scholarly journals BETWEEN THE OWN AND THE FOREIGN. MIGRATION EXPERIENCES IN MELINDA NADJ ABONJI’S AND IRENA BREŽNÁ’S NOVELS

2018 ◽  
pp. 195-213
Author(s):  
Marijana Jeleč ◽  
Nada Popović
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Scientific Discussion ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Refugee Problem ◽  
Migration Experiences ◽  
Intercultural Literature

Current developments in German-language literature show how much literature is shaped by social changes. In the past, Germanlanguage literature has repeatedly reported on waves of emigration and refugee movements, and that's what it does today. The refugee problem is therefore also in the literature a recurring theme. Contemporary authors from the German-speaking countries such as Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Feridun Zaimoğlu, Ilija Trojanow, Catalin Dorian Florescu or Abbas Khider, who experienced migration for a variety of reasons, are proof of this current trend. The Hungarian-Swiss author Melinda Nadj Abonji with her novel Tauben fliegen auf (2010) and the Slovak-Swiss author Irena Brežná with their most recent novel Die undankbare Fremde (2012) are also part of this trend. The own experiences of escape, foreignness and integration of the two authors, who make an important contribution to intercultural literature in Switzerland, characterize their work in a particularly emphatic manner and thus also repeatedly implicate a discussion of the autobiographical background. The paper intends to bring the culture contact into focus and thus to open the scientific discussion on two important literary texts of German-speaking Swiss contemporary literature and to examine how a migrant deals with the change of culture and how its identity is shaped by it. The construction of unfamiliar spaces, in which the identity unfolds between the adaptation to the prevailing norms and the resistance to a foreign language and cultural space, leads to the research objectives: to study the concepts of the own and foreign and to concretize intercultural aspects in both novels.

Didactic dimensions of intercultural literature

Proglas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mina Hubenova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Methodological Aspects ◽  
Relative Differences ◽  
Intercultural Literature

Intercultural literary studies in the field of literary scholarship represent a research perspective with a specific theoretical and methodological profile, which is based on two prerequisites: 1) cultural differences can be important in the study and perception of literature, and 2) literature and its reception can reveal these relative differences. In this way culture is interpreted as a category of differentiation, but also as a productive source of exchange, contact, dissemination and integration. Intercultural literary research focuses on specific issues concerning the creation and perception of the literary text, as well as the didactic and methodological aspects of acquiring intercultural competence through it. Literary texts lead, on one hand, to enrichment, curiosity and excitement in students, and, on the other, to the diversification of methodological techniques in foreign language teaching. Literary texts can motivate students and foster their personal development through new methods that not only encourage them to speak, but also inform them about the culturally specific point of view, through the content of the text.

The role of repeat photography in establishing theories of transition in high mountain environments

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Time Lapse ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Mountain Areas ◽  
Scientific Discussion ◽  
Mountain Environments ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Theories Of Transition

<p>Today, photos play an important role in geoscience and public discussion. When photographical techniques developed during the second half of the 19th century, it took several decades uuntil high mountain areas and specific features could be captured with this technique, as a follow upt o traditional paintings and drawings. In European geography, Friedrich Simony developed the idea of tackling geomorphological processes by time lapse photography. Contemporary literature shows that his technique of combining photography with empirical data and theories was convincing, and that he established a new style of scientific discussion. Still, the comparison of historical with contemporary photography offers scientific insights and information which is not covered by any other type of empirical evidence as measurements, maps or descriptions. For example not only extent, but also firn and debris cover of glaciers, information on type and extent of vegetation,  the width and style of roads, details of infrastructure and cultural practices can be tackled from early photographs.  Several archives do allow not only acess to photographic documents, but also to metadata. Interdisciplinary effort has to be taken to further analyse this wealth of information.</p>

scholarly journals Imigranci a przemiany społeczno-kulturowe w społeczeństwie współczesnej Szwajcarii niemieckojęzycznej

2015 ◽  
pp. 169-195
Author(s):  
Lesław Tobiasz
Keyword(s):  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Swiss Confederation ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
Effective Integration

The author analyses the problems of socio-cultural changes in the German-speaking population of Switzerland. In particular, he focuses on the processes that result from the presence of numerous immigrant communities. The analysis relates mainly to the period a er the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, the transformations in the German-speaking population of Switzerland are shown on the background of historical processes that have shaped the Swiss multiculturalism and multilingualism. The analysis takes into account the complex interactions between different multilingual areas of the country and external impacts resulting from socio-cultural processes outside its borders, especially in Germany. The German-speaking part of the multicultural Swiss Confederation is currently experiencing a period of rapid social changes. These changes relate to the sphere of culture, language, economy and politics. The German-speaking Swiss are trying to redefine their identity and role in the world, full of different challenges and threats. One of them is the approach to immigrants and the culture they represent. It can be assumed that in the next few years, the Swiss – in fear of the inflow of other cultures – will seek to limit immigration processes, while strengthening the processes for the effective integration of newcomers in the multicultural society.

scholarly journals Gonzo, Ironic Nostalgia, Magical Realism, or, How to Re-Narrate Traumatic Transnational Borderland Stories. Examples from the Twenty-First Century Polish(-German) Literature

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Magdalena Baran-Szołtys
Keyword(s):  
Magical Realism ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
German Literature ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Borders ◽  
New Generation

This paper focuses on the former Austrian crown land of Galicia and Lodomeria and its return in literary texts of a new generation that can recall it only from collective and family memory. Spaces like Galicia are situated in shifting political borders and often marked by (fragmented) memories connected to traumas caused by migration, forced resettlements, expulsions, or violence. The rediscovery of these spaces, often from nostalgia for a lost home and bygone times, is the starting point of many narratives of the postmemory generations in contemporary literature. Authors use new rhetorical strategies when dealing with adversarial nationalistic and traumatic topics: ironic nostalgia, gonzo, and magical realism. These narratives do not verify “truths,” instead they play with different myths, possibilities, and “alternative futures.” The analysis includes Tomasz Różycki’s Dwanaście stacji (2004), Sabrina Janesch’s Katzenberge (2010), and Ziemowit Szczerek’s Przyjdzie Mordor i nas zje (2013).

scholarly journals ACTIVITIES OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS UNDER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC SPREAD

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-48
Author(s):  
Iryna Shavrina
Keyword(s):  
Current Trend ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Online Technologies ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life

The article analyzes the response of religious organizations to the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on the global confessional community. Many churches and denominations have faced direct restrictions on their activities. The author concludes that in each country these restrictions are localized and feature varying degrees of flexibility, depending on the current situation. The reaction of confessions to the corresponding restrictions and lockdowns varies as well: from understanding and collaboration with the authorities to manifesting disobedience and deliberate violation of the lockdown regulations. The spread of the pneumotropic virus prompted religious organizations to widely implement new forms of communication with their followers. A current trend is a so-called "accelerated digitalization": communication of churches with the believers and of the latter among themselves through online technologies. This will undoubtedly make religious organizations to reconsider their established traditional forms of spiritual and cult activity going forward. Facing the crisis situation under the fight against the coronavirus, religious organizations were able to sacrifice the most important aspect: mass public worships, which are a basic life need for believers of any confession and religion. For most of them, this constraint became a test for their general strength since the absence of joint onsite worships means the disunity of members of religious communities, the termination of the activities of individual parishes, as well as the loss of part of their income. The religious organizations' involvement in countering the spread of the virus has shown that they are not archaic and are capable of responding to social challenges. For many of them, especially for the Orthodox ones, the crisis has posed an acute issue of developing new forms of the Christian mission and attracting the population to the church. In many countries, the pandemic has helped the development of an interfaith dialogue. The social changes caused by the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated existing issues and accelerated the processes that have already been taking place in the internal church life.

Gothic Revival/Gothick

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Glaser
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Medieval Architecture ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The French Revolution

Gothic Revival designates a key moment in architectural history. It also refers to the use of Gothic forms and motifs in furniture, design, and the decorative arts. It is inextricably connected to the reawakened interest in medieval architecture that began in the 18th century and that provided both its scholarly basis and intellectual context. Thus, Gothic Revival comprises neo-Gothic artifacts as well as the antiquarian, scholarly, and literary texts that fueled it. Scholars distinguish between Gothic Revival and Survival. “Survival” refers to the continued use of the Gothic style in post-medieval building, whereas “Revival” describes the reuse of Gothic details. As an aesthetic term, in 16th-century Italy “Gothic” was associated with the “barbaric” medieval style and by the 18th-century it was equated with bad taste. “Gothick” was used for 18th-century garden architecture, design, and buildings, such as Walpole’s villa at Strawberry Hill or the Gothic House at Wörlitz, both playful amalgamations of Gothic motifs. Lenoir followed a similar aesthetic when he created monuments from the rubble of the French Revolution. With the rise of antiquarian studies and a growing number of architects schooled in the Gothic style, the Revival grew in impetus and importance through the 19th century. Frivolous Gothick gave way to an archeologically informed style that characterized the work of Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc. Neo-Gothic was adopted by Catholics and Protestants alike and promoted by local and national governments. Monumental restoration and completion of edifices such as Notre-Dame de Paris and Cologne Cathedral also played an important role. Significantly, Gothic Revival reflected each nation’s understanding of its history: in England it was nostalgic, looking back to a lost golden age; in France, Gothic forged a continuity with a past irreparably severed by the French Revolution; in the German-speaking lands Gothic was considered to symbolize the lost unity of the medieval German Empire, which meant that the German Revival was forward looking toward future political and religious unity. Creativity and eclecticism characterized the later Gothic Revival, with Romanesque, Byzantine, and Rundbogen styles becoming viable alternatives to Gothic. Scholarship on Gothic Revival dates to the late 19th century, when Eastlake set the pattern for the scholarly discourse. In the early 20th century, Clark and Abraham negatively appraised the Revival, a stance that English architectural historians began to revise in the 1940s. By the 1970s, England, France, and Germany were considered the center of Gothic Revival. In the 1990s Gothic Revival was recognized to be a pan-European phenomenon, and in the 21st century scholars have assiduously explored Gothic’s worldwide spread. This article reflects these scholarly developments.

„Literarische Scherze in August W. v. Schlegels Manier von Doktor-Dichter Presheren“

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matjaž Birk
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Aesthetic Concepts

AbstractThe study of the role of the Slovene national Poet France Prešeren (1800–1849) as mediator of intellectual-aesthetic concepts and literary models of German romantic and their reception in the Slovene literature from 1830 is based on the analysis of literary texts, that were published in chosen German speaking cultural periodics in Laibach (Ljubljana) – the centre of Slovene ethnic territory in the Austrian monarchy. The analysis includes also cultural (nonfictional) texts, which were participating in processes of cultural coding. The research focuses on the adaptation of A.W. Schlegel’s literary epigrammatic model by Prešeren as poet and as an influential actor in the Laibach Slovene and German cultural and literary field in the frame of his fundamental contribution to the constitution of the Slovene poetry and its idiom.

Indigenous Agency and Compliance: Contemporary Literature about Dayaks

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (3) ◽  
pp. 686-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Tsao
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Dominant Discourse

Based on an analysis of three literary texts about Dayaks—the indigenous peoples of Kalimantan (Borneo) in Indonesia—this essay argues that strategic submission can play an important role in indigenous peoples' attempts to obtain and maintain agency under the shadow of dominant discourse. Discussions foundational to the field of postcolonial studies have tended to focus on the importance of subversion, resistance, and counterdiscourse in liberating the oppressed subject. Taking reading cues from anthropological and sociological accounts of Dayak compliance with various constructions of Dayaks, this essay looks at how the writing of literature about Dayaks (by both non-Dayaks and Dayaks) functions as an enactment of and meditation on the application of dominant discourse to indigenous peoples and the opportunities that such discourse affords for carving out spaces of autonomy.

scholarly journals GERMAN RECEPTION OF MODERN MIGRANT PROSE OF THE AUTHORS FROM THE FORMER USSR

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-103
Author(s):  
Anastasia A. Anokhina
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
Literary Market ◽  
Former Ussr ◽  
International Phenomenon

The literature of migrant authors from the former USSR became popular in the German literary market not only within the framework of the well-known international phenomenon of “new immigrant chic”, but also due to the specific character of German literary market, which is characterized by the demand for “narrative lightness” of modern literature. The main aspects of the promotion of writers on the literary scene in Germany are the role of the literary publisher in choosing marketing strategies for authors, the self-positioning of writers, and the interest of the readers in a biography that is exotic for German-speaking society. The interaction between different generations of migrant writers, the lack of success of migrant prose from the former Soviet Union in the Russian literary market as well as the current trend towards publishers’ creating a feigned image of the migrant writer with Russian roots are particularly relevant topics in this discussion.

scholarly journals LITERATURE AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE POST-SECULAR AGE

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-55
Author(s):  
Faisal Nazir
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Current State ◽  
Analytical Potential ◽  
And Function

This paper attempts to reconsider the nature and function of the ‘spiritual’ dimension in literary texts and in literary study in the context of the present state of the discipline of literary studies. The present era is often defined as a ‘post-secular’ era, one in which themes of spirituality and mysticism are increasingly noticeable in literary works. The paper argues that to maintain its relevance to contemporary writers and readers, literary criticism has to (re-)address these themes in a concrete and effective way. The paper recommends a comparative approach to the discussion of spirituality and mysticism in contemporary literature and literary criticism. In order to carry effective analytical potential, this approach, the paper emphasizes, has to be developed from specific spiritual traditions. The paper first discusses the disciplinary crisis literary studies have always been exposed to since their inception as a discipline of study in academic institutes. It then reviews the current state of the discipline and describes how the discipline came to be dominated by scientific and social approaches. Finally, it  suggests the reinstitutionof the ‘spiritual’ element in literary study as a way out from the state of crisis in the discipline of literary studies. The paper thus attempts to strengthen the disciplinary identify of literary studies while exploring interdisciplinary aspects of the study literature.

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