’s work. On the basis of these archival papers and the Group’s publications, this essay studies the programmatic and conceptual nature as well as the praxeological dimension of their work, including their teaching legacy.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139209011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The essay analyzes Sarban’s 1952 novel The Sound of His Horn, one of the first alternate histories to depict a victorious Third Reich. The depiction of the latter is a strange mixture. On the one hand, the novel is a product of its day by presenting a regressive, resolutely anti-modern Nazi Germany headed back into a barbarian past. On the other hand, it anticipates later depictions (both in the alternate history genre as well as in historiography proper) by highlighting the constitutive role of technology and the regime’s inner divisions. The latter results in narrowing the gap between the (British) observer and his (German) environment. I argue that this narrowing can be traced by analyzing both the chief villain Hackelnberg, a figure borrowed from German folklore that Jacob Grimm associated with the Germanic god Wotan, and the key motif of hunting. Second, the narrowing is structurally embedded in the novel by virtue of the fact that the counterfactual Nazi domain is confined to a nested narrative. It may be a mere projection, in which case Hackelnberg’s deadly hunts and English bloodsports are not that far apart.
{"title":"Wotan’s Biopunk: The Grim(m) German God and His English Bloodsport in Sarban’s The Sound of His Horn","authors":"Geoffrey Winthrop-Young","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The essay analyzes Sarban’s 1952 novel The Sound of His Horn, one of the first alternate histories to depict a victorious Third Reich. The depiction of the latter is a strange mixture. On the one hand, the novel is a product of its day by presenting a regressive, resolutely anti-modern Nazi Germany headed back into a barbarian past. On the other hand, it anticipates later depictions (both in the alternate history genre as well as in historiography proper) by highlighting the constitutive role of technology and the regime’s inner divisions. The latter results in narrowing the gap between the (British) observer and his (German) environment. I argue that this narrowing can be traced by analyzing both the chief villain Hackelnberg, a figure borrowed from German folklore that Jacob Grimm associated with the Germanic god Wotan, and the key motif of hunting. Second, the narrowing is structurally embedded in the novel by virtue of the fact that the counterfactual Nazi domain is confined to a nested narrative. It may be a mere projection, in which case Hackelnberg’s deadly hunts and English bloodsports are not that far apart.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139198276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ZAA at 70","authors":"Christoph Reinfandt","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139198320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Tamil writer Perumal Murugan announced his authorial death on Facebook in January 2015. The events that led to this moment and what followed highlight the contentious relationship between authorship and censorship. This paper positions itself within the field of literary authorship studies. While mid-twentieth-century French theory had engaged with notions of authorial death and author-as-victim, witnessing Murugan’s actions following the call for a social boycott of his novel, One Part Woman, in 2014, brought back to life theory that had long been buried. Explaining his experiences in light of Roland Barthes’s and Michel Foucault’s treatises on authorship, this paper reads Murugan’s literary suicide and writings as a resurrection that creatively challenges attempts to shun his critical fiction. His example highlights how a socio-political environment that is suspicious of plurality and democracy renders the relations among the author, the reader, the text, and the context as unstable.
{"title":"Authorial Lives and Deaths: Revisiting Perumal Murugan’s Literary Death and Afterlives","authors":"Ahmed Shabin","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Tamil writer Perumal Murugan announced his authorial death on Facebook in January 2015. The events that led to this moment and what followed highlight the contentious relationship between authorship and censorship. This paper positions itself within the field of literary authorship studies. While mid-twentieth-century French theory had engaged with notions of authorial death and author-as-victim, witnessing Murugan’s actions following the call for a social boycott of his novel, One Part Woman, in 2014, brought back to life theory that had long been buried. Explaining his experiences in light of Roland Barthes’s and Michel Foucault’s treatises on authorship, this paper reads Murugan’s literary suicide and writings as a resurrection that creatively challenges attempts to shun his critical fiction. His example highlights how a socio-political environment that is suspicious of plurality and democracy renders the relations among the author, the reader, the text, and the context as unstable.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139198612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The diary section in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often criticized. However, Helen’s diary is an essential element of the novel: recording and processing her traumatic first marriage in her diary is an important means of character development, making it possible for Helen to heal, and to experience what experts term posttraumatic growth. According to Herman as well as Tedeschi and Calhoun, the only way to recover from, and grow beyond, trauma is to narrate it. In the novel, Helen does this through recording and confronting her traumatic experiences in her diary.
{"title":"“To this Silent Paper I May Confess it”: Diary Writing and Trauma in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall","authors":"Ayşegül Kuglin","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The diary section in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often criticized. However, Helen’s diary is an essential element of the novel: recording and processing her traumatic first marriage in her diary is an important means of character development, making it possible for Helen to heal, and to experience what experts term posttraumatic growth. According to Herman as well as Tedeschi and Calhoun, the only way to recover from, and grow beyond, trauma is to narrate it. In the novel, Helen does this through recording and confronting her traumatic experiences in her diary.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139197511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and, with that decision, revoked access to safe abortion for many women across the country. The decision was anticipated and immediately followed by protests from pro-choice campaigners, who challenged the decision, arguing that it would pose a threat to the health of women across the US and compound existing inequalities relating to ethnicity and social class. In this article, we use a corpus-based approach to Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the representation of the protests in US national newspapers between May and July of 2022. Focussing in particular on the representation of the protests’ worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment, we find that generally the protests are afforded legitimacy in the coverage, with only the representation of worthiness bucking this trend. Following the analysis, we consider the possible motivations for this somewhat complex picture and consider the broader implications and future directions for similar such protests and women’s reproductive rights more generally.
{"title":"Representations of Pro-Choice Protesters in US News Media","authors":"Charlotte-Rose Kennedy, Gavin Brookes","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and, with that decision, revoked access to safe abortion for many women across the country. The decision was anticipated and immediately followed by protests from pro-choice campaigners, who challenged the decision, arguing that it would pose a threat to the health of women across the US and compound existing inequalities relating to ethnicity and social class. In this article, we use a corpus-based approach to Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the representation of the protests in US national newspapers between May and July of 2022. Focussing in particular on the representation of the protests’ worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment, we find that generally the protests are afforded legitimacy in the coverage, with only the representation of worthiness bucking this trend. Following the analysis, we consider the possible motivations for this somewhat complex picture and consider the broader implications and future directions for similar such protests and women’s reproductive rights more generally.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139344393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper examines patterns of representation of gender in a domain-specific heritage corpus. To accomplish this, a heritage corpus of mountaineering texts is examined for the strategies employed in the representation of gendered social actors. The research presented uses the corpus The New Zealand Alpine Journal Corpus, an 8-million-word corpus of the New Zealand Alpine Journal (NZAJ) with more than 5000 texts related to the topic of mountaineering. Mountaineering texts have been relatively overlooked in discourse studies so far, even though, like other leisure and sports discourses, the topic has always been highly political. Furthermore, the topic is outstanding in that it is a sport without spectators that relies almost exclusively on discursive events. The present study looks at frequently occurring patterns and typical ways of how gendered social actors are (re)produced within the NZAJ by looking at adjectival and numeral collocations.
{"title":"Half-Witted or Hard-Working-Fun-Loving Women? – A Corpus-Assisted Study of Gendered Collocation in the New Zealand Alpine Club Journal Corpus","authors":"Claudia Posch","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2033","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines patterns of representation of gender in a domain-specific heritage corpus. To accomplish this, a heritage corpus of mountaineering texts is examined for the strategies employed in the representation of gendered social actors. The research presented uses the corpus The New Zealand Alpine Journal Corpus, an 8-million-word corpus of the New Zealand Alpine Journal (NZAJ) with more than 5000 texts related to the topic of mountaineering. Mountaineering texts have been relatively overlooked in discourse studies so far, even though, like other leisure and sports discourses, the topic has always been highly political. Furthermore, the topic is outstanding in that it is a sport without spectators that relies almost exclusively on discursive events. The present study looks at frequently occurring patterns and typical ways of how gendered social actors are (re)produced within the NZAJ by looking at adjectival and numeral collocations.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139344619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article explores some of the ethical considerations about researching language, gender, and sexuality studies. In particular, it focuses on the potential risk posed to researchers from the perspectives of physical and mental health, especially as caused by conducting critical linguistic research into violent online misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia. I argue that there has been an increase in hate-based incidents related to gender and sexuality, and that while scholars are doing high-quality research in language, gender, and sexuality studies, these incidents might dissuade others from entering or remaining in the field. I also argue that there is some hostility towards scholars challenging gender-based hegemonies, which has real-world impacts on researchers. I highlight that there is a lack of support systems in Higher Education Institutions, and that sometimes the frameworks provided by these organisations are not conducive to safe research into the language of online gender/sexuality hate. I also argue that some of the frameworks, goals, and guidelines provided by Higher Education Institutions can misalign with norms of the discipline. As such I highlight where there are systematic shortcomings, in the hopes that affirmative action might be taken to better facilitate the continuation of high-quality research into language, gender, and sexuality studies.
{"title":"Positionality in a Contemptuous Time: Ethical Considerations and Discussions on Researching Language, Gender, and Sexuality","authors":"Frazer Heritage","doi":"10.1515/zaa-2023-2031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2031","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores some of the ethical considerations about researching language, gender, and sexuality studies. In particular, it focuses on the potential risk posed to researchers from the perspectives of physical and mental health, especially as caused by conducting critical linguistic research into violent online misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia. I argue that there has been an increase in hate-based incidents related to gender and sexuality, and that while scholars are doing high-quality research in language, gender, and sexuality studies, these incidents might dissuade others from entering or remaining in the field. I also argue that there is some hostility towards scholars challenging gender-based hegemonies, which has real-world impacts on researchers. I highlight that there is a lack of support systems in Higher Education Institutions, and that sometimes the frameworks provided by these organisations are not conducive to safe research into the language of online gender/sexuality hate. I also argue that some of the frameworks, goals, and guidelines provided by Higher Education Institutions can misalign with norms of the discipline. As such I highlight where there are systematic shortcomings, in the hopes that affirmative action might be taken to better facilitate the continuation of high-quality research into language, gender, and sexuality studies.","PeriodicalId":293840,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139345835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}