2019 Winner - Matthew H. Birkhold
Characters before Copyright: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford University Press) by Matthew H. Birkhold has been awarded the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize for first books published in 2019.
The prize consists of a cash award of CAD $3,000.
2019 Shortlist
Matthew H. Birkhold. Characters before Copyright: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford University Press)
Provides new insight into the history of literature and authorship, moral rights, and intellectual property (Oxford University Press).
Kata Gellen. Kafka and Noise: The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism (Northwestern University Press)
Applies concepts and vocabulary from film theory to Kafka's works in order to account for these unsettling sounds (Northwestern University Press).
Seth Howes. Moving Images on the Margins: Experimental Film in Late Socialist East Germany (Camden House)
Documents the rich allusiveness and intellectual probity of experimental filmmaking - a form that thrived despite having been officially banned-in East German socialism's final years (Camden House).
Richard N. Lutjens, Jr. Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941–1945 (Berghahn Books)
Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years (Berghahn Books).
Philipp Nielsen. Between Heimat and Hatred: Jews and the Right in Germany, 1871–1935 (Oxford University Press)
Discusses the tension between rising antisemitism and a Jewish sense of German national belonging in the years preceding the Nazi rise to power (Oxford University Press).
Zef M. Segal. The Political Fragmentation of Germany: Formation of German States by Infrastructures, Maps, and Movement, 1815–1866 (Palgrave)
Takes a comparative approach to five significant German states to examine how national and territorial identities were constructed (Palgrave).
Tyler Whitney. Eardrums: Literary Modernism as Sonic Warfare (Northwestern University Press)
The first book-length study to explore the relationship between acoustical modernity and German modernism, charting a literary and cultural history written in and around the eardrum (Northwestern University Press).