Name: Ossi Wessi
SKU: 1-84718-675-0
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Ossi Wessi

Edited By: Donald Backman, Aida Sakalauskaite

£34.99

This collection explores the Berlin Wall in language, literature, and visual media. Essays discuss its portrayal as a dividing and uniting boundary, its continued existence in the minds of Germans, and how controversial the division of Germany remains.

Ossi Wessi includes the proceedings of the fourteenth annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference at the University of California, Berkeley (2006), which explored issues surrounding the…

Ossi Wessi includes the proceedings of the fourteenth annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference at the University of California, Berkeley (2006), which explored issues surrounding the Berlin Wall, both pre- and post-reunification, in language, literature, and visual media. The collected articles discuss the situation of the Berlin Wall, describing its portrayal as both a dividing and uniting boundary, and often discussing the continued existence of the Wall in the minds of Germany’s citizens. The multi-disciplinary range of approaches contained in this volume reveals how diverse the portrayals of the history of the Wall have been, as well as how controversial the division of Germany remains today. Topics covered in this collection include Wende Literature and film, linguistic changes and attitudes since 1989, the complicated history of the Neo-Nazis, and the visual arts. Although Ossi Wessi is by no means a comprehensive reference work, each of its essays serve as a though provoking springboard for further research.

Aida Sakalauskaite is currently completing her dissertation entitled Why Eat Like a Pig? A Contrastive Study of English, German and Lithuanian Zoo Metaphors at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a BA in German linguistics from Vilnius University, Lithuania and an MA in Germanic Linguistics from UC Berkeley. Her research interests include Anglicisms in the German language, musical semiotics, and zoo metaphors in German, English, Lithuanian, and Russian. She has presented several conference papers at international as well as local conferences.

Donald Backman is currently writing his dissertation entitled, End of the Land Sadness: The Kerouacian Myth of Enlightenment in Wendeliteratur. He holds a BS in Secondary German Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; an MA in Comparative Literature from San Francisco State University; and an MA in German Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include, “Author Dead. Full Report at Eleven:  The Questioning of the Author Function in City of Glass and The Lizard’s Tail” in Portals: A Journal in Comparative Literature, 2004.