Department: Germanic Languages and Literatures ![[clear]](close-x.png "Remove this limiter")
33 matches in the database.
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1.
Bhatawadekar, Sai.
Symptoms of withdrawal: The Threefold Structure of Hegel's and Schopenhauer's Interpretation of Hindu Religion and Philosophy.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2007, Ohio State University
► German Romanticism and its enthusiasm about India produced significant research, translations, and…
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▼ German Romanticism and its enthusiasm about India produced significant research, translations, and comparative analyses of ancient Indian literary, religious, and philosophical texts. Among the German philosophers, who interpreted and commented upon this material, this dissertation investigates G. W. F. Hegel’s and Arthur Schopenhauer’s interpretation and structuring of Hindu religion and philosophy. The analysis of their interpretations reveals that Hegel and Schopenhauer imposed a threefold conceptual structure, within which they approached, interpreted, and presented Hindu religion and philosophy. Hegel and Schopenhauer identified and isolated three aspects as fundamental and defining concepts of Hindu religion and philosophy: 1. the metaphysical universal principle, 2. the world and its particular entities, and 3. the non-duality of the particular with the universal principle. They both argued that Hindu religious thought contemplates upon the concept of brahman as the singular sustaining universal principle, considers the world and its particular entities as illusory, temporary, and secondary, and recommends complete withdrawal into the non-duality with brahman as the religio-philosophical goal. This dissertation further demonstrates that the threefold structure is inherently connected and directly derives from Hegel’s and Schopenhauer’s own philosophies. This threefold structure is a result of their attempt to incorporate, place, and fit Hindu religion and philosophy within the presuppositions of their systems. Hegel analyzed Hindu religious thought in terms of his own triadic dialectical structure and criticized it as primitive and unsophisticated, belonging to the early stages of Spirit’s development. Schopenhauer attempted to establish kinship with it by seeking analogous explanations in Hindu religion and philosophy for his overarching rubric of representation, will, and denial of will. Upon comparing their interpretation with the information given in their own sources, this analysis ascertains that Hegel and Schopenhauer imposed the threefold conceptual structure by selectively reading their sources, restructuring schools of Indian philosophy, isolating and recontextualizing Hindu quotes and explanations, and reconfiguring the connotations and meanings of concepts. This dissertation further exposes the discrepancies and conceptual tensions in their interpretations of Hindu religion and philosophy that potentially challenge the consistency of their own systems.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berman, Nina.
Keywords: G.W.F.Hegel; Arthur Schopenhauer; Western Philosophers' Interpretation of Eastern Religion and Philosophy; East West Encounters; Cross-cultural Philosophy
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3.
Boney, Kristy Rickards.
Mapping topographies in the anglo and German narratives of Joseph Conrad, Anna Seghers, James Joyce, and Uwe Johnson.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2006, Ohio State University
► While the “space” of modernism is traditionally associated with the metropolis, this…
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▼ While the “space” of modernism is traditionally associated with the metropolis, this approach leaves unaddressed a significant body of work that stresses non-urban settings. Rather than simply assuming these spaces to be the opposite of the modern city, my project rejects the empty term space and instead examines topographies, literally meaning the writing of place. Less an examination of passive settings, the study of topography in modernism explores the action of creating spaces—either real or fictional which intersect with a variety of cultural, social, historical, and often political reverberations. The combination of charged elements coalesce and form a strong visual, corporeal, and sensory-filled topography that becomes integral to understanding not only the text and its importance beyond literary studies. My study pairs four modernists—two writing in German and two in English: Joseph Conrad and Anna Seghers and James Joyce and Uwe Johnson. All writers, having experienced displacement through exile, used topographies in their narratives to illustrate not only their understanding of history and humanity, but they also wrote narratives which concerned a larger global culture. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1900) and his Lord Jim (1904) compare to Seghers’ Transit (1944) and Revolt of the Fisherman from St. Barbara (1928) in that each explores crises of modernity. Instead of using the city, Conrad and Seghers utilize the sea, the harbor, and marginalized communities to illustrate thresholds of historical crises. The topographies echo a world affected by imperialism and particularly for Seghers, fascism. In my analysis of Joyce’s Ulysses (1921) and Johnson’s Anniversaries (1970-83), I steer away from a traditional examination of the classic modernist city narrative. I show how the texts provide a broader and more encompassing look of the modern world through the memory of imperialism and fascism as it is reflected from outside the city limits, most notably on the coasts of the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, and on the banks of the Hudson and Liffey. Merging a socio-historical approach with a close literary analysis, my project seeks to explore an uncharted subset of modernism, and map out poetic, durable, and visual contours for literary and cultural studies, sculpting new textures for understanding history, memory, and humanity.
Advisors/Committee Members: Fehervary, Helen.
Keywords: Joseph Conrad; James Joyce; Anna Seghers; Uwe Johnson; Writers in Exile; Displacement; Topography; Space in Literature; Landscapes in Literature; Place in Literature; Modernism; Water in Modernism; The city in Modernism; Vietnam War
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4.
Boran, Erol M.
Eine Geschichte des türkisch-deutschen Theaters und Kabaretts.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2004, Ohio State University
► This dissertation seeks to contribute to current studies of minority cultures in…
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▼ This dissertation seeks to contribute to current studies of minority cultures in Germany by examining dramatic works and staged performances by Turkish-German artists. As the first comprehensive study of its kind, it offers an overview of the forty-year-history of Turkish-German theater and cabaret with reference to the socio-cultural and economic conditions of its development and examines plays and performances with regard to influences, motives, and narrative strategies. In particular, I explore the following issues: the process of creating a space within the German culture scene; the tension between traditions and experimental innovation; the staging of identities and the performance of ethnicities in drama and theater; the strategies of expressing oneself in a foreign idiom, thereby creating a 'new' language; and the reaction of the mainstream German audience to Turkish-German cultural expressions. The work consists of four parts: Chapter 1 examines contexts relevant to the reception of Turkish minority art in Germany, such as the German reaction to Ottoman and Turkish societies and the images produced over the centuries, and draws comparisons with Jewish minority culture and migrant theaters outside of Germany. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the history of Turkish theater, presenting both traditional and modern forms as points of reference for Turkish-German artists. Chapter 3 describes the emergence and development of a Turkish theater scene in Germany, paying special attention to the socio-historical context of the labor migration and the distinct national theater traditions. Chapter 4 outlines the history of Turkish-German Kabarett focusing on the 'self'-representation of the artists and the strategies employed to articulate and discuss questions related to (cultural) identity. As the hyphenated title of my dissertation suggests, all projects described are multicultural productions resulting in what could be called 'variegated' forms of art or 'art with an accent,' i.e., kaleidoscopic expressions that probe the boundaries of what a German audience will accept as 'German' art. My approach establishes drama and theater as sites of contact allowing minority artists to stage and constitute identities whilst probing concepts of cultural and political integration and exclusion.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berman, Nina.
Keywords: Turkish-German; literature and drama; minority culture; migrant theater; migrant cabaret; ethno comedy; hip-hop; Turkish theater; Karagöz shadow theater; Emine Sevgi Özdamr; Yüksel Pazarkaya; Sinasi Dikmen; Muhsin Omurca; Serdar Somucu
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7.
Connolly, David E.
Problems of textual transmission in early German books on mining: “Der Ursprung Gemeynner Berckrecht” and the Norwegian “Bergkordnung”.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2005, Ohio State University
► The subject of this study is two printed books from the 1530s…
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▼ The subject of this study is two printed books from the 1530s on metal mining and mining law, Der Ursprung gemeynner Berckrecht (“The Origin of Common Mining Laws”) and the Bergkordnung des Löblichen newen Bergkwergs/ auff dem Golmsbergk/ im Königreich Norwegen (“Mining Regulation for the praiseworthy new mine at Gullnes in the Kingdom of Norway”). I have created scholarly editions of each German text, translations into English, and the annotations and commentary requisite for understanding the works synchronically and diachronically in their historical and linguistic contexts. The two books occupy important positions in the early German literature on mining. Ursprung, probably dating from 1535-1538, is the earliest printed compendium of legal and scientific texts on mining, containing several texts originally dating from the 13th to early 16th centuries. The collection, by known book producer Johan Haselberg, prints key early German laws on mining previously existing only in manuscripts, and it provides a new edition of the earliest printed book on mining and metallurgy, Ulrich Rülein’s “Bergbüchlein” from ca. 1500. A glossary of mining and smelting terms, a listing of mines in Bohemia, and information on mining officials complete the collection. The other book, Bergkordnung Norwegen, was composed and printed in Saxony in 1540 for use in Norway. Commissioned by King Christian III of Denmark and Norway, the book constitutes the first mining regulations produced in Germany for use in another country. This work clearly and systematically summarizes prevailing contemporary German practices and served as the legal basis for Norwegian mining for several centuries. The introduction to this study begins with overviews of early German mining and mining literature. The two texts Ursprung and the Bergkordnung Norwegen are then discussed in their historical context, including earlier versions/sources and later editions of the works. Issues of textual transmission and compilation in the early printing period are emphasized in this study—how do the texts in question inform and/or problematize our understanding of the growth and progress of scientific knowledge in the Renaissance? Part 1.8 of the Introduction discusses the rationale and methodology used in producing the editions and translations. Chapter 2 presents the edition of Ursprung; Chapter 3, the edition of the Norwegian Bergkordnung. The editions present near-diplomatic renditions of each text, with critical apparatuses to provide variants from the earlier and later versions of the texts. Chapters 4 and 5 are the respective English translations, with footnotes to illuminate various linguistic or technical aspects of the texts. On the one hand, various practices and developments in compilation of technical information are demonstrated within and between these two texts. However, study of these texts also reveals some of the problems adherent to the transmission of texts from manuscript to print and among successive print editions in the early book press period.
Advisors/Committee Members: Grotans, Anna.
Keywords: Medieval and Early Modern/Renaissance metal mining; mining laws; metallurgy; Early New High German technical literature; early book printing; transition of manuscript to print; history of the book; history of technical communication
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11.
Harder, Kirsten.
Dichten, Deuten, Denken : die Stefan-George-Rezeption von Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer und Theodor W. Adorno.
Degree: MA, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2005, Ohio State University
► The perception of a vicinity between philosophy and poetry goes back to…
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▼ The perception of a vicinity between philosophy and poetry goes back to Antiquity. In the era of German Idealism and romanticism, philosophers like Schelling hailed the arts as an organon of truth of utmost significance to philosophy. In the Twentieth Century, three thinkers - Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Theodor W. Adorno - have renewed this paradigm. They contend that poetry, sharing with philosophy the linguistic character but being sensual at the same time, offers an experience of the world and thereby of truth which is more fundamental and immediate than the sciences' truth claim.The three have extensively interpreted works of arts. Interestingly enough, all put forward readings of the nowadays almost forgotten poetry of Stefan George. This intersection in their interpretational efforts offers the opportunity to examine and compare their different approaches.Heidegger reads George's late poem "Das Wort" as a revelation in accordance with his own thoughts about language. His reading verges on the poetic as he re-writes a crucial verse several times and stages the poet's "conversion": his hitherto self-confident and aggressive attitude towards the word is broken in favor of a humble gratefulness for the gift of language. Heidegger delivers a powerful illustration of his idea of naming, but in this endeavor, brushes over details in the poem which don't sustain his reading. He also makes untenable claims about the poet, thereby denying the manifold affinities between George's poetology and his own conception of language and art, their common anti-rationalism and eschatological longings.By offering the closest reading of George's poetry, the founder of philosophical hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, remains true to his principle that the authority of the text needs to be respected. He is interested in the complex interaction and fusion of sound and sense that constitute the lyrical effect and takes the resulting notion of the work's wholeness as a reference to the totality of the world. Defining secular poetry as a remembrance of myth by means of mythopoetic play, he reads George's controversial late enunciations of a new mythology as being a true expression of modern man's coming to terms with the loss of a former "whole" in mythical society.By searching for truth-content in George's work, Theodor W. Adorno overcomes his strong reservations against the poet's Weltanschauung. He acknowledges George's aesthetic formalism as being the result of the poet's strong critique of his time (thus as a sociological I'art pour I'art). But he remains very suspicious of any traces of a "positive", i.e. ideological content in George's verse. He attributes value to those poems which reveal tensions between form and content and between the poet's intention and the actual artistic outcome: The truth lies in the failure of the poet's aesthetic project. He also praises George's language for its puristic simplicity whilst seeing it at the same time endangered by the wordsmith's violent formalism.
Advisors/Committee Members: Hammermeister, Kai.
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12.
Hetrick, Kristen M.
Writing Illness: Tuberculosis and Cancer in European and North American Literature.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2012, Ohio State University
► This dissertation addresses the use of two of the great scourges in…
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▼ This dissertation addresses the use of two of the great scourges in world history, tuberculosis and cancer, in the literary texts of North America and Europe. The focus of this work is on these two diseases due to their prominent status in the western world over the last several centuries. They also possess several significant commonalities: each has held the distinction of being one of the most feared diseases, each has been responsible for the deaths of countless people, and each has had a significant literary presence in Europe and North America. I first provide a chapter on each disease detailing its biological, medical, and social histories. Each chapter on the literary texts then includes discussions of noteworthy examples from a wide range of cultures in this investigation of each disease’s three primary manifestations in literature. The longer focused analyses of each paradigm concentrate on works from Germany and North America, as these literary traditions have produced particularly compelling works concerning tuberculosis and cancer. These focused analyses concern use of tuberculosis in the texts of Erich Maria Remarque, Eugene O’Neill, and Thomas Mann, and the use of cancer in the works of Brigitte Reimann, Maxie Wander, Audre Lorde, Reynolds Price, Thomas Mann, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Edson, and Christa Wolf. My readings of literary texts, both fictional and experiential, examine in part the effects of these illnesses on the perception of self and place in society. These analyses rely to some extent on the scholarly literature that has already investigated problems of identity produced by illness in general, both in culture and in literature. What these scholars have not done is examine these themes of identity and the self in society as they relate to specific diseases in literary texts, and I will therefore investigate and expand on them in their manifestations in works concerning tuberculosis and cancer. My readings therefore in part discuss how the unique physical manifestations and cultural realities of cancer and tuberculosis affect the identities and the narratives of their fictional and non-fictional sufferers. I also address how these themes are used in texts in which the author has sought to highlight social or ethical conditions using either of these diseases. Literary portrayals of tuberculosis and cancer are informed by the medical and social facts of each disease. I therefore investigate how authors may alter, expand, or even distort these medical and social facts in their texts so as to achieve their respective intentions. In doing so, authors can reinforce commonly held perceptions or misperceptions of the disease. They may also create new perceptions or associations as they depict the disease in a novel manner. I discuss the ways in which authors within each paradigm either use or go against the medical and social facts of each disease and the effect this then has on the themes the author presents. I also explore why these diseases lend themselves to the particular paradigms authors have traditionally favored for each, and discuss the historical progression of those paradigms.
Advisors/Committee Members: Fehervary, Helen.
Subjects: American Literature; Germanic Literature
Keywords: cancer; tuberculosis; Germany; North America; Europe; literature
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13.
Libbon, Stephanie E.
Frank Wedekind's fantasy world : a theater of sexuality.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2000, Ohio State University
► At the time Wedekind began his career, Germany was experiencing both a…
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▼ At the time Wedekind began his career, Germany was experiencing both a cult of masculinity as well as a crisis in masculinity. In the latter decades of the. nineteenth century, imperial Germany underwent a new engendering that expounded a revived emphasis on virife masculinity. Philosophers like Nietzsche cried out for a new race of supermen. Bismarck's,"blood and iron" politics made Germany a European power. Industrialization produced entrepreneurs and barons of industry. And from the ranks of the military arose the Junker-styled officer. At the same time there was this intense emphasis on masculinity, there was also a great feeling of impotence as the overarching systems of value crumbled away under the weight of commerce and science. Caught between the alpha males who ran the nation and the New Woman who was now demanding equal rights and privileges, the ordinary man felt increasingly isolated and emasculated-from his work, from his home, and eventually even from his own manhood. Like many in his day, Frank Wedekind believed life had become an affected charade belying the vitality it once possessed. While this decadence was due in part to the overly cultured and refined aspects of his times, Wedekind saw pretentious morality, what he culled "bürgerliche Moral," as the leading cause of society's downfall. To counter this decline, he proposed a new way of life which was supposed to reawaken the most vigorous of human drives. This "menschliche Moral," as he labeled it, was not a morality per se, but rather an expression of the life force now presumed missing from his world. Viewing sexuality as the most rejuvenating of human drives in that it held within it the primal instinct for life, this dissertation explores Wedekind's championing thereof as a means for fostering his new lifestyle. As this investigation discusses, sexuality held a prominent place not only in Wedekind's oeuvre, but indeed was a hotly debated issue at the end of the nineteenth century as a new brand of physicians called sexologists tried desperately to confine men as well as women to rigidly separate social spheres. Whenever there was a transgressing of engendered boundaries, as seen with the increasingly vocal and assertive Women's Movement, sexuality, and in particular female sexuality, was defined in pathological terms. While Wedekind did believe in the regenerative function of sexuality and thus the prostitute, or the more appropriately-coined German term Freudenmädchen, holds a prominent place throughout his oeuvre, this study shows how his works, like the medical discourses of his time, were also a warning against the potentially rampant nature of her sexuality and the harm it could do male sexuality. In looking at Wedekind's early works, and in particular at his Lulu-plays, through the lenses of medical, anthropological, and sociological discourses, this dissertation reveals to what extent Wedekind's own works were influenced by the debates on sexual pathology so widespread during his day. While research to date has focused predominantly on his female characters, as scholars have interpreted Wedekind's oeuvre as either a promotion of female liberation or a misogynist rebuke of the liberated woman, this study pays special attention to his male characters as I demonstrate how his works are not only an advocacy for men, but indeed a battle-cry for the male to recoup his weakened masculinity. In analyzing the way Wedekind portrays masculinity and femininity as well as the intersection of the two in the act of sex, this dissertation identifies the types of women Wedekind posited as most deviant and dangerous to male sexuality as well as the types of men he found to be most susceptible to these women. Although Wedekind professed advancing a more liberated sexuality as a means for attaining his "menschliche Moral, my research demonstrates that the vitality to be regained through this lifestyle was a vitality for man-kind only; it was to be gained through the woman, but not for the woman.
Advisors/Committee Members: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara.
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14.
Li, Weijia.
Anna Seghers´ China-Begegnung in ihrem Leben und ihren Werken.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2009, Ohio State University
► My dissertation examines Anna Seghers’s encounter with China and how this encounter…
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▼ My dissertation examines Anna Seghers’s encounter with China and how this encounter influenced her life and her writing. By using materials available in the Anna-Seghers-Archive in Berlin, results of studies in various related disciplines such as sinology, history, and political science, etc., as well as historical and current Chinese sources, this dissertation seeks to reconstruct chronologically Anna Seghers’s intellectual involvement with China.My research traces Seghers’ encounter with China back to her study of Chinese language and culture at the University of Heidelberg and her internship in the East Asian Art Museum in Cologne in the early 1920s. It illustrates that her early fascination with the cultural and political developments in China and her personal contact with several Chinese political refugees in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s were essential for her intellectual involvement with China over the following 50 years. As the first comprehensive study of its kind, this dissertation seeks to fill a void surrounding current research on Anna Seghers. The study will produce meaningful connections between Seghers’ intellectual pathways and literary activities as they intertwine with the writer’s encounter with another culture and nation. Findings from my research will inform future studies in contextualizing Seghers’ works within various cultural paradigms that played a role in the eventful career of the most prominent German woman writer of the twentieth century.
Advisors/Committee Members: Fehervary, Helen.
Subjects: German literature
Keywords: Anna Seghers; China
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15.
Loentz, Elizabeth Ann.
Negotiating identity: Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.) as German-Jewish feminist, social worker, activist, and author.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 1999, Ohio State University
► Since Ernest Jones revealed the identity of "Anna O." in his 1953…
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▼ Since Ernest Jones revealed the identity of "Anna O." in his 1953 Freud biography, scholars have been more interested in "Anna O.," the object of study for the two "founding fathers" of modern psychology, than in Bertha Pappenheim, the author, feminist, activist, and pioneering social worker. The majority of studies of Pappenheim (1859-1936) have focused on her role as the hysteric patient "Anna O." in Freud and Breuer's Studien über Hysterie. Few works have been dedicated to her later achievements as the founder of the Jewish German Women's League and as world-renowned social worker and activist, and almost none to her literary writings. My dissertation redirects attention to Pappenheim's long neglected, yet very extensive literary work, which includes dramas, short stories, parables, aphorisms, a travelogue, poems, prayers, and literary translations.Pappenheim's multi-faceted identity, or in other terms, the necessity of "negotiating" between numerous competing or seemingly incompatible self-identifications and/or externally imposed identifications (Viennese, Austro-German, Orthodox Jewish, upper-middle-class, feminist, social worker, single woman, anti-Zionist, recovered hysteric), leads to paradoxes and ambivalence both in her writings and in her personal life and public activism. My project, which is informed by recent theoretical discussions of identity issues in Cultural Studies, Ethnic and Area Studies, Minority Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies, examines the relationship between Pappenheim's literary work and her social work and activism, endeavoring to unpack these moments of apparent contradiction. I examine recurring themes in Pappenheim's work (the status of Yiddish, anti-Zionism, conversion and Catholicism, Eastern European Jewry, women's role in Orthodox Judaism) all of which revolve around and point back to Pappenheim's steadfast insistence on the ideal of German-Jewish symbiosis. The symbiosis Pappenheim avowed, a "culturally German and religiously Jewish" identity, was tenuous throughout Pappenheim's lifetime, at odds with the increasingly dominant nationalist-racist discourse, that reduced religion, language, and culture to racial attributes. In her final years, however, the institutionalized anti-Semitism of National Socialism legally annulled the symbiosis, non-negotiably. For Pappenheim, the symbiosis was equally non-negotiable. At her advanced age, she was unwilling and unable to part with the keystone of her self-understanding and foundation of her life's work.
Advisors/Committee Members: Lorenz, Dagmar C. G.
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16.
Luly, Sara Rosemary.
Magnetized Men: Constructing Masculinity through Somnambulism in the Works of German Romanticism.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2011, Ohio State University
► A frequently occurring trope in Romantic literature, somnambulism, or sleep walking, was…
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▼ A frequently occurring trope in Romantic literature, somnambulism, or sleep walking, was understood as a condition of women. Literary depictions of male somnambulism have generally been interpreted in one of two ways: either as indicative of a feminized male subject or as a universal experience that can be read as a metaphor for political and social issues. I investigate the potential of literary male somnambulist to temporarily de-stabilize contemporary gender polity. I argue that this ultimately constructs minority masculinities against which the hegemonic ideal is formed. Using the critical approach of gender studies, informed by the works of Robert Connell and Pierre Bourdieu, I examine literary works by Heinrich von Kleist, Caroline de la Motte Fouqué, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Karl Leberecht Immermann within the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medical theories and eighteenth century conceptions of gender. I show that in these texts the motif of male somnambulism is used to examine factors that shape male/male interaction including homosocial bonding, homoeroticism and military culture. Through a study of male somnambulism my dissertation contributes to current discussions of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century cultural and gender studies.
Advisors/Committee Members: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara.
Subjects: Germanic Literature
Keywords: Romanticism; somnambulism; animal magnetism; gender studies; Fouque; Immermann; Kleist; Hoffmann
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17.
Magro Algarotti, Jennifer L.
The Austrian Imaginary of Wilderness: Landscape, History, and Identity in Contemporary Austrian Literature.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2012, Ohio State University
► Contemporary Austrian authors, such as Christoph Ransmayr, Elfriede Jelinek, Raoul Schrott, and…
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▼ Contemporary Austrian authors, such as Christoph Ransmayr, Elfriede Jelinek, Raoul Schrott, and Robert Menasse, have incorporated wilderness as a physical place, as a space for transformative experiences, and as a figurative device into their work to provide insight into the process of nation building in Austria. At the same time, it provides a vehicle to explore the inability of the Austrian nation to come to terms with the past and face the challenges of a postmodern life. Many Austrian writers have reinvented, revised, and reaffirmed current conceptions of wilderness in order to critique varying aspects of social, cultural, and political life in Austria. I explore the way in which literary texts shape and are shaped by cultural understandings of wilderness. My dissertation not only sheds light on the importance of these texts in endorsing, perpetuating, and shaping cultural understandings of wilderness, but it also analyzes their role in critiquing and dismantling the predominant commonplace notions of it. While some of the works deal directly with the physical wilderness within Austrian borders, others employ it as an imagined entity that affects all aspects of Austrian life.
Advisors/Committee Members: Hens, Gregor.
Subjects: Germanic Literature
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18.
McCallum-Bonar, Colleen Heather.
Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2008, Ohio State University
► Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem…
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▼ Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance explores the relationship between African Americans and Eastern European immigrant Jews (Yiddish-speaking / Ashkenazic Jews) by examining the depictions of each in their respective literatures. The thrust of this project addresses the representations of African Americans in Yiddish literature. An investigation of the depictions of Jews by Harlem Renaissance writers can contribute to the understanding of an African American/Yiddish interface in which attitudes towards each other are played and written out. This linkage of African American and Jewish history, traditions and reflections regarding identity, culture, and language appears at a significant point in the grand narrative of ethnicity and race ideology in the United States. For Yiddish writers, their works regarding African Americans revealed their projection of what it meant to be Black, just as those of Harlem Renaissance writers projected their concept of what it meant to be Jewish, all in a milieu which saw the redefinition of what it meant to be black, to be white, and to be American. Yiddish writers addressed concepts of Blackness and Jewishness with an understanding of what could be gained or lost; the push to become American, the opportunity for social, political and economic mobility and racial alterity was countered by the pull of conflict with respect to assimilation, American conceptualization of exclusion based upon race, and a Jewish consciousness which rejected both.
Advisors/Committee Members: Miller, David.
Subjects: African Americans; American literature; Black history; Comparative literature; Judaic studies; Literature; Minority and ethnic groups
Keywords: Yiddish; Yiddish Literature; Black Ashkenaz; Harlem Renaissance; Poetry; Blacks and Jews
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20.
Payk-Heitmann, Andrea.
Fortschreiben, Vermeiden, Erneuern: Der Amerikadiskurs deutscher Schriftsteller nach dem 11. September 2001.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2007, Ohio State University
► "Continuation, Avoidance, Renewal: The Discourse of German Writers on America in the…
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▼ "Continuation, Avoidance, Renewal: The Discourse of German Writers on America in the Wake of September 11, 2001" This dissertation seeks to contribute to studies of the German perception of "America" at the beginning of the 21st century by analyzing the reactions of eight German authors to the terror attacks of September 11. By using the attacks as a probe for the continuation or modification of a long-lasting discourse on the United States of America and their role in the world, I give fresh insights into the (changing) view of the "New World" in a post-unified Germany. First, I provide an overview of the historical ambivalences of “America” in the German discourse since the 18th century. Then, I analyze the reactions of the eight writers, four of them being younger and less known, four of them being rather renowned and distinguished, often dubbed as "usual suspects" when it comes to commenting public affairs. The first group did not publish any commentaries on the terror attacks. Instead, Kathrin Roeggla, Else Buschheuer, Durs Gruenbein, and Max Goldt published some form of a diary to express their immediate impressions and feelings. In contrast, Peter Schneider, Hans Christoph Buch, Guenter Grass and Hans Magnus Enzensberger made use of the mass media in order to comment on the terror attacks and to assess the consequences. By comparing and close reading the texts of these authors, I bring attention to the continuity and the ruptures in the underlying narratives on "America". As my systemization suggests, three strands of a discourse on the United States can be identified. While the reactions of three authors show a very ambivalent and emotional attitude toward the United States, which is more or less open to traditional sentiments, another three authors consciously try to avoid those patterns, displaying an intentional indifference and sobriety. However, only a minority of two authors opens new perspectives by promoting a critical, yet unexcited image of "America" in their texts.
Advisors/Committee Members: Fischer, Bernd.
Subjects: Literature, Germanic
Keywords: German Discourse on America; America in German Literature; German Perception of America; German Image of America; Americanization; Literature; September 11, 2001; Terror Attacks; Kathrin Roeggla; Else Buschheuer; Durs Gruenbein; Max Goldt
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21.
Richards, Kevin A.
Soldiering On: Images of the German Soldier (1985-2008).
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2012, Ohio State University
► The criminal legacy of National Socialism cast a shadow of perpetration and…
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▼ The criminal legacy of National Socialism cast a shadow of perpetration and collaboration upon the post-war image of the German soldier. These negative associations impeded Helmut Kohl’s policy to normalize the state use of the military in the mid-eighties, which prompted a politically driven public relations campaign to revise the image of the German soldier. This influx of new narratives produced a dynamic interplay between political rhetoric and literature that informed and challenged the intuitive representations of the German soldier that anchor positions of German national identity in public culture. This study traces that interplay via the positioning of those representations in relation to prototypes of villains, victims, and heroes in varying rescue narrative accounts in three genre of written culture in Germany since 1985: that is, since the overt attempts to change the function of the Bundeswehr in the context of (West) German normalization began to succeed. These genre are (1) security publications (and their political and academic legitimizations), (2) popular fantasy literature, and (3) texts in the tradition of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I find that the accounts presented in the government’s White Papers and by Kohl, Nolte, and Hillgruber in the mid-1980s gathered momentum over the course of three decades and dislodged the dominant association of the German soldier with the villainy of National Socialism. The new dominant account established in the genre of security policy publications and their political and academic legitimations positions the German soldier as a European Christian hero and displaces the villainy previously associated with his image onto foreign powers and their populace. An overview of the developments in the genre of popular Nibelung adaptations echoes the development of the antagonistic accounts in the White Papers of their periods, but then these adaptations conform to the generic expectations of the Nibelungen material, though the last novels I discuss break free from this. In the genre of literature in the tradition of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung, authors engage in the broader public debates concerning the German soldier and national identity and produce counter-narratives that are both antagonistic to the dominant narrative as well as other antagonistic accounts.
Advisors/Committee Members: Davidson, John.
Subjects: Germanic Literature; Modern History
Keywords: German Soldier; Bundeswehr; Jurek Becker; Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung; Stephanie Zweig; Normalization; Discourse; Cognitive Narratology; Marcel Beyer; Wolfgang Hohlbein; Thorsten Dewi; Juergen Lodemann; Flughunde; Bronsteins Kinder
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23.
Sanda, Draga Patricia.
Christoph Ransmayrs Romane „Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis“, „Die Letzte Welt“ und „Morbus Kitahara“: Eine Narratologische, Historische und Rezeptionsästhetische Untersuchung.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2006, Ohio State University
► This dissertation examines the historical significance of Christoph Ransmayr’s novels The Horrors…
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▼ This dissertation examines the historical significance of Christoph Ransmayr’s novels The Horrors of Ice and Darkness, The Last World and Morbus Kitahara within a narratological and reader-centered theoretical framework. The representation of historical courses of events in Ransmayr’s works is analyzed with respect to its effects on the novels’ implied reader. I use a dual approach to illustrate the connections between historical and fictional events, as they are conveyed to the reader. I relate text-internal strategies of constructing a fictional world to text-external allusions. Furthermmore, I identify the precise crossing and departure points of fictional and historical facts and their possibilities. The close relationship and correspondence between text-internal discontinuities - breaks in the time-space construction of the fictional worlds - and text-external transgressions of logical, historical and literary frameworks are consistent with a portrayal of history as a course of multiple possibilities, governed by chance rather than causality. This interpretation of Ransmayr’s works challenges the argument that the fictional representation of historical events blurs or distorts their political relevance. Precisely the fictitious or plausible elements point to the central historical experience of discontinuity and emptiness, an experience which is most evident in the depiction of war in Morbus Kitahara with its unpredictable, destructive consequences.
Advisors/Committee Members: Fischer, Bernd.
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24.
Sathe, Nikhil Anand.
Authenticity and the critique of the tourism industry in postwar Austrian literature.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2003, Ohio State University
► Examining three postwar Austrian works that reflect on the impacts of the…
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▼ Examining three postwar Austrian works that reflect on the impacts of the tourism industry, this project argues that the texts employ a concept of authenticity to censure the industry, to address questions of national identity, and to pursue aesthetic or thematic concerns. The authors construct authenticity as threatened by tourism through its negative effects on people and place. While theorists of tourism recognize shortcomings of this concept, such as its assumption of a culture's previous stability, this project contends that authenticity is a rhetorical construction that remains integral for an understanding of the three texts. Charged by tensions between an idealized and an actual condition, authenticity serves the artists' critique by dramatizing what tourism erodes and by functioning as a vehicle with which they foreground figures experiencing an instability of meaning, which thus raises questions regarding personal or collective identities. Hans Lebert's Der Feuerkreis (1971) envisions an industry that creates false representations of Austria, which camouflages Nazi complicity, and that places Austrian hosts in a servile relationship, which Lebert constructs as an impediment to a national consciousness. Portraying an individual's tragic life in a resort, Norbert Gstrein's Einer (1988) employs authenticity as a contrast indicating the central character's alienation as he struggles with the frayed social conditions in the village. By replicating structures of touristic display on a narrative level, Gstrein then reinforces his critique of both the host's predicament and biographical representation. Robert Menasse's novel Schubumkehr (1995) juxtaposes its protagonist's identity crisis with the events surrounding the conversion of a destitute village into a resort, presenting the result of both processes as a state of inauthenticity. These radical deviations allow Menasse's indictment of the negative consequences of tourism and his criticism of traditional concepts of history. This study shows that authenticity serves different purposes in each author's projects, but has a consistent function in the critique of tourism. Authenticity emerges as a means of finding fault with this industry because it highlights differences resulting from radical changes and because it facilitates broader questions of identity by revealing uncertainties about who one is or should be.
Advisors/Committee Members: Davidson, John E.
Subjects: Literature, Germanic
Keywords: Austrian literature; German literature; Relationship to national identity; Tourism; Tourism and literature; Authenticity; Austria
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27.
Stefaniuk, Thomas.
Diaspora Destiny: Joseph Jessing and Competing Narratives of Nation, 1860-1899.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2012, Ohio State University
► In what is increasingly considered a post-secular age, the role of religion…
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▼ In what is increasingly considered a post-secular age, the role of religion in immigrants’ negotiations of transnational identities and search for national belonging is once again thought to be a significant one. The growing presence of Islamic diaspora communities in Europe and America has brought to the fore questions of how a “foreign” religious faith and heritage can be reconciled with the modern and secular – and yet latently Christian – cultures of their host countries. This dissertation attempts to contribute to this discourse by shedding light on a somewhat similar chapter in American and German migration and religious history. Returning to the so-called era of secularization in the late nineteenth century, I investigate the problem of how religion and nationalism were reconciled in a transnational context, namely in a German Catholic diaspora’s emerging construction of German-American identity. The vehicle for this analysis is the rhetoric of a leading opinion-shaper in the German-American Catholic community, Joseph Jessing, as it was performed in his leading German language Catholic newspaper, the Ohio Waisenfreund. Focusing on the print medium that was so crucial for the spread of ideas in the nineteenth century, I research almost thirty years of Jessing’s newspaper, as well as other German-American newspaper of the time, and place Jessing’s contribution to the diaspora group’s identity construction in the context of his day. I argue that before the era of a more complete German assimilation in the twentieth century, Jessing represented a more resilient diaspora element that resisted imposed Americanization and instead perpetuated competing narratives of national and religious identity. I show how the phenomenon of transnationalism manifested itself in the importing by Jessing of the conservative and ultramontane variety of European Catholicism into the American setting. Forged in the Prussian and Catholic province of Westphalia during the 1860s, Jessing’s import of a culture war mentality into the German diaspora context in America was the foundation of national and religious narratives that countered the dominant American narrative of Anglo-American Protestantism, as well as the dominant German identity narrative of liberal secularism and Protestantism, which found its manifestation in the new Prussianized Germany. With a political ideal rooted in the past – German unity under Catholic leadership – and a view of the United States as a decentralized confederation of various nationalities, Jessing attempts to construct a German Catholic imagined community by inculcating a heightened sense of German nationalism and cultural maintenance. The emerging consciousness and construction of American national identity in the post-Civil War period, in which the Catholic Church also participated through Americanization and Americanism, created an identity crisis for Jessing and other conservative German-American Catholic leaders. But Jessing’s mission to create a German-American Catholic community also incorporated – somewhat unknowingly by Jessing – the simultaneous goal of finding national belonging in America. The result of this complex clash of national and religious missions was Jessing’s reluctant participation in an emerging American Catholic historical counter-narrative that claimed the rightful belonging of Catholics in the American national community.
Advisors/Committee Members: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara.
Subjects: Religious History
Keywords: German-American Catholicism; community construction; diaspora; Americanism; Americanization
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28.
Vannette, Charles.
“Wir pröbeln und schneidern mit Dingen, die in der Brust anderer Menschen gesund und geheimnissvoll und unangetastet ruhen . . .” : Narrative Observation and Hyperreflexivity in the Works of Robert Walser.
Degree: PhD, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 2011, Ohio State University
► This works argues that Robert Walser’s literary production, and many of the…
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▼ This works argues that Robert Walser’s literary production, and many of the aspects that make it unique and capture the attention of his readers, stems from a hyperreflexive mind that is acutely conscious of the world around it. The argument is underpinned by the cognitive theories of the psychiatrist Louis Sass, who suggests that both schizophrenia and modernism may derive, in at least some of their forms, from a hypertrophy of consciousness that leads to compulsive reflexivity, lengthy modes of intense observation, and something akin to an apophanous mood, in which the world appears to undergo some consequential change and is revealed to the viewer as never before. Hyperreflexivity, and its corresponding aesthetic manifestation narrative observation, are established as a source and defining feature of Walser’s semantics and language experiments, the stasis of his landscape descriptions, his anti-labyrinthine stories, and his inclination towards servitude and the theater. Throughout, it is shown that Walser’s descriptions and language use seem both emptied of meaning and ineffably significant. This quality can be traced back to an aesthetic process that is seen manifested throughout his oeuvre, and which closely parallels the schizophrenic cognition of the external world.
Advisors/Committee Members: Fischer, Bernd.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: Robert Walser, hyperreflexivity, schizophrenia
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