Scott Spector's adventurous cultural history maps for the first time the "territories" carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. Spector explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. His incisive readings of a broad array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called "Prague circle" and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation as well as literary program and...

This is an important collection of essays, many of them very original and outstanding, that will further the field of history of sexuality in general and will contribute to the German historiography in particular. Lutz Sauerteig, University of Durham

This volume provides a thought provoking and thorough engagement with various aspects of Foucault's writing, at once paying homage to core themes in the history of German sexuality and charting a course for future research...The organization, structure, and coherence of each section is very strong...Most intriguing is its...

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Vienna and Berlin were centers of scientific knowledge, accompanied by a sense of triumphalism and confidence in progress. Yet they were also sites of fascination with urban decay, often focused on sexual and criminal deviants and the tales of violence surrounding them. Sensational media reports fed the prurient public's hunger for stories from the criminal underworld: sadism, sexual murder, serial killings, accusations of Jewish ritual child murder--as well as male and female homosexuality.

In Violent Sensations, Scott Spector explores...