Author Description

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.