Rüdiger Kunow Livres

‘Material Bodies’ is a book about the multiple connections, exchanges, interfaces, between biology and culture. It explores how Americans, past and present, have been empowered or constrained by biological factors (real or imagined), how the biology of human life has been holding a special place within US culture, organizing people's praxis, and at the same time also their desires and fears. Positioned at the intersection of somatic and semantic systems, this volume seeks to bring the resources of materialist cultural critique to an exploration of various material arenas of human life, ranging from the public life of public diseases, the cultural grammars of the human body in genetics, in age and disability, all the way to the tensions between suffering and (its) representations in the available cultural archives. In the arguments presented here, human life and particularly the human body manifest themselves as an endowment, even a resource, but also as sites of questioning, of reflexivity, even of limitation, sites which mark the involuntary dimension of human existence as they impose inexorable limits on individual or collective hopes and projects.

This volume presents a discussion from various positions in literary and cultural studies about the relationship between textual and contextual readings of literature. In understanding literary works do we rather map texts onto their contexts or contexts onto texts? And what are the rules of projection? By theoretical argument as well as exemplary cases Text or Context contributes to the current discussion between text-oriented literary criticism and contextbiased cultural studies.

Memory plays a crucial role in shaping individual and collective identities, permeating literature, film, historical narratives, psychology, and daily conversations. It has also become a contested cultural practice within 20th-century identity politics, both academically and socially. This book delves into the discursive construction of memory, examining its cultural significance. By intersecting memory and identity through an interdisciplinary and global lens, and drawing on S. Hall's idea that culture and identity are deeply linked through memory, the essays presented offer insightful analyses across diverse topics and contexts. The editors set the stage by highlighting the complex relationships between culture, identity, and memory, particularly in relation to the challenges of loss and the reinvention of the self in a globalized yet localized landscape. This collection features contributions from emerging American Studies scholars across various European contexts and disciplines, including cultural and literary studies, visual arts, philosophy, and history. Its interdisciplinary and international focus showcases the vital work being undertaken by the current generation of Americanists in Europe.