Austria and Other Margins: Reading Culture (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) - Hardcover

'Arens provides a delightfully varied book of essays that reveals a thorough, broadly read, and always provocative mind. This is an engaging and thoughtful book that grips the reader's imagination and presents timely questions about the institution of academic criticism.' Peter C. Pfeiffer, Georgetown University 'Arens persuasively argues for "reading culture" from the margins as crucial for academic institutions today.' MONATSHEFTE '...lively, stimulating....' FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES'Complex and theoretically well informed ... a highly interesting contribution to the debate about the status of German studies.' GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW ' Quite a lot of interesting material to be discovered! Doderer readers will find Arens's analysis of Die Daemonen ... fascinating....Theater fans will enjoy Arens's insightful cross-cultural examination of Robert Wilson's stage practice.' GERMAN QUARTERLY

In this book Katherine Arens offers a series of case studies that redefine what 'reading culture' can mean in literary and cultural studies. The first part traces the ways in which authors borrow and rewrite literary traditions across national lines, in order to address problems in their own cultures' histories. In the second set of essays, Professor Arens illustrates how literature can cross other kinds of cultural boundaries, especially those between disciplines; for example, plotting a story as if it were on a stage allows Grillparzer to tell two simultaneous stories at odds with each other; and two artists interested in large-group art (Christo and Judy Chicago) manipulate their images as modernists to achieve different careers.