new books

The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters 

from Revolutionary France

The French Revolution brings to mind violent mobs, the guillotine, and Madame Defarge, but it was also a publishing revolution: more than 1,200 novels were published between 1789 and 1804, when Napoleon declared the Revolution at an end. In this book, Julia V. Douthwaite explores how the works within this enormous corpus announced the new shapes of literature to come and reveals that vestiges of these stories can be found in novels by the likes of Mary Shelley, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and L. Frank Baum.

Material Fantasies

EXPECTATIONS OF THE WESTERN CONSUMER WORLD AMONG EAST GERMAN

In 1989 news broadcasts all over the world were dominated for weeks by images of East Germans crossing the Berlin Wall to West Germany. But what did the East Germans expect to find when they excitedly broke through the Wall? And what did they actually find when they made it over to the other side? This study draws on fifteen months of research into both the lives of East Germans before the fall of communism and their fast-changing world after they embraced capitalism. Grounded in powerful anthropological insights, Milena Veenis argues persuasively that national identifications and the bond between state and citizenry in both East and West Germany over the past twenty years hasbeen shaped by the far-fetched, socialist and capitalist promises of consumption as the road to ultimate well-being. These promises also functioned as a way to cover up the more shameful and dirty aspects of both countries’ history and social life.

Mobility at Large

GLOBALIZATION, TEXTUALITY AND INNOVATIVE TRAVEL WRITING

Mobility at Large looks at the work of innovative contemporary travel writers who experiment with form, content, and the politics of representation. Authors such as Michael Ondaatje, Caryl Phillips, and Daphne Marlatt have transformed the genre by using a variety of experimental techniques to examine the cultural and political issues raised by travel, migration, mobility, and displacement. This book challenges those who dismiss travel writing as inherently conservative and bound up in a colonial, Eurocentric tradition.