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»What Does Theology Do, Actually? Observing Theology and the Transcultural« is to be the first in a series of 5 books, each presented under the same question – »What Does Theology Do, Actually?«, with vols. 2–5 focusing on one of the theological subdisciplines. This first volume proceeds from the observation of a need for a highly inflected »trans-cultural«, and not simply »inter-cultural«, set of perspectives in theological work and training. The revolution brought about across the humanities disciplines through globalization and the recognition of »multiple modernities« has introduced a diversity of overlapping cultural content and multiple cultural and religious belongings not only into academic work in the humanities and social sciences, but into the Christian churches as well.
The relationship of texts and maps, and the mappability of literature, examined from Homer to Houellebecq. Literary authors have frequently called on elements of cartography to ground fictional space, to visualize sites, and to help readers get their bearings in the imaginative world of the text. Today, the convergence of digital mapping and globalization has spurred a cartographic turn in literature. This book gathers leading scholars to consider the relationship of literature and cartography. Generously illustrated with full-color maps and visualizations, it offers the first systematic overview of an emerging approach to the study of literature. The literary map is not merely an illustrati...
The history of images can be described as a history of technology and mediality. The development of images is deeply rooted in the potentials of media technologies and the numerous human inventions in the range of traditional craftsmanship, engineering science, computer science, and art and design. The factual embedding of images in the historical-technological processes constitutes a complex structure of an autonomous "image evolution" that must be highlighted, characterized and analyzed by the interdisciplinary academic discourses that are related to the functions and structures of visuality, pictoriality, and forms of multi-sensoric representations. The chosen term "evolution" is deliberately indicating structural laws that underlie historical events. These laws are intentional and logical processes of a historical and technological interdependency. In this interdependency, technology is evolving out of its inherent structures and additionally embedded in anthropological conditions and sociocultural dynamics. In this context, we should work with the concept of an "image evolution".
Capital cities have been the seat of political power and central stage for their state’s political conflicts and rituals throughout the ages. In the modern era, they provide symbols for and confer meaning to the state, thereby contributing to the “invention” of the nation. Capitals capture the imagination of natives, visitors and outsiders alike, yet also express the outcomes of power struggles within the political systems in which they operate. This volume addresses the reciprocal relationships between identity, regime formation, urban planning, and public architecture in the Western world. It examines the role of urban design and architecture in expressing (or hiding) ideological beliefs and political agenda. Case studies include “old” capitals such as Rome, Vienna, Berlin and Warsaw; “new” ones such as Washington DC, Ottawa, Canberra, Ankara, Bonn, and Brasília; and the “European” capital Brussels. Each case reflects the authors’ different disciplinary backgrounds in architecture, history, political science, and urban studies, demonstrating the value of an interdisciplinary approach to studying cities.
Adolescence is a phase of transition, change and upheaval. These processes are often translated into movements through space in literary representations. The narrated space is to be read in its construction and semantics as a complex symbol carrier that is able to connect different dimensions with one another. The study develops, with reference to cultural-scientific spatial theories, a methodical model to analyze current youth novels from a topographical perspective and thus to discuss the interweaving of space, movement and growing up. In the cultural studies and narratological view of (narrative) spaces of adolescence, new trends and developments in youth literature after 2000 manifest th...
Shapes of Time explores how concepts of time and history were spatialized in early twentieth-century German thought. Michael McGillen locates efforts in German modernism to conceive of alternative shapes of time—beyond those of historicism and nineteenth-century philosophies of history—at the boundary between secular and theological discourses. By analyzing canonical works of German modernism—those of Karl Barth, Franz Rosenzweig, Siegfried Kracauer, and Robert Musil—he identifies the ways in which spatial imagery and metaphors were employed to both separate the end of history from a narrative framework and to map the liminal relation between history and eschatology. Drawing on theories and practices as disparate as constructivism, non-Euclidean geometry, photography, and urban architecture, Shapes of Time presents original connections between modernism, theology, and mathematics as played out within the canon of twentieth-century German letters. Concepts of temporal and spatial form, McGillen contends, contribute to the understanding not only of modernist literature but also of larger theoretical concerns within modern cultural and intellectual history.
Exploring the Spatiality of the City across Cultural Texts: Narrating Spaces, Reading Urbanity explores the narrative formations of urbanity from an interdisciplinary perspective. Within the framework of the “spatial turn,” contributors from disciplines ranging from geography and history to literary and media studies theorize narrative constructions of the city and cities, and analyze relevant examples from a variety of discourses, media, and cities. Subdivided into six sections, the book explores the interactions of city and text—as well as other media—and the conflicting narratives that arise in these interactions. Offering case studies that discuss specific aspects of the narrative construction of Berlin and London, the text also considers narratives of urban discontinuity and their theoretical implications. Ultimately, this volume captures the narratological, artistic, material, social, and performative possibilities inherent in spatial representations of the city.
Most of the chapters in this volume were delivered as papers at a conference on the same theme held at the University of Kent in April 2002. The essays collected here, by scholars from the UK, Ireland, Germany, and the US, address a topic of fundamental concern across all the disciplines engaged with the study of contemporary Germany: the evolving relationship between urban and rural space, the metropolitan centre and the provincial Heimat. The volume identifies and investigates a number of recent trends: the emergence of 'eco-literature', the renaissance of writing - in prose and verse - inspired by the new Berlin, the realignment of regional sensibilities, which is complicated by the troubled tradition of Heimat in all its literary manifestations, and the continuing disjunctions between East and West. Individual essays engage with the work of established writers (Günter de Bruyn, Hubert Fichte, Peter Handke, WG Sebald, Siegfried Lenz, Martin Walser, and Elfriede Jelinek) and emerging talents (Georg Klein, Christof Hamann, Ludwig Laher, and Arnold Stadler).
How is it that walls, borders, boundaries--and their material and symbolic architectures of division and exclusion--engender their very opposite? This edited volume explores the crossings, permeations, and constructions of cultural and political borders between peoples and territories, examining how walls, borders, and boundaries signify both interdependence and contact within sites of conflict and separation. Topics addressed range from the geopolitics of Europe's historical and contemporary city walls to conceptual reflections on the intersection of human rights and separating walls, the memory politics generated in historically disputed border areas, theatrical explorations of border crossings, and the mapping of boundaries within migrant communities.
Drawing on the expertise of leading researchers from around the globe, this pioneering collection of essays explores how geospatial technologies are revolutionizing the discipline of literary studies. The book offers the first intensive examination of digital literary cartography, a field whose recent and rapid development has yet to be coherently analysed. This collection not only provides an authoritative account of the current state of the field, but also informs a new generation of digital humanities scholars about the critical and creative potentials of digital literary mapping. The book showcases the work of exemplary literary mapping projects and provides the reader with an overview of the tools, techniques and methods those projects employ.