Browsing by Author "Schönherr, Ulrich"
Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemBetween Ser and Parecer: Reality and Subjectivity in Cervantes, Unamuno, and Borges(2013) Ikeda, Daniel; Schönherr, Ulrich; Sacerio-Garí, EnriqueIn this thesis, I examine how three literary texts—Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote (1615), Miguel de Unamuno’s Niebla [Mist] (1914), and Jorge Luis Borges’s “El Zahir” (1949)—problematize the possibility of a stable, accessible “I” and, in doing so, call into question the prospect of separating appearance from reality and supplying knowledge with a measure of certainty. Using René Descartes’s skepticist hypothesizing in the Meditations as a foil, I contend that each author extends—and indeed comes to privilege—the skeptical conjectures that Descartes eventually discards. By rejecting Descartes’s argument that the “I” may know itself without meaningful interaction with the external world, each author, I suggest, places himself in a position that is at once antithetical to, and consonant with, the modern(izing) project that begins with Descartes. In forging such a “mentality of antinomy” in which notions of appearance/reality, rationality/irrationality, modernity/antimodernity, and realism/idealism are “held in juxtaposition” rather than “integrated” or deconstructed, Unamuno and Borges effectively excavate a Spanish Baroque tradition that begins with Cervantes and his contemporaries and purportedly dies at the close of the 17th century. In extending a Spanish Baroque ethos that resists the reduction of objects to either/or categorizations, Cervantes, Unamuno, and Borges present alternative conceptualizations of reality, conceptualizations that ultimately reject the binaries of mind/body and reality/irreality that Descartes constructs. In doing so, all three adopt positions similar to those of Francisco de Quevedo, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, and their Baroque contemporaries, whose opposition to the epistemological developments occurring throughout the rest of Europe found expression in their privileging of contingency over universality, and their textured negotiations of ser [“to be”] and parecer [“to seem to be”].
- ItemDepravity at Sea: Das Boot and the Challenge of Coming to Terms with the Past(2011) Holloway, Dustin; Schönherr, Ulrich; Gerstein, LindaAt the end of World War II Germany was faced with an identity crisis that would permeate the succeeding decades and strongly influence the question of what it means to be German. This crisis revolved around the Germans' collaboration with the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Despite attempts by the Allies to institute a top-down formula of denazification, no program was able to impose Vergangenheitsbewaltigung(the process of coming to terms with the past), and Germany experienced years of collective amnesia, in which the Second World War was a taboo topic, and avoided at all costs. The impetus for such a process would have to come from within Germany, however, and did so in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, as German youth began questioning their parents about the war and their roles in it. I argue that Das Boot, a novelization of a submarine's patrol at sea, was a symptom of the gradual conservative shift that occurred over the course of the 1970s, and contributed to the collective denial of guilt and re-definition of the German soldier as a victim that reappeared in the 1970s after a period of submersion. Both the novel (Lothar-Gunther Buchheim 1973) and the movie (Dir. Wolfgang Petersen 1981) versions contrasted sharply with the assertions of veterans who extolled their heroism and the glory of war. In opposition to this myth of heroism, Das Boot depicted the German submariner as a victim of both the Allies, against whom he hardly stood a chance, and of the Nazi High Command, which sent them to war without consideration for their lives. I examine how both versions of the story disassociate their protagonists from the Nazi ideology in order to define them as separate entities and avoid having to come to terms with the full measure of their guilt. Both works additionally display their conservative, militaristic roots through their interpretations of masculinity and its relation to technology and violence. Petersen's film employs a militaristic interpretation of masculinity, but only in his objectification of the male body, and the subordination of the individual to work as a small cog in the machine and carry out one's duty. Buchheim's text, on the other hand, exhibits a violently sexual masculinity that predominated in fascist Germany. His descriptions of masculine symbols are accompanied by graphic scenes of sex and rape, indicating his abiding need for his masculinity to subjugate the feminine in order to assert his dominance and achieve the sexual pleasure that he cannot acquire anywhere outside of combat. This form of masculinity that Buchheim displays indicates a disturbing attraction to violent sexuality, and betrays an ideological connection to the Third Reich that drastically alters the context of his novel. In light of his history as a Nazi propagandist, Buchheim's vehement denigration of the National Socialist government begins to appear more to assuage his nagging guilt, than to honestly depict the traumatic lives of the men who served in the "iron wolves." Das Boot is a story that attempts to address the German issue of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, but ultimately falls short, settling for a rewriting of history, rather than a true confrontation of German guilt.
- ItemEvery Nation’s Refugee? A Comparative Analysis of Asylum Policies towards Syrians among Hungary, France, and Germany(2016) DeSousa, Dhario; Schönherr, Ulrich; Isaacs, Anita, 1958-; Henkel, Brook
- ItemEvery Nation’s Refugee? A Comparative Analysis of Asylum Policies towards Syrians among Hungary, France, and Germany(2016) DeSousa, Dhario; Isaacs, Anita, 1958-; Henkel, Brook; Schönherr, Ulrich
- ItemIdentity Construction in a Post-War Context: Social, Political, and Cultural Memory in Uwe Timm’s Am Beispiel Meines Bruders(2017) Willigan, Macklin A.; Schönherr, UlrichWith the close of the Second World War came the need for Germans to confront their past and collective identity as a nation. However, this process was delayed due to a variety of reasons, among them the traumatic experiences shared by many German civilians and the unfavorable atmosphere created by the partition of Germany and the Cold War. Finally, those of the 1968 “student generation” began to confront openly and directly the atrocities committed by the Third Reich, the collective silence or suppression on the part of German people, and the question of memorialization, remembrance, and history. One such member of this generation was Uwe Timm, who in 2003 published Am Beispiel Meines Bruders, an investigation into his family’s history and problematic relationship to the past. This paper will endeavor to evaluate the complications associated with an upbringing antithetical to one’s own beliefs, and in light of the research behind collective memory encapsulated in Aleida Assmann’s Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, how such immersion can hinder one’s self-identification,. The following is a close reading of Timm’s text with special attention devoted to Timm’s identity formation, writing process, and effort to bear witness on behalf of his family. The unique social, political, and cultural milieu into which Timm was born necessitated this effort of articulation and reclamation of his family’s legacy.
- ItemLa Vie Bohème: Problems of Representation in Murger and Larson(2007) Zukaitis, Kat; Schönherr, Ulrich; Allen, ElizabethBohemia is characterized by impermanence. The economic situations, love affairs, living arrangements, employment, and tastes of its inhabitants are deliberately short-lived, a feature that they encourage in order to differentiate themselves from the bourgeoisie. The art of the Bohemians, however, manifests a desire for stability and permanence that is rarely found elsewhere in their lives. The contradiction between the orientation of life and art contributes to the disillusionment and abandonment of Bohemia in Murger; Larson, however, attempts to reconcile the contradiction by insisting on a celebration of the ephemeral, that is, living only in the present.
- Item“Legends Malleable in His Intellectual Furnace”: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wonder Book, Mythological Adaptation, and Children’s Literature(2013) Horn, Jacob; Roberts, Deborah H.; Schönherr, Ulrich; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, published in 1851, occupies an important position in the history of children’s literature because of its novel approach to the adaptation of classical mythology and its attitudes towards children as readers. While myth was commonly presented to children in the form of dictionaries or schoolbooks, Hawthorne was the first to use it as the inspiration for pleasurable storytelling. Writing stories intended for children to enjoy in a non-instructional setting, perhaps even along with their parents, Hawthorne heralded a shift in attitudes towards young readers that helped to define how juvenile literature has been written by future authors. My thesis examines the Wonder Book’s creation and impact from multiple perspectives. Part I, “Juvenile Literature Matures,” provides a basic account of the beginnings of children’s literature and Hawthorne’s history with the juvenile market in order to pinpoint the Wonder Book’s significance. In part II, “The Bright Stuff,” I analyze the author’s use of a frame narrative to effectively address an audience of children and adults, and to realize his goals for the stories. This discussion extends into part III, “Hawthorne’s Pandora, Unboxed,” in which I identify strategies of adaptation employed in the Wonder Book, with a particular focus on its interpretation of the Pandora myth, entitled “The Paradise of Children,” and the episode’s reception of its ancient sources. Part IV, “Beyond Hawthorne’s Intellectual Furnace,” closes the paper with a brief look at Hawthorne’s influence on later authors, who have continued to employ his adaptive strategies as myth has become a widely popular form of storytelling for children.
- ItemLiberation and The Great Refusal: Marcuse’s Concept of Nature(2002) Schlottmann, Chris; Pavsek, Christopher, 1964-; Schönherr, UlrichThis paper will explore, challenge and elucidate Marcuse's philosophy and critique its applicability to the contemporary world.
- ItemPositively Uncertain: The Refutation of Scientific Monism in Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” and Guy de Maupassant’s “Le Horla”(2011) Raghavan, Krishnan; Burshatin, Israel; Schönherr, UlrichDuring the latter half of the nineteenth‐century, scientific discourse came to dominate the sociopolitical climate of Western Europe as a result of the immense fertility of discovery in the natural sciences at the time. The scientific skepticism of the era shaped the supernatural narratives “Le Horla” by Guy de Maupassant and “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James in obliging these authors to craft a more liminal, “realistic” supernatural. Both author’s fantastic narratives remain ultimately ambiguous; however, this ambiguity subverts and critiques the forward progression mandated by positivist doctrine. Positivism is denigrated on a narrative level in both stories through the representation of techniques of positivist psychology as ultimately impotent. Maupassant and James’ aesthetic approaches towards this “new supernatural” ultimately champion a more pluralistic perspective than that of positivism.
- ItemReorienting the Land of the Middle: German Reflections after the First World War(2013) Abken, Elise; Schönherr, Ulrich; Gerstein, LindaFollowing the First World War, perceptions of social instability and loss of faith in progress prompted pervasive fears of Western decline. In Germany, anticipation of decline combined with the loss of the First World War, reparation demands, the occupation of the Ruhr Valley by France and Belgium, inflation, unemployment and the harsh conditions of industrial life. Consequently, Germans felt estranged from the West and turned to the East for an alternative to Western life and hope for the future. German fascination with the East in the 1920s was inextricably intertwined with cultural anxiety and politics. The political Left in Germany looked to the Russian Revolution for revolutionary encouragement; the Right upheld a cultural definition of the East that promised regeneration. In my thesis, I aim to describe what alternatives to Western life the Germans saw in their images of the East. I argue that by conceptualizing Germany as Eastern, German nationalists sought to distance Germany from the declining West.
- ItemThe Ineffability of the Traumatic Past, but the Necessity to Testify(2013) Milic-Strkalj, Ivo; Schönherr, Ulrich; Castillo Sandoval, RobertoThe traumatic experience itself resists any logical and regular characterization. As such, the representation of these traumatic events through film, literature, or photography threatens their authenticity and objectivity. Yet, there is an ethical necessity to confront and represent this past, so that it is not lost to a greater trend of cultural amnesia. Employing different combinations of visual and textual media as well as different discursive styles, Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Patricio Guzmán in his documentary Chile, Obstinate Memory and W.G. Sebald in his story of “Paul Bereyter” in The Emigrants, each set out to confront these issues.