Preface

Preface Editing a yearbook with open submissions and a blind reviewing process has an adventurous side since editors don't know, for quite some time, how submissions, evaluations and various other contingencies will shape a volume. Thus, it was all the more gratifying to see that, despite unavoidable delays and long uncertainty, the present volume has acquired an individuality all its own. Unlike the two preceding ones, it focuses more on older literature, and thus provides feminist reinterpretations of materials that, even among German scholars, are just beginning to attract attention. And while the topics and texts discussed span several centuries, they have an internal connection in a perspective that is basically socio-historical. Unfortunately, we were not able to secure original texts by the guests of our 1984 conference, Irmtraud Morgner and Helga Schütz. This will, however, not deter us from pursuing this policy in future volumes. Yet we have added a new feature to the Yearbook: a section entitled Reports, which will present short reports about new activities among, or by, small groups or "chapters" of WiG members. We hope that our first example here will act as a catalyst, both for more such reports and more similar activities which would bring our conference and Yearbook debates closer to our daily lives. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my co-editor, Edith Waldstein, for all the work she has done for these first three volumes. She was a perceptive and critical reader of the submitted manuscripts, and she devoted much time and care to the preparation of the camera-ready manuscript. She will now turn over her editorial duties to Jeanette Clausen, who supervised the camera-ready manuscript preparation for this volume. Jeannine Blackwell helped proofread the final manuscript copy. Marianne Burkhard University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Edith Waldstein Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...