Forum: New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Literature, Culture, and Theory Edited by Carl Niekerk; with contributions by Birgit Tautz, Nicholas Rennie, Joel B. Lande, Beate I. Allert, Mary Helen Dupree, Elisabeth Krimmer, Martin Wagner, and Ellwood Wiggins The Local and the Global—or the Persistent Relevance of the Eighteenth Century Very few literary scholars (and interested non-specialists!) would dispute the eigh- teenth century’s relevance to German literature and culture: the century proved fruitful not just for any notion of German national literature to emerge, but also for the broader concept of Kulturnation to take hold. 1800/1900 has served as a stark reminder—and entirely outside any Kittlerian paradigm—that national as- piration preceded the reality of national unity by at least 100 years. Over the last few decades, numerous alternate narratives and literary histories of the “German” eighteenth century have been proposed. Their variety itself is impressive; their quantity no less. Some contours emerge: on the one hand, these histories have exposed the monolithic, exclusionary underpinnings of “canon formation” (itself a problematic shorthand for “literary tradition”). On the other hand, scholars had to content with a practice—definitely in German Studies (or, if you will, Aus- landsgermanistik)—that has witnessed the pressure to engage, rather actively, with questions of relevance. In turn, sometimes and all too easily, this quest has led to an obsession with the contemporary, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Despite these scholarly fault lines, eighteenth-century German cultural studies are alive and well. Many novel approaches remain mindful of the rich scholarly legacy engendered by German national literature and its historiography originat- ing in philology, while intersecting both with other disciplines and an expanded notion of the literary field that diversifies questions of genre and authorship. Among these approaches, one stands out, at least to me. It chips away at the pre- rogative that views the German literary and cultural tradition from the vantage point of an “absent” nation around 1800. Instead of pivoting to the ideal of a po- litically unified territory that prided itself of shared identity and language—of a sensus communis or Nationalstaat—this approach seeks to tell literature and cul- ture’s story from different, interwoven angles. What if, rather than working with an imaginary nation, we proceeded from eighteenth-century spaces that confined and inspired most literary and cultural activity, namely the local and the global? The former stands for limited horizons, literally defined by city walls that only gradually were taken down in the course of the eighteenth century. The latter points to expansive aspirations and thought experiments as well as actual global activities, exploration and exchange, transactions and translations. I have told 255 Te German Quarterly 93.2 (Spring 2020) ©2020, American Association of Teachers of German