German Literature Commons^™

The Small Worlds Of Childhood: Philosophy, Poetics, And The Queer Temporalities Of Early Life, Lauren Shizuko Stone

Gender & Sexuality

The Small Worlds of Childhood argues that prose representations of bourgeois childhood contain surprising opportunities to reflect on the temporality of experience. In their narratives of children at home in their everyday worlds, Adalbert Stifter, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Walter Benjamin are not only able to shed a unique light on key issues in the history of philosophy. They also offer a queer critique of the normative expectation that the literature of childhood is oriented toward the future.

Stone shows that when writers engage in philosophical storytelling, showing children tarrying in quotidian experience, they dislodge childhood from its nostalgic value …

German Poetry In Musical Motion, Caden J. Lantz

Musical Offerings

The musical era of Romanticism leaped forward from the individuality of Beethoven and developed composers that were unafraid of expressing their passions through their music. The leading figures of Romanticism, like Schubert and Liszt, no longer saw themselves as servants of their audiences but instead made it their goal to show what they loved in their music. Even despite the stark individualism that was prevalent in this era, there was a shared passion many composers had that was able to unify them, a love for poetry. By studying emotive vocal genres like the German Lied as well as the influences …

From “Total Destruction” To “Total Dictatorship”: The Influence Of Ernst Jünger’S Visionary Fascism, Nick Schiff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to answer one central question: How can the life and work of Ernst Jünger help illuminate the development of fascist ideas, culture, politics, and power across Europe from 1920-1945? The components of that question are: what were the core elements of Jünger’s aesthetics, morality, and politics? How did he synthesize these elements to create his influential vision of German fascism? What were Jünger’s interactions and exchanges with other European fascists, as well as influential Nazis including Carl Schmitt, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolph Hitler himself? How did Jünger’s new Fascist politics and aesthetics affect them? I argue that …

Wordflight, Joey Gonnella

Theses and Dissertations

Exploring subjects revolving around the nature of images, language and their subsequent disseminationn through time, this paper weaves together seemingly unrelated topics from the hot air balloons of the Franco-Prussian war to the envelope poems of Emily Dickinson.

Identität In Schwarz Und Weiß: Die Übersetzung Der Afro-Deutschen Identität In Den Werken Von May Ayim, Mia Ver Pault

Senior Theses and Projects

Many parts of our being are attached to how we identify and with whom we identify. Theoretically, how we identify is based largely on one’s own choices, but such freedom is not always the case. Unfortunately, identity is often imposed upon one by the surrounding racial and ethnic majority. Like many non-white people in a white environment, this was the case for the German poet and activist, May Ayim. May Ayim (1960-1996) was born to a white German mother and a black Ghanian father. Although Ayim spoke German, grew up in Germany, and was fully acculturated into German society, she …

Defining Humanity: A Postwar Reconstruction Of The Faust Myth, Mason F. Hockett

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Homemade Language, Conservative Fro-Yo, And Sci-Fi Sloths: How Speculative Migration Fiction Confronts The Ends Of Worlds By Challenging The Nation-State, Zoe R. Scheuerman

English Honors Projects

This English literature thesis project explores an emerging, genre-defying body of fiction which I call “speculative migration fiction.” Speculative migration fiction imagines how ongoing global developments like climate change, technological development, and war may shape future migrations. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s conception of national culture, Wendy Brown’s theory of the border, and Caroline Levine’s understanding of literary form, as well as close readings from Scattered All Over the Earth by Yōko Tawada, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, and 2 A.M. in Little America by Ken Kalfus, I argue that transnational migrations move toward becoming postnational migrations as migrants evade border …

Paul Celan And The Processes Of Survival In Post-Shoah Jewish Writing, Ari Savage

Theses

The following is a study of the poetry of Paul Celan as a representation of psychological and social processes present in the written works of Shoah survivors. It begins with an analysis of the place of writing in Jewish culture, then identifies three primary processes which operate in sequence: alienation, individuation, and integration. By examining Paul Celan’s highly personal and autobiographical texts in the context of his life experience as a Shoah survivor it is possible to discern the social and psychological forces at work which compel survivors to express their traumas in written form, and to gain a better …

An Exploration Of Horror In Franz Kafka’S "The Metamorphosis", Christa M. Neumann

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Readers often identify Gregor’s vermin body as the only horrific element in Franz Kafka’s “The
Metamorphosis.” But what about the walls that he lives in? This study will deemphasize the horror of Kafka’s creature and offer new themes to consider. The following collects scholarship around Kafka’s time to understand how he used the domestic space to create horror. It includes studies on Gothic literature and Freud’s term “unheimlich” from his essay “The Uncanny.” The findings bring light to a type of horror often overlooked – the horror in the liminal, the “in- between” state of being. This space belongs to …

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

Multilingual Lifeworlds And Textual Monolingualism: Pseudotranslation In Katerina Poladjan, Olga Grjasnowa, And Nino Haratischwili, Marie-Christine Boucher

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

A great deal of existing research on literary multilingualism focuses on the explicit presence of multiple languages in literary works. Yet these texts represent only a relatively marginal portion of contemporary literary production. To focus on this rare literary phenomenon neglects the fact that literary systems pressure most authors to write increasingly monolingual texts—which does not preclude them from portraying scenes of everyday multilingual life. Rather than rendering different languages directly in the text, however, this multilingualism is often excluded: in a monolingual (literary) world, authors translate worldly multilingualism into textual monolingualism. I analyze the distinct strategies authors employ in …

Sttcl Editorial Board

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

STTCL Editorial Board

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Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

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Collective, Collage, And Translative Authorship: Writing To And From Multilingual Europe, Jamie H. Trnka

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Letters to Europe (2011) is a collectively authored, transnational literary engagement with Europe as an idea, a place, and a set of socio-political relationships. A print publication and performance, the ambivalent generic status of the Brussels-based project raises productive questions about how collective translation, transnational authorship, and multimedial performance strategies combine to advance new modes of aesthetic and political representation for subjects in transit in twenty-first century Europe. I argue for attention to multilingual and multimedial translations as sites of creative self-documentation on the part of mobile subjects as a critical counterpoint to state-sanctioned forms of documentality (Favorini). To that …

Martin Kagel And David Z. Saltz, Editors. Open Wounds. Holocaust Theater And The Legacy Of George Tabori. University Of Michigan Press, 2022., Janine Wulz

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz, editors. Open Wounds. Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori. University of Michigan Press, 2022.

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Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

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Special Focus Introduction: Translating Multilingualism, Yasemin Yildiz

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Special Focus Introduction: Translating Multilingualism

Nichole Coleman. The Right To Difference: Interculturality And Human Rights In Contemporary German Literature. University Of Michigan Press, 2021., Priscilla D. Layne

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Nichole Coleman. The Right to Difference: Interculturality and Human Rights in Contemporary German Literature. University of Michigan Press, 2021. 270 pp.

To Give Birth To A Dancing Star: Nietzsche’S Linguistic Deliverance, Bella Bergen

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies and The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College

Faithful Partner: The Role And Agency Of Pastors' Wives In The Protestant Reformation, Elizabeth M. Dubendorfer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis explores the critical yet often overlooked roles of pastors' wives during the Protestant Reformation, focusing on three key figures: Katharina von Bora, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Elisabeth Cruciger. It examines how these women navigated the complexities of Reformation-era Germany, blending traditional gender roles with new practices that emerged from their unique positions as clerical spouses. By investigating their personal histories, theological contributions, and community engagements, the thesis demonstrates that these pioneering women established a distinct archetype for pastors' wives. This archetype was characterized by a profound commitment to faith, an expanded view of motherhood and wifely duties, and …