Description
The case study has proved of enduring interest to all Western societies, particularly in relation to questions of subjectivity and the sexed self. This volume interrogates how case studies have been used by doctors, lawyers, psychoanalysts, and writers to communicate their findings both within the specialist circles of their academic disciplines, and beyond, to wider publics. At the same time, it questions how case studies have been taken up by a range of audiences to refute and dispute academic knowledge. As such, this book engages with case studies as sites of interdisciplinary negotiation, transnational exchange and influence, exploring the effects of forces such as war, migration, and internationalization.
Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge challenges the limits of disciplinary-based research in the humanities. The cases examined serve as a means of passage between disciplines, genres, and publics, from law to psychoanalysis, and from auto/biography to modernist fiction. Its chapters scrutinize the case study in order to sharpen understanding of the genre’s dynamic role in the construction and dissemination of knowledge within and across disciplinary, temporal, and national boundaries. In doing so, they position the case at the center of cultural and social understandings of the emergence of modern subjectivities.
Table of Contents
Foreword John Forrester Acknowledgments. Introduction: Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge
Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang and Katie Sutton Part I: Case Knowledge 1. The Case of the Archive Warwick Anderson 2. The Case Study as Representative Anecdote John Cash 3. Influencing Public Knowledge: Erich Wulffen and the Criminal Case of Grete Beier Birgit Lang 4. A Case for Female Individuality: Käthe Schirmacher—Self-Invention and Biography Johanna Gehmacher Part II: Historical Cases 5. Sexological Cases and the Prehistory of Transgender Identity Politics in Interwar Germany Katie Sutton 6. The Sad Tale of Sister Barbara Ubryk: A Case Study in Convent Captivity Timothy Verhoeven 7. The Curious Case/s of Dr. Wallace: Sexuality and the Medical File in Postwar Australia Lisa Featherstone 8. Sexuality and the Public Case Study in the United States, 1940–65 Joy Damousi Part III: Literary Circulations 9. The Overdetermined Literary Case Study of “New Objectivity”: Alfred Döblin’s Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord (1924) Alison Lewis 10. The Lunatics of Love: Armand Dubarry’s Psychopathological Novels and Their Publics Jana Verhoeven 11. Making a Case for Castration: Literary Cases and Psychoanalytic Readings Christiane Weller 12. When the Case Writer Eclipses the Case: Linda Lê’s Case Study of Ingeborg Bachmann Alexandra Kurmann
