Being Günter Grass:appropriations of the Tin Drum author in the British Media

Dieses Kapitel beschäftigt sich weniger mit der Rezeption des Blechtrommel-Textes als mit der seines Autors. Günter Grass wurde sowohl in englisch- als auch in deutschsprachigen Medien immer wieder als exzentrischer Blechtrommler dargestellt, und dies mehr als 50 Jahre nach dem Erscheinen seines berühmten Romans. Ausgangspunkt sind die unterschiedlichen, erheblich zeitversetzten Rezeptionskontexte der ,Welt­autor­schaft‘, die hier als bewusst performatives Erlebnis innerhalb der von Goethe definierten ,Weltliteratur‘ verstanden und mit Blick auf den amerikanischen und britischen Kontext der Grass-Rezeption erläutert wird. Insbesondere wird auf die britische Rezeption der letzten 25 Jahre seiner Karriere eingegangen, zunächst mit Blick auf die ersten Aneignungs- und Vermittlungsversuche der jüngeren britischen Autoren und Akademiker, die den ,Blechtrommler-Autor‘ in den 90er Jahren einem breiteren Publi­kum vorstellten, und dann mit Blick auf die Kontroverse über das ,Israel-Gedicht‘ (2012). Dabei wird deutlich, dass sich Grass und die zunächst vorwiegend desinteressierte britische Medienlandschaft einander allmählich näher kommen, wenn auch über den Umweg der Metapher der Exzentrizität. Am Ende seines Lebens existiert ein überraschender Grad an Verständnis nicht nur für Grass, sondern auch für den ,public intellectual‘ (öffentlichen Intellektuellen) schlechthin

Being Günter Grass:appropriations of the Tin Drum author in the British Media

Dieses Kapitel beschäftigt sich weniger mit der Rezeption des Blechtrommel-Textes als mit der seines Autors. Günter Grass wurde sowohl in englisch- als auch in deutschsprachigen Medien immer wieder als exzentrischer Blechtrommler dargestellt, und dies mehr als 50 Jahre nach dem Erscheinen seines berühmten Romans. Ausgangspunkt sind die unterschiedlichen, erheblich zeitversetzten Rezeptionskontexte der ,Welt­autor­schaft‘, die hier als bewusst performatives Erlebnis innerhalb der von Goethe definierten ,Weltliteratur‘ verstanden und mit Blick auf den amerikanischen und britischen Kontext der Grass-Rezeption erläutert wird. Insbesondere wird auf die britische Rezeption der letzten 25 Jahre seiner Karriere eingegangen, zunächst mit Blick auf die ersten Aneignungs- und Vermittlungsversuche der jüngeren britischen Autoren und Akademiker, die den ,Blechtrommler-Autor‘ in den 90er Jahren einem breiteren Publi­kum vorstellten, und dann mit Blick auf die Kontroverse über das ,Israel-Gedicht‘ (2012). Dabei wird deutlich, dass sich Grass und die zunächst vorwiegend desinteressierte britische Medienlandschaft einander allmählich näher kommen, wenn auch über den Umweg der Metapher der Exzentrizität. Am Ende seines Lebens existiert ein überraschender Grad an Verständnis nicht nur für Grass, sondern auch für den ,public intellectual‘ (öffentlichen Intellektuellen) schlechthin

Doing German Differently:New Research Practices and Partnerships around the UK

This article profiles six current projects in UK German Studies, as first presented by Rebecca Braun, Katrin Kohl, Laura Bradley, James Hodkinson, Seán Williams, and Benedict Schofield at the meeting of the Association for German Studies in September 2017. The projects combine ʻcoreʼ Modern Languages skills (close‐textual analysis, cultural analysis, linguistic and cultural translation) with ‘outlier’ methods that emerge and are developed when engaging with a range of stakeholders beyond the discipline and beyond academe. Collectively, the contributions provide insight into how to set about conceptualising and justifying this sort of work, and reflect on how it might enable us to look at the scope and purpose of German Studies in a new light

Does more sequence data improve estimates of galliform phylogeny? Analyses of a rapid radiation using a complete data matrix

The resolution of rapid evolutionary radiations or “bushes” in the tree of life has been one of the most difficult and interesting problems in phylogenetics. The avian order Galliformes appears to have undergone several rapid radiations that have limited the resolution of prior studies and obscured the position of taxa important both agriculturally and as model systems (chicken, turkey, Japanese quail). Here we present analyses of a multi-locus data matrix comprising over 15,000 sites, primarily from nuclear introns but also including three mitochondrial regions, from 46 galliform taxa with all gene regions sampled for all taxa. The increased sampling of unlinked nuclear genes provided strong bootstrap support for all but a small number of relationships. Coalescent-based methods to combine individual gene trees and analyses of datasets that are independent of published data indicated that this well-supported topology is likely to reflect the galliform species tree. The inclusion or exclusion of mitochondrial data had a limited impact upon analyses upon analyses using either concatenated data or multispecies coalescent methods. Some of the key phylogenetic findings include support for a second major clade within the core phasianids that includes the chicken and Japanese quail and clarification of the phylogenetic relationships of turkey. Jackknifed datasets suggested that there is an advantage to sampling many independent regions across the genome rather than obtaining long sequences for a small number of loci, possibly reflecting the differences among gene trees that differ due to incomplete lineage sorting. Despite the novel insights we obtained using this increased sampling of gene regions, some nodes remain unresolved, likely due to periods of rapid diversification. Resolving these remaining groups will likely require sequencing a very large number of gene regions, but our analyses now appear to support a robust backbone for this order

Let 1000 Flowers Wilt: The Futility of State-Level Health Care Reform

This is the published version

Pacing out a Polyglot Poetics:An Interview with Ulrike Draesner at the Victoria & Albert Museum

To what extent is reading a book like walking into a museum? In this conversation, held in early 2017 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Rebecca Braun and Ulrike Draesner explore how identities are forged in both language and material things, and how narratives, both poetic and prosaic, are spatially arranged. The conversation takes inspiration from material objects on display in the Europe Galleries of the Museum to cast a fresh angle on Draesner’s literary practice in her recent work: the novel, Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt, the poetry collection, subsong, and a new text that draws on the life in exile of the expressionist poet and painter Kurt Schwitters

Alcohol exposure in preterm infants in neonatal isolettes

Preterm infants admitted to the NICU may spend up to 12 weeks in isolettes (incubators with controlled air temperature and humidity). Infants receive frequent contact with health-care professionals who use alcohol-based hygiene products. Ethanol is a known developmental neurotoxicant, and inhalation may have long-term effects on infant neurodevelopment. This study assessed alcohol concentration in isolette air after inserting hands cleaned with hand sanitizer, and effects of longer hand rubbing before insertion into the isolette. Each exposure consisted of two squirts (1.5 ± 0.1mL) of hand sanitizer, and hands rubbed for 10 or 20 seconds before insertion into isolettes. Air samples were collected by photoionization detector and breathalyzer. Average ethanol peaks were 387.04ppm (10s) and 104.36ppm (20s). Ethanol levels peaked within 1min, dissipated within 5min, and returned to background within 15 - 20min. Alcohol exposure from ethanol based hand sanitizer may be decreased significantly with longer duration of hand rubbing

Three Creative Futures Methods for Imagining Life in a Post-Antibiotic World:Report on a Speculative Cross-Sector and Cross-Campus Conversation

This report describes a day that was dedicated to thinking about post-antibiotic futures through trialling 3 different ‘Creative Futures’ methods with a group of participants from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds. The event was co-organised by Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and the Institute for Social Futures (ISF) at Lancaster University, where it took place on 16 January 2020. The workshop was funded by DSTL’s Future Threat Understanding and Disruption (FTUD) Programme and was designed to allow exploratory interdisciplinary collaboration that might open up new ways of thinking and planning for all involved. Reading this report will give insight into: (1) the background science that makes living in a world where antibiotics are no longer effective a plausible future worthy of consideration within the FTUD Programme; (2) three novel Creative Futures methods that were used to tease out possible unforeseen social, political and ecological consequences of such an emergent environment and stimulate new kinds of crossdisciplinary exchange: the Consequences game, Narrative World Building, and combining Three Horizons with Verge; (3) key insights that participants gained from the day, including future possible development of both the topic at hand and the methods used to explore it

A Macroevolutionary Perspective on Multiple Sexual Traits in the Phasianidae (Galliformes)

Traits involved in sexual signaling are ubiquitous among animals. Although a single trait appears sufficient to convey information, many sexually dimorphic species exhibit multiple sexual signals, which may be costly to signalers and receivers. Given that one signal may be enough, there are many microevolutionary hypotheses to explain the evolution of multiple signals. Here we extend these hypotheses to a macroevolutionary scale and compare those predictions to the patterns of gains and losses of sexual dimorphism in pheasants and partridges. Among nine dimorphic characters, including six intersexual signals and three indicators of competitive ability, all exhibited both gains and losses of dimorphism within the group. Although theories of intersexual selection emphasize gain and elaboration, those six characters exhibited greater rates of loss than gain; in contrast, the competitive traits showed a slight bias towards gains. The available models, when examined in a macroevolutionary framework, did not yield unique predictions, making it difficult to distinguish among them. Even with this limitation, when the predictions of these alternative models were compared with the heterogeneous patterns of evolution of dimorphism in phasianids, it is clear that many different selective processes have been involved in the evolution of sexual signals in this group