This volume consists of a series of essays, written by leading scholars within the field, demonstrating the types of inquiry that can be pursued into the transnational realities underpinning German-language culture and history as these travel right around the globe. Contributions discuss the inherent cross-pollination of different languages, times, places and notions of identity within German-language cultures and the ways in which their construction and circulation cannot be contained by national or linguistic borders. In doing so, it is not the aim of the volume to provide a compendium of existing transnational approaches to German Studies or to offer its readers a series of survey chapters on different fields of study to date. Instead, it offers novel research-led chapters that pose a question, a problem or an issue through which contemporary and historical transcultural and transnational processes can be seen at work. Accordingly, each essay isolates a specific area of study and opens it up for exploration, providing readers, especially student readers, not just with examples of transnational phenomena in German language cultures but also with models of how research in these areas can be configured and pursued. Contributors: Angus Nicholls, Anne Fuchs, Benedict Schofield, Birgit Lang, Charlotte Ryland, Claire Baldwin, Dirk Weissmann, Elizabeth Anderson, James Hodkinson, Nicholas Baer, Paulo Soethe, Rebecca Braun, Sara Jones, Sebastian Heiduschke, Stuart Taberner and Ulrike Draesner.

‘Transnational German Studies offers a compelling contribution to the field of German Studies, offering both a clear account of its current identity in historical context and, crucially, a timely challenge to rethink the traditional boundaries of the discipline.’
Janet Stewart, Durham University

‘This volume is a timely and important intervention in the field of German Studies. At a time when German Studies is perceived to be in crisis, with declining student numbers and the shrinking of university departments, it convincingly demonstrates how transnational perspectives offer to expand the discipline by imbuing it with critical new questions, and by encouraging reflection not only on what German Studies is today, but where it has come from, and where it may productively head.’
Anna Saunders, University of Liverpool

Rebecca Braun is a Professor of Modern Languages and Creative Futures and the Director of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University. Benedict Schofield is a Reader in German and the Director of the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture at King’s College London.