Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 22 of 22

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Romani People In The European Cultural Imagination: Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée And Virginia Woolf, Nadya Siyam Feb 2024

The Romani People In The European Cultural Imagination: Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée And Virginia Woolf, Nadya Siyam

Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly literature on Roma is scarce compared to other racial groups as a lack of academic interest, financial limitations, and other social and political factors has constrained it. This resulted in a cross-cultural circulation of misinformation about Romani people and the reproduction of Romani myths and stereotypes in fiction. This project aims to analyze selected literary works on Gypsies from three Eastern and Western European countries and two periods to unpack the cultural and political roots of Romani literary misrepresentation. This research employs a range of theoretical frameworks chosen to put the Gypsy protagonists under maximum spotlight without unnecessary repetition, …


Once Upon A Time/There Was A Story That Began: Novelty, Endings, And Chronotope In John Barth’S The Tidewater Tales, Zachary K. Gibson Jan 2022

Once Upon A Time/There Was A Story That Began: Novelty, Endings, And Chronotope In John Barth’S The Tidewater Tales, Zachary K. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of frame tales, genre blending, multi-voiced narration, and circular structure in John Barth’s 1987 novel, The Tidewater Tales. It tracks the isomorphy of Barth’s general aesthetic project, set forth in his essays, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” “The Literature of Replenishment,” and “Very Like an Elephant: Reality Versus Realism,” onto the theoretical aesthetics of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. Both Barth and Bakhtin praise the novel its omnivorous capability to accommodate, and juxtaposes conflicting genres against one another; they each see the novelist as an “arranger” or “orchestrator,” who reassembles pre-existing forms to make them …


Domestic Space In The Times Of Change: The Collapse Of The Ussr, 1985-2000s, Kateryna L. Malaia Apr 2019

Domestic Space In The Times Of Change: The Collapse Of The Ussr, 1985-2000s, Kateryna L. Malaia

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways urban domestic spaces transformed under the pressure of social upheaval related to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been examined from a standpoint of spatial changes, but existing studies are limited to public spaces and city-scale transformations. In other words, the collapse of the USSR remains a virtually uninvestigated event from the perspective of ordinary places integral for the study of social change in everyday life, such as apartment homes, courtyards, and residential streets. Between the late 1980s and 2000s, an unprecedented remodeling and home improvement boom …


Using Religious Themes And Content To Affect Cultural Sensitivity In Russian Language Learning, Paul Tristan Gallo Jun 2018

Using Religious Themes And Content To Affect Cultural Sensitivity In Russian Language Learning, Paul Tristan Gallo

Theses and Dissertations

Specifically oriented towards Russian culture, this study addresses the need in diplomacy for deeper cultural understanding. As research suggests a link between the inclusion of religious perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) and student motivation and cultural empathy, this study examines how Russian language classrooms could leverage an understanding of Russian religious themes to foster cultural sensitivity. The study invited 24 second-year university students of Russian to complete a previously-validated assessment of cultural sensitivity: the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI). Divided into a control and a treatment group, the participants also watched a short video depicting a story from Russian history …


Tuff Breeches, Arkadiy Ryabin May 2017

Tuff Breeches, Arkadiy Ryabin

Theses and Dissertations

In consideration of language and it’s relationship to information and knowledge, the author explores personal set of events in relationship to that of the public, via forms of orality. 19th century American literature is posited as a hangover influencing contemporary events.


In Search Of Real Fathers: Plenzdorf's Die Neuen Leiden Des Jungen W. And Vater, Mutter, Mörderkind, Michelle Schwoebel Dec 2012

In Search Of Real Fathers: Plenzdorf's Die Neuen Leiden Des Jungen W. And Vater, Mutter, Mörderkind, Michelle Schwoebel

Theses and Dissertations

Plenzdorf's works, one written before the fall of socialism in the German Democratic Republic (hereafter referred to as the DDR), and one after, portray relationships between fathers and sons, which act as a metaphor to express a personal perspective of the state, revealing that the DDR was neither as repressive or as omnipresent for the average citizen as outsiders are often given to believe. The father, or Übervater, a figure deeply rooted in the German consciousness, is represented by the state and proves itself as an entity which gives the protagonists in both works little notice, despite their best efforts …


Austro-American Reflections: Making The Writings Of Ann Tizia Leitich Accessible To English-Speaking Audiences, Stephen Andrew Simon Dec 2012

Austro-American Reflections: Making The Writings Of Ann Tizia Leitich Accessible To English-Speaking Audiences, Stephen Andrew Simon

Theses and Dissertations

Ann Tizia Leitich wrote about America to a Viennese audience as a foreign correspondent with the unique and personal perspective of an immigrant to the United States. Leitich differentiates herself from other Europeans who reported on America in her day by telling of the life of the average working American. In so doing, Leitich uses her work as a foreign correspondent to create a new identity for Austria between the World Wars. Leitich uses America in the 1920's and 1930's as a cultural mirror in which the new Republic of Austria can see itself. Leitich's perspective of America is not …


Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach's Ohne Liebe: A Translation And Commentary, Steven L. Peris Nov 2012

Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach's Ohne Liebe: A Translation And Commentary, Steven L. Peris

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores a short drama of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Without Love. It provides not only a complete English translation of the work, but also an interpretative introduction. By first examining the life of Ebner-Eschenbach, I am able to provide insight to the origins of the play. Because Ebner-Eschenbach faced so much opposition in her drama writing career this one act play becomes more relevant. It contains similar themes to her other works such as: gender roles, the role of the aristocracy, and love in marriage. Without Love examines the role of love in marriage by providing the reader …


Agnes Von Lilien: A Translation By Kari Stolzenburg, Kari M. Stolzenburg Jul 2012

Agnes Von Lilien: A Translation By Kari Stolzenburg, Kari M. Stolzenburg

Theses and Dissertations

The novel Agnes von Lilien by Caroline von Wolzogen, although celebrated during the period of Weimar Classicism, was not generally well known to English-speaking readers and researchers until recently. This project aims to address this situation by creating an easily accessible English translation of the novel complete with critical annotations for the benefit of researchers and lay readers alike. The annotated translation presented in this work is an excerpt of the full translation of the work drawn in particular from the first third of the novel. This novel, first published in 1798, reflects many ideals of the Enlightenment, as well …


Pushing The "Scented Envelope": Elisa Von Der Recke At The Cultural Crossroads, Carrie L. Cox Mar 2012

Pushing The "Scented Envelope": Elisa Von Der Recke At The Cultural Crossroads, Carrie L. Cox

Theses and Dissertations

Pushing the "Scented Envelope": Elisa von der Recke at the Cultural Crossroads Carrie L. Cox Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, BYU Master of Arts This thesis serves as an introduction to the 5-volume electronic edition of the collected works of the influential German-language author Elisa von der Recke to be published by the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at Brigham Young University. The compilation presents a modern edition of Recke's published writings and letters in German, with an extensive critical apparatus in English, including introductions to the edition, author and individual sections, biographical information, a complete bibliography of …


Giants, Dragons, And The Confrontation With "Den Schrecklichen Mystischen Naturkomplexen" – Apocalyptic Intertextuality In Alfred Döblin's Berge Meere Und Giganten, Nathan J. Bates Dec 2011

Giants, Dragons, And The Confrontation With "Den Schrecklichen Mystischen Naturkomplexen" – Apocalyptic Intertextuality In Alfred Döblin's Berge Meere Und Giganten, Nathan J. Bates

Theses and Dissertations

Berge Meere und Giganten (BMG) by Alfred Döblin is a fictional account of future events in which humanity brings about the ruin of western civilization by its own technological hubris. Although BMG has been examined considerably for its literary merit in light of the Döblin corpus, few scholars have identified Döblin's work as an apocalyptic text especially after the Judeo-Christian tradition. The apocalyptic nature of BMG implies a profound religious experience on the part of the author, which in my view offers at least one plausible explanation for Döblin's repeated fixation with BMG. In my thesis, I explicate the …


Nazisploitation And The Problem Of Violence In Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Jared Welling Cook Jun 2011

Nazisploitation And The Problem Of Violence In Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Jared Welling Cook

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore the representation of Nazis and violence in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), including how the film proposes justification for violence and murder, and how the film participates in cultural fantasies. The film presents an alternate outcome of World War II in which the Allies achieve victory by assassinating Hitler and the High Command of the Third Reich in a movie theater. The Nazis in the film, far from being a complex enemy, are used for their token villain status. Using the Nazis in this way both participates in and reinterprets the Nazisploitation genre. The protagonists, …


The Gaps We Choose To Fill And How We Choose To Fill Them: Readers' Creation Of Turkish German Identity In Texts By Zehra Çirak, Whitney Roberts Ehle Mar 2011

The Gaps We Choose To Fill And How We Choose To Fill Them: Readers' Creation Of Turkish German Identity In Texts By Zehra Çirak, Whitney Roberts Ehle

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores why readers insist on interpreting Zehra Çirak's texts in light of her Turkish German background when she claims that her texts have little to do with her Turkish heritage and are more universally applicable. While readers can interpret her texts without considering the author's biography, thereby obtaining insights into their own personal identity, I suggest that it also makes sense for readers to interpret her texts with the author's biography in mind because of current events and the history of Turkish migrant labor in Germany. To explore different possible interpretations of her texts, I have categorized Çirak's …


"Heimatlos In Dieser Welt": The Isolated Modern Woman In Edith Södergran’S Vaxdukshäft Poetry, Kajsa M. Spjut Nov 2010

"Heimatlos In Dieser Welt": The Isolated Modern Woman In Edith Södergran’S Vaxdukshäft Poetry, Kajsa M. Spjut

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore how, although Edith Södergran’s Vaxdukshäf poems seem to support new female roles in early 20th century European society, they also reflect on the danger in changing from traditional to modern roles. As the poems illustrate, this change can create an isolated woman, who becomes trapped in her new independence and is unable to alter herself to connect with others. In order to understand what is meant by traditional and modern female roles, I present a historical background that contrasts the woman of pre-20th-Century Europe with the new woman that emerged around the Turn of the …


The Work Of Architecture In The Age Of Its Technological Reproducibility, Elizabeth Rae Guthrie Aug 2010

The Work Of Architecture In The Age Of Its Technological Reproducibility, Elizabeth Rae Guthrie

Theses and Dissertations

Dresden's historic reconstructions bring up questions that reach far beyond the city's new/old Neumarkt district. In this thesis, I would like to take a closer look at the current ideological discourse surrounding the reconstruction of destroyed historic buildings in Dresden and other cities in the former DDR. What seems at first to be a simple culture war between progressive and reactionary city planners is actually, I will argue, a unique historical moment that blurs the dogmatically held ideas of rationality and nostalgia, ornament and function, and high art and kitsch. From the uncanny shadow of a church recently raised from …


Reinventing The Colonial Fantasy In The Post-Wwii Era: Jovita Epp's Amado Mio, Ivana R. Klammer Jul 2010

Reinventing The Colonial Fantasy In The Post-Wwii Era: Jovita Epp's Amado Mio, Ivana R. Klammer

Theses and Dissertations

Austrian playwright Jovita Epp's German language novel Amado mí­o, which takes place in post-WWII Argentina, is a modern adaptation of the traditional colonial novel. As such, the romances between the female main character, an Argentine of German descent, and her two love interests, an Argentine of Spanish descent (Criollo), and an Austrian Argentine, reflect the hopes and fears of persons and/or cultures caught up in the imperialist dreams of their nation. In the wake of WWII, Argentina becomes a space in which European(-descended) settlers can look back at Europe's "barbarism," questioning the imperialist worldviews that brought Europe …


Die Moderne Frau Und Ihr Drama: Marie Eugenie Delle Grazies Drama Der Schatten (1901); Ein Schlüsseltext Zur Wiener Moderne, Jared Loehrmann Sep 2008

Die Moderne Frau Und Ihr Drama: Marie Eugenie Delle Grazies Drama Der Schatten (1901); Ein Schlüsseltext Zur Wiener Moderne, Jared Loehrmann

Theses and Dissertations

Marie Eugenie delle Grazies Drama Der Schatten wurde am 28. September 1901 im Wiener Hofburgtheater, einer der bedeutendsten Bühnen Europas, uraufgeführt, jedoch nach nur vier Vorstellungen abgesetzt. Das mit dem Bauernfeld-Preis ausgezeichnete Stück bildet den Zenit von delle Grazies literarischem Schaffen und beinhaltet Diskurse von hohem damaligem Stellenwert, die uns einen tieferen Einblick, vom Standpunkt der modernen Frau, ins Fin-de-Siècle Wien geben können. Das Drama und seine Dichterin wurden im Wien der Jahrhundertwende sowohl gefeiert als auch gerügt. Delle Grazie hatte mit Vorurteilen gegen sie als Frau und Dichterin, sowie mit der Kritik an ihrer unkonventionellen Dramaturgie zu kämpfen. Betrachtet …


Rethinking Trümmerliteratur: The Aesthetics Of Destruction Ruins, Ruination, And Ruined Language In The Works Of Böll Grass, And Celan, Kurt R. Buhanan Mar 2007

Rethinking Trümmerliteratur: The Aesthetics Of Destruction Ruins, Ruination, And Ruined Language In The Works Of Böll Grass, And Celan, Kurt R. Buhanan

Theses and Dissertations

Trümmerliteratur - literally “rubble-literature" - is a brand of literature that became important after the Second World War, led by Heinrich Böll, whom I term the apologist of German Trümmerliteratur. Typically included under this classification are the writers who began to produce in the years immediately following the war, and in whose work the rubble and ruins of the landscape figure prominently. Böll provided the programmatic framework for the movement in his “Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur" but his relationship to another type of ruin writing presents a point of friction when he appears to be working in a romantic mode to …


Irgendwo Muss Man Doch Einmal Hingehoeren': Irmgard Keun As Heiress To The Flaneur.", Matthew D. Embley Mar 2006

Irgendwo Muss Man Doch Einmal Hingehoeren': Irmgard Keun As Heiress To The Flaneur.", Matthew D. Embley

Theses and Dissertations

Flanerie is the art of taking a walk, leisurely observing the movements and spaces of the city. By writing about cityscapes, urban realms, and the condition of society, flaneurs are able to describe the uniqueness of the metropolis and give life to the modern city—creating a photograph of an urban setting. In the early nineteenth century, and even today, flaneur literature has been ultimately dominated by men who have documented their cultural and aesthetic interactions with the city. During these times, unwritten rules have often excluded the female from participating in parts of the urban society. Today, these unwritten rules …


Combating The Banality Of Evil: Portrayals Of The Literary Female Villain In Gã¼Nter Grass's Danziger Trilogie And Novella, Im Krebsgang., Joseph Ephraim Baumgarten Aug 2005

Combating The Banality Of Evil: Portrayals Of The Literary Female Villain In Gã¼Nter Grass's Danziger Trilogie And Novella, Im Krebsgang., Joseph Ephraim Baumgarten

Theses and Dissertations

In Günter Grass's Danzig Trilogy and novella, Im Krebsgang, an antagonistic female type makes a repeated appearance. She appears in the guise of Susi Kater and Luzie Rennwand in Die Blechtrommel, and as Tulla Pokriefke in the other works, Katz und Maus, Hundejahre, and Im Krebsgang. This antagonistic female type is not like other women in these works. A review of Le Deuxième Sexe by feminist Simone de Beauvoir reveals several crucial components contributing to woman's position in society. Most essentially, a woman's natural attributes and (dis)abilities and the conventions of society have enforced her historical submission to man. This …


Hermine Cloeter, Feuilletons, And Vienna: A Flaneuse And Urban Cultural Archaeologist Wandering Through Opaque Spaces, Bridging Past And Present To Reclaim What Could Be Lost, Kelli D. Barbour Jul 2004

Hermine Cloeter, Feuilletons, And Vienna: A Flaneuse And Urban Cultural Archaeologist Wandering Through Opaque Spaces, Bridging Past And Present To Reclaim What Could Be Lost, Kelli D. Barbour

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the authority that time holds in the discipline of studying events of the past, not all historians or writers analyzing the past use time to study history—some use space, including writers who write about and interact with an urban topography. The space used by these writers is built space, as well as inhabited and practiced "lived" space. Whereas time provides a transparent overview of history, the urban spaces tend to be opaque. Clarifying history through urban space is additionally troublesome, because built space and its attached memories are visibly forgotten and ignored as time advances. Despite the difficulties of …


Blank Pages Of The Holocaust: Gypsies In Yugoslavia During World War Ii, Elizabeta Jevtic Jul 2004

Blank Pages Of The Holocaust: Gypsies In Yugoslavia During World War Ii, Elizabeta Jevtic

Theses and Dissertations

After a general overview of the persecution of Gypsies (Roma) during World War II, this thesis focuses on the situation of Gypsies on the territory of Serbia and Croatia. The two republics are chosen because of their unique structures during the years 1941 to 1945. Both republics had puppet regimes set up by Germany; however, Croatia was an ally to Germany and strove to mirror the Third Reich in all its policies. The regime's head, Ante Pavelic, was known as one of the most brutal and merciless men on the territory of Yugoslavia, and with him Croatian paramilitary forces committed …