History

Journal History

Founded in 1953, the Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) holds a unique position in Germany as the only academic journal of English and American Studies published in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), at first by VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften in (East) Berlin, and then (from 1964) by VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie Leipzig, where it stayed until German reunification in 1990. In all these years, the issues of ZAA testified to the tensions between the inevitable political prerogative in the GDR and academic assessments of literature as an institution that anticipated many later cultural studies and book history concerns. Central to ZAA’s agenda in these years was a genuine commitment to making British and American literature available in translation for readers in the GDR, which included a critical monitoring of the translation and publication process. After 1991, ZAA was taken on by West German publisher Langenscheidt (Berlin) and continued with a new editorial board that programmatically bridged the East-West divide. Since then, ZAA has moved to Stauffenburg (Tübingen, 1995-2003) and Königshausen & Neumann (Würzburg, 2004-2013) before it reached its current home with De Gruyter (Berlin and Boston) in 2014, which also signalled its arrival in the digital age: all issues since 2004 have been made digitally available at https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/zaa/html

Attempts at including earlier issues into this electronic archive have so far not been successful; all issues published in the GDR as well as the ones from Langenscheidt or Stauffenburg will have to be accessed through academic libraries.

Given its very particular history, ZAA continues to welcome contributions from English and American Studies in Eastern Europe and beyond to its pages.

In view of its unique position in the post-WWII German cultural landscape, the history of ZAA has itself received some academic attention. See, for example,

• Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos. "'… and the recent obsession for perverted sexual aspects'? Die Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik." In: Simone Barck, Martina Langermann, Siegfried Lokatis, Hrsg. Zwischen "Mosaik" und "Einheit": Zeitschriften in der DDR. Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999: 367-374.
• Sandra Schaur. “Zwischen Nische und Öffentlichkeit . Die Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA).” In: Barbara Korte, Sandra Schaur, Stefan Welz, Hrsg. Britische Literatur in der DDR. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008: 159-181.
• Michael Lörch. “Die Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) als Beispiel für das Zusammenwirken von universitärer Amerikanistik und Verlagswesen in der DDR.” In: Aleksey Tashinskiy, Julija Boguna, Andreas F. Kelletat, Hrsg. Übersetzer und Übersetzen in der DDR – Translationshistorische Studien. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2020: 129-150.
• “Michael Lörch. “Die Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft.“ In: Oliver Scheiding, Sabina Fazli, Hrsg. Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2023: 459-467.

Book Series

During its tenures with Stauffenburg and Königshausen & Neumann, ZAA ran a parallel book series for the publication of essay collections and outstanding monographs from the entire spectrum of English and U.S. American literature, language and culture. You can see the volumes published in the Stauffenburg ZAA Studies: Language, Literature, Culture between 1997 and 2004 here:
http://www.stauffenburg.de/asp/books.asp?id=958
In the Königshausen & Neumann ZAA Monograph Series, the following volumes were published between 2005 and 2013:

K&N Volumes:

Ulrike Zimmermann.Comic Elements in Women’s Novels of Development from the 1960s to the 1980s. ZAA Monograph Series, 16. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013. ISBN 978-3-8260-5177-7
	Rüdiger Kunow, Stephan Mussil, eds. Text or Context: Reflections on Literary and Cultural Criticism. ZAA Monograph Series, 15. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013. ISBN 978-3-8260-5176-0
Jochen Petzold. Sprechsituationen lyrischer Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur Gattungstypologie. ZAA Monograph Series, 14. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012. ISBN 978-3-8260-5049-7
	Ellen Dengel-Janic. ‘Home Fiction’: Narrating Gendered Space in Anita Desai’s and Shashi Deshpande’s Novels. ZAA Monograph Series, 13. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011. ISBN 978-3-8260-4499-1
Christian Huck. Fashioning Society, or, The Mode of Modernity: Observing Fashion in Eighteenth-Century Britain. ZAA Monograph Series, 12. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010. ISBN 978-3-8260-4458-8
	Günter Leypoldt and Bernd Engler, eds. American Cultural Icons: The Production of Representative Lives. ZAA Monograph Series, 11. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010. ISBN 978-3-8260-4421-2
Stefan Horlacher, ed. „Wann ist eine Frau eine Frau?“ – „Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann?“ Konstruktionen von Geschlechtlichkeit von der Antike bis ins 21. Jahrhundert. ZAA Monograph Series, 10. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010. ISBN 978-3-8260-4416-8
	Philipp Erchinger. Kontingenzformen: Realisierungsweisen des fiktionalen Erzählens bei Nashe, Sterne und Byron. ZAA Monograph Series, 9. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. ISBN 9783826039812
Barbara Korte, Sandra Schaur und Stefan Welz, eds. Britische Literatur in der DDR. ZAA Monograoh Series, 8. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008. ISBN 978-3-8260-3920-1
	Gerhard Stilz, ed. Territorial Terrors: Contested Spaces in Colonial and Postcolonial Writing. ZAA Monograph Series, 7. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. ISBN 978-3-8260-3769-6
Diana von Finck and Oliver Scheiding, eds. Ideas of Order in Contemporary American Poetry. ZAA Monograoh Series, 6. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. ISBN 9783826036521
	Miriam Wallraven. Writing Halfway between Theory and Fiction: Mediating Feminism from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. ZAA Monograph Series, 5. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. ISBN 978-3-8260-3570-8
Dorothea Flothow. Told in Gallant Stories: Erinnerungsbilder des Krieges in britischen Kinder- und Jugendromanen 1870-1939. ZAA Monograph Series, 4. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. ISBN 978-3-8260-3497-8
	Therese Meyer. Where Fiction Ends: Four Scandals of Literary Identitiy Construction. ZAA Monograph Series, 3. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006. ISBN 9783826031649
Dieter Fuchs. Joyce und Menippos: “A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Dog”. ZAA Monograph Series, 2. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006. ISBN 9783826030987
	Horst Trossbach. Von Kruger’s Alp nach Darkest England: Christopher Hopes satirische Romane. ZAA Monograph Series, 1. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,2005. ISBN 3-8260-3035-4