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Reviewed by:
  • Germanistik im Spannungsfeld von Regionalität und Internationalität ed. by Wolfgang Hackl and Wolfgang Wiesmüller
  • Katherine Arens
Wolfgang Hackl and Wolfgang Wiesmüller, eds., Germanistik im Spannungsfeld von Regionalität und Internationalität. stimulus: Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Germanistik 18. Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2010. 365 pp.

This volume contains most of the papers from the 2009 meeting of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Germanistik and the Institut für Germanistik in Innsbruck, which had the volume’s title as its theme. This meeting offered a broad survey of what Germanistik is and what range of scholarship and teaching we need to embrace in the current context. The result is a wide-ranging, interesting volume deserving of the broadest possible audience. To present all the papers is beyond the scope of a single review, but the roadmap it presents is of critical importance to what our profession can and ought to be.

A keynote speech by Paul Michael Lützeler (Washington University, St. Louis) entitled “Bourbon oder Habsburg—Paris oder Wien?: Divergierende Europakonzepte der Schriftsteller” offers a presentation of texts on the idea of Europe since the seventeenth century that can frame current discussions of internationalism and transnationalism. The first section of the book expands on the conference’s overriding theme: “Generelle Aspekte von Regionalität, Internationalität und Interkulturalität der Germanistik.” Anke Bosse (Namur) starts the volume by discussing “Zukunftsaussichten der Germanistik? Regionale Verankerung und internationale Vernetzung: Für eine interkulturelle Germanistik,” focusing on the question of center and periphery, defining the latter as critical for the discipline’s health. Heinz L. Kretzenbacher (Melbourne) in “‘Um eine Germanistik von außen bittend?’: German Studies und/vs./oder Germanistik” traces the origin of the discipline’s US variant, concluding that “die muttersprachliche Germanistik [ist] nicht mehr die exklusive Leitkultur für German Studies.” This point of view is corroborated by Manuel Maldonado Alemán (Seville) in “Kultur im Wandel: Zur transkulturellen Orientierung der Germanistik,” in which the binary of Inland and Ausland fails to describe the evolving professions. Jean Bertrand Miguoué (Innsbruck/Yaoundé) takes a more radical position in discussing postcolonial Germanistik: “Afrikaner sein und den deutschen Kulturraum erforschen: Überlegungen zu einer afrikanischen Germanistik als Literatur-und Kulturwissenschaft.” Finally, Richard Schrodt (Vienna) surveys “Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft in Frankreich.”

The volume’s second section addresses “Germanistik—regional, national, [End Page 143] international” with fascinating discussions of Germanistik’s regional varieties along with their historical evolutions. These include Isolde Schiffermüller (Verona) addressing Italy; Maria Kłańska (Krakow) on Krakow’s position between Austria, Germany, and Poland; Sabine Eschgfäller (Olomouc) on the study of Moravian literature at the Palacký University of Olomouc; K·roly Cs˙ri (Szeged) on his university’s transition through the fall of the East Bloc; Roxana Nubert and Peter Kotter (Timișoara) on Romania; Ruth Esterhammer (Innsbruck) on the current politics of (South) Tyrolean literature; Karl Müller and Klemens Renoldner (Salzburg) on the “Stefan Zweig Centre Salzburg”; and Ulrike Längle (Bregenz) on Voralberg. One additional essay deserves special notice: Sieglinde Klettenhammer and Wolfgang Wiesmüller (Innsbruck) on “Germanistik und literarisches Leben der Region: Am Beispiel des Meraner Lyrikpreises,” which presents a juried poetry prize turned media event, with the general public voting for the winners.

“Germanistik von außen—Interkulturelle Germanistik—Didaktik” is the title of the volume’s third section, a significant set of articles on Fachdidaktik: what is taught under the umbrella term of teaching literature and in what combination. Fabrizio Cambi (Trento) discusses how Austrian literature is taught in Italy; Maria Winkler (Graz) outlines the evolution of Scandinavian studies at Graz, as a peripheral university; Anja Wildemann (Vechta) takes on transculturation for multilingual student populations; and Jürgen Struger (Klagenfurt) offers insights into current research on writing in secondary schools (useful for undergraduate programs in the United States as well as for those programs attracting German students into their degree programs). The final essay is by Susanne Hochreiter and Ursula Klingenböck (Vienna): a fascinating presentation on how literature is mediated to its various publics in Volkshochschulen and in conferences, with a focus on how they work in transmitting information.

The section “Forschungsgebiete der Germanistik—Literaturvermittlung...

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