Browsing by Author "Brust, Imke"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Between Hospitality and Hostility: Understanding Shifts in German Immigration Policy
    (2016) Krutkova, Mariya; Brust, Imke
    Starting in the post-war period and continuing into the present day, the immigration policy in Germany has been unstable, oscillating between progressive acceptance of immigrants during certain times, and retrograde conservative measures during other periods. This paper traces these shifts in policy starting in the 1940s and aims to discern its underlying causes. The questions raised are the following: What are the political, economic, and discursive forces responsible for changes in policy? What role do attitudes towards immigrants play in influencing policy? And finally, what factors influence formation and expression of these attitudes? The contextual factors found to correlate with conservative changes in policy are economic crises, high influx of immigrants, negative discourse about immigrants, and conservative majority in the government. These factors were found to affect policy by mobilizing negative sentiments against immigrants. Expression of negative sentiments, often steered by right-wing extremist groups, influenced what parties held the majority in the government and what course of action the government would take with regard to immigration. The specific factors that contribute to shaping of negative attitudes towards immigrants are perceptions of them as a threat to cultural and economic identity, as well as to collective security. The expression of these attitudes was fueled by right-wing propaganda and negative portrayals of immigrants in the media during the times of economic instability and high influx of immigrants. Attitudes thus have a strong effect in determining the direction of immigration policy in Germany, and should be considered a target area for policy makers. The negative stereotypes about immigrants have been reinforced by inadequate integration of immigrants. Proactive integration policies, which would facilitate political, economic, and social inclusion of immigrants into the German society are needed in order to improve perceptions about immigrants and thereby reduce future risk of conservative shifts in policy.
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    Écrire l'immortalité : La nature et la transcendance chez Colette et Hannah Arendt
    (2021) Coleman, Jacob; Corbin, Kathryne; Brust, Imke
    In my thesis (text in French), I work primarily with Hannah Arendt's conception of immortality and eternity as proposed in The Human Condition (1958) to widely interpret depictions of "time" and "nature" in two works by Colette, Les Heures longues (1917) and Le blé en herbe (1923). I propose a definition of a "natural time" inspired by Arendt's immortal cycle, and extend this definition to the homeostatic processes within the human body, simultaneously speculating on the relationship between literature and immortality. In the final chapter, I examine Julia Kristeva's commentary of Colette, critiquing Kristeva's use of the Freudian "death drive" as not wholly applicable to Colette. I suggest an alternative view of a creative death, inspired by Simone Weil's mystic theology.
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    Eine Untersuchung der Repräsentation ostdeutscher nationaler Identität in den ersten zwei „Indianerfilmen“ der DEFA
    (2023) Stohlman, Claire; Brust, Imke
    In this paper I explore the representation of East German national identity in the East German “Indian Films” – a series of western films produced in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that depicts Native Americans as protagonists and white settlers as antagonists. I do so by analyzing the first two films in the series: The Sons of the Great Bear (1966) and Chingachgook, the Great Snake (1967). Using these films as examples I argue that despite the American setting, the series reflects the GDR in ways both intentional and unintentional. Intentionally, the series uses the image of Native Americans as a stand-in for East Germans and encourages identification with them in order to attempt to create a sense of East German identity. Unintentionally, its inherent Americanisation and its perpetuation of colonialist traditions reveal the contradictions of the GDR regime and how it struggled to completely break free of its historical and physical ties to West Germany and the West as a whole.In diesem Aufsatz untersuche ich die Repräsentation ostdeutscher nationaler Identität in den ostdeutschen „Indianerfilmen” – einer Reihe von Westernfilmen, die in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (DDR) produziert wurden und Indianer als Protagonisten und weiße Siedler als Antagonisten darstellen. Ich analysiere die ersten zwei Filme der Filmreihe: Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966) und Chingachgook, die große Schlange (1967). Indem ich diese Filme als Beispiele benutze, argumentiere ich, dass die Filmreihe, trotz des amerikanischen Schauplatzes, die DDR sowohl absichtlich als auch unabsichtlich widerspiegelt. Die Filmreihe verwendet absichtlich das Bild der Indianer als Stellvertreter für Ostdeutsche und fördert die Identifikation mit ihnen, in einem Versuch, so ein Gefühl der ostdeutschen Identität zu schaffen. Andererseits offenbaren die inhärente Amerikanisierung der Filme und ihre Verewigung kolonialer Traditionen unabsichtlich die Widersprüche des DDR-Regimes und illustrieren wie es dem Regime nicht gelang, sich vollständig von seinen historischen und physischen Verbindung mit Westdeutschland und den Westen als Ganzes zu trennen.
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    Illustrating Trauma: Repression and Expression in Cruddy and Dear Patagonia
    (2016) Davies, Rachel; Brust, Imke; Quintero, María Cristina
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    Participation or Rejection: A Study of Overseas Military Operations Decision in Post-Cold War Germany
    (2022) Galebinge; Mendelsohn, Barak, 1971-; Brust, Imke
    One significant change in German foreign policy after its reunification is its involvement in military interventions in regional and global conflicts. On the face of it, Germany deviated from its "civilian power" identity established after the Second World War by participating in the offensive military operation in Kosovo. However, the opening of Pandora's box did not lead to German support of all military operations when called upon by its NATO allies. This thesis explores why did Germany participate in some extraterritorial military interventions but not others. More specifically, which factors affect its decision to participate in military interventions abroad? This thesis examines the change and continuity in Germany's policy towards the use of force based on four case studies of Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. This thesis argues that the pursuit of international influence and the right to speech is persistent, only it is expressed with different decisions in different phases.
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    Quantifying the Economic, Linguistic, and Social Benefits for Refugees Participating in a Federal German Integration Course
    (2021) Cai, Claire Ming; Jilani, Saleha; Brust, Imke
    In 2005, the German government introduced various integration courses in order to better support migrants and refugees. Since 2010, the refugee population in Germany has exponentially increased, particularly after Chancellor Merkel's 2015 decision to admit more than one million refugees. This study evaluates the efficacy of these integration courses by examining the extent to which participation in these integration courses increases a participant's economic, linguistic, and social integration. 4,252 responses from the IAB-SOEP-BAMF 2016 Survey for Adult Refugees are in this cross-sectional dataset. I perform logit regressions and incorporate country of birth dummy variables as a robustness check to estimate such benefits for those in my sample. This paper finds that participation in both the general integration course (GIC) and ESF-BAMF (ESF) course highly statistically significantly increases the likelihood of self-evaluating German language proficiency. However, while participation in the GIC increases social integration, participation in the ESF integration course decreases social integration, although this result might only show the initial effects of ESF course participation. When evaluating economic integration, participation in integration courses produces mixed results, but again, tracking survey respondents over time would clarify this result. These findings imply that integration courses are effective in promoting German language integration, but they have a more ambiguous impact on social and economic integration.
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    The Autoethnographic (De)Construction: How German writers of Turkish heritage manipulate the German language to reexamine ideas of national identity and -lingualism
    (2013) Starace, Emily; Brust, Imke; Fernald, Theodore B.
    This paper examines how the innovative, non-standard German language and usage presented by minority German authors with Turkish heritage stand as reactions to constructed ideals and myths that pervade modern Germany society. Using the medium of ‘autoethnographic texts,’ these authors work to dissolve the myths of nationhood, monolingualism and a ‘mother tongue’ in order to surmount the limitations they impose. Examining Feridun Zaimoğlu’s novel Kanak Sprak: 24 Misstöne Vom Rande Der Gesellschaft (1995) and Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s work Mutterzunge: Erzählungen (1990), this thesis challenges the precondition of a solely monolingual identity and analyzes these works and the unique languages they employ as commentaries on both the heritage Turkish and the host German culture.
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    Tracing the Evolution of the German Language and German Prepositions through an Interdisciplinary Approach
    (2016) Dinh, Claire; Brust, Imke
    The evolution of the German language is incredibly complex. Changes in the language have occurred due to the influence of other cultures and languages in close physical proximity to it, as well as shifts in power. Particularly with regards to the influence of power dynamics on the language over the course of its history, power has shifted from group to group, and often even from one realm of German society (e.g. religion, culture, politics) to another. Moreover, what scholars call today the historical political fragmentation of the German-speaking regions, as well as the perceived need for their unification, has led to the eventual creation of a German nationstate. In my thesis, I took an interdisciplinary approach to examine these such factors, as understanding them helped me to trace the evolution of the written German language. Through a humanities-based approach, I examined the works produced by different literary movements, prominent literary figures, and any others who had substantial religious, cultural, or political power. The respective prescriptive and/or descriptive natures of these works shaped the language over time. The linguistics-based approach informed the humanities-based approach to understanding the evolution of the German language, by providing a quantitative measure of how German prepositions have evolved. Specifically, the study on German prepositions attempted to answer the question: have uses of German prepositions become less spatial (i.e. more nonspatial) over time? The prediction was that uses of German prepositions have become less spatial over time. However, contrary to the prediction, when all of the samples containing durch, bei, and an were analyzed together, year of use of the prepositions was not a significant predictor of the likelihood of their type of use. When the prepositions were examined independently, though, the results varied. For durch, year of use was not a significant predictor of the likelihood of its type of use, though the model suggested that uses of durch tended to be less spatial over time. For bei, year of use was a significant predictor of the likelihood of its becoming less spatial over time, and for an, the effect was reversed. The humanities-based approach helped to explain these unexpected results from the linguistics-based approach, while the linguistics-based approach determined the extent to which the conclusions drawn in the humanities-based approach held true. The humanities-based approach informed the linguistics-based approach, and vice versa, in the examination of the texts that shaped the German language over time.