journal: Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Impact Factor: 0.1

Published since January 15, 2004

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture

ISSN: 2196-4726

Edited by: Michael Butter, Kylie Crane, Lars Eckstein, Joachim Frenk, Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Antje Quick, Barbara Korte, Günter Leypoldt, Christoph Reinfandt, Stefan Hartmann, Maria Sulimma

About this journal

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) is a peer-reviewed journal that traditionally reflects the entire spectrum of English and American language, literature and culture. Particular attention will also be paid to the new literatures in English, the development of linguistic varieties outside Britain and North America, the culture of ethnic minorities and the relationship between anglophone and neighbouring cultural areas. The journal also welcomes contributions which examine theoretical and interdisciplinary issues in literary, linguistic and socio-cultural research. Thus, ZAA invites contributions concerning a wide range of research on current issues, survey articles featuring recent developments in the fields of culture, literature and language, research reports as well as proposals concerning new directions within the discipline. For two of the journal’s four annual issues articles may be submitted in the field of literary and cultural studies; the remaining two issues will be reserved for special topics, one in literature and culture, the other in linguistics.

History

ZAA was founded in 1953. The journal has been published by de Gruyter since 2014.

Other publications in the field:

Anglia

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Supplementary Materials

Topics

Volume 72 (2024)

Issue 1 Special Issue: Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility; Guest Editor: Gero Guttzeit

Volume 71 (2023)

Volume 70 (2022)

Volume 69 (2021)

Volume 68 (2020)

Volume 67 (2019)

Volume 66 (2018)

Volume 65 (2017)

Volume 64 (2016)

Volume 63 (2015)

Volume 62 (2014)

Volume 61 (2013)

Volume 60 (2012)

Volume 59 (2011)

Volume 58 (2010)

Volume 57 (2009)

Volume 56 (2008)

Volume 55 (2007)

Volume 54 (2006)

Volume 53 (2005)

Volume 52 (2004)

Recent Special Issues

Journal Impact Factor	0.1	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
5-year Journal Impact Factor	0.2	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
Journal Citation Indicator	0.95	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
CiteScore	0.4	2022, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2023)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.112	2022, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2023; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	0.469	2022, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2023; Data Source: Scopus)

More information about journal rankings

Submit

ZAA invites contributions concerning a wide range of research on current issues in English and American Studies, such as research reports, survey articles featuring recent developments in the field or proposals concerning new directions within the discipline. Two of the journal’s four annual issues are open for individual submissions in the field of literary and cultural studies, the remaining two are reserved for special topics, one in linguistics and one in literary and cultural studies.

Articles, preferably written in English, should not exceed 40,000 characters and be accompanied by an abstract in English of no more than 1,000 characters. All manuscripts have to be submitted in accordance with the ZAA style sheet. The style sheet may also be obtained from the journal’s homepage (www.zaa.uni-tuebingen.de) or requested directly from the editorial office (contact: zaa@uni-tuebingen.de).

Hybrid Open Access

Please note that authors from institutions with which we have a transformative agreement can publish open access without paying an article processing charge (APC). More information on the eligible institutions and articles can be found under the "Funding and Support" tab here

Editorial

Editorial Board
Michael Butter, Universität Tübingen; Kylie Crane, University of Rostock; Joachim Frenk, Universität Saarbrücken; Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, TU Dresden; Thomas Herbst, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg; Barbara Korte, Unversität Freiburg; Günter Leypoldt, Unversität Heidelberg; Christoph Reinfandt, Unversität Tübingen;　Anatol Stefanowitsch, FU Berlin, Maria Sulimma, Universität Freiburg.

Advisory Board
Susan Bassnett, University of Warwick, UK; Christine Berberich, University of Portsmouth, UK; Ewa Dambrowska, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany; Lars Eckstein, University of Potsdam, Germany;　Bernd Engler, University of Tübingen, Germany; Gaetanelle Gilquin, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium;　Katja Kanzler, University of Leipzig, Germany; T. Vijay Kumar, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India;　Winfried Siemerling, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Gerhard Stilz, University of Tübingen, Germany;　Percy Walton, Carlton University, Canada.

Book Reviews

Maria Sulimma, University of Freiburg, Germany

Rebecca Davies, University of Freiburg, Germany

To submit a book for review, please contact zaa@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de.

General Editorial Inquiries
zaa@uni-tuebingen.de

Journal Homepage
www.zaa.uni-tuebingen.de

Volume 72 Issue 1

March 2024

Publicly Available March 11, 2024

Frontmatter

Page range: i-v

Download PDF

Editorial

March 8, 2024

Editorial

Raphael Zähringer

Page range: 1-1

Introduction

March 8, 2024

Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility: Introduction

Gero Guttzeit

Page range: 3-9

Articles

March 8, 2024

Thresholds of In/Visibility and the Scopic Power of Literature

Françoise Král

Page range: 11-22

Abstract

In recent years the trope of invisibility has emerged as a critical concept in the humanities; initially associated with the issue of racial invisibility, it has been applied to all forms of marginalisation, be they racial, social, or political. Today, the context of hypervisibility, which results from intensive media coverage of certain events, has made discussing invisibility paradoxical. This article seeks to reassess invisibility as a key concept in the humanities and discusses the scopic power of literature to make the unseen visible. This will be approached via discussion of contemporary narratives dealing with disappearance and loss, with a particular focus on the literature of the middle passage.

March 8, 2024

The Poetics of (Un)Mournability: Emma Donoghue’s Hood (1995) as an Elegy in Invisible Ink

Héloïse Lecomte

Page range: 23-34

Abstract

Emma Donoghue’s Hood is an Irish tale of closeted lesbian love in which the narrator cannot mourn the death of her partner publicly because of the compulsory social invisibility of their relationship. While in her monograph Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Judith Butler correlates the (un)grievability of certain lives (their ability to be grieved over) with ethical frames of perception, this paper focuses on the invisibilisation of public mourning. Since the term “mourning” is often used to evoke public displays and rituals of grief, I propose to confront Butler’s concept of “(un)grievability” with what I call “(un)mournability,” in order to investigate the three metaphors of (in)visibility that shape the aesthetics of Donoghue’s contemporary narrative elegy. The images of the closet, the hood, and the invisible ink, which are instrumental to Donoghue’s narrative strategies of linguistic invisibility, map out the evolving representation of lesbian invisibility in the novel.

March 8, 2024

Experience(s) of Decorporation: The Invisibilisation of Care in John Lanchester’s Capital (2012)

Alice Borrego

Page range: 35-46

Abstract

In The Ethics of Care (2006), Virginia Held underlines that care cannot be conceived without recognising our interdependence and responsibility for one another. Despite recent efforts to divide our society between private and public spheres, no such clear delimitation is possible in the ethics of care. Yet, as the Covid-19 pandemic has shown, the neoliberal financialisation of healthcare systems is redefining our ability to look after others. John Lanchester’s ‘crunch lit’ novel Capital (2012) draws attention to what I call “experiences of decorporation”: the vulnerable ageing body and the medical system both become victims of a market-logic which invisibilises the cared for, the carer, and the caring. Taking place on a single street in London, the metonymic construction of the novel calls for an analysis of how the illness and death of Petunia Howe, the oldest resident on Pepys Road, is symptomatic of the ethical effacement of the body politic under the clout of neoliberal politics.

March 8, 2024

Becoming (In)Visible: Self-Assertion and Disappearance of the Self in Contemporary Surveillance Narratives

Betiel Wasihun

Page range: 47-63

Abstract

Visible surveillance technologies are vanishing in the wake of dataveillance. The practice of surveillance is certainly not disappearing, but it has become inconspicuous. In a regime of invisible surveillance, the watchers and the watched alike are hard to identify, for the latter have also become socially invisible as human beings. I argue that the idea of becoming invisible in both digital and pre-digital surveillance societies is multifaceted. On the one hand, it suggests total deprivation of personal autonomy as a result of overexposure resulting in the disappearance of the subject and, on the other hand, it implies a possibility of resistance and self-assertion. Self-exposure is taken to extremes in Dave Eggers’s dystopian novel The Circle (2013) where the protagonist becomes the centre of attention in a “viewer society” (Mathiesen 1997) and “goes transparent” (Eggers 2013, 351). In contrast, Wolfgang Hilbig’s Stasi novel “Ich” (1993) works with different notions of invisibility. Recruited to spy for the Stasi, Hilbig’s protagonist – an unsuccessful poet – is at the same time targeted by East Germany’s secret police and wants to become invisible, hiding from the omnipresent Stasi surveillance in Berlin’s maze-like cellar corridors in an attempt of self-assertion. The comparison of these novels will elucidate how different discourses on (in)visibility and transparency contribute to an account of subjectivity that attempts to resist surveillance.

March 8, 2024

‘Perced to the Roote’: Refugee Tales and the Poetics of In/Visibility

Sibylle Baumbach

Page range: 65-79

Abstract

In their aim to give a voice to those that are unheard and unseen in society, to refugees and detainees, Refugee Tales aim at countering practices of invisibilisation, especially in connection with UK immigration politics. While this might suggest a focus on narrative as a tool for communicating the untold, Refugee Tales I–IV (2016–2021) exceed this important, yet unsurprising role of narrative by unfolding the ‘making’ of invisibility. This is suggested, for instance, by the politics of adaptation and the in/visible intertext The Canterbury Tales , or by the (productive) paradox that most tales are in fact ‘translations’ penned by renowned writers, such as David Herd, Patience Agbabi, or Ali Smith. This article explores the poetics of invisibility in Refugee Tales by examining their specific (attentional) design. As I argue, these tales draw on tensions of in/visibility to unveil key instances of inattentional blindness in literature, culture, and society, challenging the relation between the seen and the unseen, between what is considered visible or invisible.

Open Access March 8, 2024

Afterword: Running with the Metaphor of Social Invisibility

Esther Peeren

Page range: 81-92

More Download PDF

Abstract

In this afterword, I reflect on the contributions gathered in this special issue, which make clear that social invisibility is multivalent, as visibility, invisibility, and the oscillation between them have different meanings and effects in different social and literary contexts. To the points made about social invisibility in the contributions, I add three more. First, after considering social disappearance as a possible alternative to social invisibility, I conclude that the lack of clear boundaries between these two highly elastic metaphors should not be seen as a problem, but as fruitful: running with both metaphors allows us to arrive at a better understanding of the lives led by particular precaritized groups, and to compare these lives across historical and cultural contexts, as well as across approaches and methods. Second, while social invisibility and social disappearance have predominantly been used to figure disempowerment, it should be acknowledged that escaping notice can also empower. A brief reading of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis illustrates the power self-chosen invisibility may impart to the privileged. Third, I argue that humanities approaches to fictionality and narrative and visual form, as found across different types of art and media, provide ways of thinking through social invisibility that add something valuable to empirical and ethnographic approaches in the social sciences. The main reason for this is that narrative and visual form can defamiliarize our perception of the social world, enabling us to notice again or notice differently what has become unremarkable.

Book Reviews

March 8, 2024

Sherronda J. Brown: Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

Kristina Weber

Page range: 93-97

March 8, 2024

Sara Ahmed: The Feminist Killjoy Handbook

Lena Mattheis

Page range: 99-101

March 8, 2024

Marlon Lieber: Reading Race Relationally: Embodied Dispositions and Social Structures in Colson Whitehead’s Novels

Valentina López Liendo

Page range: 103-106

March 8, 2024

Ina Bergmann: The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed: The New Historical Fiction

Michael Butter

Page range: 107-109

(Deutsch)

View latest issue

Online ISSN: 2196-4726
Print ISSN: 0044-2305
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
First published: January 15, 2004
Publication Frequency: 4 Issues per Year
Audience: Academics (English and American Studies), Libraries, Research Institutes