Authenticity is one of the most crucial, but also most contested concepts in literary and cultural studies. Hollowed out by postmodernist theory, it paradoxically enough persists as an important backdrop for the discussion of literature, film, and the visual arts. The essays in this volume explore perspectives on authenticity and case studies dealing with "the authentic." They thereby seek to show how the paradoxical persistence of authenticity in contemporary critical discourse can be turned into a fruitful point of departure for an analysis of literary texts, but also films, and the visual...

The study combines theories of myth, popular culture, structuralism and poststructuralism to explain the enormous appeal of Star Wars and Harry Potter. Although much research already exists on both stories individually, this book is the first to explicitly bring them together in order to explore their set-up and the ways in which their structures help produce ideologies on gender and ethnicity. Hereby, the comparison yields central insights into the workings of modern myth and uncovers structure as integral to the success of the popular genre. It addresses academic audiences and all those...

Ritual and narrative are pivotal means of human meaning-making and of ordering experience, but the close interrelationship between them has not as yet been given the attention it deserves. How can models and categories from narrative theory benefit the study of ritual, and what can we gain from concepts of ritual studies in analysing narrative? This book brings together a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including literary studies, archaeology, biblical and religious studies, and political science. It presents theoretical explorations as well as in-depth case studies of ritual and...

How should we archive dance? How do we process performative heritage in the twenty-first century? How do we describe the performativity of remembering? And what is involved in building an archive for tomorrow that will serve as a workshop for the future? Inheriting Dance explores these questions and provides insight into the local, national, and global work of the Pina Bausch Foundation as it builds an archive as a place of transformation, exchange, creative production, and artistic practice. Contributors include Salomon Bausch, Stephan Brinkmann, Royd Climenhaga, Katharina Kelter,...