humanities and cultural studies

May 2014 - Political crisis and armed conflict in Ukraine. While the rebels in eastern Ukraine are portrayed in the European media as "pro-Russian" separatists, they simply describe themselves as Russians. Russia urges Ukraine to dialogue with all "Ukrainians". NATO wants to arm and sends protection troops to the Baltic States. What collective identity is being fought for? When the multinational empire - the Soviet Union - collapsed in the course of the democracy movement in 1991, the identification processes...

In Wilde's works, especially the art-theoretical essays, aptly summarized under the title Intentions, his desire for tolerance and artistic freedom runs through. This claim to autonomy for the art sphere is based on philosophical studies written a century earlier by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment. Kant analyzes the specificity of aesthetic experience and distinguishes it from theoretical knowledge and morality, emphasizing its freedom from purpose and thus paving the way for the autonomy of the beautiful. This final...

"There is no end to the making of many books!" This quote from Ecclesiastes 12 could be used to comment on the appearance of new literature on Cologne during World War II. However, it does not apply to the time of the First World War. A detailed description of this part of Cologne's history has so far been missing - although a book about Düsseldorf during the First World War was already available in 1927. This study aims to fill...

Rage, desire, inhibition, tension, representation, poetry, definition, screaming, whispering, fantasizing, specifying and telling. Twelve authors, twelve perspectives, twelve insights. This first volume of the writing competition Scribere brings together poems, short stories and articles on the question: What does writing mean? Details Title: Scriber Subtitle: What does writing mean? Author: Alexander Martin Sieber, Anne-Christin Schicketanz, Anton Gsell, Armin Scheben, Bernd Hoffmeister, Claudia Paal, Daniela Schmidt, Johannes Mueller, Josi Schlichting, Julia Lietzau, Luisa Volkhausen, Rune Baruschke Row: Scriber Edition: 1st edition...

Political Islam has received increased attention in the media, the public and academia, particularly since the 9/11 attacks in New York. This work is dedicated to the question of how political Islam is to be defined and presents its history in Sudan. The second part of the work deals with the importance of political Islam for the civil war in Sudan, which has so far claimed and risked more than three million deaths a prognosis for the time after the...

TheWigalois of Wirnt von Grafenberg describes the life of Gawein's son Gwigalois. The main plot is preceded by a backstory about the protagonist's parents, while the narrative ends with a wish for a sequel about the exploits of Gawein's grandson, Lifort Gawanides. The present study takes its starting point from the observation that the hero's family affiliation is a fundamental motif in Wigalois. The novel not only describes a basic form of genealogical continuity through the transition from father to son....

Since the middle of the 12th century, marriage between Christians and Gentiles was customarily forbidden in the Catholic Church due to Impedimentum disparitas cultus (the difference in religion). Nevertheless, marriage was possible if the partner had previously converted. If this requirement was not fulfilled, the marriage was declared invalid even after the marriage had already taken place. In medieval society, the issue of marriage law was a very controversial subject. The problem is illustrated using the works of Wolfram von...

Our modern world is dominated by a flood of images. It is therefore of great interest to investigate how images can also be used efficiently in language textbooks in such a way that learning success is optimized. Surprisingly, there is still little literature on the use of images in language textbooks and especially on their intercultural aspects. The sentence from Sturm (1994) still applies: intercultural understanding of images is one of the big "blank spots" in image research. This book...

The present study provides a historical overview of the Hyâyna, Arab nomads from the Banu Hilal group, as well as information on the geography, administrative divisions and the agricultural and social sectors of the Hyâyna region. As the first detailed presentation, it deals in detail with this ethnic group and its language. It also provides valuable insights into the problem of Arabization of significant parts of Morocco between the 11th and 14th centuries. In the present case, it is not...

Zoo and cinema - two places of entertainment that caught the viewer's eye at the end of the 19th century. However, both places cannot simply be placed in parallel without addressing the multifaceted and complex relationship between animals and film in the 19th century. In the present book, the various forms of perception of both settings, the zoo and the cinema, are to be worked out. Based on the scientific panorama of the Hamburg zoo director Carl Hagenbeck and the...

Refugees face social and legal rejection in Germany. The reason for this lies in the attempt to deport asylum seekers and tolerated persons - despite years of residence in Germany - instead of integrating them. This exclusion from the German host society has a major impact on the labor market opportunities of refugees. This thesis uses interviews with employers to show what influence "equal access" to the labor market has on the employment opportunities for many refugees and those with...

The concept of postmodernism has become a central concept in the humanities discourse since the 1970s. Together with the term poststructuralism, it describes a departure from the basic intellectual assumptions of modernity. What is often overlooked, however, is that the term has a different meaning in the philosophical context than in the original literary context. While the concept of philosophical postmodernism was constituted in contrast to the ideas of the Enlightenment, the concept of postmodernism was originally used in literature...