This volume contains twenty-three articles that were first presented at the international interdisciplinary symposium "1945-1995: The Changing Faces of German Studies," which the two editors organized at the University of Colorado in 1995. In their preface, Del Caro and Ward explain the symposium's commemoration of Nazi defeat in 1945. They also point to the continuing role the Holocaust and the Nazi period play in lay expectations for those who teach German. In response to these expectations, the editors frame the volume's content with the overriding call to their profession to recognize its ever-increasing diversity, not only in the professoriate, including a need to challenge the mistaken belief that one is a German national if one teaches German, but also in interdisciplinary German-studies curricula across the United States: "Let us resolve to continue this cross-pollination; let us resolve to humanize all studies at the university by breaking down the disciplinary walls, by breaking down the stereotypes" (ix).

The volume's organization into four main sections evidences the innovation, new insights, and expansion of existing disciplinary boundaries called for by the editors in their preface: "Cultural Philosophy and Ideologies of Identity," "Post-Holocaust Identity Debates," "Poetry and Images After Auschwitz," and "Sites of Meta-German Multiplicity." The first section contains articles by two scholars of literature, three historians, and a political scientist and touches on topics ranging from Nietzsche's legacy to anti-Semitism and the judiciary. The most striking feature of this section is the time span encompassed by the various contributions. For example, Robert A. Pois connects attitudes towards war found in responses to World War I and traces this thread through National Socialist ideology. At the opposite end of this time span, Thomas A. Hollweck looks at the response by German intellectuals Jürgen Habermas and Dieter Henrich to post-unification Germany.

In the section "Post-Holocaust Identity Debates," the contributors focus on the German "other" in a number of contexts. Susann Samples looks at Afro-Germans and the pressing need to redefine what constitutes the term "German." Silvia Henke calls for the integration of Else Lasker-Schüler, an author known for the incredible liberties she took with identity both in her person and in her writing, into literary history. Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres explores the relationship between feminism and German studies. Both Todd Herzog and Andreas Michel look at Germans and Jews and the issue of identity.

In "Poetry and Images After Auschwitz," scholars focus on either one or both of the section's themes. With his examination of Paul Celan, an Eastern European Jew whose native language was German, Adrian Del Caro returns to one of the issues broached in the volume's preface: language and identity. Erk Grimm examines recent German poetry in the wake of Paul Celan and Theodor Adorno. In order to question our understanding of how we define Holocaust poetry, Kathrin Bower delves into the dichotomy between testimonies to the Holocaust and works written in response to the Holocaust. Robert Shandley offers a reading of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's polemical book, Vom Unglück und Glück der Kunst in Deutschland nach dem letzten Kriege. In her analysis of Ray Müller's 1993 bio-documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Janet Ward analyzes Müller's intertwinement of documentary footage and interviews with Riefenstahl to undermine Riefenstahl's self-construction.

The final section "Sites of Meta-German Multiplicity" contains a mixed bag of topics. Ann Schmiesing looks at the portrayal of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in Norwegian Literature. In their articles, Martin R. Dean and Karlheinz Auckenthaler argue for the distinctive German literatures of Switzerland and Austria respectively. Canadian universities provide the data for Kari Grimstad's examination of literature in German studies programs, which she argues should not be sacrificed "for the sake of 'relevance' or ease of consumption" (193). Grimstad's article segues to the volume's final three articles, whose focus is once again literary with Jean Wilson's examination of Heinrich von Kleist and Christa Wolf, Alexander Honold's look at Peter Weiss and Uwe Johnson, and Thomas Nolden's analysis of contemporary Jewish literature. This final section takes the tendency apparent in the previous three sections of bringing a diversity of analyses under one heading to an extreme. When read in its entirety, this gives one the impression that the editors simply may have relegated articles which were poor fits with other sections to this catch-all final section.

In sum, German Studies in the Post-Holocaust Age: The Politics of Memory, Identity, and Ethnicity achieves the goals the editors established in their preface. The contributors represent a variety of disciplines and explore a breadth and depth of "texts" spanning decades, nationalities, identities, and genres. Furthermore, the selection of texts for each section reinforces the editors' efforts to expand the borders of German studies. An added bonus is that all contributions and quotations in languages other than English have been translated, resulting in a volume truly accessible to scholars across the boundaries of discipline and language the editors hope to break down.