Crossing Central Europe

This volume studies elements of Austro-Hungarian or Central European culture that were common across linguistic, national, and ethnic communities, and shows how some of these commonalities survived or were transformed by the turmoil of the 20th century: two world wars, a major depression between the wars, Stalinism and the Iron Curtain

Digital Feminisms and the Impasse: Time, Disappearance, and Delay in Neoliberalism

This collaborative essay considers the way feminist activism takes shape in the context of time-based feminist performance art. We argue that the formal and aesthetic interventions into digital culture of Noah Sow, Chicks on Speed, and Hito Steyerl articulate political resistance within feminist impasses and neoliberal circularities. Our analysis focuses on how these artists engage digital platforms to make visible otherwise imperceptible aspects of the present, including consumerism, wellness, imperial warfare as crisis ordinariness, and modes of digital hypervisibility, perception, and representation. Not only do these works uncover, grapple with, and potentially dissolve the bind of feminism, but they also work against the imperceptibility of neoliberalism as second nature or common sense. In the form of this essay (with comment bubbles and hyperlinks), we highlight our process of thinking about these works and expose the collaborative process of feminist academic writing in the digital age as yet another form of searching for spaces of political resistance and solidarity. Should be viewed with current versions of Firefox, Safari, or Adobe PDF viewer/reader

Forum: Feminism in German Studies

From Professor Wallach\u27s contribution entitled Jews and Gender : To consider Jews and gender within German Studies is to explore the evolution of German‐Jewish Studies with respect to feminist and gender studies. At times this involves looking beyond German Studies to other scholarship in Jewish gender studies, an interdisciplinary subfield in its own right. Over the past few decades, the focus on gender within German‐Jewish Studies has experienced several shifts in line with broader trends: an initial focus on the history of Jewish women and feminist movements gradually expanded to encompass the study of gender identity, masculinity, and sexuality. Historical and literary scholarly approaches now operate alongside and in dialogue with interdisciplinary scholarship in cultural studies, film and visual studies, performance studies, and other fields. [excerpt

Writing rape, troping history : story, plot, and ethical reading in Julia Franck's 'Die Mittagsfrau' (2007)

This article examines the rhetorical function of sexual violence in Julia Franck’s novel 'Die Mittagsfrau' (2007), which unflinchingly relates the degradations to which the protagonist is subjected from infancy: sexual exploitation by her sister; psychological abuse at the hands of her mother; sexual harassment by a family friend; abuse by her eventual husband; marginalization as a “Mischling” in the Third Reich; gang rape by Soviet soldiers. Franck extensively and graphically describes individual episodes of sexual harrassment within chapters that span several years. This narrative excess warrants a “hysterical reading” that magnifies textual details in order to demonstrate the link between representations of sexual violence and wider patterns of structural and symbolic violence. The gaps and tensions that emerge as the narrative shifts between the mimetic and tropological levels provide the basis for a broader exploration of the ethics of reading and the ethics of representing sexual violence more generally

Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

“Knaller-Sex für alle”: Popfeminist Body Politics in Lady Bitch Ray, Charlotte Roche, and Sarah Kuttner

Germany has seen a recent upsurge in publications proclaiming that feminism is again an urgent matter for a new generation of women. Faced with the reactionary demography debate and the hegemony of second-wave feminism, young writers, musicians, journalists, and critics call for new models of feminism relevant to women today. As one of these viable models, popfeminism draws on dominant trends in mass culture, on pop’s forty-year history as a cultural prefix in Germany, and on traditional feminism in order to create a new, ostensibly apolitical, feminist subculture based in self-stylization and individual autonomy. Shared by many popfeminist sources is the depiction of negatively coded female corporeality. This article begins with a theoretical analysis of writings on sexuality and the body in recent (pop)feminist nonfiction. It then examines the negative corporeal self-stylizations in Turkish-German rapper Lady Bitch Ray’s performances since 2006, in former music video host Charlotte Roche’s novel Feuchtgebiete (2008), and in media personality Sarah Kuttner’s novel Mängelexemplar (2009). Ultimately, these negatively coded bodies are shown to uncover popfeminism’s political intent

“Knaller-Sex für alle”: Popfeminist Body Politics in Lady Bitch Ray, Charlotte Roche, and Sarah Kuttner

Germany has seen a recent upsurge in publications proclaiming that feminism is again an urgent matter for a new generation of women. Faced with the reactionary demography debate and the hegemony of second-wave feminism, young writers, musicians, journalists, and critics call for new models of feminism relevant to women today. As one of these viable models, popfeminism draws on dominant trends in mass culture, on pop’s forty-year history as a cultural prefix in Germany, and on traditional feminism in order to create a new, ostensibly apolitical, feminist subculture based in self-stylization and individual autonomy. Shared by many popfeminist sources is the depiction of negatively coded female corporeality. This article begins with a theoretical analysis of writings on sexuality and the body in recent (pop)feminist nonfiction. It then examines the negative corporeal self-stylizations in Turkish-German rapper Lady Bitch Ray’s performances since 2006, in former music video host Charlotte Roche’s novel Feuchtgebiete (2008), and in media personality Sarah Kuttner’s novel Mängelexemplar (2009). Ultimately, these negatively coded bodies are shown to uncover popfeminism’s political intent

Introduction: Crossings and Encounters

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Awkwardness and Assemblage: Digital Schemes for Feminist World-Making

14 pagesIn this essay, we develop the concept of awkward assemblages to describe feminist digital activism that is multidirectional in its political effects and interpretive legibility, built of uneasy bedfellows and ill-suited coalitional partners. We exemplify the way in which activist practices, developing out of the tensions in which contemporary feminisms find themselves, complicate the genealogy of feminist protest. We focus on feminist responses triggered by the sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve 2015/16, particularly the work of Swiss-German performance artist Milo Moiré. This example allows us to highlight the complex ways in which local and contemporary feminist interventions intersect with the history of feminist protest art and how they link to transnational movements—among other examples, the #MeToo movement. We then turn to digital-feminist coalitional possibilities by thinking through assembling, along with coding and hacking, as performative labor that emphasizes the potential of inventing and visualizing political forms that (however awkwardly) materialize different worlds

Crossing Central Europe

This volume studies elements of Austro-Hungarian or Central European culture that were common across linguistic, national, and ethnic communities, and shows how some of these commonalities survived or were transformed by the turmoil of the 20th century: two world wars, a major depression between the wars, Stalinism and the Iron Curtain