Project MUSE®: Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 42 (2006) through vol. 61 2025)Latest Articles: Seminar: A Journal of Germanic StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies1911-026X0037-1939Latest articles in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Special Issue of Seminar 2025: German Television in the Convergence Era
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984475
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In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), Henry Jenkins explored the rapid changes underway in US and global media production, distribution, and reception due to merging digital media technologies—including the personal computer, telephone, radio, film, and television. At the time, Jenkins's book did not address how culturally specific or domestic media productions from around the globe merge with US dominant content in streaming television and with what effects. This issue of Seminar is devoted to investigating this global-national intersection by analyzing recent television series emanating from Germany and co-produced with European and US-based streaming platforms. In contrast to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallSpecial Issue of Seminar 2025: German Television in the Convergence Era2026-03-06text/htmlen-USSpecial Issue of Seminar 2025: German Television in the Convergence Era2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®352772026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06"Die Geschichte unseres Landes ist so viel mehr als nur der Zweite Weltkrieg": German Cultural History Meets Transnational Genre Narratives in How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984476
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The transnational archetype of the lonely computer nerd is in the DNA of Netflix's original German productions. The film Who am I: Kein System ist sicher (2014), in which outsider Benjamin Engel's acceptance into the hacker collective CLAY boosts his online and offline social networks, initially brought filmmakers Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese to the streaming service's attention. Odar and Friese then heralded the new era of German streaming television with Netflix's first German-language original, the three-part science fiction series Dark (2017–20), to outstanding international success. Later, Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann drew on the blueprint developed by Who am I to propel nerd narratives from
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmall"Die Geschichte unseres Landes ist so viel mehr als nur der Zweite Weltkrieg": German Cultural History Meets Transnational Genre Narratives in How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)2026-03-06text/htmlen-US"Die Geschichte unseres Landes ist so viel mehr als nur der Zweite Weltkrieg": German Cultural History Meets Transnational Genre Narratives in How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®1343392026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06Streaming Multilinguality: Language, Authenticity, and Technology in 1899 and The Swarm
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984477
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At the 2023 Ceremonial Act of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Deutsch-Französische Institut (dfi), Winfried Kretschmann, Baden-Württemberg's Minister-President and a prominent Green Party politician, argued, "In zehn Jahren wird sich jeder einen Knopf ins Ohr setzen. Und dann übersetzt der das simultan und die Sprachbarriere ist niedergerissen" ("Lehrerverbände"). Since these initial statements, Kretschmann has repeated the claim that one no longer needs to learn two foreign languages in German schools because of ever-evolving translation software, drawing the ire of official language-related organizations ("Kretschmann"). While Kretschmann acknowledged the importance of reaching high proficiency in languages
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallStreaming Multilinguality: Language, Authenticity, and Technology in 1899 and The Swarm2026-03-06text/htmlen-USStreaming Multilinguality: Language, Authenticity, and Technology in 1899 and The Swarm2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®1929202026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06Deutsches Haus—empathisches Engagement in die Aufarbeitung der nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984478
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Die vierte von insgesamt fünf Folgen der Miniserie Deutsches Haus beginnt mit einer Szene von zwei Schwestern, die im Freien spielen. Während des Spiels pflückt eines der Mädchen eine gelbe Rose aus einem Busch vor dem Eingang eines Mehrfamilienhauses. Eine Erwachsene kommt aus dem Haus und bemerkt den Vorfall. Sie beklagt sich laut über die gepflückte Blume, schlägt dem Mädchen ins Gesicht und nennt es eine Rotzgöre. Absurderweise ist es die beschädigte Pflanze, die der Frau Kummer bereitet und nicht die enorme Rauchsäule in der Ferne, die man im Hintergrund der Totalaufnahme wahrnimmt. In diesem Bild wird das Relevanteste der filmischen Erzählung in das Marginale verrückt. Doch etwa zwanzig Jahre später rückt die
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallDeutsches Haus—empathisches Engagement in die Aufarbeitung der nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen2026-03-06text/htmlen-USDeutsches Haus—empathisches Engagement in die Aufarbeitung der nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®976462026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06White Leisure, Black Labour, and Global Afro-Diasporic Entanglements in the Streaming Era: A Case Study of Sam: Ein Sachse
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984479
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Samuel Meffire (b. 1970), a Black German born in Dresden, initially came into the public eye in 1992, when a West German advertising firm selected an image of him to be displayed under the phrase "Ein Sachse" ("A Saxon") as part of an attempt to rebrand the region, which at the time had become associated with neo-Nazi violence against people of colour. In 2000, Black German director Branwen Okpako made a documentary about Meffire's life called Dreckfresser (Dirt for Dinner). Since then, Meffire has also written an autobiography, Ich, ein Sachse: Mein deutsch-deutsches Leben (2023), which was published in English translation the same year as Sam: The German, the Officer, the Man. Two years prior to the publication
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallWhite Leisure, Black Labour, and Global Afro-Diasporic Entanglements in the Streaming Era: A Case Study of Sam: Ein Sachse2026-03-06text/htmlen-USWhite Leisure, Black Labour, and Global Afro-Diasporic Entanglements in the Streaming Era: A Case Study of Sam: Ein Sachse2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®1120352026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06Alternate Endings: The Cold War Meets Neoliberal Television in Counterpart
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984480
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In 2018, a secretive UN agency fought to contain a criminal conspiracy to release a devastating, pandemic-causing virus in Berlin. Such is the story of Counterpart, a twenty-first-century television spy thriller created by thirty-something screenwriter Justin Marks, financed and co-produced by Media Rights Capital and Studio Babelsberg (Berlin), and broadcast on premium cable by Starz and digitally via Amazon Prime (Marks). Counterpart finished its two-season run late that year, and Starz declined to pick it up for further seasons. Still, diehard fans of the show could take heart that even in cancellation they could find closure: in the second-season finale in late 2019, the conspirators manage to outwit
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallAlternate Endings: The Cold War Meets Neoliberal Television in Counterpart2026-03-06text/htmlen-USAlternate Endings: The Cold War Meets Neoliberal Television in Counterpart2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®1229272026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06German Conquistadors in Venezuela. The Welsers' Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory by Giovanna Montenegro (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984481
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This book treats a remarkable episode in the conquest and colonization of the Americas. In 1528, a southern German company, the Welsers, received permission to govern the Spanish colony of Venezuela. However, this merchant-colonial experiment failed, and by 1556, the Spanish Crown had taken back full control. Drawing from sixteenth-century accounts, such as the German narrative by Welser representative and governor Nikolaus Federmann and many other sources, the study presents a micro-history of the installation and eventual failure of this endeavour in racialized merchant capitalism and provides important information on the Welsers' dependence on the slave trade and enforced labour by Indigenous and African people.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallGerman Conquistadors in Venezuela. The Welsers' Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory by Giovanna Montenegro (review)2026-03-06text/htmlen-USGerman Conquistadors in Venezuela. The Welsers' Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory by Giovanna Montenegro (review)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®105612026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06Bertolt Brecht in Context ed. by Stephen Brockmann (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984482
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The works and ideas of Bertolt Brecht have a renewed relevance in an era when populist, authoritarian, xenophobic politics are on the rise, war is once again becoming a global phenomenon, and unchecked capitalism continues to create social inequality and injustice, all while life on the planet is being jeopardized by environmental devastation. One subjective proof of this relevance is the frequency with which I see Brecht quotes used both by activists protesting against the above developments and by journalists reporting on them in mainstream media. In fact, though, interest in and critical engagement with Brecht among theatre practitioners and other cultural workers as well as scholars in German studies, theatre
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallBertolt Brecht in Context ed. by Stephen Brockmann (review)2026-03-06text/htmlen-USBertolt Brecht in Context ed. by Stephen Brockmann (review)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®111822026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06W. G. Sebald in Context ed. by Uwe Schütte (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984483
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Cambridge University Press's In Context series offers a novel take on the author companions that have dominated publishers' lists in recent decades and packaged literary criticism in a student-friendly and commercially viable form. The In Context series goes one step further, eschewing detailed close readings of literary texts and concentrating instead on the multiple contexts in which they are embedded. Multiplicity is the explicit guiding ethos of W. G. Sebald in Context. The editor, Uwe Schütte, writes that the aim of the volume is to "present Sebald's biography, his critical writings and his literary œuvre under different aspects, from different perspectives and in different contexts," in a "composite
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallW. G. Sebald in Context ed. by Uwe Schütte (review)2026-03-06text/htmlen-USW. G. Sebald in Context ed. by Uwe Schütte (review)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®83392026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06Minority Discourses in Germany since 1990 ed. by Ela Gezen et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984484
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This co-edited volume, which emerged from a 2017 conference and was published in the Spektrum series of the German Studies Association, set out to address the "experiences of a disconnect in the field of German Studies between scholars who focus on different minoritized groups" (2). With the aim to develop a dialogue across disciplines and to work coherently "toward an understanding of Germanness as plural, culturally diverse, and multilingual" (4), the contributions of the collection focus on aesthetic interventions into discourses on memory, immigration, and racism by Black German, Turkish German, and Jewish German writers.By exploring the intersections and divergences of their experiences and situating them in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallMinority Discourses in Germany since 1990 ed. by Ela Gezen et al. (review)2026-03-06text/htmlen-USMinority Discourses in Germany since 1990 ed. by Ela Gezen et al. (review)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®106562026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06German Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix by Sunka Simon (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984485
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Sunka Simon's book German Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix presents a thorough examination of the evolution of German crime dramas, particularly in the context of their reception in the United States. The book begins with a brief discussion of Deutschland 83–89, the first German series aired on a US network, and uses this as a springboard to explore the growing interest in German series in recent years, especially through platforms like Netflix. Simon's perspective as a "German-American academic viewer" (21) informs her analysis, as Netflix has become a central access point for German series in the United States.The primary aim of the book is not to provide a grand narrative of postwar German
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallGerman Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix by Sunka Simon (review)2026-03-06text/htmlen-USGerman Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix by Sunka Simon (review)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®90752026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06Untimely Bodies, Untimely Aesthetics: Temporality, Relationality, Intimacy in the Cinema of the Berlin School by Simone Pfleger (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984486
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With Untimely Bodies, Untimely Aesthetics, Simone Pfleger explores an intriguing new dimension to the scholarship on the loose ensemble of films known as the Berlin School, that burgeoning of art-ambitious, usually contemporarily set films that began in the early to mid-2000s. Pfleger's book examines a number of the Berlin School filmmakers, including Maren Ade, Valeska Grisebach, Christian Petzold, Maria Speth, and especially Christoph Hochhäusler, who made three of the eight films on which Pfleger focuses (Milchwald [2003], Falscher Bekenner [2005], and Unter dir die Stadt [2010]), with additional analyses of Petzold's Gespenster (2005), Ade's Alle Anderen (2009), Köhler's (underrated) Montag kommen die Fenster
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/351/image/coversmallUntimely Bodies, Untimely Aesthetics: Temporality, Relationality, Intimacy in the Cinema of the Berlin School by Simone Pfleger (review)2026-03-06text/htmlen-USUntimely Bodies, Untimely Aesthetics: Temporality, Relationality, Intimacy in the Cinema of the Berlin School by Simone Pfleger (review)2026-03-062026TWOProject MUSE®100562026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-03-06