Edinburgh German Yearbook 4

Established, commissioned, and edited by the Department of German at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh German Yearbook encourages and disseminates lively and open discussion of themes pertinent to German Studies, viewed from all angles -- literary, artistic, musical, theoretical -- but takes particular interest in problems and issues arising out of politics and history. Each year, EGYB invites scholarly contributions on a topic of current challenge to German Studies. No other yearbook covers the field of German Studies while addressing a focused theme in each issue. Volume 4 focuses on disability in German literature, film, and theater. Disability Studies is part of a broader discussion of difference and "otherness," the politics of identity, social processes, human rights, ethics, and discrimination. As a critical resistance strategy, it seeks to retrieve the silenced voices of disabled figures from literature, film, and theater and discuss their position vis-à-vis "normalcy." Recently, Disability Studies has explored the binary construction of "able" and "disabled," strategies of exclusion, and the marginalization and suffering of the disabled body under social and medical structures. The field is now entering a phase of positive reflection, addressing the ontological politics of disability. Accordingly, this volume examines cultural representations of disability that raise questions about "the humane gaze" and posits disability as historically central to discussions of humanity, modernity, and social and moral behavior in German-language literature, film, and theater. Points of focus include blindness, physical deformity, injury, illness, and euthanasia, and topics dealt with are the humanizing and (de-)re-humanizing gazes; the experience of the modern condition and the discourse of disability; the social and cultural construction of representations of the disabled body; stigma; and the effects of inclusion and exclusion strategies. Eleoma Joshua is Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Michael Schillmeier lectures in Sociology, Science and Technology Studies, Disability Studies, and Empirical Philosophy at the Department of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.