PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Arts and Sciences : Germanic Languages and Literature

This dissertation explores the creation of a personal sense of home within the experience of migration in two semi-autobiographical trilogies by contemporaries Barbara Honigmann and Emine Sevgi Ozdamar. The interdisciplinary literary analysis draws on the fields of Urban Studies, Gender Studies, and Human Geography to examine the interdependence between these seeming binaries – home and migration – in six works: Honigmann's Roman von einem Kinde (1986), Eine Liebe aus Nichts (1991), and Damals, dann und danach (1999), and Ozdamar's Das Leben ist eine Karawanswerei (1992), Die Brucke vom Goldenen Horn (1998), and Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde (2003). The dissertation begins with a discussion of scholarship on Ozdamar and Honigmann, and on concepts of home, space, and place, migration, exile, and nomadism. Four central chapters examine each protagonist's critical engagement with and reinvention of the varied spaces she inhabits. The textual analysis explores physical, social, linguistic, spiritual, and gendered spaces as points of contact between home and migration. It demonstrates the ways in which artistic and literary spaces blur the boundaries between home and away, familiarity and foreignness. In these texts, home and migration emerge not as static concepts, but as two very similar dynamic processes. Ozdamar and Honigmann create new and particular perspectives that come out of allegiances to multiple localities, and from real and imagined “double locations.” By taking these works out of their potentially competing fields of German-Jewish Studies and transnational studies and examining them instead through the common lens of spatiality, this dissertation challenges the discourse that locates Honigmann's and Ozdamar's texts as marginal or “Other” in relation to the German literary canon. The dissertation concludes with speculations on the term “cosmopolitanism,” arguing that Ozdamar and Honigmann rewrite the term cosmopolitanism as a highly personal and individu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Katharina Gerstenberger (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2006, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1984, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, German

This thesis's aim is to introduce the contemporary Austrian comic book author Nicolas Mahler and his work to an English-speaking readership. A background of the German comic book genre prefaces a discussion about Nicolas Mahler and his professional career. The central section of this study will be devoted to a close analysis of two of Nicolas Mahler's works, Der Weltverbesserer (2014) and Franz Kafkas nonstop Lachmaschine (2014). For my analysis of these works, I explore Linda Hutcheon's theory of adaptation, Roland Barthes's narratology and Brian McFarlane's notion of enunciation. These theories aid in unpacking Nicolas Mahler's style and examining how he adapts works of German literary classics into the comic book genre. My thesis places Nicolas Mahler and his comic books within the tradition of the German literary context as well as within the study of contemporary German-language comic books.

Committee: Christina Guenther Dr. (Advisor); Edgar Landgraf Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Arts and Sciences : Germanic Languages and Literature

The German reunification in 1990, a political and historical turning point, produced a literary vacuum, in which the younger generation of writers stood a chance of becoming accepted by a big readership. One of these newcomers is the East German Thomas Brussig. His novel Helden wie wir (Heroes like us) has since its publication in 1995 been acclaimed as one of the most important contemporary German novels. Recounting the German reunification from a sexual point of view, it tells the story of the pervert Klaus Uhltzscht who brings down the Berlin Wall with his penis. Sexuality embodies the East German society's struggle between freedom and ideological bondage. Helden wie wir also deals with the relationship between Germany and the United States. We see today's United States as a sanctuary and mainstay for Germany's history. Brussig refers to the American dream, democracy and freedom, interweaving voices of American politicians like Ronald Reagan and using American culture as a foil for his protagonist Klaus. In my analysis of Helden wie wir I focus on sexuality and America. In my analysis of sexuality I follow the references in the novel itself – Freudian theories, the East German sex therapist Siegfried Schnabel, and works by Christa Wolf. I also include works not explicitly mentioned in the novel but which yield further insight into Brussig's understanding of sexuality, Philip Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaint and Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex. I try to explore sexuality further by working out special aspects, like the division of sexuality in East and West, the penis as symbol, and the language of sex. In the chapter on American ideas I include political statements of American presidents as a historical account of the reunification by the German historian Manfred Gortemaker. Besides other historical analyses and scholarly literature about the picture of America in German literature, the view of the Western world in Christa Wolf's works is juxtaposed with Helden wie w (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Katharina Gerstenberger (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, Germanic

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Germanic Languages and Literatures

"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 "Americ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bernd Fischer (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, Germanic

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1907, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1987, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Arts and Sciences : Germanic Languages and Literature

This dissertation explores the relationship between the visual and textual Berlin representations of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Wilhelm Raabe and architectural and city paintings among others by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Eduard Gaertner and Adolph Menzel. Besides interart comparison the dissertation uses non-fictional aesthetic writings, socio-historical analyses and contemporary concepts of urban planning for the interpretation of canonical Berlin texts. As city texts often bear an explicit or implicit affinity to the art of painting, concepts and techniques such as the elevated view, window view and the bird's eye view in text and images are compared in Berlin texts and paintings. The dissertation argues that the innovative visual and textual representations of the civic spaces of Berlin served as frame for transforming the Berliners' relationship to their urban environment and raised a new urban consciousness. The dissertation argues that early city texts and city paintings reflect similarly upon a new significance of seeing and a changing urban perception. The introduction is devoted to methodological questions as it explores the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, the terminology for the concept intermediality and the interconnectedness of the representations of the urban environment in literature and in the visual arts. The first chapter analyzes eight Berlin-texts by E.T.A. Hoffmann and discusses the label "Berlinische Geschichte" in a wide cultural context with the aid of Hoffmann's Berlin drawings and of contemporary Berlin paintings. The second chapter is devoted the Hoffmann's Des Vetters Eckfenster (1822), which is compared to two architectural paintings of the Gendarmenmarkt from 1822 and to the curtain design of the Schauspielhaus by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The similarity of the representations manifests itself in extraordinary perspectives and reveals how the Gendarmenmarkt contributed to the emergence of a new civic space and a new urban consciousne (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Katharina Gerstenberger PhD (Committee Chair); Sara Friedrichsmeyer PhD (Committee Member); Richard Schade PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: German literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, English

German-Americans were the most populous and influential non-British immigrant group in the British colonies and in the early nation. In order to fully understand early American history, culture, and literature, it is crucial to explore the literature produced by this group. Nonetheless, the sheer number of literary works produced by Germans in America makes such a task as difficult as it is important. This project participates in the recovery of German-American literature by focusing on German-language stories written in and about American contact zones. I begin in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania and follow new waves of immigrants south and west in the nineteenth century. I argue that German-American writers used transnational genres (the captivity narrative, the frontier romance, and the urban mystery novel) to articulate the transports and traumas of their transnational experiences. In Chapters 1 and 2, I look at German-language captivity narratives of the French and Indian War. I argue that writing captivity narratives allowed German settlers to negotiate their culturally liminal place in Pennsylvania as a racially privileged but culturally marginalized group, to come to terms with the transnational traumas of captivity and religious persecution, and to define and police constantly shifting communal boundaries. Chapter 3 focuses on the frontier romances of Austrian-American novelist Charles Sealsfield, whose work deals with the transnational pleasures of an imaginary empty frontier. Sealsfield alleviates national guilt over Indian removal by alleging that southwestern farmers and pioneers are the most “legitimate” Americans, more so even than Northerners and Easterners. He nonetheless suggests that unlike Indians and Africans, Yankees and European immigrants can gain legitimacy if they undergo a process of national regeneration through marriage, which operates as a metaphor for democracy in his work. In Chapter 4, I look at urban mystery novels of the 1850s. Like (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jared Gardner PhD (Committee Chair); Chadwick Allen PhD (Committee Member); Susan Williams PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Germanic Languages and Literatures

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 conce (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Davidson (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, Germanic

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2006, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Germanic Languages and Literatures

In contemporary German literature there is a body of texts that deals with pilgrimage on the levels of both form and content that I identify as pilgrim literature. From this literary corpus emerge interventions in literary traditions and theories of modernity. Pilgrim literature intervenes in the tradition of the Bildungsroman, which portrays a journey of self-realization that ultimately ends in resignation and societal integration. It brings a critique of and alternative to this genre's articulation of discontent with modernity through its communal aspects and its mode of engaging with place and movement. The literary pilgrims I investigate travel not only as part of religious communities, but must also learn to engage with the community of the biosphere as they move within and through the environment. With protagonists setting off on journeys that bring them into contact with nature, pilgrim literature also hearkens back to the Romantic tradition and its topos of Wanderlust. As it re-frames literary topoi in the framework of pilgrimage, this body of literature engages with theories of modernity, in particular theories of time. I analyze three novels that I consider representative of pilgrim literature due to their protagonists' embodiment of predicaments of modernity: Ilija Trojanow's Der Weltensammler (2006), W.G. Sebald's Die Ringe des Saturn (1995), and Carl Amery's Die Wallfahrer (1986). Each of the pilgrim protagonists embodies different predicaments of modernity: temporal and social homogenization, social acceleration, and ecological crisis. Trojanow's pilgrim embodies discontent with homogenization as he undertakes the Hajj to Mecca in disguise. His many attempts at inner and outer transformation through role-play can be interpreted as compensation for experiences of temporal and social homogenization. As Sebald's narrator retrospectively models a journey along the English coast as a pilgrimage, he embodies discontent with social acceleration. Through hi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bernhard Malkmus (Advisor); Katra Byram (Advisor) Subjects: Germanic Literature; Modern Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, German

This thesis highlights the ways in which Bertolt Brecht's concept of epic theatre pertains to video games, more particularly, visual novels. Digital drama and romance genres (aka “dating simulators”) are known for their “realism” for their ability to make the player feel as if they are interacting with real people. Yet, the deceptiveness is their apparent inability to replicate fully the kinds of social interactions a person can have. The plot structure oftentimes is also rather simplistic: the goal of these games is that the player gets the girl of their dreams, despite any hardships. The horror game Doki Doki Literature Club (2017) by game developer Dan Salvato challenges these genre shortcomings and aspire to make productive, I will argue, a Brechtian notion of epic theatre. Salvato had a love-hate relationship with visual novels. To him, visual novels were nothing more than “cute girls doing cute things” where any tragic backstory or character arc is just another objective the player must overcome to make the girl of their dreams fall in love with them. Like Brecht, Salvato wants to destroy the illusions created by visual novels and shock people into reflecting about such illusions. He created Doki Doki Literature Club, a horror game disguised as a dating simulator, which takes a critical look at issues such a mental health that visual novels often gloss over and treat as plot points in the story.

Committee: Edgar Landgraf Ph.D. (Advisor); Kristie Foell Ph.D. (Committee Member); Clayton Rosati Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Germanic Languages and Literatures

Defining realism often relies on visual similarities between the outside world and the thing depicted. In German literary Realism of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, drawing and painting frequently serve as a metaphor for what authors were expected to accomplish, while other times they warned against a literary art that only offered an unfiltered depiction of all the detail this world had to offer. This dissertation broadens the view of the role that discussion of visual arts play in German language Realism by focusing on the connections between visual arts and education presented in this literature. To this end, it analyzes the work of Realist authors who had a close relationship to the visual arts, while at the same time looking directly at visual art objectives, training and production practices of this time. In discussing of the work of Adalbert Stifter, Gottfried Keller, and Theodor Fontane, this dissertation reveals processes of learning and verbalizing: learning to see and to depict the real, and to transform depictions, visual images, into words. By dually engaging in close textual analysis and a study of historical art practices, this dissertation develops the argument that visual arts serve as a concrete way for writers to discuss the necessity of training and shaping of the Realist artist, to acknowledge the technical skills needed to create art, and to recognize that a writer or visual artist engages in a constantly evolving interaction with external reality.

Committee: Robert Holub (Advisor); Katra Byram (Committee Member); May Mergenthaler (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1991, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1986, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1978, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1976, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature