Carmen Birkle Knihy

Literary criticism of Sylvia Plath; Adrienne Rich; Audre Lorde; Audre Lorde; Sylvia Plath; Adrienne Rich; Audre Lorde; Sylvia Plath; Adrienne Rich; Sylvia Plath; Adrienne Rich; Audre Lorde; Sylvia Plath; Adrienne Cécile Rich; Audre Lorde

'Communicating Disease' focuses on the intersections of literature and medicine. It unravels the intricate entanglement of culture and disease and is devoted to the representation of life through medical narratives, exploring its value to both the literary critic and the medical practitioner. Grouped in four sections, the contributions to this volume discuss cultural representations of medical practice, the medical profession, diseases and epidemics, and potential healing functions of narratives. Topics range from eighteenth-century Old and New World practices of medicine via the careers of nineteenth-century women doctors and nurses subverting dominant gender norms, to twentieth- and twenty-first-century cognitive sciences; from smallpox epidemics via yellow fever to AIDS and biotechnology; from Alice James and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Siri Hustvedt and Richard Powers as well as women pathologists on the screen; to be concluded by a transnational reading of the world of medicine in the medium of literature.

'Emanzipation und feministische Politiken' zeigt das Zusammenspiel von Veränderungen in den Geschlechterverhältnissen und in den Vorstellungen von Emanzipation in unterschiedlichen historischen und geographischen Kontexten. Sozial-, kultur- und geisteswissenschaftliche Analysen setzen den Wandel von Politiken und Institutionen, kulturellen Repräsentationen und Subjekten in Verbindung mit Veränderungen in Konzepten und Praxen von Kritik, Emanzipation und Utopie. Quer zu den Disziplinen wird diskutiert, ob das Konzept der Emanzipation für geschlechterpolitische Anliegen heute noch zeitgemäß ist, und wenn ja, welche Verwandlungen notwendig sind, um an einem Projekt der Emanzipation festhalten zu können. Wie tauglich ist heute eigentlich noch die Idee von 'Emanzipation'? Wie haben sich die Vorstellungen von Emanzipation im Wandel der Geschlechterverhältnisse immer weiter verändert und entwickelt?

The paradigm of Atlantic studies combines the concerns of history, culture studies, and literature and takes as its area of inquiry the so-called „circum-Atlantic world,“ an oceanic space triangulated by the land masses of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. As a field of inquiry, Atlantic studies has thus emerged in recent years to question and modify academic thinking which understood culture and history predominantly along the lines of the nation-state. In re-focusing on the Atlantic as a space in-between, intercultural and interdisciplinary research can establish readings which add new dimensions to our study of cultures on three continents. Based on the theories of William Boelhower, Donna Gabaccia, and Bernard Bailyn, „The Sea ist History“ explores cultural, literary, and historical phenomena ranging from colonial times to the present and focusing on issues such as the colonial Atlantic, the Atlantic slave trade, history in the Caribbean, and transatlantic relations and negotiations. The volume brings together writers of fiction as well as scholars from a variety of fields (literature, history, cultural anthropology, and sociology) whose work draws on genres such as prose, poetry, drama, historical documents, film, and music.

This study examines short stories written by ethnic and women writers between the 1880s and 1920s and focuses on these stories' reflection of changes in the United States, particularly those caused by (im)migration and emancipation movements. Ethnicity and gender are the guiding categories in the analysis of migration, miscegenation, and transculturation in cultural contact zones. This detailed investigation gives voice to a broad spectrum of writers from Native, African-, German-, Jewish-, Chinese-, and Mexican-American backgrounds, ultimately leading to a reconsideration of the canon of American literature. The evolving patterns developed in Migration - Miscegenation - Transculturation provide a context for the analysis of ethnicity and gender in Western societies in the twenty-first century.