The literature of the New Sensibility (ca. 1965–1975) was deeply inter­twined with popular culture and audio­visual media such as film, pop/rock music, adver­tising graphics, and visual arts. During the first funding period, the subproject estab­lished a canon of this literary formation, conducted an in-depth analysis of Acid: Neue amerika­nische Szene – a seminal anthology framing New Sensi­bility texts as expressions of counter­cultural dissent – and examined the book design of works asso­ciated with the New Sensibility.
Central to the New Sensibility is a funda­mental ambi­valence toward the popular: its embrace of popular culture remains contin­gent on oppo­sition to the preten­sions of high culture. In its second phase, the subproject probes this paradox by analyzing program­matic writings of the New Sensi­bility, 1960s-era news­paper and magazine articles, and literary adapta­tions of popular motifs in exemplary “pop novels.” Additio­nally, it traces the move­ment’s popul­ariza­tion within the “Zwei­tausend­eins culture” of the 1970s – a West German cultural pheno­menon marked by the dissemi­nation of avant-garde and counter­cultural works through afford­able paper­back editions and alter­native distri­bution networks.