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Publication Jewish Women's Wombs: The Holocaust and Postwar Pronatalism(2024-09) Maznick, TiarraThis dissertation contrasts theory and practice in Jewish Holocaust survivor’s reproduction. Looking to five varying, interconnected sites of inquiry, I contend that while there are sites that code women’s reproduction as normative and desirable, women forged families and social meaning—if at all—in a widely heterogeneous fashion. Resuming life after persecution, family dismemberment, physical maim and psychological trauma, survivors’ bodies navigated a host of complex challenges that impacted survivors’—especially female survivors’—readiness and/or willingness to bear children. In theory, there are three sites and mediums that promote reproduction. Firstly, the deployment of photography in Displaced Persons camps, I contend, positions children at the front of marches and protests for immigration reform, evoking optics of a displaced nation and people. Children, leading the collective, marching from here and now to a there and then. Secondly, for women repatriated and whose bodies never returned to regular menstruation, I paint a medical history of the European-based fertility studies conducted on female Holocaust survivors conducted over 30 years following the war. Void of consensus or demonstrative reproductive damage, the studies were framed—by authors and physicians themselves—as grounds for national reparations. Women’s reproductive capacities, treated as indicative of a nation’s strength, became the entry point for aggrieved nations to stake their claims. Thirdly, I conduct a case study on 32 Holocaust testimonies, in which I claim that the tripartite structure of audiovisual testimony, situating a “before” and “after” destruction, ultimately signifies reproduction in a chronological retelling as indiscernible from redemption—a signification that certain Holocaust archival institutions exacerbate with family-centered approaches. These sites of pronatalist investigation are bookended by two historical inquiries into the practice of how Jewish survivors reproduced and forged kin. The afterlives of Jewish women experimentally sterilized in Auschwitz-Birkenau, I theorize, came to include child-centered models and non-child-centered models, ranging from child-sharing to avoidance. In closing, I present novel analyses drawn from the metadata of survivor Lore Shelley’s 1981 dissertation questionnaire, whereby I conduct multivariant analyses that reveal reproductive attitudes and trends, paving future intervention points for Holocaust researchers.Publication Pessimism in Progress: Hermann Sudermann and the Liberal German Bourgeoisie(2016-05) Doerre, JasonOnce ranked among the most internationally read authors at the turn of the nineteenth century, the name Hermann Sudermann (1857‚Äì1928) today has been all but forgotten. This dissertation frames the life and work of this once famous author in the context of the liberal German bourgeois milieu. Not only was Sudermann a liberal bourgeois, his works reflected the preferred styles, attitudes, and worldview of this social class. I argue that the rise and fall of Hermann Sudermann‚Äôs career, as it was inextricably connected to the fortunes of the liberal German bourgeoisie, mirrors the trajectory thereof. As the appeal of bourgeois liberalism waned from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth, so too did the reception of its author par excellence. With the end of his life in 1928, and then the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933, Hermann Sudermann and the legacy of the liberal German bourgeoisie came to an abrupt end. Most peculiar was that Hermann Sudermann had written about the decline of bourgeois liberalism for decades in advance of its collapse. This is part of a self-fulfilling prophecy, an affliction that affected many of his contemporaries. Instead of emanating a persistently progressive force and survivalist spirit, the tendency was aestheticist withdrawal, and resignation to fate. Using his roman √† clef, titled Der tolle Professor, as an entry point into the life work and worldview of Hermann Sudermann, this dissertation focuses attention on the representation of liberalism, the bourgeoisie, and pessimism.Publication Maternal Drag: Identity, Motherhood, And Performativity In The Works Of Julia Franck(2009-05) Hill, Alexandra MerleyThis dissertation, the first book-length investigation of the works of Julia Franck, investigates representations of the mother-daughter relationship in Franck's five major texts: Der neue Koch (1997), Liebediener (1999),Bauchlandung: Geschichten zum Anfassen (2000), Lagerfeuer (2003), and Die Mittagsfrau (2007). Specifically, it examines the roles of "daughter" and "mother" as social constructs, which are open to resignification and reinvestigation. In the introduction, I outline the trajectory of Franck's career, focusing particularly on her relationship with feminist scholarship and her persona as a representative of feminism in the German media. In chapter 1, I begin with Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and look for examples of performative identity in Franck's works of fiction. I further destabilize identity in chapter 2 by demonstrating how identity is contingent on space, drawing on Marc Augé's theory of "places" and "non-places." In chapter 3, I demonstrate how psychoanalysis, as the primary theoretical lens through which the mother-daughter relationship has been viewed, conflicts with destabilized gender binaries, as laid out in chapter 1. Consequently, I argue, the psychoanalytic models of attachment and identity are not relevant to an investigation of the mothers and daughters in Franck's works. I explain my theory of "maternal drag" in chapter 4. I argue that the mother figures in Franck's novels exhibit a performative maternal identity, specifically one that so conflicts with expectations of the maternal that it calls into question those very expectations. Finally, in the conclusion, I consider the wider implications of my theory, particularly in light of the media discussions in Germany surrounding feminism, motherhood, and the decline in birth-rate.Publication Der Wenderoman: Definition Eines Genres(2009-05) Hector, AnneThis dissertation investigates the literary landscape in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The first chapter provides the historical context and examines the different generations of authors growing up in the GDR. The term `Wenderoman' is coined through the historical event of the opening of the Berlin Wall, also referred to as turning point or change, and subsequently followed by the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. The second chapter demonstrates how the assimilation of East German people into the free market economy has been interpreted by scholars such as Paul Cooke in the context of Postcolonialism. This theoretical framework allows for a study of the patterns and structures that guide this new fictional genre within Wende-literature. In the prototypical Wenderoman viable individual identities are created by taking its main protagonist/s through the historical Wende which also provides the context for a personal Wende. The GDR Secret Police, whether in the background or foreground of the plot, is an essential element in the plot, as is a major city, generally Berlin. Each chapter, from chapters three to seven, provides an analysis of a Wenderoman according to these categories. Chapter eight concludes that one of the most important consequences of the Wende is the requirement to create a German history and identity which accepts responsibility for Nazism (the GDR by and large repudiated any such responsibility) and GDR state repression (West Germans do not see this as a common German heritage). The reverse side to this is that West Germans must accept East Germans' positive evaluations of aspects of their GDR past, just as East Germans must accept both the positive and negative consequences of a market economy and democracy. Coming from very different angles to the definition of German identity, East and West Germans define themselves in very different ways in Wenderomanen.Publication The Race-Time Continuum: Race Projrction in DEFA Genre Cinema(2013-05) Torner, EvanThis dissertation is a book-length investigation of race representation in three different East German feature film genres produced by the Deutsche Film Aktiensgesellschaft (DEFA): the western (Indianerfilm ), the musical, and the science-fiction film. The primary films examined include Osceola (1971), Meine Frau macht Musik (1958),Revue um Mitternacht (1962) and Der schweigende Stern (1960). I specifically articulate how each genre structures a temporality around race politics that tells us more about unique East German conceptions of whiteness, non-whites' role in society and "progress" than it tells us about the objectives of international and interracial solidarity espoused by the state. In the introduction, I discuss the relevant foundations of this study, including the various discourses one must mobilize to explain East German racism and to frame DEFA cinema from a contemporary perspective. In Chapter I, I posit some theories of race and genre that show their historical linkages with regard to film. Chapter II is a historical overview of interactions between East Germany, DEFA cinema and the Global South. Chapter III focuses on the way the western film Osceola views 1830s American racism within a 1970s Marxist-Leninist paradigm that elides opportunities for its Cuban co-production partner or the anti-racist history of the Seminoles to speak. Chapter IV looks at the phenomenon of the musical in East Germany in terms of its production of East German whiteness, as theorized by film theorist Richard Dyer. Chapter V describes science-fiction film Der schweigende Stern in terms of its accomplishment as the first multiracial space crew seen on television or film and the problematic race hierarchies that nevertheless underpin the final product. The conclusion deals with the very notion of "progress," especially with regard to racial equality, and looks at recent German cinema as a site where the discussion initiated by this dissertation might continue.Publication The Abject Of My Affection: “Heimosexuality” In German Texts And Films(2009-02) Frackman, Kyle E.This dissertation is an investigation of the spatial and temporal Othering of subjects, characters, and themes in German-language film and literature by means of a series of case studies, which illustrate a certain kind of alterity. This work offers a classification for a new type of Othering based on the interactions among gender, sexuality, and a notion of home or belonging. Heimosexuality, this kind of Othering, can appear when certain conditions are met: new bodies (corporeal constructions) will result from the combination of gender-sexual behaviors with notions of “home” and the pressures of abjection. The entities that emerge from this process operate in various spatiotemporalities, fusions of space and time with Otherness (allospaces and allotimes). Building on Sigmund Freud’s idea of the uncanny, chapter one provides and introduction to and foundation for the theoretical concepts employed throughout the dissertation by presenting a unique combination of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theories. The following chapters demonstrate the application of these concepts to four main cultural products. Chapter two argues that the characters in Frank Wedekind’s play, “Frühlings Erwachen” (1891), affect/effect each other’s bodies and sexual identities, as the adolescent characters demonstrate the polymorphous nature of corporeal eroticism and its dependence on national ideas of respectability. Chapter three is an analysis of Robert Musil’s novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß (1906), in which Foucauldian disciplinary power, colored by ideas of cultural propriety and social fitness, mold the sexualized and gendered methods by which privileged young men subjugate their surroundings. Chapter four is an examination of Kutluğ Ataman’s film, Lola und Bilidikid (1999), in which “majority Germans” and “minority Germans” affect each other’s attempts to construct a home despite obstacles of race, gender, and sexuality. Chapter five examines Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss’s film, Zurück auf los (2000), and its presentation of the re-temporalization of its Afro-German, HIV-positive, gay protagonist. Chapter six, the conclusion, builds on the theory presented in chapter one and posits the simulacral nature of identity categories, including that of belonging, whether Othering takes place in a national or anational or post-national setting.Publication Luthers Gebrauch Von Modalpartikeln In Seiner Übersetzung Der Vier Evangelien(2010-02) Keyler-Mayer, JudithModal Particles (MPs) are uninflected words with little semantic value in modern German and are used mainly in spontaneous spoken language, where the same words with a specific semantic value can also be found as adverbs, particles, or conjunctions. Their identification in an MP function can be done only by syntactic analysis. The usage of some of these MPs can be documented in texts of Early New High German, a time which was crucial for the establishment of the "sentence frame" in German syntax. This dissertation is an investigation of Luther's usage of MPs in his translations of the four gospels. The MPs DOCH, DENN, JA, AUCH and NUR can be found in sentences where there is not necessarily an equivalent lexeme in the Greek and Latin source texts. Luther aimed to produce a text that was linguistically suitable for all groups of readers. The hypothesis is that Luther makes ample use of MPs in direct speech in his translation to make the text more natural according to his effort to use language as spoken by the people. Using syntactic and semantic analysis, it can be shown which of the words in question actually function as MPs or have another function. Luther's distribution system for the MPs DOCH, DENN, JA, AUCH, and NUR shows similarity to current use, but not in such a wide range. It can be shown that DENN, for example, is in transition from the function as adverb to a MP, but many examples are ambiguous and could be interpreted either way. It can be shown that certain translation patterns existed between certain Greek particles, their Latin counterparts, and the German MPs. According to a coincidence rate of maximally 4 %, it is apparent that Luther was only sporadically and inconsistently inspired by the occurrence of particles in the source texts, but followed instead German patterns of spoken language when inserting a MP in his translation text.