Bøker utgitt av ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon

During the last few years, the German higher education landscape has witnessed an increase in the delegation of decision power from the state to the universities. In order to adapt to this new situation, universities are more and more looking at management structures, decision-making systems, and governance mechanisms as fundamental performance drivers. The objective of this dissertation is to provide an economic insight into the inner workings of universities in Germany, thus answering the question of how they should organize themselves in order to persist in times of economic, organizational, and competitive challenges. Special focus lies on the analysis of the role of faculty in participative university decision-making and its positive and negative effects on the university. Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, the dissertation outlines policy recommendations that may help to overcome the problems inherent in today's university management and governance structures in Germany.

Margaret Atwood's novels are photographs of her characters' lives: while words only ever describe her protagonists' blurred visions of their pasts, their 'true' stories are told in subtexts which run parallel or even contrary to the main story line and which depict the unseen, the buried, the 'untrue'. Replete with intertextual references, her fiction illuminates that and why "[w]hat isn't there has a presence, like the absence of light" (The Blind Assassin). She plays with our conventional modes of perception to make us aware of the way we frame reality in our minds. Andrea Strolz discusses in her book the interrelation between metafictional and intertextual features in two of Atwood's novels that share many similarities, even though written in different decades. She examines how Atwood weaves intertextual references into her fiction, how she facilitates a reader's recognition of the intertexts, and she shows that Atwood's narrator-protagonists also reflect on our age as one of intertextuality.

The necessity of a religious dialogue between Christians and Muslims these days has come to mind very often for a lot of reasons - especially in the process of globalization. What happened on September 11, 2001 and its consequences have reinforced the necessity. Not only a religion but also its followers, numbering more than a billion people, run the risk of falling into disrepute thereby.Islamic teaching according to the latest religion coming from Abraham confirms the previous religions. Islam is the only religion after Christ which recognizes in Jesus not only the Word of God, but also sees in Jesus a sign of God's love and mercy. The following verse is a witness to the importance of the Jewish and the Christian belief from the Islamic view."Say ye: "We believe in God, and the revelation given to us, and to Ibrahim, Isma'il, Ishaq, Ya'qub, and the Tribes, and that given to Musa and 'Isa, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord: we make no difference between one and another of them: and we bow to God (in Islam)." [2:136] The diversity in God's offer is a wealth which we absolutely must recognize today.

These proceedings of the symposium 'The Rhetoric of Sociopolitical Power and Representations of Victim-hood in Contemporary Literature,' conducted by the Department of American Culture and Literature at Haliç University, Istanbul, on 13-15 April 2005 contain discussions of power and victimization as represented in contemporary literatures in light of the leading questions and issues in contemporary literary criticism, the emphasis being on writing from the Anglophone world.The authors treated include Angela Carter, Colm Toibin, Alan Hollinghurst, Tony Harrison, Henry James, David Mamet, Anne Sexton, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Terry Tempest Williams, Margaret Atwood, Derek Walcott, J. M. Coetzee, Jean Anouilh, Thomas Mann, Ricardo Piglia, Luisa Valenzuela, Naguib Mahfouz, Kemal Yalç¿n, Orhan Pamuk, Kobo Abe.

This book includes contributions by African, East and West European, Asian and North American scholars which deal with and compare ideological and non-ideological approaches to the analysis of literary, artistic as well as popular works (popular music) mostly by American authors. Most of the essays deal with a way various aspects of American identity are depicted, represented, treated, ideologized and aestheticized in different literary genres, forms of art and media. The contributions offer multidisciplinary, cross-cultural and comparative perspectives and represent a diversity of scholarly voices ranging from the general discussion on the relationship between ideology and art (Anton Pokrivcák), ideology and multiculturalism (Cristina Garrigós). They also give the analysis of poetry (Pokrivcák, Obododima Oha), postmodern fiction (Pi-Hua Ni, Cristina Garrigós), drama (Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Csaba Csapó) as well as the comparative analysis of the depiction of the identity of North American Indians in such different media as literature and film (Michal Peprník). In addition to this, the book includes the analysis of Black rap music (Wojciech Kallas).

This book offers far-reaching insights into perceptions of conflict in South Africa. Claude-Hélène Mayer's approach is remarkable, because she imparts the recollections of numerous people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The author captures the essence of about one-hundred interviews reflecting disparate attitudes towards social changes in the post-apartheid Republic of South Africa. Unexpected statements - for example, with respect to the continued existence of internalized apartheid - are carefully analyzed and hermeneutically understood. At the beginning of the research, presumptions might have raised expectations for the similarity between the narrative interviews. However, it becomes clear during the reading of this work that each interview was itself unique and each created a unique situation between the interviewer and the interviewee, inviting the reader to listen again and again to the spoken and analyzed words. The thorough, months-long field stays, from 1999 until 2004, emphasize the researcher's exhaustive effort better to understand the perspective of the interviewees. In addition to the book's research-related merits, its data can increase the cultural competence of those readers who are interested in information on specific predominant-cultural standards in present day South Africa. Readers can more fully appreciate how the people in South Africa live a special, dynamic form of their unmatched "unity in diversity."

The European Union is increasingly facing a dilemma between democracy and technocracy. On the one hand, the EU is today accused for lacking sufficient democratic legitimacy, and on the other, public policy-making is getting more and more complex and technical, making politicians reliant to a certain extent on the technical knowledge of specialised experts. The European Parliament, being the only directly legitimated body within the institutional set-up of the EU and thus the symbol of democracy, plays a key role in this respect. In this book Brigitte Reck analyses the role of expertise for the European Parliament. It is assumed that, in order to fulfil the new challenges posed by its enhanced role in EU decision-making, the European Parliament depends to a high degree on internal and external help in the form of expert knowledge, policy advice and parliamentary assistance. It discovers, mainly on the basis of interviews with politicians and officials in Brussels, which sources of expertise the European Parliament can rely on and to what extent Parliament has adapted its internal capacities to the new challenges arising mainly from co-decision, but also from enhanced complexity. Finally it suggests how to improve the internal expertise capacities of the European Parliament which are necessary if the institution is to bridge the gap between democratic control and good quality outcomes.

Jaroslav Künír's book American Fiction: Modernism-Postmodernism, Popular Culture, and Metafiction is a sequel to his previous study on American postmodern fiction entitled Poetika americkej postmodernej prózy: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme [Poetics of American Fiction: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme]. Pre¿ov: Impreso, 2001. It explores various aspects of American postmodernist fiction as manifested in the works by Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme and other American postmodernist authors such as Robert Coover, E. L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster. Analyzing various short stories and novels, the author shows differences between modernist and postmodernist literature in the works of Donald Barthelme; the way postmodern parodies of popular literary genres give a critique of some aspects of American cultural identity and experience (the American Dream, individualism, consumerism); and he also shows different ways postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster create metafictional effect as one of the most significant aspects of postmodern literature.

Would you like to acquire intercultural competencies that would open new perspectives to you, and new options for action, and new options, especially in negotiations, and situations of conflict? This book gives information on procedures and processes of mediation in Western and intercultural contexts, and explains them. Readers come in contact with what is special about mediation, and working with conflict, in interaction between Germans and Africans. Finally, the authors place at readers' disposal introductory training methods, necessary for all who wish to work responsibly in intercultural contexts.The book's "constructivist" approach affords the perception of new aspects and perspectives of German-African realities, and of the current discussion on intercultural conflict-management.