Genre - more than just a category in literary history? This volume provides cultural studies confrontations with the concept of genres in Kleist's work. The epistemic charge of the texts goes beyond poetic criteria and pertains to any definition of natures at the intersection of literature, natural history, biology, anthropology, aesthetics, and politics. Thus, figures of transgression, restitution, and incorporation of systems of order, as well as the topographies of border spaces, come into focus. The contributions sharpen the genre question around 1800 based on the Kleist corpus, while also providing new impulses for Kleist research.