1st Edition

Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge

Edited By Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang, Katie Sutton Copyright 2015
    228 Pages
    by Routledge

    242 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    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

    Biography

    Joy Damousi is Professor of History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

    Birgit Lang is Senior Lecturer in German at the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne.

    Katie Sutton is a Lecturer in German and Gender Studies at the Australian National University.