twentieth-century German literature, and those who wish to gain insight about the contours of German Studies in the U�S� University of Kansas Marike Janzen Kyle Frackman and Faye Stewart (Eds.): Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 296 pp. $ 90.00. Scholars of East Germany have increasingly turned their attention to issues surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality to open new perspectives on foundational topics like consumer goods, labor, and the relationships between state and society� But so far, questions about gender and sexuality have not been widely applied to East Germany’s film productions, made by the state-sponsored film corporation DEFA� This scholarly omission seems even more surprising when one considers the substantial role that DEFA films play in scholarship on East Germany more generally� Therefore, Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation, edited by Kyle Frackman and Faye Stewart, provides a welcome and insightful first look at how film readings centering around gender and sexuality can lend new perspectives to particular films and also to East German studies more broadly� The volume’s twelve contributions (which began as presentations at the 2015 Summer Film Institute at the DEFA Film Library) cover different decades, approaches to cinema, and theoretical methods� They also embrace the full range of the DEFA catalogue� Popular feature films are studied alongside documentaries, amateur films, and experimental shorts� Even scholars closely familiar with DEFA will likely discover new films in this volume� The contributors develop similar themes across the volume, like gender roles ( John Lessard, Larson Powell), queer relationships (Stewart, Frackman), and the influence of the state and politics on personal lives (Sonja E� Klocke, Jennifer Creech and Sebastian Heiduschke)� Other crucial topics (like the effects of gender in the workplace or moving beyond binary frameworks) are the focal points of individual chapters by Muriel Cormican and Evan Torner� Underlying this strong thematic discussion is also a consideration for change over time� The roughly chronological organization of the chapters shows that issues of gender and sexuality were confronted much more directly in East Germany’s later decades� Several contributors focus on Der Dritte (The Third, 1972), so this film offers the best example of the kinds of insights provided in this volume� In terms of the 406 Reviews film’s plot, Stewart uses gendered and queer readings to reshape its widely accepted meaning� Traditionally, scholars have seen Der Dritte as a film that champions women’s liberation under socialism: the protagonist Margit is a successful single mother, who is free to enter into a third marriage if and with whomever she so chooses� But Stewart instead sees a more ambiguous message� Perhaps the film is about women’s liberation under socialism, Steward writes, and ‘the third’ does indeed refer to Margit’s third husband� At the same time, Stewart also points to the close relationship between Margit and her female best friend, who share an intimate scene, and suggests that ‘the third’ might refer to the romantic connections among Margit, her new husband, and her best friend� For Stewart, the film “validates both the social norm and the queer alternative” (96) and is far richer than ideologically-driven interpretations of it would suggest� Other contributors show how this delicate balancing in the film’s plot was replicated in the making of the film� Victoria I� Rizo Lenshyn demonstrates how East Germany’s film star Jutta Hoffmann (who played Margit in Der Dritte) presented herself in public as a dedicated socialist citizen so as to be allowed to work on films like Der Dritte that had views that could be seen as more experimental, outside of the mainstream, or not adhering to party views� This new reading of East German cinema further clarifies the roles of gender and sexuality in East Germany� Cinema, as a public, widely viewed art form, shows the pervasiveness of discussions about gender, sex, and sexuality in East Germany� Rather than hidden behind closed doors, East German cinema instead presented a wide range of plots, scenes, and subtexts that showed frustrations with gender norms or the desire to talk about relationships beyond heterosexual ones� And yet, the contributors to this volume show that even though these ideas were more widely discussed than either political ideology or historical studies might have suggested, these more permissive attitudes toward gender, sex, and sexuality were far from monolithic� Some movies, for instance, ultimately upheld traditional gender norms: Henning Wrage points out that even as women became more empowered in the 1970s, films continued to suggest women’s inability to foster social change� Yet other films, which seemed on the surface to uphold traditional gender norms, actually played with them� John Lessard uses the presentation of women characters and the work of women in filmmaking to show the subtle ways that plots and productions challenged patriarchal notions of work and gender� This multitude of ideas extended beyond discussions of gender� Kyle Frackman shows how the 1988 documentary Die andere Liebe (The Other Love), the first East German film to look at gay and lesbian experiences in the country, made these communities more visible while also exposing their more general lack of recognition and the extent to which attitudes in East Germany lagged behind those in Western Europe� Reviews 407 As these examples show, the studies in this book make a great contribution to methods for studying East German sources in general, not just when it comes to questions of gender and sexuality� They offer particularly valuable methods for examining sources from a multifaceted viewpoint� Instead of a singular ideological reading, the contributors open up ways to see the ambiguities of everyday life in the state� The many questions that this book poses will likely inspire future projects� Editors Frackman and Stewart suggest areas of research including masculinity studies, sexual violence, and non-binary identities� Another consideration might be the connections between DEFA cinema and everyday experiences� It is clear that the 1970s saw changes in how films dealt with gender and sexuality, but how did these new discussions interact with how East Germans actually lived? Furthermore, while some contributions gesture to international developments, future research might look at East German film in a wider context: what attitudes toward gender and sexuality were particular to East Germany and which were shared within the socialist sphere and beyond, as sexual mores and gender roles changed in the later decades of the twentieth century? The fact that this volume opens up so many productive avenues of research shows how engaging and innovative these contributions are� This study will be important for anyone interested in postwar cinema or East Germany more broadly� Stanford University Colleen Anderson Katya Krylova: The Long Shadow of the Past: Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film, and Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2017. 197 pp. Hardcover $ 90.00. Paperback $ 29.95. With her lucid prose, Katya Krylova skillfully weaves together the historical context with pertinent case studies to illustrate how the selected writers, filmmakers, and creators of public art have engaged with the legacy of the National Socialist past� The Waldheim affair (1986-88), which serves as the point of departure for the volume, resulted in a long-overdue public discrediting of the myth of Austria’s victim status during the National Socialist regime� It was also the impetus for many of the subjects of Krylova’s study to become involved in a variety of protest movements and confront the past in their chosen media� After setting up the historical context with a discussion of the civic engagement following Waldheim’s election, Krylova dedicates five chapters to the exploration of two novels, a play, four films, and eight examples of public art 408 Reviews