European Languages and Societies Commons^™

Blind Luck: A Narrative Exploration Of French Sayings And Superstitions, Isabella North

Honors Theses

The goal of this Honors Thesis was to explore French superstitions and idioms through a fictional story. To facilitate the inclusion of a range of sayings and superstitious beliefs, the short story “Jamais Deux Sans Trois” is a borderline paranormal piece of fiction which is meant to call into question how the reader interprets the world. The story, written in French, revolves around a pair of best friends and their experiences with a series of events which may or may not be explained through the lens of superstitions, depending on which character is asked at which point in the story. …

Review Of Minority Discourses In Germany Since 1990, Patricia Simpson

German Language and Literature Papers

Both scholarly and popularized examinations of Germany during the 1990s hotly debated the “new normal” of its national politics and cultures, from the so-called “Leitkultur” (guiding culture) of the late 1990s to the plural, intersectional identities within the Federal Republic, among them “Ossis,” “Wessis,” and the multiple minoritized groups negotiating various points on the peripheries. ... The ten essays in the volume, published in the Spektrum Series (volume 23), engage the discursive plurals of intersectional identities and their positions visà- vis dominant whiteness in German-speaking Europe since German unification and the later founding of the European Union in 1993. To …

Concerning A Manuscript From A Moravian Immigrant’S Trunk: Postil By Johann Spangenberg (1557), Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

In Nebraska, a family of Czech ancestry possesses a precious and unusual family artifact—an antique early-modern book, which was passed down in the family from generation to generation as their most precious treasure, a book that is much older than most carefully investigated family genealogies. The book has neat calligraphy and prints, leather binding, and comprises more than a thousand pages, though the first batch of pages is missing. The inside of the cover bears a pencil-written date: 1542. There are no title pages, no forewords, and no introductory chapter(s). The family lore tells that they kept it hidden in …

Eda Kriseová And Her Prophecy Of The Velvet Revolution: “The Gates Opened” (1984), Hana Waisserova, Eda Kriseová

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This is an introduction to a story, “The Gates Opened,” which serves as a memento of a restrictive regime that banned freedom. It also shares a hope and vision that the gates would open someday—and all would be liberated (despite the chaos and lack of natural order). The story was written in 1984 (sharing a strong symbolic value with George Orwell’s masterpiece). Eda Kriseová shares this anecdote: Around 1984, she wanted to stop writing about the mental institution where she was working, while regularly providing a story to the underground monthly Obsah, and many of her stories were set in …

Thank You, Samizdat!, Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This autumn we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, when a chain of events all across Central and Eastern Europe gradually brought the weakening yet persistent Communist system to its knees. Though the melt was paradoxically coming with Gorbachev’s reforms from the Kremlin, the Czech hardliners seemed to resist. They had a much stronger grasp over the society than the Communist governments of Hungary and Poland. Nevertheless, the domino effect was there and change finally came.

The geopolitics notwithstanding, sometimes we might forget that samizdat and independent literary culture played a major role …

Coming And Going: Identity, Institutions, And The United Kingdom's Resistance To The European Union, Lauren Bruning

Honors Theses

In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, a decision widely known as ‘Brexit’. This analysis compares two competing theories – institution and identity – to explain why. Four historical events, chronologically ordered from 1945 to 2016, are examined with both identity and institution analysis to explain British integration and its subsequent withdrawal from the European Union. Through this analysis, one can conclude the United Kingdom’s decision to withdraw in 2016 stemmed from a variety of reasons, but each of these can be explained by identity (a sense of nationalism), or institution (EU relationships).

Nationalism around …

Embodied Transitions In Michel De Montaigne, Nora Martin Peterson, Peter Martin

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne was one of the first writers to reflect on embodiment. “I am myself the matter of my book,” he proclaims in the introduction to his Essays. Montaigne writes about various moments of embodied transitions: a near-death experience, reflections on aging and cognitive decline, and a lengthy discussion of how to cope in the face of devastating loss. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective by analyzing the relationship between embodiment, health representations, and geropsychological themes, this chapter analyzes Montaigne’s in-between moments, arguing that Montaigne’s essays—innovative in their own time—remain important in discussing embodied transitions today.

Socialist Paradise, Sexual Paradise? Meditation On “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism” (2018) By Kristen Ghodsee, Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Women have better sex under socialism claims title of Kristen Ghodsee’s recent book (2018) that highlights female economic independence as a main factor leading to greater freedom and thus more sexual pleasure for women in “socialist paradise”. This critical approach opens up new perspectives and frameworks to re-consider socialist advantages that benefit women, and it also invites further discussion of the thought-provoking premise of “female comfort and pleasure” in various socio-cultural and socio-economic orders. Though the text serves primarily as a critique of current capitalism, it also explores available frameworks and generates reasoning for current campaigns concerning women’s sexuality as …

Parallels Of Morality: Wilde And Nietzsche’S Challenge To Social Obligation, Amzie A. Dunekacke

Honors Theses

This thesis explores Irish author Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in relation to a selection of texts by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. To demonstrate the similarities between Wilde and Nietzsche’s challenges to European morality, this work considers these themes, which are present in the ideologies of both Wilde and Nietzsche: the body and sensual pleasure, social construction, and the hypocrisy of altruism. Both radical thinkers castigate Platonic notions of the body as ignoble and weak, and they mock European propriety’s shyness of the body. In addition, Wilde and Nietzsche offer similar criticisms of social laws, adopting a …

Sebald Beham And The Augsburg Printer Niclas Vom Sand: New Documents On Printing And Frankfurt Before 1550, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

This essay makes known two unpublished documents from the last years of the life of Sebald Beham (1500 Nuremberg–1550 Frankfurt) and uses them as a means to explore Beham’s relationship to printing, the town of Frankfurt, and the Augsburg printer Niclas vom Sand, who remains an unwritten part of the history of the period. The essay is organized as an autobiographical retrospective by an older man forced in prior decades to move from Nuremberg and seek employment and a new life elsewhere. The end of the essay evaluates the documents and aspects of them.

Sins, Sex, And Secrets: The Legacy Of Confession From The Decameron To The Heptaméron, Nora Martin Peterson

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

A quick digital search for the term ‘confession’ in Boccaccio’s Decameron yields 75 results (Decameron Web). Confession in Boccacio’s text is conspicuously present and, I argue, not coincidental: it highlights the increased attention to the sacrament after the Fourth Lateran Council made annual confession mandatory in 1215. Decameron 1.1 depicts a false confession performed by a wicked man on his deathbed. His confessor follows the protocol of confession manuals, which began to appear in increasing number following 1215, but his interpretive skills do not extend beyond the questions he is bound by protocol to ask. In Boccaccio’s world, …

Anatomía Comparada De La Representación De La Muerte En La Literatura Española Transatlántica Durante El Ocaso De La Edad Media Y El Renacimiento, Miguel Ángel Albújar Escuredo

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

The main goal of this project is to dissect how death is represented during the Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the beginning of the phenomenon of colonization of America carried out by the Spanish Empire, all of it by means of reviewing the representations in Spanish literary works of those times. This is accomplished by comparing works diachronically in order to reveal the main thematic variations between them. To that effect, representative models are taken from the literary canon in Spanish that involves texts since the Late Middle Ages until the first modernity, also known as the Renaissance. This …

Review Of Performing Captivity, Performing Escape. Cabarets And Plays From The Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto. Edited And With An Introduction By Lisa Peschel., Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Performing Captivity, Performing Escape. Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto presents Lisa Peschel’s edited, revised, and translated into English Divadelní texty z terezínského ghetta/ Theatretexte aus dem Ghetto Theresienstadt, 1941-1945.

Terezín/Theresienstadt was unusual in that it served as a ghetto with an attached prison, as well as a concentration camp. The Nazi propaganda used this camp to convince the world that life was “normal” in this supposed Jewish resettlement area. For this reason, they allowed cultural life to take place. Peschel’s work is an anthology of selected texts originating there. It contains cabarets, puppet play scripts, as well …

What Women Know: The Power Of Savoir In Marguerite De Navarre’S Heptaméron, Nora Martin Peterson

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The verbs savoir and connaître appear in central moments in the Heptaméron. Knowledge—as it appears in the frame narrative and in the novellas—can be a way for men and women to debate, among many other things, the relationship between the sexes. When women use this word, or when they demonstrate that they know something, it creates the space to participate – not always unambiguously – in otherwise male-dominated conversations. How Marguerite writes about the acquisition, possession, fragmentation, or loss of knowledge, underscores her interest in exploring the role of women in communities of knowledge.

Voltaire The Feminist, Esdras Castaneda

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Voltaire was not the common Enlightened philosopher. No, he was one of the great ones. And especially critical in the fight for social justice and equality for women. Voltaire did not write about women. Typically, women were seen as weak, fragile, had pale skin, and were very thin. But Voltaire wrote about them in the exact opposite way. They were as strong, resilient, and brave as any man. And they were buxom, plump, and provocative. Voltaire purposefully writes this way to switch the gender roles; to show that women could be anything a man could be. That they could be …

An Introduction To Serbian Piano Music: Musical And Cultural Influences On Three Selected Composers, Jelena Djukic

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

Serbia is a country that has survived many political and religious conflicts. Perhaps the best way to describe Serbian culture and tradition would be a country whose inhabitants struggled for many years, yet managed to incorporate the best elements of its conquerors’ cultures. Serbian musical identity is an amalgam of local and international influences and styles.

Different foreign authorities occupied this country for centuries. The Danube River was the main border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, located in the north, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire, situated south of the Danube. The Austro-Hungarian influences on Serbian music are most evident in piano …

La Violencia Terrorista En La Narrativa Vasca Del Siglo Xxi, Montserrat Fuente-Camacho

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

Teniendo en cuenta la evolución tanto de la opinión pública sobre ETA, como la del tratamiento del tema del terrorismo desde la literatura, este trabajo se centra en la narrativa vasca del siglo XXI, analizando tres obras literarias de diferente género: una recopilación de cuentos, una novela y un cómic o novela gráfica. En cada capítulo se estudia un aspecto relacionado con el terrorismo de ETA: el silencio, las víctimas y el perdón. En el primer capítulo se argumenta que además de la violencia de ETA, el silencio es un elemento que une los cinco relatos de Letargo (2004), de …

«El Mundo Del Exilio Es Parte De Nuestra Historia Y De Nuestra Cultura». Entrevista A José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta, Iker González-Allende, José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta

Spanish Language and Literature

En esta entrevista, realizada en verano de 2015, José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta traza su trayectoria vital y profesional, indicando el ambiente familiar en el que creció, los estudios que realizó, los maestros que más le influyeron y su interés en el exilio vasco. Asimismo explica qué es el exilio como categoría y departe sobre su posible vivencia como una realidad enriquecedora y sobre las diferencias y factibles trasposiciones entre el exilio y la emigración. Ascunce Arrieta presenta también un amplio panorama del exilio vasco, señalando los distintos exilios que ha sufrido Euskadi a lo largo de su historia y la …

Review Of Galicia, A Sentimental Nation: Gender, Culture And Politics, By Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature

Este libro analiza el mito de la sentimentalidad gallega desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la época presente. Miguélez-Carballeira demuestra cómo este tópico se ha utilizado de manera recurrente por distintas ideologías políticas, desde el regionalismo apolítico gallego hasta el nacionalismo cultural franquista y el centralismo conservador del Partido Popular. Para la autora, la sentimentalidad gallega consiste en un ambivalente estereotipo colonial, ya que si, por un lado, lo usa el discurso dominante español para desarticular y debilitar las aspiraciones políticas del nacionalismo gallego, por otro, desde posiciones gallegas también se recurre a él como rasgo de identidad y autodiferenciación. …

The Artist's Lament In 1528. Exile, Printing, And The Reformation, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

The plight of painters and other artists was not an easy one when the Reformation made inroads into German-speaking lands. Commissions for Catholic subjects and altarpieces dried up as a result of Lutheran influence. Two laments dating from the early Reformation period address the artist's situation. Both are brief, date from 1526 and 1528, and appear in different contexts - one in a letter of introduction and the other in a printed pamphlet. The first concerns the painter Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98- 1543) whose portraits painted for King Henry VIII and his court indicate that the pictorial genre of …

The Basque Big Boy? Basque Masculinities In Vaya Semanita, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature

This article argues that the television show Vaya semanita portrays a specific Basque masculinity, different from the Spanish or Mediterranean ones. The traditional Basque masculinity shares some values with the most accepted forms of Spanish masculinities –including manhood as a challenge to be overcome, physical strength, intemperate drinking, and gluttonous eating – but differs from them in the way men behave in relation to women and sex, and the way they maintain close friendships with each other. Basque men appear as dependent on their mothers and wives, making them look emasculated and infantile. Their male bonding is also interpreted as …

El Fantasma Del Deseo: Delirios Nacionalistas En Huesos, De Ramiro Pinilla, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature

Ramiro Pinilla desarrolla en Huesos (1997) el descubrimiento por parte del joven protagonista, Asier, de que un gudari llamado Ismael Jáuregui se halla escondido desde la Guerra Civil en su caserío, habiendo propagado sus familiares la noticia de su muerte. Ismael vive encerrado en esa casa durante veinte años, hasta su fallecimiento en 1957, cuando su madre Josefa y su hermana Nerea le entierran junto a la que fue su novia, haciendo creer al pueblo que, gracias a un mensaje de la Virgen, han descubierto sus huesos en un monte y los están dando sepultura. Partiendo del argumento de la …

Kořeny Stoleté České Tradice V Nebrasce, Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Do období po roce 1850 se datuje vlna české emigrace do tzv. Nového světa, tvořená především odpůrci rakouské monarchie, kteří nesouhlasili s konzervativním režimem. Migraci do USA motivovala rovněž možnost získat levně pozemky a usadit se ve svobodné zemi. V Nebrasce jako v mnoha jiných státech Unie byl vyhlášen tzv. Homestead Act, což znamenalo, že přistěhovalci mohli za malý administrativní poplatek získat pozemek, na němž museli v průběhu pěti let vybudovat dům a farmu. Pokud se jim to podařilo, pozemek si mohli nárokovat do svého vlastnictví. Tito přistěhovalci za nesmírně tvrdých podmínek budovali na prérii hliněné domy na způsob zemljanek …

De Niño Del Exilio A Hombre De La “Nueva España”: Masculinidad Y Nacionalismo Español En El Otro Árbol De Guernica, De Luis De Castresana, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature

Este artigo analisa a representação da masculinidade e identidade nacional espanhola na obra El otro árbol de Guernica (1967), de Luis de Castresana. Nessa narrativa, o exílio implica um momento de rito de passagem, por meio do qual o protagonista acentua sua identidade como homem e como espanhol. Santi deixa de ser um menino para transformar-se num modelo de homem da “nova Espanha” franquista, ao possuir valores como o patriotismo, a capacidade de liderança, a independência e a religiosidade. O surgimento do amor é um sinal de entrada do protagonista no mundo dos homens, o que se fortalecerá com seu …

Tracing The Origins Of Success: Implications For Successful Aging, Nora M. Peterson, Peter Martin

French Language and Literature Papers

Purpose of the Study: This paper addresses the debate about the use of the term “successful aging” from a humanistic, rather than behavioral, perspective. It attempts to uncover what success, a term frequently associated with aging, is: how can it be defined and when did it first come into use? In this paper, we draw from a number of humanistic perspectives, including the historical and linguistic, in order to explore the evolution of the term “success.” We believe that words and concepts have deep implications for how concepts (such as aging) are culturally and historically perceived.

Design and Methods: We …

Red Social En La Celestina: Una Aproximación Cuantitativa A Su Sistema De Personajes, Jennifer Isasi

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

La que hoy es conocida como La Celestina se publicó en su edición príncipe con el título de Comedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499 o 1500), con 16 actos, para ser retitulada Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea en 1502, añadiéndosele cinco actos más. Parece que sin prestar demasiada atención a la decisión tomada respecto a la trama trágica en lugar de cómica, ya en ese mismo siglo Juan de Valdés o Juan Luis Vives comenzaron a referirse a la obra tal y como la conocemos hoy, haciendo de Celestina la protagonista de la obra ¿Por qué se dio dicho cambio, …

Albert Camus And The Anticolonials: Why Camus Would Not Play The Zero Sum Game, James D. Le Sueur

Department of History: Faculty Publications

In 1994, I returned from Paris to Hyde Park just in time to catch a lecture about Albert Camus that an esteemed colleague, the late Tony Judt, was giving at the University of Chicago. I was much younger then, eager to engage in debate, and I had just spent most of the past two years turning over the recently opened pages of Camus’ private papers in Paris and trolling through the private papers of other prominent French intellectuals, as well as newly declassified state archives for what was to become my first book, Uncivil War.2 I had also done dozens …

Man’S Best Friend? Dogs And Pigs In Early Modern Germany, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

When Jacob Seisenegger and Titian painted individual portraits of Emperor Charles V around 1532, a dog replaced such traditional accouterments of imperial power as crown, scepter, and orb.3 Charles placed one hand on the dog’s collar, a gesture indicating his companion’s noble qualities including faithfulness.4 At the same time, another more down-to-earth meaning for the dog had become prominent in the decades before the imperial portraits: the interest in and ability to eat anything in sight. This pig-like ability resulted in dogs, alongside pigs, becoming emblems of indiscriminate and gluttonous eating and drinking during the early sixteenth century when humanists, …

El Ex-Hombre: Masculinidad Y Exilio En La Poesía De Juan José Domenchina, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature

This article analyzes the representation of masculinity in Juan José Domenchina’s poetry of exile. The article argues that, during his last 20 years of life in exile (1939–1959), Domenchina shows in his poetry a contradictory masculinity. On the one hand, he reaffirms normative masculinity by rejecting pompous demonstrations of suffering, describing himself as stoic, tough, strong-willed and independent, and praising nostalgically Castilian men’s hypermasculine behavior. On the other hand, Domenchina’s poetry also testifies to his feelings of emasculation, since he calls himself an “ex-man”, shows his masculine fragmentation with the figures of the doppelganger or shadow, identifies himself with a …

Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The connection between French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Italian political theorist Antonio Negri has drawn attention in academic publications over the last decade. For both thinkers, the philosophical concept of immanence is central to how both respectively conceptualize the world. However, in order to consider their work with regard to a metaphysical grounding, one may benefit from turning to each thinker’s engagement with Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza whose immanent ontology, or monism, was indeed his Ethics. This essay concentrates on drawing out an ontological distinction between the philosophical projects of Deleuze and Negri by way of a close reading …