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The curious humanist : Siegfried Kracauer in America / Johannes von Moltke.

Publication | Not Digitized | Library Call Number: PT2621.R135 Z94 2016

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    Book cover

    Overview

    Summary
    "Siegfried Kracauer is today considered one of the key thinkers of the twentieth century. During the Weimar Republic, he established himself as a trenchant theorist of film, culture, and modernity, now often ranked alongside his friends Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. When he arrived in Manhattan aboard a crowded refugee ship in 1941, however, he was virtually unknown in the United States and had yet to write his best-known books, From Caligari to Hitler and Theory of Film. In this study, Johannes von Moltke details the intricate ways in which the American intellectual and political context shaped Kracauer's seminal contributions to film studies and shows how Kracauer's American writings helped shape the emergent discipline in turn. Through archival sources and detailed readings of Kracauer's work, von Moltke reconstructs what it means to consider Siegfried Kracauer as the New York Intellectual he became when he settled in Manhattan for the last quarter century of his life. Here, he found an institutional home at the MoMA film library, contributed to communications and propaganda research under the aegis of the Rockefeller Foundation, and published in the influential "little magazines" of the New York Intellectuals. Adopting a transatlantic perspective on Kracauer's work, von Moltke demonstrates how he pursued questions that animated contemporary critics from Adorno to Hannah Arendt, from Clement Greenberg to Robert Warshow: questions about the origins of totalitarianism and the authoritarian personality, about high and low culture, about liberalism, democracy, and what it means to be human. From these wide-flung conversations and debates, Kracauer's own voice emerges as that of an incisive cultural critic invested in a humanist understanding of the cinema."--Provided by publisher.
    Format
    Book
    Author/Creator
    Von Moltke, Johannes, 1966- author.
    Published
    Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]
    ©2016
    Locale
    Germany
    New York, NY
    Contents
    Introduction: Siegfried Kracauer and the politics of film theory
    Metropolitan contact zones: Kracauer in New York
    Totalitarian propaganda
    Nazi cinema
    Freedom from fear?
    From Hitler to Caligari: spaces of Weimar cinema
    Authoritarian, totalitarian
    Reframing Caligari: the politics of cinema
    Theory of film and the subject of experience
    The curious humanist
    History and humanist subjectivity
    Epilogue: Siegfried Kracauer and the emergence of film studies.
    Notes
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-302) and index.
    Introduction: Siegfried Kracauer and the politics of film theory -- Metropolitan contact zones: Kracauer in New York -- Totalitarian propaganda -- Nazi cinema -- Freedom from fear? -- From Hitler to Caligari: spaces of Weimar cinema -- Authoritarian, totalitarian -- Reframing Caligari: the politics of cinema -- Theory of film and the subject of experience -- The curious humanist -- History and humanist subjectivity -- Epilogue: Siegfried Kracauer and the emergence of film studies.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    ISBN
    9780520290938
    0520290933
    9780520290945
    0520290941
    Physical Description
    xi, 317 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

    Keywords & Subjects

    Record last modified:
    2024-06-21 23:20:00
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/bib263327

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