humanities and cultural studies

Especially in Germany, where the conversation about terror and Islamist extremism is part of everyday media life, well-founded works on Islamism in the northern Caucasus based on comprehensive knowledge of sources are in demand, but hardly available - the public discourse is essentially based on obvious stereotypes and unscientific generalization. The young scientist Christian Paul Osthold is trying to overcome this desideratum. Osthold presents the genesis of the Islamist-tinged separatist movements in Chechnya as a dynamic and cumulative process; Based...

This anthology by students of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich offers access to the skeptical hermeneutics and the normality of the foreign by Hans Hunfeld from different individual and culture-specific perspectives. They range from hermeneutic self-assurances and cross-cultural studies to extensions to intercultural competence, philosophical basic work and a review of the method in the teaching context to a rich collection of reviews from the past decades and current references to practice, teaching and research. Other essays deal with anxiety at school,...

The crudely funny clown, the quick-witted Kasper, the violent Punch or the melancholic Pierrot - as playwrights, H. C. Artmann, Konrad Bayer and Gerhard Rühm staged one 'funny' character after the other in their mini-plays from the 50s and 60s . What is it all about when 'hanswurst' is having sexual fun on stage, when 'kasper' causes unrest in the midst of the military or police, when 'punch' curses at the audience and throws his child out of the window,...

Although the Haiti revolution only rarely emerges from the oversized shadow of the French Revolution in the Eurocentric consciousness, it nevertheless marks a turning point of world-historical importance. As the only successful slave revolution in history, it put a bloody end to European rule on the Antilles island and created the second independent state in the New World after the USA. Based on the diary of a British officer who took part in the battles for the Pearl of the...

This work demonstrates the importance of pre-modern or irrational values ​​(curses, superstition, myths, witches and natural healers versus doctors, fetishism) in a comparative perspective in the threatening experience of the globalizing process of modernization in Theodor Fontane and black African poets of the modern age. They bring solutions where the achievements of modern civilization alone cannot work. Both literatures therefore claim the primacy of these irrational values ​​in a civilization-historical world in which metaphysical problems challenge the rational mind. In...

Since its beginnings, the history of opera has been shaped by adaptations of popular subjects and literary material. But according to what rules do such opera adaptations work? Which dramaturgical means are used in the transformative process of adaptation and what are the consequences for the original template? ​Based on the Danish opera Lulu by Friedrich Daniel Rudolph Kuhlau, first performed in Copenhagen in 1824, the adaptation of a narrative text is examined on a textual and musical level. In...

"Together we are changing the rules of pornography." This is what the burgeoning (queer) feminist porn scene promises. But according to what rules does pornography work? And to what extent are new porn makers trying to break with the usual norms and forms of representation? On the one hand, pornography stands for female objectification, male-dominated pleasure images and gender stigmatization. On the other hand, it stands for sexual self-empowerment, sex positivism and the expression of one's own sexuality independent of...

Cities in the Global South grow fast. Infrastructure struggles to keep up with the growth. At a certain point it fails. The population of a fast growing city needs food. Therefore a close look at urban and peri-urban agriculture is necessary to provide it even if infrastructure might collapse. This book investigates the livestock production and marketing, its chances and obstacles in a fast growing city in Northern Ghana. Details Title: THE COW EATS THE CHAMELEON Subtitle: Urban and peri-urban...

The present studies should serve to make thoughtful people tempted to study Schopenhauer's work and his pessimism on the basis of the unillusioned and unembellished presented human condition as a thoroughly altruistic alternative to the naive and pernicious positivism of modern consumer society. Details Title: Thus Passed the Glory of the World Subtitle: 3 studies on Arthur Schopenhauer - philosopher with uncomfortable truths Author: Dr. Bruno Schmitz Edition: 1st edition Published: 1st edition 26.11.2015 Department: Philosophy Product Type: Book (Hardcover)...

The fate of an individual is often not given enough attention in the historical context, often due to a lack of sources. How did Transylvanian Saxons who had decided to become teachers and pastors perceive their personal development? What impression did the happy and sad events of both their own lives and of world history make on them? A family book that was found in October 2005 in almost unedited condition provides answers to these questions in biographies from the...

Argula von Grumbach, née von Stauff, dared to enter public space as a woman. By defending the young Magister Arsacius Seehofer, who was influenced by Lutheran ideas, she challenged not only the scholars of the University of Ingolstadt, but the entire Catholic establishment. The conference volume brings together essays that deal with the first Reformation writer as well as with her family and other female "border crossers". But it also opens numerous windows into an extremely exciting, energetic time, into...

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...