German Literature Commons^™

Identität In Schwarz Und Weiß: Die Übersetzung Der Afro-Deutschen Identität In Den Werken Von May Ayim, Mia Ver Pault

Senior Theses and Projects

Many parts of our being are attached to how we identify and with whom we identify. Theoretically, how we identify is based largely on one’s own choices, but such freedom is not always the case. Unfortunately, identity is often imposed upon one by the surrounding racial and ethnic majority. Like many non-white people in a white environment, this was the case for the German poet and activist, May Ayim. May Ayim (1960-1996) was born to a white German mother and a black Ghanian father. Although Ayim spoke German, grew up in Germany, and was fully acculturated into German society, she …

Paul Celan And The Processes Of Survival In Post-Shoah Jewish Writing, Ari Savage

Theses

The following is a study of the poetry of Paul Celan as a representation of psychological and social processes present in the written works of Shoah survivors. It begins with an analysis of the place of writing in Jewish culture, then identifies three primary processes which operate in sequence: alienation, individuation, and integration. By examining Paul Celan’s highly personal and autobiographical texts in the context of his life experience as a Shoah survivor it is possible to discern the social and psychological forces at work which compel survivors to express their traumas in written form, and to gain a better …

An Exploration Of Horror In Franz Kafka’S "The Metamorphosis", Christa M. Neumann

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Readers often identify Gregor’s vermin body as the only horrific element in Franz Kafka’s “The
Metamorphosis.” But what about the walls that he lives in? This study will deemphasize the horror of Kafka’s creature and offer new themes to consider. The following collects scholarship around Kafka’s time to understand how he used the domestic space to create horror. It includes studies on Gothic literature and Freud’s term “unheimlich” from his essay “The Uncanny.” The findings bring light to a type of horror often overlooked – the horror in the liminal, the “in- between” state of being. This space belongs to …

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

What Makes A Woman "Pious And Good": The Function Of Several Grimm Brothers' Cautionary Fairy Tales, Hannah Montante

English (MA) Theses

This thesis explores how several of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, “Little Snow-white and the seven dwarfs,” “The Juniper Tree,” and “Cinderella” exhibit patriarchal expectations of women that fairy tale protagonists strive to uphold, while female villains feel driven to violence and artifice because of their inability to fit into this role. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published these stories in nineteenth-century Germany, which was predominantly Protestant and held the belief that women should be nurturing homemakers who took care of their husbands and children. These cautionary tales instruct women on how to behave and appear physically, likely because these stories …

Faszination Mond – Das Mondmotiv In Der Deutschsprachigen Gegenwartslyrik Vor Dem Hintergrund Seiner Literarischen Tradition, Lara-Mareen Foerster

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master thesis explores the moon motif in contemporary poetry in relation to its literary history. Contemporary poetry is understood as poetry after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. My research seeks to provide an overview of the moon motif in German contemporary literature where hitherto only scholarship on Durs Grünbein has considered the importance of the moon motif.

Therefore, this work taxonomically explores the functions of the moon motif in general instead of aiming at a close reading of selected poems. I am taking a stance against the notion that the moon motif and the fascination for …

“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 …

Zur Ästhetik Des Widerstands Im Afrodeutschen Theater: Am Beispiel Von Olumide Popoolas Also By Mail, Bertrand Collins Ngong M.A.

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This research is titled On the Aesthetics of Resistance in Afro-German Theater: A Case Study of Olumide Popoola's Also by mail. The main purpose of this research is to show how Afro-German theater resists through creative processes on a symbolic and aesthetic level to address crucial challenges faced by the black minority in Germany. The play Also by mail by Nigerian-German playwright Olumide Popoola is an interesting example of this, as it is situated at the intersection of gender, race, and identity. Popoola’s engagement with the aesthetics of resistance provides a way to understand how Afro-German activism today uses …

Towards A Queer Weimar Cinema: Spaces, Narratives, And Influences, Elizabeth M. Lynch Sullivan

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

The Faustian Deal: What Is Good And Evil?, Jaclyn Elmquist

English Honors Theses

How is the “deal with the devil” is portrayed in contemporary films? This essay compares how the original Faustian deal informs modern-day portrayals. Thus, I examine how devils were first represented in early works such as The Faustbuch, Mary of Nijmegen, and Goethe’s Faustus. These depictions and their historical context provide the basis for my research. I compare these works to the films, Rosemary’s Baby, Wall Street, and Sweet Smell of Sucess. In the mentioned films, the main characters make deals with a devil or demon for wealth, success, or fame. I explore how the Faustian character of each film …

„Kopfschmerzen, Familiensorgen": Urszenen-Konfigurationen, Psychotherapie-Parodie Und Sublimierungspraktiken In Kafkas "Proceß", Anna Lynn Dolman

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis presents a re-reading of Kafka's novel "The Trial" against the background of Kafka's negotiation of Freudian psychoanalysis. Rather than merely employing the Freudian framework as a hermeneutic tool, the thesis argues that Kafka constructs his novel along the lines of psychoanalytic theories while simultaneously attempting to deconstruct them and question the effectiveness of the so-called talking cure by means of ironically subverting a therapeutic configuration. The starting point of the thesis centers on an oftentimes overlooked scene at the very beginning of the novel, arguing that the voyeuristic old couple across the street from K. demonstrate that the …

Riding The Bahn, Reading Berlin: Berlin In Transit(Ion) From Reichshauptstadt To Weltstadt (1871-1930), Mikael Olsson Berggren

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Riding the Bahn, Reading Berlin: Berlin in Transit(ion) from Reichshauptstadt to Weltstadt (1871-1930) is a study of the relationship between Berlin’s public transit network and representations of the city in literature and film. The ride within the confines of the city differs from journeys with the national railway, and the passenger’s encounter with urban space diverges from the perambulating flâneur. Although Berlin’s intra-urban transit system relied on horse-drawn carriages and busses until the construction of the Stadtbahn in the 1880s, the number of passengers commuting and traveling in and around Berlin grew exponentially each year between the 1870s to the …

Werwolf, Weswolfs, Wemwolf, Wenwolf: Gender, Morality, And Transformation In Annette Von Droste-Hülshoff’S “Der Loup Garou” (1860), Hasol Yu

University Honors Theses

Werewolves have long populated Western culture, forming a particularly close relationship with Germany through their impact on fairy tales, psychology, and literature, with works such as Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse, 1927) and Der Wehrwolf (Hermann Löns, 1910) eventually becoming international bestsellers.

Less widely recognized, however, is Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's "Der Loup Garou" published in 1860 in the collection, Letzte Gaben. This nine-stanza poem depicts a tale of a savage beast with white fur and twisted eyes that is told to the mischievous children Pierrot and Caton in hopes that it keeps them pious and obedient on a cold night. At first …

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy, Lena Nighswander

Honors Projects

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy is a new play that takes up the issues of adaptation, translation, and temporality in regards to Frank Wedekind's Frühlingserwachen, a play infamous in its revelry in controversy and unflinching nature in the face of social issues many would prefer to ignore. Several modern adaptations of the original text exist, but none have utilized the 2020s as a setting nor have they used the fertile landscape of the American midwest as a background.

This play, set in Toledo, OH, leans into the Wedekindian tradition of cutting social criticism and controversy in its exploration of …

The Methods Of Oppression Of Women In 1800s Germany Vs. Today, Amina Taher

Senior Theses and Projects

Women have faced many injustices, pain, and struggles over time. This thesis focuses on the methods by which women were oppressed in 1800s Germany vs. today. At first, I use a number of popular fairytales, novels, and scholarly articles/books to discuss the role of women in German society in the 1800s. Furthermore, I talk about the different methods used to oppress and abuse women in modern times, mainly focusing on the role of social media as a tool of oppression. Finally, I emphasize and debate the similarities and differences between the different oppression forms over time.

A Bird’S Eye View: Large-Scale Tonal Structures In Robert Schumann’S Four Song Cycles (Op. 42, 24, 39, And 48), Peter Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Some of Robert Schumann’s most notable works are his Lieder for solo voice and piano accompaniment. Schumann's Lieder are considered some of the best compositions in this genre, engendering various interpretations by performers and exciting vigorous debate among musicologists and theorists. Robert Schumann’s early music was almost entirely composed for the piano alone; it wasn’t until 1840 that he started to compose almost exclusively Lieder and song cycles inspired by his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert. This was a prolific year for Schumann compositionally, in part due to his marriage to Clara Schumann who was one of Europe’s most preeminent piano …

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) …

Aus Deutschland Nach Westen: Eine Analyse Der Westen-Abenteuerliteratur Von Friedrich Gerstäcker, Ruby Hoffman

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the construction of masculinity and its role in the construction of the image of America in two books by Friedrich Gerstäcker (Flußpiraten des Mississipi and Streif- und Jagdzüge durch die Vereinigten Staaten Nord-Amerikas). The portrayal of men in these books reflects a largely traditional and hegemonic masculinity, but it contains a number of nuances that complicate that model. With particular attention to the interaction of this masculinity and nature in the American backwoods, a particular image of a successful, real, American man becomes visible. This thesis analyzes how Gerstäcker’s outsider (German)—but immersed—perspective produces a familiar …

The Other Side Of Silence: The Productive Limits Of Human Awareness And The Novel, Aven Elaina Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

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 …

The Thematic Changes In Defa Cinema, David Hillman

Honors Theses

This presentation examines the evolving themes in the films produced by the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) film monopoly Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) from its founding in 1946 through German Reunification in 1990. It analyzes ten films that span a variety of genres, including the ‘rubble films’ (Trümmerfilme), fairy tale films (Märchenfilme), and the GDR-American westerns (Indianerfilme). They are also reflective of the different periods of GDR politics in which they were made, such as the brief GDR ‘New Wave’, the banned films of the mid-1960’s, and the push for films addressing contemporary society (Gegenwartsfilme …

Critical Climates: Stimmung, Voice And Mythopoesis In German Literature From 1950–1989, Marc Cesar Rickenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Critical Climates examines the interest in myth among a number of literary figures from 1950 to 1989 in relation to the concurrent re-emergence of the German aesthetic concept of Stimmung. At once referring to atmosphere, milieu, mood, disposition and harmony, while carrying along its root Stimme, or voice, this dissertation shows how Stimmung informed a literary practice among German-language authors that engaged the relationship between narrative, ideology and collective moods in a way that can be spoken of in terms of a mythopoesis. This project builds upon contemporary scholarship that focuses on Stimmung as a way to refigure …

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 …

L’Universalité De La Voix Féminine : Interprétations Genrées De La Poésie Romantique Française Et Allemande, Mimi Mackilligan

Senior Theses and Projects

Contemporary French feminist literary critics have debated whether the category of woman is an empowering or limiting paradigm through which to analyze women writers. Hélène Cixous coined the term "feminine writing [écriture féminine]" in order to link femininity to a radical particularity, whereas Monique Wittig has asserted that this concept confines women writers to their minority identity rather than allowing them to be read universally. Such discussions serve as a useful lens through which to analyze women writers who grappled with their gendered position far before the advent of 20^th-century feminism.

Despite the abundance of woman …

Songs For High Voice: An Annotated Guide To African Romances, Op. 17 By Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Makeda Danielle Hampton

Theses and Dissertations--Music

African Romances, Op. 17, composed in 1897 by African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), is a collection of seven songs for high voice that is uniquely both African and American. The lyrics of this song cycle were first published in the book Majors and Minors, a collection of poems published in 1895 by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

An analysis of resources supports that academic discourse in Black vocal music has been underrepresented due to the absence of centralized information, such as published scores, recorded materials, catalogs, and guides for study and performance. While in depth research focusing on the art …

Fort! Da!: Thinking Death In Freud And Faust, Mercer M. Greenwald

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

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 …

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 …

Postkoloniale Solidarität: Alltagsleben Von Ddr-Bürgern In Mosambik, 1979-1990, Katrin Bahr

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation examines the everyday life and work of development workers[1] and their families sent by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to Mozambique between 1979 and 1990. I investigate the issues of state and individual solidarity and the interactions of Germans and Mozambicans within the development projects. Since the GDR did not see itself as a colonial power or an heir to Germany's colonial past, it acquitted itself of the charge of being an exploitative imperialist in its foreign policy. From its perspective, it stood side by side in “solidarity” (Solidarität) with its “brother states” (Bruderstaaten) …

Good Bye, Socialist Paradise: Representations Of Postreunification Nostalgia In Sonnenallee And Good Bye, Lenin!, Hannah L. Garver

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis analyzes the experiences constituting the protagonists’ adolescence in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as portrayed in Thomas Brussig’s book Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, Leander Haußmann’s film Sonnenallee, and Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye, Lenin!. These narratives challenge assumptions that the phenomenon Ostalgie indicates a desire to return to the actual conditions of life in the former East. Using Svetlana Boym’s work on post-communist nostalgia as a theoretical framework, I argue that the representations of life in the East as presented in these texts are the protagonists’ reinterpretations of the past. The protagonists develop nostalgia for their youth …