Germany's Colonial Pasts (Texts and Contexts) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803227833 ISBN 13: 9780803227835

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2009

Synopsis

Germany’s Colonial Pasts is a wide-ranging study of German colonialism and its legacies. Inspired by Susanne Zantop’s landmark book Colonial Fantasies, and extending her analyses there, this volume offers new research by scholars from Europe, Africa, and the United States. It also commemorates Zantop’s distinguished life and career (1945–2001).

 

Some essays in this volume focus on Germany’s formal colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific between 1884 and 1914, while others present material from earlier or later periods such as German emigration before 1884 and colonial discourse in German-ruled Polish lands. Several essays examine Germany’s postcolonial era, a complex period that includes the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany with its renewed colonial obsessions, and the post-1945 era. Particular areas of emphasis include the relationship of anti-Semitism to colonial racism; respectability, sexuality, and cultural hierarchies in the formal empire; Nazi representations of colonialism; and contemporary perceptions of race. The volume’s disciplinary reach extends to musicology, religious studies, film, and tourism studies as well as literary analysis and history. These essays demonstrate why modern Germany must confront its colonial and postcolonial pasts, and how those pasts continue to shape the German cultural imagination.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Ames is an assistant professor of German at the University of Washington. Marcia Klotz is an instructor in the English department at Portland State University. Lora Wildenthal is an associate professor of history at Rice University. Sander L. Gilman is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Emory University and the author of Fat Boys: A Slim Book (Nebraska 2004).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803227833
• ISBN 13: 9780803227835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Ames Eric, Klotz Marcia, Wildenthal Lora