Emily Jeremiah Knihy

An Approach to Black traces the fate of Finnish artist Anna S. and her legacy. It’s the late nineteenth century, and Anna is married to Eino, another artist. Eino gains fame and recognition for his idyllic evocations of family life. Anna, meanwhile, goes mad and is confined to an institution.In present-day London, two people are driven to try and understand Anna: a young artist named Jonathan, who is descended from Anna and Eino, and retired Finnish academic Emma, who is writing a book about her. Through their quest, An Approach to Black explores questions of female agency and creativity, as well as desire and madness.

Exploring the concept of "becoming woman" within neoliberalism and postfeminism, this analysis delves into contemporary representations of girls and young women in literature. It highlights critical themes such as agency, beauty standards, sisterhood, and sexual desire, drawing from works by authors like Helene Hegemann and Caitlin Moran. The text emphasizes the roles of failure, refusal, and anger in female identity formation, while also considering willfulness as a key aspect of female agency. It appeals to scholars in various fields, including feminist and gender studies.

'The blue moment - the time between light and dark, when all is in suspense.' In the wake of her parents' divorce, Eeva moves from England to Finland with her father, leaving her mother behind. Flung into the midst of a new language and culture, Eeva struggles to find her place between two worlds. A coming-of-age story with an international twist, Blue Moments follows Eeva on her journey towards womanhood. But Eeva's path is not straightforward, and she soon realises that to make peace with her own identity, she must first engage with the past.

There has been an "ethical turn" in the literature, culture, and theory of recent years. Questions of morality are urgent at a time of increasing global insecurities. Yet it is becoming ever more difficult to make ethical judgments in multicultural, relativist societies. The European economic meltdown has raised further ethical difficulties, widening the gap between rich and poor. Such divisions and difficulties heighten the widespread fear of "the other" in its various manifestations. And in the German context especially, the past and its representation offer ongoing moral challenges. These ethical concerns have found their way into recent German-language literature and culture in texts that deal with history and memory (Timm, Petzold, Schoch, Strubel); materiality (Krau, Overath); gender (Berg, Schneider); age and generation (Moster, Pehnt, Schalansky); religion, especially Islam (Senocak, Kermani, Ruete); and nomadism (Tawada). The relationship between self and other; the connection between particular and general; the personal and political consequences of individuals' actions; and the potential, and danger, of representation itself are issues that are vital to the shaping of our future ethical landscapes, as this volume demonstrates. - From publisher's website

Explores nationality, gender, and postmodern subjectivity in the work of five German-speaking women writers who embody a "nomadic ethics." How can postmodern subjectivity be ethically conceived? What can literature contribute to this project? What role do "gender" and "nation" play in the construction of contemporary identities? Nomadic Ethics broaches these questions, exploring the work of five women writers who live outside of the German-speaking countries or thematize a move away from them: Birgit Vanderbeke, Dorothea Grünzweig, Antje Rávic Strubel, Anna Mitgutsch, and Barbara Honigmann. It draws on work by Rosi Braidotti, Sara Ahmed, and Judith Butler to develop a nomadic ethics, and examines how the writers under discussion conceptualize contemporary German and Austrian identities -- especially but not only gender identities -- in instructive ways. The book engages with a number of critical issues in contemporary German studies: globalization; green thought; questions of gender and sexuality; East (and West) German identities; Austrianness; the postmemory of the Holocaust; and Jewishness. In this way, Nomadic Ethics offers a valuable contribution to debates about the nature of German studies itself, as well as insightful readings of the individual authors and texts concerned. Emily Jeremiah is Lecturer in German, Royal Holloway, University of London.

This book on motherhood looks at feminist critical theory and women's writing in German in the 1970s and 1980s.