Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
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Item Exotik, Erotik und Haremkultur: Zur Gender-Problematik im deutschen Orientalismus des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts(2014) Baysal Walsh, Melda Ina; Frederiksen, Elke P.; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Arabian nights, oriental women, the harem, exoticism, and eroticism: what else comes to mind when thinking of the colorful world of the Orient? In order to challenge these Western stereotypes, which have been abundant since the Middle Ages and reflect only a few of the many prejudices contained in the Western understanding of "Orientalism" , my study examines cultural representations of oriental, African and occidental women in literary texts by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German and Austrian writers (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ida Hahn-Hahn, Peter Altenberg, Else Lasker-Schüler) as well as in the visual arts. Stereotypical images of oriental women are based on assumptions and claims made by eighteenth-century Western philosophers and travellers (e.g. Kant, Herder, Forster), creating misinterpretations of the Orient which appeared to be the perfect place to act out "male" fantasies. While using cultural studies approaches including oriental, post-colonial, and gender studies, this dissertation establishes a new theoretical framework on Gender and Orientalism, and aims to contribute significantly to a new understanding of the Orientalism debate within the German and European contexts. An in-depth discussion of the "harem" as cultural text and multifaceted metaphor discloses this realm as a space for cross-cultural female encounter where hybrid identity formations of culturally diverse women arise.Item Chaotic Topography in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature(2010) Wittrock, Mary Cobb; Eades, Caroline; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Chaos theory proposed by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers illuminates new conclusions about narrative structures in contemporary French and Francophone literature. Espousing an order-out-of-chaos paradigm, my tutor texts by Annie Ernaux, Frankétienne, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint demonstrate how the contemporary notions of identity, gender and genre are innately chaotic but simultaneously offer innovative insights into how these entities are being (re)conceived and (re)presented. Scientific, philosophical, and cultural models of chaos described by Prigogine, Deleuze and Glissant respectively, offer a means to understand the world in order to frame a contemporary cultural topography. Liberated limits of the novel, poetry, and diary genre, viewed through the concept of chaotic "noise", represent richness of information rather than a dearth in order. With Prigogine's Arrow of Time, identity is found in the future not in the past suggesting a non-linear development that is plagued with uncertainty but possibilities. Consequently, identity in contemporary literature is located in others and not in the self challenging traditional notions of this concept. Bifurcation points serve as nodes of "textual instability" revealing themes and trends questioning the function of language, identity and generic transitions in contemporary literature. Through the concept of strange attractors, women, men, language and places within these chaotic tutor texts serve as points of order to which chaotic narratives consistently return advocating the creative force of non-gendered chaos. Accordingly not only can the notion of identity, love and language be viewed as fractal within their own textual space, but the texts themselves transcend generic boundaries. Finally, the contemporary cultural topography is expanding to include electronic literature as an area of critical study. Due to the medium of transmission, i.e., the computer code, electronic literature presents chaotic form and content and challenges traditional notions of `reading' a text. Consequently, the reader interacts with the computer code causing the `narrative' to bifurcate resulting in multiple, unpredictable reading experiences. Chaos theory thus offers a pertinent tool through which to read and interpret this genre. Electronic literature's literariness, viewed through chaos theory, is defined as what changes instead of what remains constant.Item Die Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) als kulturelles Phänomen: Repräsentationen in literarischen Texten und anderen kulturellen Produkten(2009) Naylor, Sylvia; Frederiksen, Elke P.; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Red Army Faction (RAF), a radical West German left-wing terrorist group that existed from 1970 to 1998, has been the focus of numerous literary and non-literary texts. I argue that due to the appearance of the RAF in a wide variety of cultural products, such as literary texts, art, music, movies, and the media, one must now examine the RAF as a part of German cultural discourses. I analyze a broad spectrum of texts that are representative of the various portrayals of the RAF over the years, including the short story Lenau by Günter Herburger (1972), the drawing Gruppenbild mit Dame by Gerboth (1972), the film Die bleierne Zeit by Margarethe von Trotta (1981), the drama Berliner November by Holger Teschke (1987), the drama Leviathan by Dea Loher (1993), the drama Rinderwahnsinn by John von Düffel (1999), the painting Meinhof by Johannes Kahrs (2001), the film Baader by Christopher Roth (2002), and newspaper articles from the 1970s to the present. This research project presents an interdisciplinary analysis, incorporating the methodological paradigms of New Historicism and Gender Studies, in order to examine the RAF as a cultural phenomenon. I investigate the portrayal of the RAF in literary and non-literary texts since 1970 with the purpose of understanding how the representations in these texts can be interpreted as products of the political, cultural, and social environment from which they arose. This dissertation analyzes numerous aspects of the RAF discourse, including: (1) how did representations of the RAF in different areas, such as politics, literary texts, and the media contrast and/or influence each other? (2) how did portrayals of the RAF differ in West and East Germany? (3) how did representations of the RAF change over the years? and (4) how were female RAF members depicted in literary and non-literary texts and what role did gender identity in German society play in these depictions?