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Over the last few decades, the field of film studies has seen a rise in approaches oriented toward genre: studies that look at thematic, narrative, and stylistic similarities between films, contextualizing them within culture and society. Although there now exists a large body of genre-based scholarship on international film, German film studies has largely ignored the importance of genre. Even as the last several years have witnessed increasing scholarly interest in popular cinema from Germany, very few works have substantively engaged with genre theory. Generic Histories offers a fresh approach, tracing a series of key genres -- including horror, science fiction, the thriller, Heimat films, and war films -- over the course of German cinema history. It also addresses detective films, comedies, policiers, and romances that deliberately localize global genres within Germany - a form of transnationalism frequently neglected. This focus on genre and history encourages rethinking of the traditional opposition (and hierarchy) between art and popular cinema that has informed German film studies. In these ways, the volume foregrounds genre theory's potential for rethinking film history as well as cultural history more broadly. Contributors: Marco Abel, Nora M. Alter, Antje Ascheid, Hester Baer, Steve Choe, Paul Cooke, Jaimey Fisher, Gerd Gemünden, Sascha Gerhards, Lutz Koepnick, Eric Rentschler, Kris Vander Lugt. Jaimey Fisher is Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Technocultural Studies, and Director of Cinema and Technocultural Studies, at the University of California, Davis.

Motion pictures --- Film genres --- Cinéma --- Genres cinématographiques --- History --- Histoire --- Cinéma --- Genres cinématographiques --- History and criticism. --- Genre films --- Genres, Film --- Motion picture genres --- Cinema --- Feature films --- Films --- Movies --- Moving-pictures --- Audio-visual materials --- Mass media --- Performing arts --- Plots, themes, etc. --- History and criticism --- Culture. --- Film Studies. --- Genre Theory. --- Genre. --- German Cinema. --- Heimat Films. --- History. --- Horror. --- Popular Cinema. --- Thriller. --- War Films.

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The phrase “spatial turns” signals the growing importance of space as an analytical as well as representational category for culture. The volume addresses such emerging modes of inquiry by bringing together, for the first time, essays that engage with spatial turns, spatiality, and the theoretical implications of both in the context of German culture, history, and theory. Migrating from fields like geography, urban studies, and architecture, the new centrality of space has transformed social-science fields as diverse as sociology, philosophy, and psychology. In cultural studies, productive analyses of space increasingly cut across the studies of literature, film, popular culture, and the visual arts. Spatial Turns brings together essays that apply a spatial analysis to German literature and other media and engages with specifically German theorizations of space by such figures as Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin. The volume is organized in four sections: “Mapping Spaces” addresses cartography in all forms and in its intersection with culture; “Spaces of the Urban” takes up one of the key sites of spatial studies, the city; “Spaces of Encounter” considers how Germany has become a contact zone for multiple ethnicities; and “Visualized Spaces” concerns the theorization of space in film and new media studies.

Cartography in literature. --- Cities and towns in literature. --- Cities and towns in motion pictures. --- German literature --- Motion pictures --- Motion pictures, German. --- Place (Philosophy) in literature. --- Setting (Literature). --- Space in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Thematology --- Place (Philosophy) in art. --- Setting (Literature) --- Place (Literature) --- Authorship --- Drama --- Fiction --- Literature --- German motion pictures --- Foreign films --- Cinema --- Feature films --- Films --- Movies --- Moving-pictures --- Audio-visual materials --- Mass media --- Performing arts --- Setting and scenery --- Technique --- History and criticism --- Germany --- Civilization. --- Ethnic relations.

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The retirement of the distinguished philosopher Jürgen Habermas from his chair at the University of Frankfurt signalled an important caesura in the history of Critical Theory: the transition from the Habermasian project, to different forms of inquiry in the work of the next generation. This change-over happens at a time when it has become clear that Habermas's systematic exploration of communicative rationality has reached the point where both its achievements and its limitations had become evident. The essays collected in this volume address the problems connected with this transition, partly by returning to the insights of the first generation (Adorno and Benjamin), partly by focusing on questions raised by Habermas's work. Whatever the difference in the authors' positions, this collection gains its unity through their common interest in the significance and value of Critical Theory today and in its future as a philosophical project.

Critical theory