German Language and Literature Commons^™

Ladies, Whores, And Holy Women: A Sourcebook In Courtly, Religious, And Urban Cultures Of Late Medieval Germany, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Sarah Westphal-Wihl

TEAMS Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions

This sourcebook presents editions and translations of seven fourteenth- and fifteenth-century texts that advance our understanding of gender, sexuality, and class in the late medieval German-speaking world. Three of the translated texts are fiction. Additionally, there is a religious treatise, a religious legend, an inventory of books, and a legal document. While each of these texts is instructive in and of itself, they gain in complexity when brought into dialogue with one another.

Sexual Selection And Plumage In The Polymorphic White-Throated Sparrow, Nathan Rathbun

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Feather coloration has been known to be connected with sexual selection for many years. It also provides an opportunity to study evolution, focusing on sexual selection and natural selection. Plumage is affected by both of these forces and the equilibrium is where these forces balance. The white-throated sparrow gives us a unique opportunity to observe the effects of the different strengths of these forces within a species. First, I established that there were differences in plumage characteristics between the morphs and sexes. White males had the brightest white and darkest black feathers. White females and tan males were the next …

Text As Resistance In Holocaust Literature: Struggles For Personhood In Wiesel, Levi, And Delbo, Gillian M. Mozer

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is an examination of the memoirs of three core Holocaust writers, Elie Wiesel (Night and Day), Primo Levi (If This is A Man), and Charlotte Delbo (Auschwitz and After), exploring the ways in which each of the three authors uses his or her memoir to simultaneously document and resist the dehumanizing influence of the concentration camp experience.

Germans, Jews And Turks (Spring 2010), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This class studies the expression of cultural identity in central European literature. How have people come to think of themselves or others as “Germans,” “Jews,” “Turks,” or some combinations thereof? While the Holocaust is obviously central to the German-Jewish relationship, it is not the only focus of this course—we will read literary reflections of the emancipation of the Jews, of German-Jewish assimilation and symbiosis, of the rise of anti-Semitism and Zionism, as well as attempts to remember the past. And while the long history of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Germany will be a major component of our …

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 …

Die Darstellung Der Evangelischen Kirche Als Eine Neue Familie In Erich Loests Nikolaikirche, Beth A. Roberts

Honors Projects

Throughout the end of the 1980s the Lutheran Church in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) experienced a surge of attendance and social activism in an otherwise secularized society. Research shows that the church was the sole island of dissent within the communist GDR. St. Nicolas Church in the city of Leipzig became the prototype of social involvement; visionary pastors opened their doors to every citizen and provided a space for congregations to voice concerns, organize interest groups, and plan peace protests. The construction of an open environment in which citizens could speak and interact gave rise to a greater sense …

Optimal Experience In Relationships, Activities, And Beyond: Connecting Flow With Self-Expansion, Brandy M. Dean

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Flow is a state of optimal experience characterized by complete immersion in an enjoyable activity and has been associated with positive experience in activities. Self-expansion is a state of increase in the diversity and complexity of the self and has been linked with positive experience in relationships. Despite phenomenological similarities, the connection between these two states has not been examined. The current study used a correlational design to explore the degrees of overlap between these states by comparing them in general, situation-specific, and predictive contexts. It was expected that flow and self-expansion would occur at similar frequencies, be produced by …

Pollinator Deception And Plant Reproductive Success In Jack-In-The-Pulpit, Joseph L. Pettit

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I conducted a study of the deceptive pollination system of Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisama triphyllum, Araceae) in forests of west-central Indiana. I focused on (a) determining the identities and abundances of insect visitors to spathes, (b) evaluating the success of female spathes in setting fruit, (c) determining the relative importance of pollinator visitation and plant size for fruit number, and (d) investigating the function of the female spathe’s lack of an exit hole, which has been hypothesized to improve pollination success. I found that (a) Jack-in-the-pulpit receives visits from both flies and thrips. Counts of fly corpses from spathes showed the most …

Review Of Elisabeth Vavra, Ed. Der Wald Im Mittelalter, Richard Utz

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Broadsheet Of Koheles Shlomo: Beney Israel Rahmanim Vegomley Hasadim (1738), Shalhevet Dotan-Ofir

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This is a translation of a 1738 Broadsheet of Koheles Shlomo "Beney Israel rahmanim vegomley hasadim"

Early Modern Yiddish Readers: Immoderately Addicted To Rhyme?, Ruth Von Bernuth

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Roughly one third of Old Yiddish literature is based on traceable European literary sources, mainly German. Given how close Old Yiddish is to Early New High German, some of these Old Yiddish texts with European sources feel like mere transcriptions, others more like legitimate translations and yet others more like free adaptations. From the Yiddish reader's perspective, the texts become accessible through transcription into Hebrew characters and more accessible the more that the translator engages the text as representative Jewish reader. A large proportion of these Yiddish books with German sources are prose novels–a genre newly popular with German readers …

Der Welsche Gast (The Italian Guest), Marion Gibbs

TEAMS Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions

Friedrich Neumann described Thomasin's Der Welsche Gast as a linguistic phenomenon without comparison within the corpus of German literature of the Hohenstaufen period. In the didactic literature of the time, Der Welsche Gast does indeed occupy a unique position. . . . [It] betrays the heavy hand of the clerical moralist who moves from providing the younger members of his audience with a primer for proper social etiquette in his early verses to a meticulous analysis of what he clearly viewed as the appropriate ethical code for the nobility of his time, often presented against the backdrop of a thundering …

Book Review: Heart Language: Elsie Singmaster And Her Pennsylvania German Writings, Anna Jane Moyer

Adams County History

Heart Language: Elsie Singmaster and Her Pennsylvania German Writings

By Susan Colestock Hill. Foreword by Charles H. Glatfelter. Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series. The Pennsylvania German Society. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2009.

A new century with all its energy and expectations had slipped into place and challenged Americans with fresh promises. The year was 1900. Elsie Singmaster had spent two years at Cornell University immersed in writing classes, and she would return home to Gettysburg eager to write. Her professors had been encouraging. She would always remember one of them who commented on her work for the day …

The "Art" Of War: The Influence Of Propaganda Music During World War Ii, Karissa L. Andrews

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduate requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

A Life On The Left: Moritz Mebel’S Journey Through The Twentieth Century, Robert Weinberg, Marion J. Faber , Translator

History Faculty Works

In A Life on the Left, Moritz Mebel describes life as a Jewish refugee from Germany in 1930s Moscow, service in the Red Army during the war, and what it meant to be a Jew in Stalin’s Russia and communist East Germany. He also evaluates his life as a political activist upon his return to East Germany after Stalin’s death and offers insight into the allure of communism.

Germany And Its Others (Fall 2007) (Whitman College), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course was taught by Robert Tobin at Whitman College. Professor Tobin worked at Whitman for 18 years as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities, and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.

"In this course, we will be investigating how German culture has defined itself against its others: If Germany has defined itself in opposition to the East, is it Western? If Germany has defined itself in opposition to the South, has it escaped the legacy of Rome? Or is it a developed country? How did Germany's relationship to its colonies structure its self-image? …

The Wess East German Study Tour: A Report, Richard Hacken, Kizer Walker

Faculty Publications

Ten WESS members were selected to participate in a study tour of eastern Germany sponsored by the Goethe-Institut, New York; the U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Germany, Public Affairs Section; and Bibliothek & Information International, in cooperation with WESS. Titled "Leipzig, Dresden, Weimar: Exploring a Library Landscape," the tour was intended to acquaint German Studies specialists from US academic and research libraries with developments in librarianship and publishing in eastern Germany since unification. The tour, which ran March 16-23, 2006, was book-ended, start and finish, by the Leipzig Book Fair and Germany's national professional meeting of librarians, the Bibliothekartag, held this …

Nietzsche’S “Gay” Science, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Offers a reading of the allusion to the 'Provencal' in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, including the troubadour’s art (or 'technic') of poetic song, an art at once secret, anonymous and thus nonsubjective, but also including logical disputation, for which it is the model, and comprising, perhaps above all, the important ideal of action (and pathos) at a distance: l’amour lointain. But beyond the Provençal character and atmosphere of the troubadour, Nietzsche’s conception of a joyful science, Nietzsche's 'gay' science also adumbrates a critique of science understood as the collective ideal of scholarship, and including classical philology as much as logic, …

Um 1800 (Spring 2006) (Whitman College), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course was taught by Robert Tobin at Whitman College. Professor Tobin worked at Whitman for 18 years as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities, and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.

"In this course, we are attempting to get a sense of the richness of the cultural life of German-speaking central Europe around 1800, when there was a flowering of literature, philosophy, music and the arts flowered. We will read a variety of texts in German from a variety of disciplines and develop our skills as literary analysts, cultural critics, and readers of …

Otto Gründler: In Memoriam (1928-2004), Richard Utz

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

Eulogy on Director of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University.

Medieval Nominalism And The Literary Questions: Selected Studies, Richard Utz, Terry Barakat

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

Like few other topics in the academic study of medieval literature, the search for the possible parallels between philosophical and literary texts reveals the not always peaceful coexistence among the three basic approaches to the study of medieval literature and culture: While hard-core medieval philologists would not accept any claims for a “literary nominalism” unless direct textual dependence can be demonstrated, scholars in medieval studies and the comparative study of medieval literature have shown themselves more accepting of investigations which diagnose a certain nominalistic Zeitgeist, mentality, or milieu especially in late medieval culture; and scholars preferring presentist/postmodern approaches have wholeheartedly …

Chaucer And The Discourse Of German Philology: An Addendum, Richard Utz

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

Contains several additions to the “Annotated Bibliography” of German and Austrian Chaucer criticism between 1793 and 1948 published in Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002)

Johann August Weppen's Der Hessische Officer In Amerika And David Christoph Seybold's Reizenstein: The American Revolution And The German Bürgertum's Reassessment Of America, Virginia Sasser Delacey

Institute for the Humanities Theses

While American, British, and French reactions to the American Revolution are well-known, those of the German people are not, despite the presence of almost 30,000 German soldiers in America fighting for the British army and hundreds of German volunteers fighting for the American patriots. The participation of German soldiers on both sides of the conflict inspired numerous works of German poetry, prose, and drama, all largely forgotten in the wake of the French Revolution and the rise of German Classicism and Romanticism. This thesis examines two works that have received brief mention in the past two centuries: Der hessische Officier …

Is Anne Frank At Last Taken Seriously As A Writer?, Laureen Nussbaum

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 1998, the emergence of five unknown pages written by Anne Frank once again focused attention on her diary. Despite the fact that the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation had unravelled the history of Anne's diary in "The Critical Edition" (Dutch 1986, 2001; English 1989, 2003) and had printed all available texts in parallel, readers were confused. This was partly due to Mirjam Pressler’s so-called ‘Definitive Edition’ of 1995 in which the strands, that had been so carefully separated in the Critical Edition, were once again tangled. A brief review of the different versions of Anne Frank's journal may be …

The Phenomenology Of Büchner's Woyzeck: Historical And Critical Problems In The Ongoing Adaptation, Jonathan W. Myers

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Georg BUchner is considered by many to be the father of 20th century drama, despite his death in 1837 at the young age of 23. His legacy is visible in any contemporary survey of the history of theater. The origins of the styles and techniques of Naturalism, Expressionism, Theater of the Absurd, Existential Drama, Theater of Alienation, Theater of Cruelty, Socialist theatre, and documentary drama may all be feasibly traced to BUchner's own innovative themes and playwriting techniques. His final manuscript Woyzeck remained incomplete at his death, leaving what would become a dramaturgical puzzle for the theater scholars of each …

History As Literature, Graeme Dunphy

TEAMS Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions

This volume presents excerpts and translations of three thirteenth-century South German verse chronicles: Rudolf von Ems's Weltchronik, the anonymous Christherre-Chronik, and the Weltchronik of Jans Enikel. These three works are close in language, in date, and in conception, yet they also differ significantly, representing the perspectives of three distinct sections of medieval society: courtly, monastic, and urban. The excerpts have been chosen from the beginning of Rudolf's chronicle, the middle of the Christherre-Chronik and the end of Enikel, so that taken together they give something of an impression of the chroniclers' arrangement of material in a continuum from …

Ava's New Testament Narratives: "When The Old Law Passed Away", James A. Rushing Jr.

TEAMS Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions

Ava is the first woman whose name we know who wrote in German. She wrote her poem - or poems - on the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ sometime early in the twelfth century, no later than 1127. It seems certain that she was a layperson, and her work reflects a level of learning that raises all sorts of interesting questions about the education of the laity, especially the education of lay woman, and about the nature of authorship in the Middle Ages, generally and particularly in medieval Germany.

Dreams Of Interpretation: Psychoanalysis And The Literature Of Vienna, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

The first edition of Die Traumdeutung (translated as The Interpretation of Dreams, 1913) bears a publication date of 1900, although it actually appeared in Vienna in November 1899. This is consistent with the pivotal temporality of a work that looks retrospectively into the nineteenth century and prospectively into the twentieth. In 1931, Freud said of his first and arguably most important book, "It contains, even according to my present-day judgement, the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make. " In terms of the influence not only on his later publications, but also …

Review Of David Matthews, The Invention Of Middle English, Richard Utz

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Literary Skinheads? Writing From The Right In Reunified Germany, Jay Julian Rosellini

Purdue University Press Books

"Literary Skinheads? is a very nuanced, meticulously researched and vividly written study of a series of important debates in German literary circles since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid political transformations that have accompanied German unification. No other book in the English-speaking world offers such a comprehensive survey of the legacy of radical conservative ideas in German political life. Rosellini not only offers trenchant interpretations of major political controversies of the last decade in Germany, but he also provides the necessary background information needed to make sense of these important public debates." Elliott Neaman, author of …