Cultural Studies

Luther used and coined a rich arsenal of battle names and pejorative terms with which he labelled his 'radical' opponents and through which he marked 'deviation' from his own position. Thomas Hahn-Bruckart explores these and other strategies of linguistic inclusion and exclusion to trace how identity and alterity was marked and contoured in the early Wittenberg Reformation.

Digitalization changes retail contracting. Where consumers used to buy exclusive use (as ownership) through salespeople, they now often lease or license use (as services) directly from a producer. Do new business models force us to reassess our contract typology? Scholars of business and law jointly explore this question in this interdisciplinary volume.

Paul von Otting is the first to present a comprehensive monograph on the cultural history of the (late) ancient death penalty, critically revising the prevailing conception of a regime of violence during this period. In addition, he determines the place of capital punishment within the changing society and culture of the late antique world, offering new insights into the nature of pre-modern criminal justice.

Punishment is seen as being a matter of course. As the saying goes, whoever will not hear must feel. However, the contradiction embodied here is rarely voiced. After all, reacting to experienced suffering with punitive pain shows that the law is still based on a myth today: it believes it can bring vulnerable subjects to their senses through suffering and in this way do justice to the existential plight of the victims. A law that recognizes this contradiction must find other answers.