Book out now: Rewriting Identities in Contemporary Germany

The collected volume Rewriting Identities in Contemporary Germany: Radical Diversity and Literary Interventions was co-edited by Laura Marie Sturtz, a fellow of the Research Training Group »Literature and the Public Sphere«, together with Selma Rezgui and Tara Talwar Windsor, and was recently published by Camden House at Boydell and Brewer in October 2024.

In Germany today, minoritized authors are staging literary interventions that write radical diversity into the dominant culture. They reconceive »Germanness« by centering previously marginalized perspectives and challenging fixed frames of nationality, ethnicity, language, gender, and sexuality. Their innovative writings thus open new understandings of self and other, individual and collective, and envision alliances and communities that do justice to the range of lived experiences in Germany.

Drawing on frameworks of postmigration, postcolonialism, intersectionality, critical race and whiteness studies, and feminist and queer theory, this volume investigates various literary strategies employed by writers representing diverse subject positions to engage creatively with questions of hegemonic culture and belonging, exposing the exclusionary if not violent practices that these entail. The volume showcases cutting-edge scholarship by established and early career researchers, and is innovative in format: essays treating works by authors such as Fatma Aydemir, Shida Bazyar, Asal Dardan, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Antje Rávik Strubel, Noah Sow, Jackie Thomae, and Olivia Wenzel, along with original interviews with Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo, Özlem Özgül Dündar, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, and Mithu Sanyal illustrate the plurality, agency, and increasing resonance of these literary figures and their works.

The edited volume features three articles by Laura Sturtz, including a co-written Introduction (with Selma Rezgui and Tara Talwar Windsor), an Interview with Sasha Marianna Salzmann, »Acting from Within: Inclusive Literature and the Power of Writing. A Conversation with Sasha Marianna Salzmann« as well as an article on Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Olivia Wenzel, »win Novels: Renegotiating Self and Other in Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Außer sich and Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Serpentinen Angst.«

Citation:

Rezgui, Selma, Laura Marie Sturtz und Tara Talwar Windsor (2024): Rewriting Identities in Contemporary Germany: Radical Diversity and Literary Interventions. Rochester, NY: Camden House. ISBN 9781640141551.

More about the book:

https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781640141551/rewriting-identities-in-contemporary-germany/