• Telling Stories To Survive: The Writings of Saša Stanišić. An Approach To Decolonizing Discourses In German Studies 

  Klueppel, Joscha (University of Oregon, 2024-01-10)

  This dissertation project is the first comprehensive analysis of Saša Stanišić. It transcends the valid, but restricting focus on migration in his works by tracing a common narrative strategy that spans all his writing. ...
• Troubling the Waters: Porous Materiality, Contaminated Environments, and Female Bodies of Water in Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Undine geht,” Yoko Tawada’s Das Bad, and Katharina Köller’s Was ich im Wasser sah 

  Hoeller, Lisa (University of Oregon, 2024-01-09)

  In my dissertation, I examine water—watery environments, fluid materialities, bodies of water—in literature and environmental theory. I argue that literary texts offer creative and imaginative ways to engage with environmental ...
• The Farce of Fascism: A Tragedy of Othering and Power in Three Acts 

  Bailey, Natalia (University of Oregon, 2023-03-24)

  In his essay Urfascism, Umberto Eco outlines the various ideological traits that he perceives to be the basic “familial resemblances” of fascism – one of these traits being “the natural fear of difference”. In acknowledgement ...
• Disability as Epistemic Experience: Autofictional Representations of Disability in German and American Literature 

  Yeomans, Kaitlin (University of Oregon, 2021-04-27)

  This thesis seeks to explore how authors with disability create knowledge about the experience of disability that differs from cultural perceptions of disability. This thesis also utilizes autofictional narratives as a ...
• Mediations from Under the Cloak: Christianity, Trauma, and Reconciliation in Brennu-Njáls Saga 

  Young, Jeremiah (University of Oregon, 2020-12-08)

  This thesis explores the representation and testimony of trauma in the medieval Brennu-Njáls saga. Beginning with an outline of contemporary trauma studies, this thesis examines the repercussions narratives of social trauma. ...
• Subjectivity and (De)Humanization in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Puppe and HBO’s Westworld 

  Vigeant, Christine (University of Oregon, 2020-09-24)

  This thesis examines representations of female android subjectivities across three successive texts and media corresponding with three time periods: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story Der Sandmann (1816), Ernst Lubitsch’s silent ...
• Whose Voice is it Anyway? The Politics of Narrative Stylistics in Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else & Han Kang’s The Vegetarian 

  Zabel, Verena (University of Oregon, 2020-02-27)

  Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Fräulein Else has often been juxtaposed with Freud’s Bruchstücke einer Hysterie-Analyse, and both can be read as an endeavour to ‘give voice’ to the hysteric through representation. This ...
• The Poetics of Affirmative Fatalism: Life, Death, and Meaning-Making in Goethe, Nietzsche, and Hesse 

  Barto, Jacob (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  The fundamental role that tragedy has played in the development of European philosophy and, by extension, psychology, has in part been due to its inextricability from an understanding of human life, facilitating its many ...
• Hearing with the Body: Poetics of Musical Meaning in Novalis, Ritter, Hoffmann and Schumann 

  Smith, Alexis (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  The question of whether or not music can be considered a universal language, or even a language at all, has been asked for centuries—and indeed, it is still being addressed in the 21st century. I return to this question ...
• Grillparzer, The Enlightener: Displaced Paternity in GrillParzer's Works 

  Chapman, Stephanie (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Stephanie Fritsch Chapman Doctor of Philosophy German and Scandinavian June 2017 Title: Grillparzer, the Enlightener: Displaced Paternity in Grillparzer’s Works It is my intention ...
• Queer Kinships and Curious Creatures: Animal Poetics in Literary Modernism 

  Hoffmann, Eva (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  My dissertation brings together prose texts and poetry by four writers and poets, who published in German language at the beginning of the twentieth century: Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Franz Kafka (1883-1924), ...
• Mythos als Zivilisationskritik: Die Pragmatisierung einer erweiterten negativen Dialektik in Werken Heiner Müllers 

  Zimmermann, Nora (University of Oregon, 2016-10-27)

  This thesis analyzes three works of the GDR dramatist Heiner Müller: his early prose poem Orpheus gepflügt, his learning play Mauser, and his late piece Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten. It demonstrates ...
• Matters of Recognition in Contemporary German Literature 

  Lechner, Judith (University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)

  This dissertation deals with current political immigration debates, the conversations about the philosophical concept of recognition, and intercultural encounters in contemporary German literature. By reading contemporary ...
• Novalis, Nietzsche, and the Rhetoric of Enchantment 

  Mottram, Robert (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This work reopens the question of Nietzsche’s relationship to Early German Romanticism through critical readings of moments of enchantment in the writings of Novalis. It unveils the seemingly conciliatory gestures of ...
• Brechts Kritik des Faschismus als Religiöser Institution Die Parodie der Kontrafaktur 

  Kilian, Anika (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This thesis examines selected poems from the German author Bertolt Brecht. It critically investigates the claim that expressionist art can be held responsible for opening the door to fascism in Germany. It will place ...
• Once Upon an Ecocritical Analysis: The Nature-Culture of German Fairy Tales and Its Implications 

  Adler, Katherine (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  This thesis analyzes the relationship between German fairy tales and Ecocriticism by examining the similarities and differences in depictions of nature in the tales published by the Brothers Grimm in 1857 and tales written ...
• Michael Kohlhaas and the Limits of Kantian Reason, Morality, and Law 

  Mitzen, Lindsey (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  Kleist's work is often read within the context of his Kant Crisis. My thesis will follow in that tradition and give a close reading of Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas within the context of Kantian morality in Kritik der ...
• Sense and Creative Labor in Rainer Maria Rilke's Prose Works 

  Reynolds, Nicholas (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  Although Rainer Maria Rilke is one of the most widely-read poets in the world and there are mountains of secondary literature on his poetry, his prose works are not given nearly so much attention. The present study is a ...
• Franz Rosenzweig's Hegel and the State: Biography, History and Tragedy 

  Simon, Josiah (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) is known today as one of the most influential German Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century. His most celebrated work, The Star of Redemption, has earned him a reputation as a challenging ...
• The Laws of Terrorism: Representations of Terrorism in German Literature and Film 

  Chen, Yannleon (University of Oregon, 2013-10-03)

  Representations of the reasons and actions of terrorists have appeared in German literature tracing back to the age of Sturm und Drang of the 18th century, most notably in Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas and Friedrich ...

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