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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Counter-Discourses Of Fictional And Autofictional Contemporary German Refugee Narratives: The Slow Violence Of Postponement, Bethany Morgan May 2021

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 …


A Genealogy Of Victimhood: Empathy And Memory In Recent German Fiction, Catherine E. Mcnally Dec 2020

A Genealogy Of Victimhood: Empathy And Memory In Recent German Fiction, Catherine E. Mcnally

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses literary representations of empathy and altruism in Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2015 novel Gehen, Ging, Gegangen and Bodo Kirchhoff’s 2016 novel Widerfahrnis. These novels demonstrate continuities and discontinuities between German literature of the postwar, reunification and contemporary contexts.Analyzing expressions of empathy by Erpenbeck and Kirchhoff’s protagonists, I locate them in historical and literary contexts, the roots of which can be traced to the first generation of postwar German literature (1945-1968), particularly Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. In both Grass and Böll’s early postwar fiction, German experiences of the war and its aftermath are foregrounded, and focus is placed …


Re-Evaluating “Authenticity” In Holocaust Literature – Memory And Trauma In Recent Holocaust Fiction, Christos Giantsidis Jan 2018

Re-Evaluating “Authenticity” In Holocaust Literature – Memory And Trauma In Recent Holocaust Fiction, Christos Giantsidis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a structural and para-textual analysis of recent Holocaust fiction. Challenging the assumption of the superiority of “authentic” representations of the psychological effects of this historic event, I will highlight the cultural and pedagogical effects of fictionalized accounts of the Holocaust. A short analysis of the terms “memory,” “trauma,” and “history” as understood in the research field of Holocaust studies, will be substantial in debunking the failures of memory as perfect ways to recreate historical “truths.” Theories about trauma and memory by scholars such as Cathy Caruth and Dominick LaCapra will serve as reference points in the validation …


Those That Trespass Against Us: Childhood, Violence, And Memory In The White Ribbon, Joseph Kuster Dec 2016

Those That Trespass Against Us: Childhood, Violence, And Memory In The White Ribbon, Joseph Kuster

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines aesthetic representations of childhood and violence in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I argue that Haneke’s film interrogates notions of the idealized child in the context of German history/the history of the Tätergeneration in order to question the possibility of affixing particular objective truth to historical or cultural narrative. First, I examine and deconstruct culturally accepted representations of the child as a symbol of innocence and purity, and explore how Haneke’s film manipulates and subverts these tropes. I then approach the film using three different theoretical structures: the gaze of the monstrous child in the horror …


Mémoire Et Identité Dans Les Réécritures Caribéennes : Wide Sargasso Sea Et La Migration Des Coeurs, Camille Charlery Feb 2016

Mémoire Et Identité Dans Les Réécritures Caribéennes : Wide Sargasso Sea Et La Migration Des Coeurs, Camille Charlery

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis will study creole identity in Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), prequel of Jane Eyre, as well as in Maryse Condé's La Migration des Coeurs (1995), a rewriting of Wuthering Heights. I argue that both novels create a new creole identity by conversing with their original texts as well as by going beyond the official definition of creoleness. Using the concepts of obsessive memory and forced forgetfulness, I explore the tension betwee innate and constructed identity. First, I focus on the meaning of creoleness, then, I examine how memory plays a crucial role in the novels through topics …


Stories In Mind – The Relationship Between The Narratological Categories Of Order And Time And The Reader’S Cognitive Structures As Exemplified In Büchner’S Play Woyzeck, Marc Breetzke May 2015

Stories In Mind – The Relationship Between The Narratological Categories Of Order And Time And The Reader’S Cognitive Structures As Exemplified In Büchner’S Play Woyzeck, Marc Breetzke

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.


The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative And A Literary Language For Loss, Corey Lee Twitchell May 2015

The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative And A Literary Language For Loss, Corey Lee Twitchell

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how a constellation of German Jewish post-Holocaust novels confronts the paradox of recovering and recuperating lost stories of Holocaust victims. I analyze how works by Edgar Hilsenrath, Jurek Becker, and Fred Wander reveal a preoccupation with the innumerable stories and testimonies of the individuals who did not survive the Nazi Judeocide to contribute to the archive of experience. These novels gesture toward an epistemological alternative to this loss: they consider possibilities for recovering the unarchivable. These German Jewish authors employ a particular cluster of varied narrative strategies: the dialogic, linguistic and cultural elements of Eastern European Jewish …


The Cultural Memory Of German Victimhood In Post-1990 Popular German Literature And Television, Pauline Ebert Jan 2010

The Cultural Memory Of German Victimhood In Post-1990 Popular German Literature And Television, Pauline Ebert

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation analyzes the representation of Germans as victims of the Third Reich and the Second World War in post-1990 German memory. After unification, there no longer were two states that could each blame the other as the heir of National Socialism and this past had to be renegotiated. The claim that many Germans had been victims became central as evidenced by the vast number of popular literature, commercial cinema and television programs of this subject. I argue with Wulf Kansteiner (2006) that to understand collective memory, we should explore mass media representations. As the majority of highbrow artifacts do …