Editors’ Introduction
Avoiding essentialist definitions, this module presents “Germanness” as complex, contingent, and constantly changing. It features more than 200 sources that draw attention to the various considerations—textual, visual, material, spatial, aesthetic, physical—at play in negotiating Germanness and in establishing, granting, or denying this “status.” How and when are subjects, spaces, objects, norms, seen as “German”—by whom, or for whom? By presenting Germanness as a space of negotiation, we hope to offer teachers, students, and scholars an interesting way to engage with certain historical outcomes in need of further reflection.
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