Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations

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The 1974 Bilingual Education Amendments: Revolution, Reaction or Reform
(1976) Schneider, Susan Gilbert; Baird, Janet R.; Languages, Literatures, & Cultures; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
Purpose: The study examined in detail the legislative history of the 1974 Bilingual Education Act, Section 105 of the Education Amendments of 1974, Public Law 93-380. The study examined the roles of Representatives, Senators, lobbyists, judicial decisions, minority groups and Administration officials in developing the 1974 Bilingual Education Act.
Age Differences and Cognitive Aptitudes for Implicit and Explicit Learning in Ultimate Second Language Attainment
(2012) Granena, Gisela; Long, Michael H.; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Very high-level, functional ability in foreign languages is increasingly important in many walks of life. It is also very rare, and likely requires an early start and/or a special aptitude. This study investigated the extent to which aptitude for explicit learning, defined as "analytic ability" and aptitude for implicit learning, defined as "sequence learning ability," are differentially important for long-term L2 achievement in an immersion setting. A group of 20 native speaker (NS) controls and 100 Chinese-Spanish bilinguals with ages of onset 3-6 (n = 50) and > 16 (n = 50) participated in the study. Early L2 learners use the same language learning mechanisms as NSs (but still differ in ultimate success), whereas late L2 learners have been claimed to be fundamentally different from NSs in terms of learning mechanisms (and also differ in ultimate success). A set of six L2 attainment measures reflecting a continuum from automatic to controlled use of language knowledge was administered, as well as a battery of six cognitive tests (four language aptitude subtests, a general intelligence test, and a probabilistic serial reaction time task). Results confirmed the predicted distribution of cognitive abilities into two main types of aptitudes, interpreted as implicit and explicit. Participants could be high in one, high in both, or low in both. Results further revealed that early and late L2 learners with high aptitude for explicit learning outperformed individuals with low aptitude on tasks that allow controlled use of language knowledge. On these tasks, aptitude for implicit learning also had an effect, but among early L2 learners only. In addition, early and late L2 learners with high aptitude for implicit learning showed greater sensitivity towards agreement violations on the language task at the most implicit end of the continuum. Finally, general intelligence only played a role in late L2 learners' attainment on tasks that allow controlled use of knowledge. The study concluded that 1) cognitive aptitudes play a role in both early and late L2 learners, 2) different types of cognitive aptitudes have differential effects on L2 outcomes, and 3) individual differences in implicit learning ability are related to L2 attainment in adults.
Alan Pauls: Poéticas del anacronismo
(2016) Charry, Luis F.; Demaría, Laura; Merediz, Eyda; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Alan Pauls (b. 1959) is an Argentine novelist and essayist. His works have barely been studied outside of Latin America; therefore, my work will be one of the first to focus critically and theoretically on his oeuvre and raise awareness of his importance to Contemporary Latin American Literature. The fundamental concept of my thesis is anachronism, which I develop by investigating the ways in which the present and the past are interconnected in the same temporal space. My dissertation has two interconnected parts. In the first, I propose an approach to Pauls’ literary work that emphasizes its engagement with literary and cultural theory. Specifically, I analyze how Pauls’ first novels –El pudor del pornógrafo (1984), El coloquio (1989), Wasabi (1994)– are strongly influenced by various theoretical discourses, especially the work of Roland Barthes. The guiding question of my dissertation’s first part is how one can narrate a fictional text without strictly appropriating narrative devices. Namely, I suggest that Pauls’ conception of literature is inevitably related to critical discourse. In the second part, I study a trilogy that Pauls wrote about the 1970s in Argentina: Historia del llanto (2007), Historia del pelo (2010), and Historia del dinero (2013). Here I focus on how Pauls uses the 1970s to propose a new conceptualization of the “political.” For Pauls, the “political” is not represented in the great events of a particular time but rather in the “effects” that these events produce; these effects are minor, almost imperceptible, and for that reason much more powerful as a literary event mechanism per se. From my point of view, this new conceptualization of the “political” contains in itself a problematic issue: the articulation between personal experience, history, and fiction. In conclusion, this interrelation between theory, politics, history, and fiction defines the path of my dissertation, which would have been just the “starting point” in my personal attempt to reconfigure the map of the Latin American literary contemporaneity.
Alfonsina Storni: Analisis y contextualizacion del estilo impresionista en sus cronicas
(2004-07-28) Mendez, Claudia Edith; Messinger Cypess, Sandra; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) was a seminal Argentinean author who had a deep influence both on her readers and other writers. Best-know for her poetic works, she also wrote poetry, theater, and works in prose. The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss her prose works, heretofore classified as articles, notes or essays, under the literary genre of chronicles, and analyze Storni's style in these works, which is best described as literary impressionism. The corpus studied in comprised of 35 brief chronicles published in the magazine La Nota and some 30 more published in the Argentine newspaper La Nación from 1919-1937. These two groups form the majority of Storni's chronicles. I also consider some chronicles which appeared in magazines such as Fray Mocho, Atlántida and Hebe. I addition I discuss two of her lectures, "Desovillando la raíz porteña" and "Entre un par de maletas a medio abrir y las manecillas de un reloj". Some of the important themes or these works are women in the labor market, the place of women in modern society, and literary creation. The first chapter is dedicated to the definition of "chronicle" and "literary impressionism." The second chapter surveys the critical literature on Storni in order to determine why her prose works have not previously been studied, and the third, fourth, and fifth analyze her chronicles and present an account or the historical circumstances in which they were produced. All of her chronicles, some 80 in total, are written in an impressionist style and maintain a coherence of form and consistency in the themes they address. Careful analysis of these chronicles leads to the conclusion that Storni's chronicles are an integral part of her literary opus, and that Storni was one or the most important literary creators in the history of Argentina, an original feminist and a painter of the modern life.
American Blackness and Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Twenty-First Century German Literature and Film
(2014) Wall, Christina Noelle; Frederiksen, Elke P; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study represents a unique examination of the convergence of constructs of Blackness and racism in twenty-first century novels and films by white Germans and Austrians in order to demonstrate how these texts broaden discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The increased prominence of minority voices demanding recognition of their national identity within Nazi successor states has transformed white German perceptions of "Germanness" and of these nations' relationships to their turbulent pasts. I analyze how authors and directors employ constructs of Blackness within fictional texts to interrogate the dynamics of historical and contemporary racisms. Acknowledging that discourses of `race' are taboo, I analyze how authors and directors avoid this forbidden discourse by drawing comparisons between constructs of American Blackness and German and Austrian historical encounters with `race'. This study employs cultural studies' understanding of `race' and Blackness as constructs created across discourses. Following the example of Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark (1992), my textual analyses show how these constructs create a "playground for the imagination" in which authors confront modern German racism. My study begins with a brief history of German-African American encounters, emphasizing the role American Blackness played during pivotal moments of German national identity formation. The subsequent chapters are divided thematically, each one comprised of textual analyses that explore discourses integral to Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The third chapter examines articulations of violence and racism in two films, Oskar Roehler's Lulu & Jimi (2008) and Michael Schorr's Schultze gets the blues (2008), to explore possibilities of familial reconciliation despite historical guilt. The fourth chapter compares the Besatzungskinder protagonists of two novels, Peter Henisch's Schwarzer Peter (2000) and Larissa Boehning's Lichte Stoffe (2007), with the (auto)biographies of actual Besatzungskinder Ika Hügel-Marshall and Bärbel Kampmann, exposing the modern discursive taboo of `race' as a silence stemming from historical guilt. The final chapter demonstrates the evolution of German conceptualizations of historical guilt through the analyses of Christa Wolf's novel Stadt der Engel (2010) and Armin Völckers's film Leroy (2007).
ANIMALITÉ ET ALTÉRITÉ AU XVIe ET AU XVIIe SIÈCLE : LA THÉORIE DE L'UNCANNY VALLEY APPLIQUÉE À LA LITTÉRATURE ET PLUS PARTICULIÈREMENT AUX ESTATS ET EMPIRES DE LA LUNE DE CYRANO DE BERGERAC
(2009) Arnaud, Cybèle; Campangne, Hervé; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle, l'autre est une fascinante énigme à résoudre pour certains, une source de peur et de haine pour d'autres, mais les écrivains se tournant vers l'étranger partagent un même désir : celui d'établir un bestiaire de l'inconnu et de l'inusité. Sous les formes de femmes-chattes et de princes porcins, d'autruches et de loups-garous, l'animalité se décline dans le but d'incarner la gamme des sentiments, souvent contradictoires, que l'on peut ressentir pour l'autre. Cette thèse étudie le choix des animaux dans les contes et fables, les libelles et pamphlets, et les récits de voyages réels ou imaginaire, comme celui de Cyrano de Bergerac, Histoire comique des Estats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, afin d'établir une hiérarchie des animaux et des émotions qu'ils provoquent, puis de comparer ces résultats à ceux des recherches effectuées par le robotocien japonais Masahiro Mori, créateur du concept de l'Uncanny Valley.
ANTÍGONAS EXILIADAS DE LA GUERRA CIVIL DE LAS ESPAÑAS (1936-1999): CONCHA MÉNDEZ Y ERNESTINA DE CHAMPOURCIN
(2019) Bort Caballero, María de la Luz; Naharro-Calderón, José María; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) left a marked influence on the culture and literature of contemporary Spain. After Franco violently toppled the Second Spanish Republic, those with progressive ideas were persecuted, executed, and more than a half a million were forced into a nearly forty-year diaspora. These displacements left diverse traces buried in private memories and certain literary and cultural practices. Despite active research in the last four decades, there are still untapped questions and silences. Particularly, works by exiled women writers and intellectuals that have been relegated to the margins. They offer unexplored spaces of memory and insights into the experiences of forced uprootings. Through poets Concha Méndez (1898-1986) and Ernestina de Champourcin (1905-1999), this thesis delves into geographies of memory, and seeks to broaden the relevance of poetry written in exile, biased by the male canon and its scholarship. It posits the recognition of fresh and close readings of repression and resistance while looking through the violet lenses of equity. These poets refused to abandon their own voices or be silenced due to their marginalized condition as women and exiles. The figure of the classical archetype, Antigone, and the dialogic theories of María Zambrano, allow for a further exchange with these authors’ poetry, oral testimonies and remembrances. The entombment of Antigone, for Zambrano, represents both a challenge and a liberation where expulsion is redeemed by the affirmation of the feminine self. Even though these women were banished to the same location, Mexico, D.F., Concha Méndez offers insights into the study of the plight of her terminal exiles. Meanwhile, Ernestina de Champourcin represents the possibility of interrogating a reconstruction of exile as she attempts a definite return to Spain. However, both voices and experiences coexist within the trauma of loss, solitude, survival, a search for refuge, and the reinvention of oneself. They call for a review and rethinking of categories such as inner exile, and propose new multidisciplinary lenses in order to read alternative discourses of exodus in a feminine mode.
Apologies in French: An Analysis of Remedial Discourse Strategies Used by L1 Speakers
(2009) Bodapati, Sandhya; Yotsukura, Lindsay; Modern French Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Speech act research has contributed much to our understanding of contextual L1 and L2 use in various languages. French, however remains largely ignored. The handful of studies that do exist are confined to a rather small set of speech acts. Although common in everyday discourse, French apologies have been underrepresented in the literature. This exploratory study attempts to observe and quantify apology strategies utilized by the French. Data were collected from L1 speakers in three phases. In Phase 1, 11 respondents provided conflict situations--used to construct a Discourse Completion Task (DCT)--that would require an apology in France. Twenty-two separate speakers completed a rating scale in Phase 2, stating their perceptions regarding sociolinguistic factors underlying the conflict situations. Finally in Phase 3, 85 respondents completed the DCT, which sought their reactions to the apology situations. Five main findings are discussed. First, L1 speakers most commonly used an explicit expression of apology or provided explanations as remedial strategies. This finding differs from previous studies on French L1 apologies in which accepting responsibility for the offense was the second most-used strategy after explicit apologies. Second, it was found that not all apology utterances performed a remedial function in all situations; certain linguistic formulae typically used to offer redress were also used as mitigators to potentially face-threatening acts such as complaining. Third, of several sociolinguistic factors operative within a situation, severity of the offense and the speaker's obligation to apologize seemed to have the most influence on apology strategy selection. Fourth, a survey of L1 speakers revealed that a majority felt it more important for an L2 speaker to be sociopragmatically competent in the target language than to demonstrate grammatical accuracy alone. Finally, the results suggest that the DCT continues to be a highly effective data elicitation instrument. In the present study, it not only facilitated quick access to a large data set, but it also allowed participants to make ancillary comments. Such insights might not have been revealed as readily through data collected in naturalistic settings through participant observation or role-plays--methods that have been deemed more reliable than the DCT.
Aristokratische Schriftstellerinnen Österreichs und Deutschlands: Ein `Sonderweg` der Frauenemanzipation des 19. Jahrhunderts?
(2013) Van Leuven, Susanne Nicole; Frederiksen, Elke; Beicken, Peter; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study focuses on a variety of texts by Austrian and German aristocratic women writers who are known for their high social status within their historical and political contexts. They are much less known, however, for their writings. My categories of investigation include social class and gender, with particular emphasis on emancipatory aspects of the life and works of these aristocratic women, as portrayed in a variety of literary and non-literary texts. Selected writings, such as Das poetische Tagebuch by Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1835-1898), Die Waffen nieder! by Baroness Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) and Tropenkoller by Countess Frieda von Bülow (1847-1909) reveal that, despite groundbreaking achievements, these women were not affiliated with - or even interested in - the organized bourgeois women's movement. They simply led by example, widening the range of their personal space (quite literally as the geographic zone and allegorically as their own creation and development of `self') beyond the limits of "proper" femininity. The methodological paradigms of Cultural Studies and Gender Studies form the basis of my analyses of these women's texts; additionally I am including theories of Postcolonial Studies in order to investigate the concepts of `space', `territory', `oppression' and `conquest', which defined the white upper-class woman as being colonized by her superiors in her own patriarchal setting. My dissertation is the first to establish a triangular relationship between the concepts of social class, gender and authorship in the lives of female aristocratic pioneers with the goal of contributing to the scholarship on women's literary history, which, thus far, has ignored the (her-)story of the female aristocrat in her struggle for recognition as a writer and her quest for personal freedom as an individual.
Art comme archive dans (Archives du nord)
(2012) Phair, Elise; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Archives du nord est l'histoire d'une humanité où la présence de l'auteur est évidente non dans la forme traditionnelle d'un personnage, mais dans les opinions et l'imagination insérées dans ses réflexions sur l'art et son analyse de l'art comme témoignage de l'Histoire et de la pensée humaine. Ce mémoire explore le discours sur l'art dans Archives du nord et montre en quoi il est un témoignage historique selon Yourcenar, ses perspectives sur l'Histoire de la pensée, et comment art reflet sa propre identité, liée aux cultures française, flamande, et européenne en général. Ces réflexions sont fondées sur des peintures, des sculptures, et dans quelques cas, des photographies. Yourcenar donne à l'art une place importante dans les archives qui forment la base de son oeuvre, car les tableaux et les portraits sont des témoignages visuels de l'identité individuelle et universelle, propre à ses personnages et générale à tout le monde à la fois. Archives du nord is a story of humanity where the author's presence is felt through the opinions and use of imagination included in her reflexions on art and her analysis of art as a testimony of human thought, rather than in the form of a traditional character. This thesis explores the discours on art in Archives du nord and reveals how Yourcenar considers it historical evidence, her perspectives on human thought, and how art reflects her own identity as it is linked to French, Flemish, and European culture in general. These reflexions are based on paintings, sculpture, and in some cases, photographs. Yourcenar gives art an important position among the archives that provide the basis of her work, for paintings and portraits are visual testimonies to both individual and universal identity, relating to her characters and to humanity in general.
ArteletrA: The Politics of Going Unnoticed in the Latin American Sixties
(2014) Bartles, Jason A.; Demaría, Laura; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation focuses on the long 1960s in Latin America to ask about forms of political and ethical interventions that went unnoticed in the cultural debates of the era. Within the vast Latin American cultural markets of the sixties, I study four authors who works were overlooked both critically and popularly at the time. Calvert Casey (1924-1969), a gay Cuban-American writer, worked and published in Havana from 1958 to 1965 when he went into self-exile. Juan Filloy (1894-2000), the Argentine "writer from three centuries," returned from a thirty year editorial silence in the sixties. Héctor Manjarrez (1945) returned to Mexico City from London and began to publish only after the massacre at Tlatelolco. Armonía Somers (1914-1994), a female, Uruguayan writer of dark and erotic tales, was originally dismissed by many of her contemporaries for her provocative themes. What unites these diverse authors is a common problematic, unique to them, which appears throughout their works--a practice I call "the politics of going unnoticed." Political philosophy from Plato to Rancière highlights the process of passing from invisibility to visibility within the public sphere. However, these authors imagine subjects who purposefully avoid the spotlight and still engage in dissensus. While reading the Latin American cultural archive against the grain, my analysis is guided by three questions: (1) How can a seemingly unimportant subject enact a radical critique while, paradoxically, going unnoticed by dominant institutions? (2) How do these authors promote an ethics that open dialogues among political adversaries in a democratic framework without relying on exclusive categories? And (3), what are the formal strategies they employ to reflect the politics and ethics of going unnoticed? I contend that these authors imagine new possibilities for political action far from entrenched ideologies (e.g., Peronism, the Cuban Revolution) and violent acts of aggression or repression (e.g., the Tupamaros, the massacre at Tlatelolco). Moreover, they generate the conditions of possibility for agonistic, democratizing transformations of existing institutions and epistemologies that exceed exclusive national and identitarian boundaries.
AUTOMATIC ACTIVATION OF SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION DURING SECOND LANGUAGE PROCESSING
(2015) AHN, SUN YOUNG; JIANG, NAN; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The present study is motivated by two questions. First, can late learners of a second language (L2), who begin learning after puberty and are unbalanced bilinguals, activate or visualize the meaning of an L2 word or sentence as quickly as do first language (L1) speakers? Second, if so, what factors—such as L2 proficiency and the amount of its use—contribute to developing native–like efficient processing in L2? To address these questions, the degrees of automatic semantic activation were compared between L1 and L2 speakers through emotional involvement during word recognition and mental imagery generation during sentential reading. To this end, a total of 60 late–advanced L2 Korean speakers participated in the emotional Stroop Task and the sentence–based picture recognition task along with 36 L1 Korean speakers. The results revealed that the emotional Stroop effect was not statistically significant in the late L2 group but was significant in the L1 group; whereas the sentence–picture congruency effect was significant in both L2 and L1 groups with similar degrees. This means that late L2 Korean speakers could activate sentence meaning during L2 sentential reading as automatically as L1 speakers but could not activate word meaning as efficiently as L1 speakers. Different degrees of semantic activation among the L2 group across experiments compared to L1 speakers can be considered as cross–task variation; that is, L2 speakers exhibited native–like patterns when semantic activation was promoted but did not when constrained in the tasks (in a sentence–based picture recognition task and an emotional Stroop task, respectively). Furthermore, the results showed that the effect of L2 use was positively significant both on the emotional Stroop effect and the sentence–picture congruency effect. These findings suggest that the degree of automatic semantic activation during L2 word recognition, as well as sentence reading can be improved with increased L2 use, despite the late starting age of L2 acquisition. Overall, the present study found positive evidence that late L2 speakers may achieve native–like efficiency in reading comprehension in L2, assisted with the extensive L2 use in addition to high proficiency in L2.
"...bajo el tumulto no hay nada": Formas para el mal en las literaturas hispanoamericanas del siglo XIX.
(2007-03-28) Ponce-Ortiz, Esteban; Aguilar Mora, Jorge; Sosnoswski, Saúl; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The idea of evil is a cornerstone where different discourses have come into contact. This idea has touched philosophic discourses as well as medical and psychiatric ones, and it is part of the every day speech of ordinary people. The general opinion is that human beings are a defined species whose conscience has the power to more or less locate without difficulty where evil and good exist. Therefore, there is a social need to locate the place of evil, and this need allows the fixation of "that place" within the political and religious discourses. In this sense, evil, one of the most complex concepts, became one of the most manipulated categories at the service of power and the authoritative order. This dissertation deconstructs the fabrication process of evil's images, and the manipulative Latin America's fabric of morals trapped on the dialectic process among liberal and conservative political factions. The bipolarities Church - State, individuality - society, or rationality - instinct, among others, are reviewed as a complex set of tensions. Such tensions appeared peculiarly exposed in poetic works despite their cryptic nature. Poetry is used as a tool to unveil the same phenomenon in non-poetic texts that construct an apparently coherent political discourse. Multiple poetic and literary representations of evil have replicated the foundational narrative that centers on a dilemma for human beings: to choose between individual impulse and the restraint of public morals. Literature in Latin America shows diverse poetic notions of evil, from the orthodox Catholic idea to the materialist denial of the existence of evil. Between these two poles, other approaches arose usually in agreement with political affiliations that nevertheless proved inconsistent allowing for the proliferation of unorthodox positions. The study focuses on selected poetry works by Andrés Bello ("Las fantasmas"), Esteban Echeverría ("El ángel caído"), José Eusebio Caro (selection), Juan León Mera (selection), Rubén Darío ("El coloquio de los centauros") and José Martí (Versos libres).
"Barbarous Berlin": Narratives of Queerness, Space, Survival, and Memory in a Liminal City
(2018) Joyner, Raleigh; Baer, Hester; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The intent of my work is to explore the relationships between history, space, community, and movement in and through the city of Berlin throughout the last century. I trace common threads of liminality, memory, survival, and the relationships between the urban space and the individual over a 100-year period. The three periods that I particularly focus on are the Weimar era (1919-1933), the division of Germany and Berlin (1961-1989), and the reestablishment of Germany as a united country (1990-present).
Between Resistance and Silence: The Making of the Child Murderess in German Literature and Culture of the 18th and 19th Centuries
(2015) Sammler, Ina; Koser, Julie; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Infanticide emerged as a major topic of public concern in Germany during the Storm and Stress period. Goethe and Schiller took up this issue and altered its social and historical reality by focusing solely on the bourgeois mother as perpetrator of infanticide. By concentrating on the figure of the bourgeois woman seduced by a nobleman and by criminalizing her actions and condemning her to death, many authors denounced interclass relationships and asserted traditional, rigid class divisions. In my dissertation, I show how competing discourses sought to demonize or even convict the mother while perpetuating patriarchal and social systems of power in order to regulate behavior. My project confronts the issues of power, gender, and class as underlying components of the construct of the child murderess in German literature and culture. My work contributes new and critical insights as I analyze texts outside the traditional literary canon by Therese Huber, Benedikte Naubert, Marianne Ehrmann, Friedrich Maler-Müller and August Gottlieb Meißner and bring them into dialogue with conservative contemporaries. By describing the social misery and depicting the severity of the laws to which these women were subjected, the works demonstrate that infanticide impacted the discussion of the death penalty and provided a more complex and nuanced view of the woman as child murderess in her social, political, and legal contexts. Drawing on the poststructuralist theories of the philosopher and critic Michel Foucault, my dissertation demonstrates that these female criminals were not transgressing some “natural” condition, as the works of Goethe and Schiller insinuated; rather, these women were made into criminals by competing social and political agendas. Thus, my research focuses on how power structures stigmatized women who acted on their sexual desires, thereby violating social morals, as outcasts and deviants. My study of literary works reveals that authors commonly depicted their fictional female murderers as driven to crime by forces beyond their control, such as factors of class, financial standing, and psychological impairment. My work provides a more refined and holistic understanding of the competing interests throughout history and in literature, which sought to construct and define the child murderess.
Bildung and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Bourgeois Germany: A Cultural Studies Analysis of Texts by Women Writers
(2008-05-30) Gary, Cauleen; Frederiksen, Elke P; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, the German Bildungsbürgertum used the civic and inner components of Bildung defined by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) as a means to characterize its social identity and prominence. Together with the transitions related to the industrialization of society in the second half of the century, the German intellectual middle class recognized the changes of Bildung that adapted to the expansion of the bourgeois public sphere but simultaneously upheld the construction of the "eternal feminine" that emerged during the period of Weimar Classicism around 1800. Therefore, the idea of Bildung became associated with the cultural reality of young men. This event leads to the question: If bourgeois society excluded women from the process of inner and civic Bildung, how did women in return view themselves as members of the Bildungsbürgertum? Drawing on both the inner and civic aspects of Bildung, this project investigates the interrelationship of Bildung and gender as portrayed in a variety of literary and non-literary texts. Selected writings by Fanny Lewald (1811-1889), Hedwig Dohm (1833-1919), Franziska Tiburtius (1843-1927), Gabriele Reuter (1859- 1941), and Ricarda Huch (1864-1947) reveal that many women created new interpretations of Bildung that were quite different from the mainstream conception defined by the male public voice. In addition, a variety of texts from the nineteenthcentury press shows how women simultaneously raised awareness of the gender paradox in Bildung in mainstream bourgeois culture, particularly by women associated with the nineteenth-century German bourgeois women's movement. The methodological paradigms of New Historicism and Gender Studies play a vital role in my analyses of women's Bildung as it existed in a cultural discourse of "otherness",and how women's Bildung changed and shifted throughout the course of the century. My project examines the role of gender within multiple contexts of Bildung as portrayed in the texts mentioned above. These discourses include upbringing, selfawareness, self-cultivation, literacy, institutionalized education, and vocational training. In addition, my analysis asks how Bildung played a role in either creating or breaking a woman's gender consciousness and idea of "self" in regards to the construction of "proper" femininity.
Brazil after Humboldt - Triangular Perceptions and the Colonial Gaze in Nineteenth-Century German Travel Narratives
(2008-01-30) Diggs, Cerue Kesso; Frederiksen, Elke P.; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This project is a study of nine German travel narratives on Brazil written between 1803 and 1899, identifying their contribution to the discourses on German national identity in the nineteenth century. Famous German explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1834) influenced travelers to explore Brazil, the part of South America that he was not able to enter for political reasons. I approach their accounts from new historicist and post/colonial perspectives. My thesis is that these narratives help construct a German national identity that occupies a fluid (colonial) position in response to diverse "Others" encountered in colonial Brazil. While contributing to the study of travel literature, my dissertation contributes significantly to the field of German Cultural Studies by applying a post/colonial approach to the reading of German texts. Chapter I locates my investigation theoretically at the intersection between post/colonialism - the critique of colonization and colonial ideology - and new historicism - the reading of texts within their historical contexts, identifying discourses by juxtaposing them with various other contemporary texts. Katrin Sieg's concept of triangular thinking and Susanne Zantop's idea of colonial fantasies are instrumental in my reading. Chapter II places my selection of travelogues in the historical contexts of nineteenth-century Germany and Brazil, underscoring their paths to nationhood and changes in Wissenschaft. Chapter III shows that Alexander von Humboldt's influence on German explorers of Brazil is more evident in the scope of their research than in their writing styles. Chapter IV interprets German travelers as surprised yet critical flâneurs in Rio de Janeiro, as skeptical listeners to the stories of German immigrants, and seekers of Germania in their responses to Brazilian women. Chapter V shows how a German understanding of 'race' as an ingredient of national identity colors the travelers' anthropological observations of blacks and native populations in Brazil. Through various triangulations, German travelers to Brazil ambivalently identified with Portuguese colonizers and, at times, with colonized subjects (native populations, blacks), constructing diverse colonial/nationalistic fantasies in their narratives. All of these texts bare witness to specific historical events, and provide a comparative view of nationalism in nineteenth-century Germany and Brazil.
BRILLER SUR SCÈNE : L'ASTRONOMIE DANS LE THÉÂTRE DU GRAND SIÈCLE
(2014) Arnaud, Cybele; Campangne, Hervé Thomas; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
January 5th, 1634, the news of Galileo's condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church for his heretical belief in heliocentric theories -theories that postulate that the Earth orbits the Sun- reach France. As the professors of the Sorbonne condemn Galileo, as René Descartes, ever-cautious, chooses to forgo publishing his Treatise on the World, an ever increasing number of French writers turn to fiction to prove, attack, or simply present astronomical and cosmological theories to their audience. While much has been written about the new astronomy's relationship to poetry, proto-science fiction and vulgarization through novelization of scientific knowledge, its presence on the French stage, in comedies and ballets, has been mostly ignored by the scholarship. This thesis constructs a timeline of "natural philosophy theatre", tracking the movement of the sun and the earth and the representation of the theories elaborated by Copernicus, Tycho Brahé and Descartes through plays and ballets published in the 17th century and beyond, in order to analyze the function of laughter in the context of the scientific revolution. The following questions will be answered: How is the new astronomy presented on stage, both in comedies and ballets? What role does laughter play in the representation of science? Is it simply used to challenge the audience's beliefs? Is dance's only purpose to mimic the orbits of the planets, or does it hold a deeper meaning? What, if any, is the greater purpose of including scientific knowledge in theater?
BY THE AUTHORITY OF DREAMS: TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE IN KICHWA MUSKUY NARRATIVES
(2020) Carney, Lisa Warren; Harrison, Regina L.; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
For Kichwa-speaking Runa of Ecuador’s tropical forest region, narratives about muskuy experiences—dreams and visions—are revered sources of knowledge. Muskuy is a real (non-fantasy) experience in which humans communicate with each other and non-human persons that inhabit their environment, acquiring information and powers in the process. Through analysis of video recordings of muskuy narratives told by Kichwa speakers (2014-2016), this dissertation explores how verbal artistry, performance technique, and emotional resonance are central to knowledge acquisition and transmission. Specifically, narratives are deemed truthful and authoritative when they evoke empathy and memory through imagery, gesture, and vocal dynamics. Whereas ethnography and psychoanalysis have been the prevalent models for scholarship of indigenous dream practices, this is among the first scholarly work to use diverse methods of ethnopoetic analysis such as close reading, performance studies (Bauman, Hymes), linguistic analysis (Mannheim, Nuckolls), and ethnographic contextualization (Galli, Uzendoski) to elucidate the aesthetics of Kichwa muskuy narratives. Chapter 1 examines muskuy as a source of gender-specific knowledge and authority conveyed in the narrative of a master ceramicist woman’s dream interaction with a Clay Master Spirit. Narrative skill is one manifestation of mature womanhood or manhood that is developed partially through muskuy. Through artful storytelling, a narrator demonstrates her feminine strength. Chapter 2 elucidates the central role of dialogue in articulating authority and credibility. In a narrative of a boy’s transformation into an anaconda, implication and allusion induce dialogic resonances (Bakhtin), while quotation and perspective-marking with “evidential” enclitics animate authoritative voices within the narrative. Additionally, interlocutors substantiate narrative information through commentary and story contributions. Chapter 3 compares a traditional muskuy narrative from the community of Sarayaku, Ecuador, to the same story transformed for digital media platforms that in turn give it the force of prophecy in activist contexts. Thus, strategic and creative modifications allow muskuy narratives to remain an authoritative source of knowledge for Runa as they are recontextualized for non-indigenous audiences. The truth and authority of muskuy narratives emerge from artistry that engages listeners’ imagination, memory and emotion. Affecting and aesthetically complex, these stories are an ancestral form that remains salient for Runa today.
Camus and Sartre: The Unsettled Conflict on Violence and Terror
(2008) Ahmed, Nadine Sara; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The broad purpose of this paper is to bring attention to the subject of terrorism. In the paper two plays by are compared which both treat this matter somewhat differently. The first play is "Les Mains Sales" by Jean Paul Sartre and the second play is "Les Justes" by Albert Camus. The two authors who are both descendents of the existentialist time period have quite differing views on the subject. Sartre was known for his belief in action while Camus was known to be more of a pacifist. Both of these issues are portrayed in the paper. This paper also goes one step further because it looks at the literary aspect of both plays yet also places them and their theories into today's context. Both of the plays look terrorism from the eyes of the terrorist. This is something that is not very common even today in the middle of the all the terror that exists around the globe. However the issues and theories presented here bring some insight into the terrorists mind and how that affects the world today.

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