Journal of European Studies recent issues

That most hateful land: Romanticism and the birth of modern anti-Americanism

Gulddal, J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

This article presents a comparative study of romantic anti-Americanism focusing on Britain, Germany and France. On the basis of the hypothesis that romanticism invented what might be called the basic vocabulary of anti-American discourse, the article presents a taxonomy of this vocabulary and points to the determining factors underlying the romantic disaffection for America and Americans. Five motifs are singled out as fundamental to romantic anti-Americanism: the lack of history and culture in the US, the crass materialism of its inhabitants, their vulgarity, their religious excesses, and the flaws of the American political system. The article closes with an interpretation of romantic anti-Americanism as a strongly self-affirming, Eurocentric discourse, which accustomed Europeans to think of Europe and America as antithetical entities, thereby paving the way for cultural constructions not only of the American ‘other’, but also of a common European identity.

French travellers to Greece and the representation of modern Greeks in the nineteenth century

Samiou, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

The representation of modern Greeks by a number of nineteenth-century French travellers raises questions about the factors that influenced them in their accounts. If we accept that travel literature is a distinct kind of literary genre characterized by a range of forms and themes, we should also not ignore the influence of the travellers' social and cultural background on the images they produce. Their social status, gender, cultural and professional backgrounds, together with their personal motives for travel, determine the approach they adopt while observing 'others'. The accounts they produced of numerous aspects of modern Greek life and culture were almost inevitably subjective, often controversial, and reflected intellectual currents and Western preconceptions of that period.

The prospect of Turkey's EU membership as represented in the British newspapers The Times and The Guardian, 2002--2005

Aksoy, S. Z. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

This article examines the prospect of Turkey’s EU membership as presented in two influential British newspapers and their Sunday editions (The Guardian/Observer and The Times/Sunday Times) during the eventful period of 2002—5, when Turkey’s expectations of setting a date for the start of accession talks overlapped with the establishment in Turkey of a single party government with roots in political Islam, the preparatory phase of the EU constitution, and the terrorist attacks on British targets in Istanbul. The particular aim is to find out how the enthusiastic support of the British government for Turkey’s EU membership was reflected and evaluated in the press, and what particular arguments (pragmatic, moral and ethical—political) were put forward either for or against. A discourse analysis of the papers’ regular columnists and news correspondents suggests that although The Guardian/Observer and The Times/Sunday Times do not hold radically different views on the issue, and are close to the British government’s pro-Turkish stance, they differ in their degree of support for Turkey’s EU membership and the rationale they deploy to support their respective positions.

Book Review: English and European Studies Medieval Lucca and the Evolution of the Renaissance State. By M. E. Bratchel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xxi + 249. {pound}65.00

Wright, J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Book Review: The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Expansion 1560--1660. By Alison Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 381. {pound}18.99

Wright, J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Book Review: International Faust Studies: Adaptation, Reception, Translation. Edited by Lorna Fitzsimmons. London and New York: Continuum, 2008. Pp. x + 299. {pound}75.00

Bishop, P. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Book Review: French Studies: Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age. By Vincent J. Pitts. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 477. {pound}24.00

Black, J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Book Review: The Development of Albert Camus's Concern for Social and Political Justice: 'Justice pour un juste'. By Mark Orme. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007. Pp. 350. {pound}41.50

Fletcher, J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Book Review: German Studies: W. G. Sebald: Le Retour de l'auteur. By Martine Carre. Collection Regards sur l'Allemagne. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2008. Pp. 349. 20.00

Sheppard, R. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Book Review: Writing the New Berlin: The German Capital in Post-Wall Literature. Katharina Gerstenberger. Rochester: Camden House, 2008. Pp. 209 + x. {pound}40.00

Taberner, S. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:35 PST

Introduction

Ashkenazi, O., Greenberg, U. E., Lewy, J. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:19 PDT

Psychiatry and criminal justice in modern Germany, 1880--1933

Wetzell, R. F. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:19 PDT

This article presents an overview and analysis of the relationship of psychiatry and criminal justice in three different areas: the role of medical expert testimony in criminal trials; the role of psychiatrists in criminological research; and the influence of psychiatry on the penal reform movement. The first section argues that the increased use of medical expert testimony in the criminal courts demonstrates the increasing social acceptance of the psychiatric claim that borderline mental abnormalities were widespread and frequently connected to criminal behaviour. The second section examines the reasons why psychiatrists became so interested in research into the causes of criminal behaviour, and relates this interest to psychiatrists’ efforts to expand their professional territory. The third section argues that psychiatry exerted an important influence on the penal reform agenda. Not only was psychiatry crucial to the treatment of mentally deficient offenders, but the penal reformers’ demand to make every offender’s punishment dependent on his ‘social prognosis’ promised to give psychiatric expertise a central role in criminal justice. The article’s conclusion examines to what extent it makes sense to speak of a medicalization of criminal justice in this period.

Prisoners' fantasies in Weimar film: The longing for a rational and just legal system

Ashkenazi, O. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:19 PDT

Prison cells constituted a unique sphere in post-World War I German films. Unlike most of the modern city spheres, it was a realm in which the private and the public often merged, and in which reality and fantasy incessantly intertwined. This article analyses the ways in which filmmakers of the Weimar Republic envisaged the experience within the prison, focusing on its frequent association with fantasies and hallucinations. Through the analysis of often-neglected films from the period, I argue that this portrayal of the prison enabled Weimar filmmakers to engage in public criticism against the conservative, inefficient and prejudiced institutions of law and order in Germany. Since German laws forbade direct defamation of these institutions, filmmakers such as Joe May, Wilhelm Dietherle and Georg C. Klaren employed the symbolism of the prisoner’s fantasy to propagate the urgent need for thorough reform. Thus this article suggests that Weimar cinema, contrary to common notions, was not dominated by either escapism or extremist, anti-liberal worldviews. Instead, the prison films examined in this article are in fact structured as a warning against the decline of liberal bourgeois society in the German urban centres of the late 1920s.

Criminalization: Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin's concept of criminal politics

Greenberg, U. E. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:19 PDT

The two most celebrated intellectuals of the Weimar period — Carl Schmitt on the right and Walter Benjamin on the left — were fascinated by the role of crime in modern politics. In order to shed light on this neglected element of their work, this article explains how crime became a central category in their political theory and a crucial component in their narratives of modern history. Furthermore, it elucidates how both men simultaneously came to characterize their society as a whole, and not only fractions of it, as criminal in essence. Though many have seen the connection between Schmitt and Benjamin as a continuous dialogue, this study contends that the similarity between their theories of criminal politics should be interpreted not as a direct discussion, but within the context of wide debates regarding the origins of crime as well as the blending of criminal and political discourses that occurred during the Weimar period.

Art and illegality on the Weimar stage: The dances of Celly de Rheydt, Anita Berber and Valeska Gert

Hughes, E. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:19 PDT

This essay explores the representations of crime and madness in the work of three German dancers during the interwar years. Before World War I, public displays of nudity were illegal, but after 1918 a window of opportunity appeared. This article analyses the work and reception of Celly de Rheydt, Anita Berber and Valeska Gert – contemporaries whose works differed greatly from one another but who all displayed contempt for onstage sexual norms. All three used the female body as a site where notions of art, pornography, legality and illegality were contested, both on stage and in the courtroom. The Nackttanz (nude dance), as performed by Celly de Rheydt, who along with her producer– husband was convicted of lewdness, possessed a self-awareness of the potential for artistic catharsis which she then played upon sexually. She performed in a small space where the performers and audience were in close physical proximity, and in which drugs and alcohol were consumed, thereby setting the space apart from the traditional stage. Yet some women performers took offence at such dehumanization and abstraction. Valeska Gert danced in the guise of prostitutes, corpses, and ruined young girls as an alternative to the quasi-pornography of the Ballet Celly de Rheydt. She did not titillate, but rather forced her audience to examine ugly bodies and characters that had been debauched. Drugs also found their way into performances: Anita Berber’s Kokain paid homage to the drug that would later contribute to her early death. This paper looks at these dancers and the performances that tested the boundaries of representative mores in the interwar period. It shows how popular dancers, by presenting scenes of delinquency and insanity as the centre of their art, utilized it to refl ect on and criticize their society.

Explaining crime: Berlin newspapers and the construction of the criminal in Weimar Germany

Siemens, D. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

In the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, well-known journalists working for leading newspapers regularly covered the proceedings of the criminal court in Berlin-Moabit. In seeking sensational news as well as stories about everyday life in the metropolis, the court provided them with insights into contemporary urban problems such as unemployment, political struggle, gender-based conflict, and crimes of passion. The court and the journalistic coverage of its activities are historically important because they were a locus of legal and social conflicts intermingled with popular entertainment and mass media. This article sheds light on the engagement of the press with criminal trials in Weimar Berlin. By examining material never previously discussed, it claims that, contrary to what is generally believed today, German public opinion did not on the whole accept the idea that criminals could be categorized as a genetically inferior social class. In fact, most crime reporters — who reflected and formed public opinion — argued that the psychological problems of overstrained individuals and inferior living conditions were responsible for most crimes. Offenders were therefore considered as unfortunate ‘ordinary men’, or, more generally, as ‘victims of society’. Some journalists even claimed that crimes passionelles were the result of society’s oppression. This article goes on to argue that the extreme popularity of these reports shows that the journalists’ perspective on criminality met with the approval of contemporary readers and accorded with common views on crime. As part of the larger discourse on ‘victimization’ so important to the Weimar period, this journalistic coverage of the court can help us understand the unique role the criminal played as a central symbol of the German press and public.

Youth protection and the prevention of juvenile delinquency: Keeping cinema on the right side of the law

Hall, S. F. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

The year 1926 marked the passage of Germany’s Law to Protect Youth from Worthless and Obscene Publications. In combination with the Reich Motion Picture Law of 1920, this legislation sought to shelter minors from the corrupting forces of cultural narrative and imagery. As the discourse surrounding these laws attests, the terms of Germany’s so-called ‘cinema debate’ were ambivalent, and discussions about films thematizing crime were especially complex. Whereas many detective and crime films were condemned for glorifying delinquency, brutalizing the senses and exposing youth to excessive details about criminal activity, educational films and films that sounded a warning were viewed by reformists as ideal means to teach moral responsibility and good citizenship. This paper explores the purported connection between visual imagery, sensual—psychological stimulation, crime and censorship during the early years of the Weimar period.

A biological threat or a social disease?: Alcoholism and drug addiction in Nazi Germany

Lewy, J. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Racial hygiene — cleansing the Volk of those deemed undesirable by the regime such as anti-socials, biologically defective individuals and races — was at the heart of Nazi policy. This essay will explore whether the Nazi wrath was also directed against drug addicts; or, in other words: was drug addiction considered a biological disease to be eradicated? The answer is no. The Germans believed that drug addiction, unlike mental deficiency and alcoholism, was not hereditary. Not being hereditary, it presented no danger to the master race but could be cured, despite patients’ relapses. Those who were not considered a threat to the race were deemed worthy of life and were treated relatively well.

Book Review: European Studies: Our Distance from God. Studies of the Divine and the Mundane in Western Art and Music. By James D. Herbert. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2008. Pp xii + 198. {pound}35.00

Conlin, T. J.K. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Princely Power in the Dutch Republic. Patronage and William Frederick of Nassau (1613--64). By Geert H. Janssen. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008. Pp. xv + 215. {pound}55.00

Black, J. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Unity and Diversity in European Culture c. 1800. Edited by Tim Blanning and Hagen Schulze. (Proceedings of the British Academy 134.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 213. {pound}35.00

Dixon, S. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Reinventer la tradition. Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la Sainte Alliance. By Stella Ghervas. (Histoire culturelle de l'Europe 9.) Paris: Honore Champion, 2008. Pp. 620. 85.00

Drace-Francis, A. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Reviews: Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism, 1830-1920. Edited by C. A. Bayly and E. F. Biagini. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 419 pp. {pound}45.00

Black, J. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: In the Shadow of Empire: Austrian Experiences of Modernity in the Writings of Musil, Roth and Bachmann. By Malcolm Spencer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Pp. ix + 254. {pound}50.00

Robertson, R. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: The Women's Movement in Wartime. International Perspectives, 1914--19. Edited by Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp xi + 272. {pound}50.00

Grenaudier-Klijn, F. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Women in Europe between the Wars. Politics, Culture and Society. Edited by Angela Kershaw and Angela Kimyongur. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Pp xi + 249. {pound}50.00

Grenaudier-Klijn, F. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Conflicted Memories. Europeanizing Contemporary Histories. Edited by Konrad Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007. Pp. xii + 293. {pound}50.00

Black, J. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: French Studies: Approaches to Teaching Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. Edited by Colette H. Winn. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007. Pp. 247

Gilby, E. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: German Studies: Freud's Memory: Psychoanalysis, Mourning and the Foreign Body. By Rob White. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. vi + 183. {pound}45.00

Robertson, R. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Germany, 1871--1945. A Concise History. By Raffael Scheck. Oxford: Berg, 2008. Pp. xiv + 249. {pound}19.99

Black, J. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. By Edward Skidelsky. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. x + 288. {pound}19.95

Bishop, P. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: The Technological Unconscious in German Modernist Literature. Nature in Rilke, Benn, Brecht, and Doblin. By Larson Powell. Rochester, NY: Camden House 2008. Pp. 256. {pound}35.00

Midgley, D. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: German--Jewish Culture before the Holocaust: Kafka's Kitsch. By David A. Brenner. (Routledge Jewish Studies Series.) London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. x + 118. {pound}70.00

Robertson, R. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Wandernde Schatten: W.G. Sebalds Unterwelt. Edited by Ulrich von Bulow, Heike Gfrereis and Ellen Strittmatter. (Marbacherkatalog 63.) Marbach/Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 2008. Pp. 238. 20.00

Sheppard, R. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Book Review: Russian Studies: Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868--1910. A Comparison with British India. By A. S. Morrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. 400. {pound}60.00

Longworth, P. — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:20 PDT

Nijinsky's images of homosexuality: Three case studies

Kolb, A. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Many choreographies created by the Ballets Russes defied and disrupted conventional gender norms, thus helping to redefine methods of sexual presentation on stage. Drawing on material from gender and queer theory, including Judith Butler's work, this interdisciplinary paper explores how the male dancer, notably Nijinsky, was used to portray three different types of homoerotic imagery. Fokine's Le Spectre de la rose, Nijinsky's choreography for L'Après-midi d'un faune, and Fokine's Legend of Joseph are analysed against the backdrop of early twentieth-century research in sexual science and the literary reception of the male dancer by German-speaking authors.

Bertolt Brecht and Bela Balazs: Paradoxes of exile

Petrie, G. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

The sometimes parallel, sometimes conflicting careers of Bertolt Brecht and Béla Balázs are examined through the focus of their engagements with film and in the context of their experience of exile. Both were anti-fascist and at least nominally communist; yet neither was fully accepted by the communist governments of East Germany (in Brecht's case) and post-World War II Hungary (in the case of Balázs) and both were subjected to official criticism and censorship despite their attempts to conform to political orthodoxy.

An intellectual revolution: Andre Malraux and the temporal nature of art

Allan, D. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Very little has been written in recent decades about the temporal nature of art. The two principal explanations provided by our Western cultural tradition are that art is timeless (`eternal') or that it belongs within the world of historical change. Neither account offers a plausible explanation of the world of art as we know it today, which contains large numbers of works which are self-evidently not timeless because they have been resurrected after long periods of oblivion with significances quite different from those which they originally held, and which also seem to have escaped history because, though long-forgotten, they have `come alive' again for us today. In his two key works on the theory of art, Les Voix du silence and La Métamorphose des dieux, André Malraux offers an entirely new account of the temporal nature of art based on the concept of metamorphosis. Unlike the traditional explanations, Malraux's account makes sense of the world of art as we now know it. He revolutionizes our understanding of the relationship between art and time.

Exhibiting the National Socialist past: An overview of recent German exhibitions

Paver, C. E.M. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

The article attempts to move beyond the scholarly debates surrounding the so-called Wehrmacht Exhibitions by broadening the focus to include a wide spectrum of public exhibitions about the National Socialist era in Germany, mounted mostly between 1995 and the present. Three straightforward questions — `What is exhibited?', `Who exhibits it?' and `Where is it exhibited?' — throw up some complex answers: a shift from history to memory becomes evident; the line between protest exhibitions and establishment exhibitions becomes blurred as public memory work becomes increasingly institutionalized; and exhibitions use a combination of symbolic and indexical place (as defined by Aleida Assmann) to make statements about the relationship of contemporary communities to the National Socialist past.

Book Review: French Studies: Picasso and Apollinaire. The Persistence of Memory. By Peter Read. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. xvi + 317. {pound}29.95

Lethbridge, R. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: European Studies: The Duke of Queensberry and the Union of Scotland and England. James Douglas and the Act of Union of 1707. By Collins McKay. Youngstown: Cambria Press, 2008. Pp. xix + 269

Black, J. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: German Studies: The Wanderer in Nineteenth-Century German Literature: Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism. By Andrew Cusack. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Pp. x + 257. {pound}40.00

Bishop, P. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History. By Christian J. Emden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi + 386. {pound}50.00

Bishop, P. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: Approaches to Teaching Grass's The Tin Drum. Edited by Monika Shafi. New York: Modern Languages Association of America, 2008. Pp. xvi + 258. $19.75

Finch, H. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: Zerstreute Reminiszenzen: Gedanken zur Eroffnung eines Stuttgarter Hauses. By W. G. Sebald. Edited by Florian Hollerer. Warmbronn: Verlag Ulrich Keicher, 2008. Pp. 32. 16.00

Sheppard, R. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse: The Politics of Memory. By Anne Fuchs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. xi + 254. {pound}50.00

Hutchinson, B. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

Book Review: Russian Studies: St Petersburg and the British. The City through the Eyes of British Visitors and Residents. By Anthony Cross. London: Frances Lincoln Publishing, 2008. Pp. xiv + 338. 48 pp. of plates. {pound}25.00

Keenan, P. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:29 PDT

The fascist body beautiful and the imperial crisis in 1930s British writing

Rau, P. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

This essay deals with the representation of fascist corporeality in British fiction and travel writing about Nazi Germany. A conspicuous feature of contemporaneous accounts of 1930s Germany is the perception of a physical regeneration, which Nazi ideology itself fashions into a palingenetic myth. The British response to this corporeal phenomenology reveals cultural anxieties about imperial decline and physical inadequacy. In travel writing, the fascist body beautiful becomes the focus of a nostalgic desire for the British imperial past. In fiction, it also highlights a growing ambivalence about British imperialism by dramatizing English subjection in sadomasochistic scenarios in which the Anglo-Saxon body can enjoy relief from the white man's burden vis-à-vis German domination. In this way, travel writing and fiction enact border crossings into the fascist state that point to uncomfortable similarities between the legitimizing fictions of racial superiority in British imperialism and in fascist ideology.

`The German of caricature, the real German, the fellow we were up against': German stereotypes in John Buchan's Greenmantle

Storer, C. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

At first glance Greenmantle , John Buchan's 1916 novel of war and high adventure, seems a fairly conventional Boy's Own tale of wartime daring and heroism, in which a plucky band of British patriots attempt to foil a dastardly German plan to topple the British Empire. But a closer reading of the text reveals a much more complex set of themes and attitudes, especially regarding the Germans. Far from conforming with the negative stereotypes of the Germans prevalent in wartime, Buchan presents his readers with a complex set of representations of German characters which can be read as challenging and undermining established prewar and wartime conceptions of the Germans in British popular culture. This essay examines the ways in which the Germans are represented in Greenmantle in order to assess to what extent these representations conform to or challenge contemporary stereotypes, and indeed to what extent Buchan's German characters are typically or specifically German.

`I was a stranger, and ye took me not in': Deus ludens and theology of hospitality in Lars von Trier's Dogville

Bradatan, C. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

In this article I propose an interpretation of Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003) as a theological and philosophical film. Dogville occasions a series of theological—philosophical reflections on grave topics such as hospitality, homelessness, home, alienation, divine trials and Deus ludens. In my interpretation Dogville's film narrative is, allegorically, about a homeless divinity that, in the process of searching for shelter and hospitality, is putting humanity to the test. The character Grace is increasingly asserting herself as a cinematic metaphor for an ironic god. As the film narrative unfolds, this becomes increasingly evident, culminating in the final scenes, with their numerous visual and textual allusions to the Judgment Day. I will show that in Dogville both the narrative proper and the film's aesthetic vision are philosophically and theologically loaded in a significant way. I will also be discussing Dogville in the light of two biblical texts (Job and Matthew 25), and in relation to Dostoevsky's legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov.

`Woods, trees and the spaces in between': A report on work published on W. G. Sebald 2005--2008

Sheppard, R. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: European Studies An Agenda for Regional History. Edited by Bill Lancaster, Diana Newton and Natasha Vall. Newcastle upon Tyne: Northumbria University Press, 2007. Pp. x + 334. {pound}14.95

Shaw, D. J.B. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: After Intimacy: The Culture of Divorce in the West since 1789. Edited by Karl Leydecker and Nicholas White. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. (European Connections, vol. 10, edited by Peter Collier.) Pp. 295

Hiner, S. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: Sacred Theatre. Devised and Edited by Ralph Yarrow. Written by Franc Chamberlain, William S. Haney II, Carl Lavery, Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow. Bristol UK and Chicago: Intellect Books, 2007. Pp. 224. {pound}19.95

Sheppard, R. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: French Studies France from 1851 to the Present. Universalism in Crisis. By Roger Celestin and Eliane DalMolin. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007. Pp. xiii + 416. {pound}40.00

Black, J. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: Paris and the Commune, 1871--78. The Politics of Forgetting. By Colette Wilson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii + 236. {pound}55.00

Black, J. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: Patrick Modiano. Edited by John E. Flower. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Pp. 296. 60.00

Hurcombe, M. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: German Studies Shifting Perspectives: East German Autobiographical Narratives Before and After the End of the GDR. By Dennis Tate. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007. Pp. 267. {pound}45.00

Philpotts, M. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: Elfriede Jelinek: Writing Woman, Nation, and Identity: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Matthias Piccolruaz Konzett and Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007. Pp. 317. {pound}37.50

Fiddler, A. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST

Book Review: Russian Studies The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union. Edited by Birgit Beumers, preface by Sergei Bodrov. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. Pp. x + 283. Pbk. {pound}18.99. Hbk. {pound}50.00

Widdis, E. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:12:06 PST