Arts and Humanities Commons^™

I Read To You, And You Relax: Interactive Teacher Read-Alouds Of Picture Books In The Undergraduate Foreign Language Classroom, Mareike Geyer

Doctoral Dissertations

Research Area: This dissertation investigates interactive teacher read-alouds of picture books in the undergraduate foreign language classroom. It focused on reading comprehension and read-aloud enjoyment.

Study Design: The study was conducted in four in-person German language classes at a U.S. university. It consisted of six weekly read-alouds interventions that took place over the time span of 7 weeks. During the interventions, one German picture book was read interactively to the students.

Data Collection Instruments: Reading comprehension was measured with a pre-test and a post-test and read-aloud enjoyment was measured with a pre-intervention survey and a post-intervention survey.

Results: The findings …

Postmortem Objectification: A Spectacle Of Human Remains In German Museums, Helen Martin

Masters Theses

The net of scientific entitlement is woven from a single thread that extends from German colonialism to present-day exhibits like Körperwelten. The work of physical anthropologists in Germany and the development of the field from the late 1800s offers insight into the creation and continuity of scientific entitlement to the body of individuals deemed to be ‘others’. Museums and their exhibits embody the intentionality of the curators and researchers, and communicate these intentions to the visitors through curation and exhibit design choices. The inclusion of human remains in exhibits should be considered carefully as to be respectful of the individuals, …

“Vom Verstehen Rede Ich Vorsichtshalber Nicht”: Discourses Of Memory And German-Jewish Literature In Selected Literary Award Speeches By Barbara Honigmann, Achim Schmid

Masters Theses

The literary prize speeches of German-Jewish author Barbara Honigmann make up only a small part of her mainly narrative oeuvre, yet they are relevant to her writing. On the one hand, they provide insights into the difficulties of being a German-Jewish author in the twenty-first century, on the other hand, they are also politically significant. In them, Honigmann recalls the crimes of the National Socialists against the Jewish population during the Third Reich, as well as the suffering under the socialist dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic.

Analyzing three of her speeches that were delivered between 2001 and 2015 in …

Filmmaking As A Practice In Critical Theory, Cora M. Lay

Masters Theses

This multi-part project pulls together all my fields of research under the umbrella of my ultimate interest– agriculture and its future. The film portion focuses on regional and seasonal agriculture in Southern Germany near Lake Constance. It focuses on several families who do small-scale agricultural production utilizing various methods but ultimately touches on our current disconnect from our food systems and nature. The written portion found in this document focuses on filmmaking as a practice in critical theory, a tool to visualize what written theory cannot. Filming happened over a three-week period in Summer 2021for the portion shot in Germany. …

Mephistopheles' Atopy, Allotry, Lottery. On Textual Proliferations In Goethe's Faust I And Ii, Pasqual Solass

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Combining a careful reading of selected passages from Goethe’s Faust I and II and of marginal but nevertheless revealing lines on maybe the actual protagonist of the “Tragödie”, Mephistopheles, this paper aims to present aspects of what one could call Goethe’s vision of a modern devil. Taking departure from etymological considerations on the root of “diabolus”, i.e. diabállein, meaning to cast apart, to scatter, but also to accuse, as well as from different beliefs of German “Aberglaube” (superstition), it will become clear that one if not the major feature of Goethe’s Mephistopheles-figure is movement, not just …

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.

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 …

Bundesgartenschau Mannheim (1975): Sustainable Urban Development Through A Horticultural Festival, Aubrey Sofia Bader

Haslam Scholars Projects

The purpose of this research was to analyze the success of the 1975 Mannheim Bundesgartenschau (BUGA-MA), a highly visible and popular BUGA then and now, in achieving sustainable development. A BUGA is a German Federal Horticulture Show, but it is not simply a one-time exhibition; it is a full-time commitment to sustainable development in German cities and regions. BUGAs are complex undertakings, involving national and regional players, and they are fine-tuned to the sustainable needs of their respective location and culture. This presentation will outline the key tenets of sustainability addressed by BUGAs and analyze the degree of their success …

Das Ist Doch Trivial! Wie Walter Moers Mithilfe Der Intertextualität Mit Der Grenze Zwischen Hoch- Und Trivialliteratur Spielt, Isabell Stoll

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes two novels by contemporary German author Walter Moers, Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (City of Dreaming Books) (2004) and Das Labyrinth der Träumenden Bücher (Labyrinth of Dreaming Books) (2011).

Thus far, there only exists a relatively meager corpus of research on Moers because his texts have often been marginalized as ‘trivial.’ Moers only recently started to receive more attention in scholarly contexts and this thesis intents to help filling this still existing void.

This thesis starts with an overview of Walter Moers as an author, his works in general, and focuses on the two novels Stadt der …

Studentinnen, Student*Innen, Or Student_Innen: How Six German Universities Are Constructing Gender Equitable Language And Increasing Female Linguistic And Visual Representation, Julia Goncalves

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Vom Kreativen Umgang Mit ,Gott‘ Eine Analyse Der Behandlung (Christlicher) Moralbegriffe In Ausgewählten Werken Lou Andreas-Salomés, Silke Gudrun Seibold

Masters Theses

Lou Andreas-Salomé is widely known for her ties to famous German authors and scholars such as Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud. However, literary critics often fail to recognize Andreas-Salomé’s own authorship. This thesis tries to paint a more nuanced picture of the author by putting her literary works at the center of attention, tracing one of the predominant topics of her literary works – questions of Christian morality. It assesses the changes in how Andreas-Salomé negotiates questions of Christian morality in those of her works that make this a central theme, namely Im Kampf um Gott (1885), Aus fremder Seele ( …

Selbstinszenierung Im Deutschrap: Konstruktion Von Identität Und Authentizität Im Subgenre Des Gangstaraps Am Beispiel Von Kollegah Und Xatar, Sladana Gnjatic

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the construction of identity in German Gangsta rap by taking a close look at the rappers Kollegah and Xatar, who are both using their music for self-portrayal. The selection of those two rappers can be justified by their commercial success in Germany and further by their differences as well as similarities in the construction of their images. The first chapter gives a historical overview of American and German rap. It also analyzes specific features and trends in German rap and describes the current status of research. The focus of the second chapter is on the rapper Kollegah, …

Hysterie Und Zaubertränke: Hofmannsthals Ägyptische Helena Als Therapiegeschichte, Raphael Johannes Mueller

Masters Theses

In this thesis, Die ägyptische Helena by Hugo von Hofmannsthal is read as the story of the healing process of the main character Menelas. The main hypothesis states that Hofmannsthal designed the mental disease of Menelas according to the theory of hysteria that Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud described in their Studies on Hysteria (Studien über Hysterie, published in 1895). In the treatment of Menelas’ disease, magic potions play a crucial role. The thesis argues that although those potions are similar to psychotropic drugs, Hofmannsthal refers much more to the potions in Richard Wagner’s operas Tristan und Isolde …

Sketches, Impressions And Confessions: Literature As Experiment In The Nineteenth Century, Andrew Ragsdale Lallier

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue for the existence and critical relevance of a program of experimental literature in the long nineteenth century, developed in the aesthetics of German Romanticism and adapted in a set of texts by Thomas De Quincey, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. My introduction positions this argument in context of larger debates concerning form, theory and literary capacity, provides points of connection between these authors, and outlines the most prominent features of experimental literature. In the first chapter, I present an unorthodox reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, accompanied by a brief account of the literary-critical …

Mädchen Und Girls: Gender In Serie, Lisa Jasmin Merkel

Masters Theses

Gender topics are an often discussed theme in both the English as well as in the German speaking world. Academic research in the discipline of media studies is addressing gender questions in film, TV series and media in general. In recent years gender media studies grew in a number of directions. This thesis discusses how women, specifically their negotiations of conventional gender roles in romantic relationships and in the work place are depicted in contemporary American and German TV series and what it means for societal development. It discusses the German telenovela Verliebt in Berlin (SAT.1, 2005-2007) which was adapted …

‚Literarisch Inszenierte Sprachbiographien’ Familiengedächtnis, Liebe Und Stadt In Dimitré Dinevs Engelszungen, Marica Bodrožićs Das Gedächtnis Der Libellen Und Ilma Rakusas Mehr Meer. Erinnerungspassagen, Anja Katharina Seiler

Doctoral Dissertations

Literary characters as well as the realities that surround them can be portrayed and developed through the lense(s) of the languages that these characters speak and experience. This dissertation analyzes such ‘literarily enacted language biographies’ (‘Sprachbiographien’) in the following German texts: Engelszungen by Dimitré Dinev (2003), Das Gedächtnis der Libellen by Marica Bodrožić (2010) and Mehr Meer: Erinnerungspassagen by Ilma Rakusa (2009).

Drawing upon current research that focuses on literary multilingualism as well as language biographies, this dissertation analyzes which literary strategies Dinev, Bodrožić and Rakusa employ in these texts to narratively (re)construct the protagonists’ language biographies. Three common thematic …

Kiezdeutsh In Den Kinos Und Auf Den Strassen: Mediendiskurse Zu Einer Neuen Sprechweise Und Ihre Darstellung Im Film, Andrew Simon Lubben

Masters Theses

The rapid and unique development of so-called “Jugendsprachen” (youth languages) in multicultural city spaces across Europe has been documented extensively in the past decade, receiving immense attention from linguists and the general public alike. As with countless other language registers, which from a grammatical standpoint depart from the accepted language norm, such “Jugendsprachen” have met with intense scrutiny and skepticism as to their legitimacy as expressive forms—a condition which is explored in this paper through a media discourse analysis of one such youth language: “Kiezdeutsch” or “hood German”. Spoken primarily in metropolitan areas such as Berlin and Stuttgart, “Kiezdeutsch” suffers …

Zwischen Zugeständnis Und Zurückhaltung: Der Bayerische Schriftsteller Georg Britting Und Die Innere Emigration, Anna Zucht

Masters Theses

The controversy surrounding the so-called „Innere Emigration“ (inner emigration) as a way to describe authors who stayed in Germany during the Nazi regime engaged German intellectuals in the postwar period. Although the term was accepted between 1933 and 1945 to describe the non-fascist attitude of authors remaining in Nazi Germany, exiled authors questioned the term after the war. Authors who had remained in Germany used the term as a self-definition to avoid the arising „Schuldfrage”, especially in the postwar period. The lack of a concrete definition of what „Innere Emigration” describes creates significant challenges surrounding research on literature written during …

Religious Tones And Overtones In The Human Sufficiency Arguments Of Marx And Nietzsche, Norman Rudolph Saliba

Masters Theses

It is often assumed that since Marx and Nietzsche were both anti-religious thinkers, religion played no part in the formulation of their philosophical outlooks. With this assumption, the influence of historical religions on rhetoric has received a subordinate role, if at all, in the discourse on 19^th century German critiques of those very religions. Although differing fundamentally in the debate on inclusiveness versus individuality, this essay asserts that Marx and Nietzsche, both from families of religious scholars, broke with previous philosophical tradition and utilized a religious form of rhetoric in their writings to combat doctrines of human deficiency inherent …

„I Am God“ Und „Femen Akbar“: Die Beziehung Der Aktivistischen Frauenrechtsbewegung Femen Zu Christentum Und Islam, Lisa Breddermann

Masters Theses

Feminist movements that arose in the early 2000s have triggered renewed discussions in academia and in the media about the validity and the future of feminism in the 21^st century. One important protest group in the context of post – and popfeminism is the group FEMEN, a feminist protest group that originated in Ukraine. Research has already begun to discuss FEMEN’s protest forms and their ideologies, and their bare-breasted calls for the demolition of patriarchy. So far, researchers mostly concentrated on the question if FEMEN are feminists and if FEMEN’s naked protest is effectively reaching their goal to liberate …

“Die Zukünftige Ehefrau” And “Alte Jungfer” In Fanny Lewald’S First Fiction And Autobiography, Judith E. Hector

Masters Theses

Celebrations two hundred years after her birth acknowledge Fanny Lewald (1811-1889), a prolific writer, as an early spokesperson for the emancipation of women from restricted social roles. Her autobiography, Meine Lebensgeschichte, published in 1861-62 when she was 50 years old, describes the first 30 years of her life. In it, she details growing up female in a middle-class home in Königsberg and how she was prepared to assume narrowly defined roles of wife, mother, and household manager (Gattin, Mutter, Hausfrau). Marriage in late 18^th and early 19^th century Germany was touted by Joachim Heinrich Campe and others …

Insurgent Spectacles: Spring Awakening, Woyzeck, Mother Courage And The ‘New’ Broadway Spectacle, Noah Porter Soltau

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the political and ideological work done by what I call "insurgent spectacles," which comprised a historical episode of American theater occurring primarily from 2006 to 2008. The spectacles had liberatory and redemptive potential not in spite of their identity as mass culture, but indeed precisely because of it. They functioned in a contested political and ideological space within the schema of mass culture. The insurgent spectacle is so-called because it superficially resembled other bits of Broadway fluff with its glitziness, over-production, and ham-fistedness that allow the audience to be intellectually disengaged. During this episode, it persisted (often …

The Mechanics Of Franz Kafka's 'In Der Strafkolonie': A Reading Through Verbal Associations, Charles Beck Cochran

Masters Theses

Theoretically based in a Judaic philosophy and in Kafka’s related mythology, which locates the origins of the world in language, this thesis takes its practical starting point from a relatively little-documented writing method of Kafka that appears inseparably linked to his language mythology. This writing method is one in which Kafka developed the fictional world of his narratives out of language or associations in language. In a unique attempt to document its full impact on the development of a literary text, the thesis seeks to utilize this writing method as a reading method, identifying the verbal associations from which Kafka …

Unmasking Wagner's Grail: Homoeroticism, Androgyny, And Anxiety In Parsifal, Tyler Cole Mitchell

Masters Theses

Most readings of Wagner’s final music drama Parsifal seek to illumine a clandestine presentation of Wagner’s racist doctrine or make sense of a less-shrouded but still ambiguous panegyric to Christianity. However, little scholarly material addresses Wagner’s provocative account of sensuality and homoeroticism in this Bühnenweihfestspiel [Stage Consecration Festival Play]. This thesis explores desire and homosexuality within the drama and considers how and why Wagner masks these themes through the opaque mythos of religion, race, and community. Parsifal was partly informed by Wagner’s own complex neuroses: his sexual anxieties and scandals, amalgam of German philosophies, and confusion concerning Germanness. As filtered …

Framing Urban Change: Gentrification Discourses In The Media Coverage Of The Gülbol Eviction In Berlin, Eric Daniel Gedenk

Masters Theses

This thesis examines gentrification discourses in Berlin by highlighting an extraordinarily large protest sparked by the eviction of the Gülbol family—long-time residents of Berlin who immigrated to Germany from Turkey. Media outlets chose to frame the event in very different ways. I analyze articles from various media sources in an attempt to discover how these sources chose to frame this event, then analyze how these frames are applied to the general gentrification discourse in Berlin. Non-traditional, or “advocacy” media outlets used technology to break away from mass media frames on the subject and frame the event as governmental oppression and …

Be A Man, Comrade! Construction Of The ‘Socialist Male Personality’ In The Gdr Youth Literature Of The 1950s And 1960s., Joanna Broda-Schunck

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the main goals of the East German government was the education of its population towards Socialism, and the creation of the new type of human – the Neue Mensch. The belief in the possibility of molding the next generation was particularly strong in the first decades of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), – in the 1950s and the 1960s. At the same time, the leaders of the regime presented the new Socialist state as the rightful heir to the German cultural and historical traditions. Both claims were aimed at strengthening the legitimacy of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED …

Brundibár: Confronting The Misrepresentation Of Resistance In Theresienstadt, Anna Catherine Greer

Masters Theses

Brundibár, a children’s opera written by Czech composer Hans Krása (1899-1944), routinely appears in Holocaust musical scholarship as a depiction of “thriving” Jewish cultural activity during the Holocaust. First performed clandestinely in a Prague orphanage in 1942, the work was ultimately co-opted by Nazi authorities in Theresienstadt. Under the jurisdiction of the Freizeitgestaltung (Leisure Time Activities), the opera came under control of the camp administration and became part of several propaganda schemes, including the 1944 Nazi propaganda film, Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives a City to the Jews). In preparation for the International Red …

The Middle Ground Between Good And Evil: The Role Of Young Adult Literature In Modern Understandings Of German History, Bonnie Kristin Mary Jendrek

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Die Rolle Des Opfers In Der Fiktionalen Darstellung Der „Landshut“- Entfuehrung In Literatur & Film, Annica Esther Eisenhofer

Masters Theses

In this thesis I examine the cinematic and literary portrayal of victims during the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane, Landshut by Palestinian terrorists in October 1977. I discuss the book, Mogadischu Fensterplatz by the German author Friedrich Christian Delius and two films, the docudrama Todesspiel by the director Heinrich Breloer, and the film Mogadischu by the director Roland Suso Richter.

The study compares and contrasts alternate means of portraying the plight of the hijacking victims through different forms of media. Mogadischu Fensterplatz is a book whose text comprises a single victim’s personal narrative. The backbone of Todesspiel is a chronology …

Vertrag Und Frust Statt Peitsche Und Lust? - Der Masochistische Sklavenvertrag Als Parodie Und Theater In Leopold Von Sacher-Masochs Venus Im Pelz, Anna Walburga Nisch

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses the masochist slave contract in Leopold von Sacher-Masochs Venus im Pelz and reads the slave contract between Severin and Wanda as a parody of the 19th century marriage contract. This interpretation points to the need to understand masochism less as a sexual perversion and more as a reaction to specific political and historical conditions. By becoming a cruel woman, the dominatrix symbolizes female emancipation from the dominant role of men. Especially in the marriage contract, the woman is suppressed by male power and has only limited rights. The masochist uses acontract to legitimate the woman´s liberation and …