front cover of The German Patient
The German Patient
Crisis and Recovery in Postwar Culture
Jennifer M. Kapczynski
University of Michigan Press, 2010

The German Patient takes an original look at fascist constructions of health and illness, arguing that the idea of a healthy "national body"---propagated by the Nazis as justification for the brutal elimination of various unwanted populations---continued to shape post-1945 discussions about the state of national culture. Through an examination of literature, film, and popular media of the era, Jennifer M. Kapczynski demonstrates the ways in which postwar German thinkers inverted the illness metaphor, portraying fascism as a national malady and the nation as a body struggling to recover. Yet, in working to heal the German wounds of war and restore national vigor through the excising of "sick" elements, artists and writers often betrayed a troubling affinity for the very biopolitical rhetoric they were struggling against. Through its exploration of the discourse of collective illness, The German Patient tells a larger story about ideological continuities in pre- and post-1945 German culture.

Jennifer M. Kapczynski is Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the coeditor of the anthology A New History of German Cinema.

Cover art: From The Murderers Are Among Us (1946). Reprinted courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek.

"A highly evocative work of meticulous scholarship, Kapczynski's deftly argued German Patient advances the current revaluation of Germany's postwar reconstruction in wholly original and even exciting ways: its insights into discussions of collective sickness and health resonate well beyond postwar Germany."
---Jaimey Fischer, University of California, Davis

"The German Patient provides an important historical backdrop and a richly specific cultural context for thinking about German guilt and responsibility after Hitler. An eminently readable and engaging text."
---Johannes von Moltke, University of Michigan

"This is a polished, eloquently written, and highly informative study speaking to the most pressing debates in contemporary Germany. The German Patient will be essential reading for anyone interested in mass death, genocide, and memory."
---Paul Lerner, University of Southern California

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front cover of Globalization in an Age of Crisis
Globalization in an Age of Crisis
Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Along with its painful economic costs, the financial crisis of 2008 raised concerns over the future of international policy making. As in recessions past, new policy initiatives emerged, approaches that placed greater importance on protecting national interests than promoting international economic cooperation. Whether in fiscal or monetary policies, the control of currencies and capital flows, the regulation of finance, or the implementation of protectionist policies and barriers to trade, there has been an almost worldwide trend toward the prioritizing of national economic security. But what are the underlying economic causes of this trend, and what can economic research reveal about the possible consequences?

Prompted by these questions, Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor have brought together top researchers with policy makers and practitioners whose contributions consider the ways in which the global economic order might address the challenges of globalization that have arisen over the last two decades and that have been intensified by the recent crisis. Chapters in this volume consider the critical linkages between issues, including exchange rates, global imbalances, and financial regulation, and plumb the political and economic outcomes of past policies for what they might tell us about the future of the global economic cooperation.

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front cover of Going Virtual
Going Virtual
Programs and Insights from a Time of Crisis
Sarah Ostman
American Library Association, 2021
From the moment the pandemic took hold in Spring 2020, libraries and library workers have demonstrated their fortitude and flexibility by adapting to physical closures, social distancing guidelines, and a host of other challenges. Despite the obstacles, they’ve been able to stay connected to their communities—and helped connect the people in their communities to each other, as well as to the information and services they need and enjoy. Ostman and ALA’s Public Programs Office (PPO) here present a handpicked cross-section of successful programs, most of them virtual, from a range of different libraries. Featuring events designed to support learning, spark conversation, create connection, or simply entertain, the ideas here will inspire programming staff to try similar offerings at their own libraries. Showcasing innovation in action as well as lessons learned, programs include
  • COVID-19 Misinformation Challenge, featuring an email quiz, to encourage participants to separate fact from fiction; 
  • weekly virtual storytimes;
  • community cooking demonstrations via Zoom;
  • an online grocery store tour, complete with tips about shopping healthy on a budget;
  • a virtual beer tasting that boasted 80 attendees;
  • socially distanced "creativity crates" for summer reading;
  • an online Minecraft club for kids ages 6 and up;
  • a Zoom presentation about grieving and funerals during COVID, featuring the director of a local funeral home;
  • Art Talk Tuesday, a one-hour, docent-led program; 
  • a virtual lecture on the history of witchcraft, presented by a public library in partnership with a university rare book room, that drew thousands of viewers;
  • "knitting for knewbies" kits for curbside pickup;
  • Songs from the Stacks, an ongoing virtual concert series in the style of NPR’s “Tiny Desk”;
  • a pink supermoon viewing party that included people howling at the moon together from their homes on Facebook Live;
  • and many others
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front cover of Government Ideology, Economic Pressure, and Risk Privatization
Government Ideology, Economic Pressure, and Risk Privatization
How Economic Worldviews Shape Social Policy Choices in Times of Crisis
Alexander Horn
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
From the 1980s on, a privatization of labor market-related risks has occurred in the OECD. Governments have cut the generosity of social programs and tightened eligibility rules, particularly for the unemployed. Government Ideology, Economic Pressure, and Risk Privatization: How Economic Worldviews Shape Social Policy Choices in Times of Crisis analyses these curtailments for eighteen countries over the course of four decades and provides an encompassing comparative assessment of the interactive impact of government ideology and economic pressure. It demonstrates that the economic worldviews of governments are the most important factor in explaining why cuts are implemented or not. While ideas of non-intervention in the market underlie cuts in generosity, ideas of equality and fairness are at the heart of stricter eligibility criteria. This book also shows that the impact of the economic pressures often held responsible for the marginalization of politics and government ideology is in fact conditional on the specific ideological configuration.
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front cover of The Great War Comes to Wisconsin
The Great War Comes to Wisconsin
Sacrifice, Patriotism, and Free Speech in a Time of Crisis
Richard L. Pifer
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017
The Great War Comes to Wisconsin examines Wisconsin’s response to World War I, the first "total war" of the twentieth century, a war so large that it engaged virtually everyone.
Instead of a comprehensive history of the battlefield, this book captures the homefront experience: the political debates over war policy, the worry over loved ones fighting overseas, the countless everyday sacrifices, and the impact of a wartime hysteria that drove dissent underground. It also includes the voices of soldiers from Wisconsin’s famed 32nd Division, through extensively quoted letters and newspaper accounts. Immerse yourself in the Wisconsin experience during World War I—a conflict that demonstrated America’s great capacity for sacrifice and generosity, but also for prejudice, intolerance, and injustice.
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front cover of Green Communication and China
Green Communication and China
On Crisis, Care, and Global Futures
Jingfang Liu
Michigan State University Press, 2020
How does China speak for nature? How are the pollution and climate change crises being addressed? What are the possibilities and limitations of mobilizing publics to care about the environment through new media, tourism, and government policy? Green Communication and China is the first volume to identify the importance of studying environmental communication in, about, and with China, a rising global environmental leader whose ecological and political controversies often make international headlines. Organized into three sections on communicating crisis, communicating care, and environmental futurity, these essays span multimodal communication practices and methods in green public culture and address topics ranging from The North Face advertisements to NGO advocacy to global governmental policy. The volume showcases the work of leading scholars, all of them deeply intimate with China, in disciplines ranging from cultural studies and rhetoric to public opinion polling, discourse analysis, ethnic studies, and sociology. These complex projects engage transnational and national politics, ecological and economic challenges, media saturation, and government control. Holding these tensions together without glossing over differences, Green Communication and China will inform new agendas for environmental communication in China, the United States, and beyond.
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front cover of Growing Up Graphic
Growing Up Graphic
The Comics of Children in Crisis
Alison Halsall
The Ohio State University Press, 2023
In Growing Up Graphic, Alison Halsall considers graphic texts for young readers to interrogate how they help children develop new ideas about social justice and become potential agents of change. With a focus on comics that depict difficult experiences affecting young people, Halsall explores the complexities of queer graphic memoirs, narratives of belonging, depictions of illness and disability, and explorations of Indigenous experiences. She discusses, among others, Child Soldier by Jessica Dee Humphreys and Michel Chikwanine, War Brothers by Sharon E. McKay, Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq, Matt Huynh’s interactive adaptation of Nam Le’s The Boat, and David Alexander Robertson’s 7 Generations. These examples contest images of childhood victimization, passivity, and helplessness, instead presenting young people as social actors who attempt to make sense of the challenges that affect them. In considering comics for children and about children, Growing Up Graphic centers a previously underexplored vein of graphic narratives and argues that these texts offer important insights into the interests and capabilities of children as readers. 
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