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A sign of commodification and mass culture, tourism is usually treated as a disturbance and contamination of the otherwise "authentic" atmosphere of historical artifacts. Drawing on Siegfried Kracauer's and Susan Sontag's theories of photography, this paper argues that transgressions of the genre of historical documentary in Exil Shanghai (1997) cast tourism as an authenticating factor in the perception of historical sites. The film thus suggests a notion of historical authenticity grounded in a perception of the passing of time, rather than the authority of witness accounts or archival material. This notion of historical authenticity relies on a feminist epistemology that debunks the traditional binary opposition between subject and object by suggesting that the experience of the other is essentially a reflexive experience of the self.

"Ableism remains the most socially acceptable form of intolerance, with pejoratives referencing disability - and intellectual disability in particular - remaining largely unquestioned among many. Yet the understanding, depiction, and representation of disability is also clearly in a process of transformation. This volume analyzes that transformation, taking a close look at attitudes toward disability, understood as a "deviation" from what a non-disabled body should ostensibly be able to do and how it should look, in historical and contemporary German-speaking contexts. The volume begins with an overview of the emergence and growth of disability studies in German-speaking Europe against the background of the field's emergence a decade or so earlier in the US and UK. The differences in timing, methodology, and research concentrations bring into focus how each cultural context has shaped the field. Building on recent scholarship that uses a cultural studies approach, the volume's three sections analyze disability and ability constructs in history, memory, and culture. The essays in the history section examine the emotions, morality, and power as they are negotiated on the individual level. Those in the memory section grapple with the origins of the Nazi persecution of people with disabilities, the fight for recognition of this genocide, and the politics of its commemoration. Finally, the culture section offers close readings of disability in literary and filmic texts from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries"--

25 Years Berlin Republic takes stock of the state of German unification a quarter of a century into the ongoing project that is the Berlin Republic. Thirteen scholars, artists, and public figures from diverse backgrounds document the changing hopes and fears, successes and challenges, that face the republic as it negotiates its way through the 21st century. Taking up a broad assessment of German culture ranging from sports to religion, painting to map-making, film to foreign policy, these studies combine personal experiences with critical analysis in order to understand the Berlin Republic today. The resulting portrait reveals a complex, diverse, and constantly-developing Republic that continues to ask the same essential question that has been at the center of discussions since the dramatic events that gave birth to the Republic: "Sind wir ein Volk?"