Preface

PREFACE The time during which this volume of the Yearbook has been prepared is one that, at least for its American editors and contributors, has been marked by much that has made us uneasy and despairing. It began with the continuing struggle to come to grips with the huge gap created by the death of Susanne Zantop. It became strange and frightening with the events of September 11, 2001. And it has continued with the horrors not only of the ongoing violence in the Middle East but also of the increasing American military and other involvement in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Perhaps all of this is still too raw to be written about within the context of the scholarly work we do, but we must nevertheless acknowledge this dis-ease in and around us. We continue to miss Susanne. We are perhaps more aware than ever of the tenuous contingencies involved in our presence—both as individuals and as citizens of various nation-states—in this unsteady world. And perhaps for that reason, it is reassuring to look at the contents of this year's Yearbook, which presents in many ways the familiar eclectic mix of interests marking the study of gender in German literature and culture. There is the customary historical section in which articles focus on topics such as reception, the representation of women, and more or less forgotten German women writers from previous centuries. In an echo of the feminist emphasis on the value of the spoken word and the importance of personal narrative, there are interviews with two contemporary artists of written and filmic texts. There is the ongoing discussion of the ways in which male writers construct female characters. There is the aim of maintaining historical consciousness along with an engagement with present-day feminist concerns. Much of this is recognizable, but as is always the case with feminist inquiry, the multiple approaches to the subject of gender and culture /literature show evidence of an apparently infinite range of interpretative possibilities. If anything continues to be too rarely in evidence , it is an involvement with the specifics of race—in its presence or its absence—in the feminist scholarship of German Studies. We hope that that gap will be recognized and addressed and rectified in the future. As has often been the case in previous volumes, this one begins with the present day: with an examination of two contemporary artists ? Women in German Yearbook 18 who have a connection to Women in German. Lilian Faschinger, an Austrian writer, was invited as the special guest at the October 2002 Women in German annual conference; she is represented here by an excerpt from her first novel, Die neue Scheherazade (ably translated by Jeanette Clausen), and by an interview conducted with her by Ellie Kennedy. Fatima El-Tayeb, an Afro-German filmmaker and writer who was the invited guest at the 2001 annual meeting, is presented here in two ways: via an interview conducted with her by Barbara Kosta, and in an analysis by Barbara Mennel of the financial and cultural-political intricacies involved in recent filmmaking by minority women in Germany . The rest of this volume offers an impressive array of discussions about and approaches to the feminist study of German literature and culture. In each instance, there is the familiar and the different. Ruth Dawson's historical and analytical review of representations of Catherine the Great in the context of contemporary discourses of libertinism and gender therefore does not limit itself to literary texts but includes visual representations as well. Anna Richards' look at five German novels that appeared around 1800 offers a useful discussion of those novels but approaches them as New Historians might, by focusing on the contextualizing element of contemporary medical writings that deal with women's illness, both psychic and physical. Her focus on silence as a component of illness and, paradoxically, self-expression provides a framework, and her discussion of Thérèse Huber's novel gives an interesting counterpoint that helps us realize once again how futile it is to believe in universal categories. Two reception studies follow. They again present a familiar pattern in their examination of the ways in...