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The following paper explores the relationship between Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film The Blue Angel and Edward Dmytryk's 1959 remake to consider what happens when an "original" film is repurposed to address another socio-historical time period, and cultural and national setting. The similarity and, more interestingly, the differences between the remake and its original and the engagement of the historical moments, from which these films emerge, reveal different directorial styles, technological developments, aesthetic choices, cultural practices, performances of gender, and narrative resolutions. Based on the hallmarks of a remake, and on Thomas Leitch's premise that remakes subscribe to a process of "disavowal" and want "to be just like their model only better," I question what has been made better in the Hollywood remake set in 1956 Germany. The Blue Angel remake notably subdues the tension between desire and prescriptive social norms and diverges from von Sternberg's devastating drama of seduction. In striking contrast to Professor Rath's fatal decline at the twilight of the Weimar Republic, the 1959 version reasserts masculine authority and offers a model of benevolent and fraternal masculinity. In doing so, I argue that Dmytryk rehabilitates the image of Germany, and in contrast to many Hollywood films made during the 1940s, in which many German émigrés played Nazis, he offers an alternate acoustic landscape for a German-accented English. Produced and set during the Cold War, Dmytryk reframes and redresses the image of Germany just when the Federal Republic begins to serve as a crucial political ally.

Writing against Boundaries. Nationality, Ethnicity and Gender in the German-speaking Context presents a series of essays by prominent scholars who critically explore the intersection of nation and subjectivity, the production of national identities, and the tense negotiation of multiculturalism in German-speaking countries. By looking at a wide spectrum of texts that range from Richard Wagner's operas to Hans Bellmer's art, and to literature by Aras Ören, Irene Dische, Annette Kolb, Elizabeth Langgässer, Karin Reschke, Christa Wolf, to contemporary German theater by Bettina Fless, Elfriede Jelinek, Anna Langhoff, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and to Monika Treut's films, the volume explores the intersection of gender, ethnicity and nation and examines concepts of national culture and the foreigner or so-called 'other.' Focusing on such issues as immigration, xenophobia, gender, and sexuality, the volume looks at narratives that sustain the myth of a homogeneous nation, and those that disrupt it. It responds to a growing concern with borders and identity in a time in which borders are tightening as the demands of globalization increase

Recent scholarship has broadened definitions of war and shifted from the narrow focus on battles and power struggles to include narratives of the homefront and private sphere. To expand scholarship on textual representations of war means to shed light on the multiple theaters of war, and on the many voices who contributed to, were affected by, and/or critiqued German war efforts. Engaged women writers and artists commented on their nations' imperial and colonial ambitions and the events of the tumultuous beginning of the twentieth century. In an interdisciplinary investigation, this volume explores select female-authored, German-language texts focusing on German colonial wars and World War I and the discourses that promoted or critiqued their premises. They examine how colonial conflicts contributed to a persistent atmosphere of Kriegsbegeisterung (war enthusiasm) that eventually culminated in the outbreak of World War I, or a Kriegskritik (criticism of war) that resisted it. The span from German colonialism to World War I brings these explosive periods into relief and challenges readers to think about the intersection of nationalism, violence and gender and about the historical continuities and disruptions that shape such events.

In den 1920er Jahren erobern die »City Girls« die Medien und Metropolen. Sie treten in einem neuen Look auf: mit Bubikopf, kurzem Rock und mit Zigarette. Ihr Schauplatz ist die Großstadt. Die Bubiköpfe, Blaustrümpfe, Working Girls und Tippmamsells sind Ausdruck eines veränderten Rollenverständnisses der Frau zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Rastlosigkeit, Tanzwut und Exzess kreieren für eine kurze Zeitperiode einen verrückten Kosmos. Weiblichkeit, Großstadt und Moderne verdichten sich zum Mythos der »Neuen Frau«. Ihr Leben ist nicht mehr von den drei »K's« (Kinder, Küche, Kirche), sondern von den drei »M's« (Mode, Metropole, Medien) geprägt. Weibliche Selbstständigkeit und wirtschaftliche Unabhängigkeit durch Berufstätigkeit führen aber auch in die »Fröste der Freiheit«. Film und Photographie, Literatur und bildende Kunst nehmen diese Veränderungen im Geschlechterverhältnis auf und reflektieren die Darstellung dieses neuen Frauentyps. Das Bild der »Neuen Frau« als internationales, interkulturelles und intermediales Phänomen der Moderne steht im Vordergrund des vorliegenden Bandes.

Cultural Studies have been preoccupied with questions of national identity and cultural representations. At the same time, feminist studies have insisted upon the entanglement of gender with issues of nation, class, and ethnicity. Developments in the wake of German unification demand a reassessment of the nexus of gender, Germanness and nationhood. The contributors to this volume pursue these strands of the cultural debate in German history, literature, visual arts, and language over a period of three hundred years in sections devoted to History and the Canon, Visual Culture, Germany and Her "Others," and Language and Power. Contributors: L. Adelson, A. Taylor Allen, K. Bauer, R. Berman, B. Byg, M. Denman, E. Frederiksen, S. Friedrichsmeyer, E. Kaufmann, L. Koepnick, B. Kosta, S. Lefko, A. M.O'Sickey, B. Mennel, H. M. Müller, B. Peterson, L. Pusch, D. Sweet, H. Watt, S. Zantop