Concepts and Culture

This volume contains the contributions to the Twenty-Ninth Wisconsin Workshop on Concepts of Culture. Culture studies in the United States have arrived at a turning point. There is a clear orientation toward solidification on the one hand and to self-clarification on the other. The pragmatically oriented attempts to institutionalize culture studies refrain from further theoretical and methodological discussions, while attempts of an ongoing self-clarification of culture studies are still substantially involved in giving a profile to the aim and scope of the concept(s) of culture studies. Throughout the exciting debates at the Workshop it became clear that culture studies cannot be reduced to a quest for identity or an inconceivable Other . It has also become clear, however, that declarations of the end of the revolution, in order to do (new) business as usual, do not hit the mark either. In nine essays, German studies scholars help to show the state of the discipline and its problematic ambitions.

The Editors: Hans Adler is Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches German literature and culture from 1700 to the present, continental philosophy, and aesthetics. His publications include several books and numerous articles on the industrial novel, eighteenth-century literature and philosophy, J. G. Herder, K. Ph. Moritz, J. W. Goethe, G. Büchner, L. Otto, K. Struck, and the relationship between literature, philosophy, and social history. He is president of the International Herder Society.
Jost Hermand is the William F. Vilas Research Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches German literature and culture from 1750 to the present, German-Jewish history, and the methodology of cultural studies. His most recent books include Geschichte der Germanistik (1994), Judentum und deutsche Kultur. Beispiele einer schmerzhaften Symbiose (1996), and Die deutschen Dichterbünde von den Meistersingern bis zum PEN-Club (1998).