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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Unraveling Paradise: Colonialism And Disguise In German Language Literature, Brigita Kant
Unraveling Paradise: Colonialism And Disguise In German Language Literature, Brigita Kant
Honors Projects
For centuries, the Pacific Islands have been disguised by Europeans through the trope of “island paradise." Despite Europe’s role in bringing colonization and racial oppression to Oceania, the dominant narrative has been that Pacific Islanders lead simple lives, untouched from the complicated aspects of the “modern world.” This narrative has enabled White outsiders to fantasize about the Pacific Islands as a place for personal denial of Western social conventions, simultaneously allowing White European men to fetishize and possess Pacific Island culture and identity. My honors project will closely examine three fictional German language texts- Haimotochare (1819), Der Papalagi (1920) …
Transforming The Humane: Human/Animal Relationships In Marlen Haushofer’S Die Wand And Franz Kafka’S Die Verwandlung, Joosep R. Vorno
Transforming The Humane: Human/Animal Relationships In Marlen Haushofer’S Die Wand And Franz Kafka’S Die Verwandlung, Joosep R. Vorno
Honors Projects
In this project, I investigate Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (1915) and Marlen Haushofer’s Die Wand (1963) through a magic realist interpretive strategy. I identify how, as a result of a mysterious opening premise, the two texts accomplish a human/animal transformation in the protagonists. While the transformations differ in several aspects, even at times being direct opposites, the way in which the characters navigate their new nonhuman selves poses many important questions about care and humaneness, the human condition, and social and familial structures. By drawing on discussions of magic realism – from its roots in Weimar German art criticism, its …