This collection brings together international scholars pursuing cutting-edge research on spatial identities under National Socialism. They demonstrate that the spatial identities of the Third Reich can be approached as a history of interrelated dimensions; Heimat, region and Empire were constantly reconstructed through this interrelationship.

The German notion of ‘Heimat’ is highly subjective, ambiguous and historically charged. Senses of belonging and identity associated with Heimat render the concept vulnerable to appropriation and instrumentalization by different political forces. Thereby, a static and exclusive understanding of Heimat is often depicted. This book drafts a counternarrative to demystify the contested concept. On the one hand, Heimat is conceptualized as spatial through emotional-geographical approaches to human-place relations. And on the other hand, the concept is placed in a global context through the perspective of international migration. The author contributes to the understanding of Heimat as an emotional map of self-location. This subjective map is neither purely static nor dynamic - it is characterized by simultaneities of opposing processes.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) was one of the most influential southern writers, widely considered to rival his contemporary, William Faulkner-who believed Wolfe to be one of the greatest talents of their generation. His novels- including Look Homeward, Angel (1929); Of Time and the River (1935); and the posthumously published The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940)-remain touchstones of U.S. literature. In Look Abroad, Angel, Jedidiah Evans uncovers the "global Wolfe," reconfiguring Wolfe's supposedly intractable homesickness for the American South as a form of longing that is instead indeterminate and expansive. Instead of promoting and reinforcing a narrow and cloistered formulation of the writer as merely southern or Appalachian, Evans places Wolfe in transnational contexts, examining Wolfe's impact and influence throughout Europe. In doing so, he de-territorializes the response to Wolfe's work, revealing the writer as a fundamentally global presence within American literature.

Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present. A wide range of internationally renowned scholars from the USA, the UK and mainland Europe are brought together here in one volume to examine the historical roots of the current regional movements, and to explain why some of them - Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders, among others – evolve into nationalist movements and even strive for independence, while others – Brittany, Bavaria – do not. They look at how regional identities - through regional folklore, language, crafts, dishes, beverages and tourist attractions - were constructed during the 20th century and explore the relationship between national and subnational identities, as well as regional and local identities. The book also includes 7 images, 7 maps and useful end-of-chapter further reading lists. This is a crucial text for anyone keen to know more about the history of the topical – and at times controversial – subject of regionalism in modern Europe.

This is an in-depth study of the ethnic German minority in the Serbian Banat (Southeast Europe) and its experiences under German occupation in World War II. Mirna Zakić argues that the Banat Germans exercised great agency within the constraints imposed on them by Nazi ideology, with its expectations that ethnic Germans would collaborate with the invading Nazis. The book examines the incentives that the Nazis offered to collaboration and social dynamics within the Banat German community - between their Nazified leadership and the rank and file - as well as the various and ever-more damning forms collaboration took. The Banat Germans provided administrative and economic aid to the Nazi war effort, and took part in Nazi military operations in Yugoslav lands, the Holocaust and Aryanization. They ruled the Banat on the Nazis' behalf between 1941 and 1944, yet their wartime choices led ultimately to their disenfranchisement and persecution following the Nazis' defeat.

The essays in Nationalizing Empires challenge the dichotomy between empire and nation state that for decades has dominated historiography. The authors center their attention on nation-building in the imperial core and maintain that the nineteenth century, rather than the age of nation-states, was the age of empires and nationalism. They identify a number of instances where nation building projects in the imperial metropolis aimed at the preservation and extension of empires rather than at their dissolution or the transformation of entire empires into nation states. Such observations have until recently largely escaped theoretical reflection.

This book examines Nazi Germany's expansion, population management and establishment of a racially stratified society within the Reichsgaue (Reich Districts) of Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia in annexed Poland (1939-1945) through a colonial lens. The topic of the Holocaust has thus far dominated the scholarly debate on the relevance of colonialism for our understanding of the Nazi regime. However, as opposed to solely concentrating on violence to investigate whether the Holocaust can be located within wider colonial frameworks, Rachel O'Sullivan utilizes a broader approach by investigating other aspects, such as discourses and fantasies related to expansion, settlement, 'civilising missions' and Germanisation, which were also intrinsic to Nazi Germany's rule in Poland. The resettlement of the ethnic Germans-individuals of German descent who lived in Eastern Europe until the outbreak of the Second World War-forms a main focal point for this study's analysis and investigation of colonial comparisons. The ethnic German resettlement in the Reichsgaue laid the foundations for the establishment and enforcement of German society and culture, while simultaneously intensifying the efforts to control Poles and remove Jews. Through this case study, O'Sullivan explores Nazi Germany's dual usage of inclusionary policies, which attempted to culturally and linguistically integrate ethnic Germans and certain Poles into German society, and the contrasting exclusionary policies, which sought to rid annexed Poland of 'undesirable' population groups through segregation, deportation and murder. The book compares these policies - and the tactics used to implement them - to colonial and settler colonial methods of assimilation, subjugation and violence.