German Language and Literature Commons^™

2021 Seccll Conference Program, Seccll Conference

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

Conference program for the 2021 SECCLL.

Die Erotik, Lou Andreas-Salomé

Essays

No abstract provided.

Olga Beloborodova, Editor. The Making Of Samuel Beckett’S Play/Comédie And Film. Bloomsbury, 2019., S. E. Gontarski

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Olga Beloborodova, editor. The Making of Samuel Beckett’s Play/Comédie and Film. Bloomsbury, 2019. 352 pp.

Intolerable Histories And Imperfect Narratives: Nationhood, Identity, And The Integrity Of Law In Post-Vichy France And Beyond, Kaela S. Holmen

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The principal aim of this thesis project is to examine the socio-legal context of the Vichy regime in World War II France, and to provide an understanding of how that context informed, and continues to inform, the integrity of French nationhood. With Ernest Renan’s oubli serving as a framework for the solidification of nationhood, I will demonstrate that the betrayals to French law and custom that were committed in an attempt to right the wrongs of the Vichy resulted in an imperfect forgetting, and ultimately, a more fragmented national sense of self. I contend that this imperfect oubli resulting from …

Readings Of (Non-)Consumption In Jan-Ole Gerster's Oh Boy (2012), Christopher Etheredge

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis consists of a series of close readings of consumptive acts in Jan-Ole Gerster’s debut film, Oh Boy (2012). I argue that the analysis of consumptive acts enables the viewer to develop a more nuanced understanding of the characters and their relationships to one another. Furthermore, these consumptive acts shift our understanding of other themes present within the film, such as the characters’ confrontations with their past and with feelings of guilt. Confrontations with the past have played a large role in many scholars’ and interpreters’ understanding of the film, as it encourages in some ways reading Oh Boy …

Between The Axe And The Anvil: Internal Reconstructions Of Modern Subjectivity In Alfred DöBlin's Berlin, Alexanderplatz, Zachary Lopez

Honors Projects

Berlin, Alexanderplatz holds a unique place in literary history; for despite being considered one of the major Gro√üstadt‚Äîor big city‚Äînovels of the modernist period, it has largely been forgotten. Between the Axe and the Anvil: Internal (Re)constructions of Modern Subjectivity in Berlin, Alexanderplatz is an essay that grapples with the problem of subjectivity within the city‚Äîa problem that is peculiarly similar to the novel‚Äôs, as both seem to have been lost amidst the buildings and crowds of Weimar Berlin. By reading the text as a dialectic between the social pressures of modernization and the spatiality of the city, Berlin, Alexanderplatz …

Maria Stehle And Beverly Weber. Precarious Intimacies: The Politics Of Touch In Contemporary Western European Cinema. Northwestern Up, 2020., Paul Ardoin

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber. Precarious Intimacies: The Politics of Touch in Contemporary Western European Cinema. Northwestern UP, 2020. 197 pp.

Assimilating To Art-Religion: Jewish Secularity And Edgar Zilsel’S Geniereligion (1918), Abigail Fine

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1918, Edgar Zilsel—a Marxist-Jewish philosopher who was soon to be exiled from Vienna—published a sociological study that later readers have found prescient of fascism. In Die Geniereligion (“The Religion of Genius”), Zilsel cautioned against the hidden dangers of elevating secular figures to the status of deities. As early as 1912, Zilsel was disturbed by how art-religion shaped music culture: his earliest published essay ruminated on timelessness and canonicity, on striving for heavenly tones while cast down to the earthly squalor of the concert hall. Indeed, in Zilsel’s Vienna, art-religion had come to dominate the music world—biographers made Beethoven a …

The Thematic Changes In Defa Cinema, David Hillman

Honors Theses

This presentation examines the evolving themes in the films produced by the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) film monopoly Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) from its founding in 1946 through German Reunification in 1990. It analyzes ten films that span a variety of genres, including the ‘rubble films’ (Trümmerfilme), fairy tale films (Märchenfilme), and the GDR-American westerns (Indianerfilme). They are also reflective of the different periods of GDR politics in which they were made, such as the brief GDR ‘New Wave’, the banned films of the mid-1960’s, and the push for films addressing contemporary society (Gegenwartsfilme …

Critical Climates: Stimmung, Voice And Mythopoesis In German Literature From 1950–1989, Marc Cesar Rickenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Critical Climates examines the interest in myth among a number of literary figures from 1950 to 1989 in relation to the concurrent re-emergence of the German aesthetic concept of Stimmung. At once referring to atmosphere, milieu, mood, disposition and harmony, while carrying along its root Stimme, or voice, this dissertation shows how Stimmung informed a literary practice among German-language authors that engaged the relationship between narrative, ideology and collective moods in a way that can be spoken of in terms of a mythopoesis. This project builds upon contemporary scholarship that focuses on Stimmung as a way to refigure …

Contrasting Spaces In Plautdietsch: Language Variation And Change, Roslyn Burns

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

In this article, I explore linguistic variation in Plautdietsch through the lens of social variation and the resulting redistribution of linguistic forms across the community. Language change requires variation in a population and a social pathway for the variation to be distributed (or redistributed) across a community. This article explores two systems of variation in the Plautdietsch language as it is used across North America: the so-called traditional dialect system (based on descriptions from Thiessen 1977, Epp 1993, and Rempel 1995, among others), and the vowel system (based on Nieuweboer 1998, Burns 2016a,b, among others). I propose that linguistic diversification …

The Counter-Discourses Of Fictional And Autofictional Contemporary German Refugee Narratives: The Slow Violence Of Postponement, Bethany Morgan

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Whereas the public discourses surrounding refugees encompass notions of legitimacy and proving the need for asylum, potential for an individual to enact violence on the host community or country as well as integration and standards for measuring individual integration, the discourse and language used by the refugee figures themselves focuses on issues of self-representation, loss and various wrongs done to themselves. These fictional and autofictional texts position the refugee figure in light of their identity, their loss(es) and the ways they have endured wrongdoing to their physical persons either through violence and imprisonment or through overly rigorous or disorganized bureaucratic …

Der Glockenspielmord, Rachel L. Morgan

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

In the city of Munich Germany, diary and journal entries written by an artist named Max Pfeiffer are found, detailing the horrendous way in which he created his first statue for the world-famous Glockenspiel on Marienplatz.

Stell Dir Vor, Du Müsstest Eine Woche Ohne Internet Leben. Was Wären Die Herausforderungen? Was Würdest Du Vermissen? Was Würdest Du Gewinnen?, Aistis Sadausk

COD in Lingua

Obtaining a college degree from a foreign university is the dream of many young adults. Studying abroad could be challenging at times; however, it is associated with numerous benefits. This essay explores the possibility of studying in a foreign country. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of obtaining a college degree from a foreign university.

Wollen Sie Im Ausland Studieren? Welche Vorteile Hat Ein Studium Im Ausland? Welche Nachteile Sind Dabei?, Aistis Sadausk

COD in Lingua

Obtaining a college degree from a foreign university is the dream of many young adults. Studying abroad could be challenging at times; however, it is associated with numerous benefits. This essay explores the possibility of studying in a foreign country. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of obtaining a college degree from a foreign university.

Studium Im Ausland, Lara Echten

COD in Lingua

Obtaining a college degree from an US university is the dream of many European students. This paper explores the challenges and benefits associated with a potential course of study in some of the leading universities in the USA. The author describes the difficulties she endured, and the advantages an international education would provide to her.

The Inner Tragic Of The Sturm Und Drang And Its Dramatic Trilogy: Lenz’S Die Soldaten, Schiller’S Die Räuber, And Goethe’S Faust I, Charles Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

My research examines three German dramas – J. M. R. Lenz’s Die Soldaten (1776), Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber (1781), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: eine Tragödie (1808). The three plays exhibit with remarkable parallel a three-phase dramatic structure that serves as the inner framework for a tragic process. This shared inner tragic process is suggestive evidence of an enlightening intertextuality within the purview of the Sturm und Drang. Featuring prominently in this tragic trilogy of the Sturm und Drang is Lenz, the tragic innovator whose template for inner tragic not only influences works of literature in this sequence of …

Mehr Als Ein Spiel: Far-Left And Far-Right Football Subcultures In Germany, Daisy Garner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes Germany’s far-left and far-right football subcultures and how their expressions are shaped by Germany’s laws, policies, and social taboos. After World War II, Germany’s efforts to overcome or to work through its history of political extremism and authoritarian governments (Vergangenheitsbewältigung/Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung) has resulted in laws and policies intended to restore Germany’s national image, protect democratic institutions, and prevent another mass atrocity like the Holocaust. These laws are against political extremism as a whole, including left-wing political extremism, but many of these laws are aimed at restricting far-right political extremism de jure because they address hate speech. However, despite …

Understanding German-Turkish Identity In The Context Of Deutschrap, Alena Tien Vu

Honors Theses

Since its emergence in the 1980s, Deutschrap has been used by German-Turkish rap artists as a medium to reflect their views and identity. What is understood as the German-Turkish identity has been put up for debate as to whether it can be labeled as assimilated, integrated or something else entirely. By doing a close reading and analysis of three songs each from German-Turkish rap artists Alpa Gun, Eko Fresh and Mert, it is found that these three artists can be categorized as Ayhan Kaya’s hybrid-, boundaries-, and flows- transmigrant identity, respectively. This also shows that the German-Turkish identity is not …

Gay Identity In The Gdr: The Homosexuelle Interessengemeinschaft Berlin Between Self-Expression And State Control, Susanna Cassisa

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the Homosexuelle Interessengemeinschaft Berlin (HIB), the

first gay liberation group in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Specifically, it analyzes the demands and tactics of the HIB alongside London Gay Liberation Front activist Peter Tatchell at the tenth World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) in 1973. This study analyzes four primary sources: 1) the HIB’s banner from the WFYS, 2) the leaflet Tatchell distributed at the WFYS, 3) Tatchell’s placard from the WFYS, and 4) a 1978 letter from the HIB to the People’s Chamber arguing for a socialist information center geared toward a homosexual patronage. I …