Matching Items (36)
Description
Approaches to Holocaust representation often take their cues from both academic and public discourse. General opinion demands serious engagement that depicts the full range of the brutality and inhumanity of the genocide and the victimization of targeted groups perpetrated by the National Socialists. Such a treatment is considered necessary to adequately represent the Holocaust for generations to come. The analysis of four texts will show that humor is not only appropriate but is also an important addition to Holocaust discourse. This study argues that humor plays an important role as a stylistic tool for discussing the Holocaust as well as for its remembrance and representation. Jurek Becker's novel Jakob der Lügner and Ruth Klüger's autobiography Weiter Leben: Eine Jugend are witness-texts by Jewish authors. Humor in these two works helps the authors engage and work their experiences. Klüger's autobiography also utilizes humor to critically engage in the discussion of Holocaust representation. This study also analyzes two non-witness Jewish texts: the stage play Mein Kampf by George Tabori and the feature film Mein Führer, die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler by Dani Levy. These two works utilize overt humor to challenge established Holocaust representations. Drawing on ideas from Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben, the core argument of this study demonstrates humor performs two main functions in the Holocaust literature and film chosen for this investigation. First, it restores a potential loss of dignity and helps victims endure the incomprehensible. Second, it challenges the prevailing truth and the established order.
ContributorsMeirich, Hanni (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Ghanem, Carla (Committee member) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Wolfgang Haas is an award-winning Austrian author known primarily for his entertaining and quirky detective novels which follow the misadventures of Simon Brenner, an Austrian private investigator. These novels are notable for their subtle and not-so-subtle critiques of contemporary Austrian society and culture, their sometimes grisly content, and their unique and colloquial use of the Austrian variety of the German language. Haas has received numerous literary awards in the German-speaking world and attributes his success to the unique way he tells his stories, rather than the stories themselves. Of the seven Brenner novels that have been published thus far, only one is available in English translation, and he remains virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. This thesis includes a brief biography of Haas and an overview of his career, an analysis of his unique writing style and the problems they pose for a translator, and an English translation of the first two chapters of the novel Silentium! (1999).
ContributorsGeisler, Paul (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Ghanem, Carla (Committee member) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation analyzes contemporary American literature, which includes novels, graphic novels, film, and television of the last forty years, to deconstruct the critical relationship between lived space, institutional power, and trauma. It examines literary representations of traumatic moments in recent American history--the attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the emergence of the Homeland Security state, and the introduction of the "new metropolis"--to demonstrate that collective trauma at the turn of the century is very much a product of the individual's complex relationship to the state and its institutional auxiliaries. As many philosophers and social critics have argued, institutional forces in contemporary America often deprive individuals of active political engagement through processes of narrative production, and this study discusses how literature both represents and simulates the traumatic consequences of this encounter. Looking to theories on urban, domestic, and textual space, this dissertation explores and problematizes the political and psychological dimensions of space, demonstrating how trauma is enacted through space and how individuals may utilize space and exploit narrative to achieve critical distance from institutional power. Literature as a narrative medium presents vital opportunities both for exposing the machinery of institutional power and for generating positions against the narratives produced by the state.
ContributorsPattison, Dale (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The "Perchtenlauf," a multi-faceted procession of masked participants found in the eastern Alps, has been the subject of considerable discourse and often debate within European ethnology since the mid-19th century. While often viewed from a mythological perspective and characterized as a relic of pre-Christian cult practices, only recently have scholars begun to examine its connection with Carnival. Research of this kind calls for an in-depth analysis of the "Perchtenlauf" that is informed by Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque, an aesthetic of festive merriment and the release from social restrictions which is embodied by Carnival traditions. A carnivalesque reading of the "Perchtenlauf" reveals a tradition pregnant with playful ambivalence, celebrations of the lower body, and the inversion of social hierarchies. Past interpretations of the "Perchtenlauf" have often described its alleged supernatural function of driving away the harmful forces of winter, however its carnavalesque elements have definite social functions involving the enjoyment of certain liberties not sanctioned under other circumstances. The current study solidifies the relationship between the "Perchtenlauf" and Carnival using ethnographic, historical, and etymological evidence in an attempt to reframe the discourse on the tradition's form and function in terms of carnivalesque performance.
ContributorsNatko, David (Author) / Alexander, John (Thesis advisor) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / Horwath, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Environmental Justice Witnessing in the Modernist Poetry of Lola Ridge, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Elizabeth Bishop analyzes the poetic forms used by four modernist American women poets to trace depictions of social oppression that are tied to specific landscapes. My focus is on what I term "environmental justice witnessing," which I define as accounts that testify to experiences of injustices that affect humans and the environments they inhabit. Integrating theories of witnessing, which to date have focused exclusively on humans, with environmental justice criticism, I fashion a lens that highlights the interconnectedness of social and environmental problems. In this way, I theorize the study of texts of witness and how they document the decay, disease, and exploitation of urban and rural landscapes in the twentieth century. In this dissertation, I focus on Lola Ridge's "The Ghetto" (1918), Muriel Rukeyser's "The Book of the Dead" (1938), Gwendolyn Brooks' "In the Mecca" (1968), and poems about Brazil from Elizabeth Bishop's Questions of Travel (1965) and New Poems (1979). I argue that these women poets depict environmental injustices as an inherent facet of social injustice and do so by poetically connecting human bodies to environmental bodies through sound, diction, figurative language, and imagery.
In Environmental Justice Witnessing, I expand arguments made by environmental scholars about the exchange of environmental elements among humans, animals, and landscapes to include the way poets reflect this transfer poetically. The poetry of Ridge, Rukeyser, Brooks, and Bishop allows me to investigate the ways the categories of race, gender, and class, typically thought of as human qualities, are integrally tied to the geographic, national, and cultural bounds in which those categories are formulated. This argument has clear implications on the study of poetry and its environmental contexts as it invites discussions of the transnational conceptions of global citizenship, examinations of the relationships among communities, the environment, and overarching power structures, and arguments surrounding the ways that poetry as art can bring about long-term social and environmental awareness.
In Environmental Justice Witnessing, I expand arguments made by environmental scholars about the exchange of environmental elements among humans, animals, and landscapes to include the way poets reflect this transfer poetically. The poetry of Ridge, Rukeyser, Brooks, and Bishop allows me to investigate the ways the categories of race, gender, and class, typically thought of as human qualities, are integrally tied to the geographic, national, and cultural bounds in which those categories are formulated. This argument has clear implications on the study of poetry and its environmental contexts as it invites discussions of the transnational conceptions of global citizenship, examinations of the relationships among communities, the environment, and overarching power structures, and arguments surrounding the ways that poetry as art can bring about long-term social and environmental awareness.
ContributorsGrieve, Sarah (Author) / Hogue, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Clarke, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT (English)
Heinrich Hoffmann`s renowned Struwwelpeter and the famous Grimm brothers' fairy tales have been the subject of exhaustive pedagogical and psychological scrutiny. By means of shocking and fascinating literary elements Struwwelpeter's revolutionary didactic horror-comedy as well as the instructive horror-fantasy inherent in fairy tales are able to cast an enchanting, enlightening spell on their audience. However, both Hoffmann's and the Grimm's adventurous stories have suffered harsh criticism particularly owing to their often gruesome, macabre and unrealistic subject matter. Notwithstanding the barrage of denunciating objections, the remarkable longevity of Fidgety Philip, Little Red Riding Hood and Co appears to know no bounds, as their ingenious formula for success comprising captivatingly shocking, spine-tingling elements of both entertaining and educational value continues to inspire contemporary adaptations. Several German dialects have also discovered and devoted themselves to the magical world of Hoffmann's chaotic rascals and the Grimm's fascinating fairy tale characters in furtherance of enlivening them with the identity, culture and local flavor of their respective region.
The current study aims to demonstrate the extent to which dialectal adaptations of the aforesaid tales succeed in not only revitalizing the original narratives including their pedagogical and psychodynamic quintessence but also in capturing the readers' hearts by virtue of their intimate parlance/phraseology. This particular philological approach illustrates the symbiotic interaction between regional German dialects and well-known (children's) Horror-stories.
ABSTRACT (German)
Bisher waren sowohl der renommierte Struwwelpeter Heinrich Hoffmanns als auch die berühmten Märchen der Brüder Grimm Objekte erschöpfender pädagogischer und psychologischer Betrachtungen. Die revolutionäre didaktische Gruselkomik der struwwelpetrigen Abenteuer sowie die lehrhafte Gruselphantastik der Märchen vermögen vermittels ihrer schockierenden und zugleich faszinierenden Elemente Menschen jeden Alters in ihren verzaubernden, lebenserhellenden Bann zu ziehen. Allerdings mussten die hoffmannschen und grimmschen Geschichten insbesondere auf Grund grausamer, wirklichkeitsfremder Inhalte auch als Zielscheibe heftigster Kritik fungieren. Nichtsdestotrotz scheint der steilen Karriere von Zappelphilipp, Rotkäppchen und Co keine Grenzen gesetzt, denn ihre raffinierte Erfolgsformel bestehend aus unterhaltsam-belehrenden Schock- und Zaubermotiven inspiriert stets neue Adaptionen. So haben auch die deutschsprachigen Mundarten längst das skurille sowie zauberhafte Reich der chaotischen Lausbuben und Märchencharaktere für sich entdeckt, um diese mit der jeweils eigenen regionalkolorierten Identität und Kultur zu beseelen.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gilt es nun zu demonstrieren, inwiefern es den dialektalen Petriaden und Märchenversionen gelingt, nicht nur die Erzählungen samt ihrer pädagogisch sowie psychodynamisch wertvollen Kerngehalte zu neuem Leben zu erwecken, sondern sich darüber hinaus in anheimelnder Weise die Herzen der Leserschaft zu erobern. Diese einzigartige philologische Perspektive beleuchtet die Erfolg versprechende Wechselwirkung zwischen den ortsspezifischen Sprachgeflechten und den (Kinder)-Gruselklassikern.
Heinrich Hoffmann`s renowned Struwwelpeter and the famous Grimm brothers' fairy tales have been the subject of exhaustive pedagogical and psychological scrutiny. By means of shocking and fascinating literary elements Struwwelpeter's revolutionary didactic horror-comedy as well as the instructive horror-fantasy inherent in fairy tales are able to cast an enchanting, enlightening spell on their audience. However, both Hoffmann's and the Grimm's adventurous stories have suffered harsh criticism particularly owing to their often gruesome, macabre and unrealistic subject matter. Notwithstanding the barrage of denunciating objections, the remarkable longevity of Fidgety Philip, Little Red Riding Hood and Co appears to know no bounds, as their ingenious formula for success comprising captivatingly shocking, spine-tingling elements of both entertaining and educational value continues to inspire contemporary adaptations. Several German dialects have also discovered and devoted themselves to the magical world of Hoffmann's chaotic rascals and the Grimm's fascinating fairy tale characters in furtherance of enlivening them with the identity, culture and local flavor of their respective region.
The current study aims to demonstrate the extent to which dialectal adaptations of the aforesaid tales succeed in not only revitalizing the original narratives including their pedagogical and psychodynamic quintessence but also in capturing the readers' hearts by virtue of their intimate parlance/phraseology. This particular philological approach illustrates the symbiotic interaction between regional German dialects and well-known (children's) Horror-stories.
ABSTRACT (German)
Bisher waren sowohl der renommierte Struwwelpeter Heinrich Hoffmanns als auch die berühmten Märchen der Brüder Grimm Objekte erschöpfender pädagogischer und psychologischer Betrachtungen. Die revolutionäre didaktische Gruselkomik der struwwelpetrigen Abenteuer sowie die lehrhafte Gruselphantastik der Märchen vermögen vermittels ihrer schockierenden und zugleich faszinierenden Elemente Menschen jeden Alters in ihren verzaubernden, lebenserhellenden Bann zu ziehen. Allerdings mussten die hoffmannschen und grimmschen Geschichten insbesondere auf Grund grausamer, wirklichkeitsfremder Inhalte auch als Zielscheibe heftigster Kritik fungieren. Nichtsdestotrotz scheint der steilen Karriere von Zappelphilipp, Rotkäppchen und Co keine Grenzen gesetzt, denn ihre raffinierte Erfolgsformel bestehend aus unterhaltsam-belehrenden Schock- und Zaubermotiven inspiriert stets neue Adaptionen. So haben auch die deutschsprachigen Mundarten längst das skurille sowie zauberhafte Reich der chaotischen Lausbuben und Märchencharaktere für sich entdeckt, um diese mit der jeweils eigenen regionalkolorierten Identität und Kultur zu beseelen.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gilt es nun zu demonstrieren, inwiefern es den dialektalen Petriaden und Märchenversionen gelingt, nicht nur die Erzählungen samt ihrer pädagogisch sowie psychodynamisch wertvollen Kerngehalte zu neuem Leben zu erwecken, sondern sich darüber hinaus in anheimelnder Weise die Herzen der Leserschaft zu erobern. Diese einzigartige philologische Perspektive beleuchtet die Erfolg versprechende Wechselwirkung zwischen den ortsspezifischen Sprachgeflechten und den (Kinder)-Gruselklassikern.
ContributorsGerber, Michelle (Author) / Alexander, John (Thesis advisor) / Ghanem, Carla (Committee member) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
In the time of Nazi Germany the systematic targeting of Jews for persecution and extermination was rampant. Although this was a dark time for the Jewish people in Europe, they did not simply stand idly by and let this happen to them. The Jewish people found a way to make a mockery of the situation that they wee in, as well as a way to poke fun at the people who persecuted them. The Jews used dark humor to mock the situations that they found themselves in. The interesting point here, though, is that they did not use all the aspects of dark humor that exist. The Jews used situational humor, critical humor, and gallows humor-humor about death-according to the incongruity theory of humor, to make a mockery of the plight that they were in. They did not use all of the different aspects of dark humor, but only the parts that would merge with their need to mock their situation, in order to be able to deal with the reality of what was happening in their lives. For the analysis in this thesis, I researched various collections of Jewish humor in Nazi Germany. I analyzed the jokes in relation to the different humor theories, and gave my conclusion on why these jokes were effective. Based on the evidence, I have come to several conclusions. The Jews that made these jokes only used the aspects of dark humor that would fit in with the atmosphere that they were trying to create. They would not use sexual jokes of any kind because of this. They used jokes that could be used as a shield, to comfort not only themselves but also their compatriots given their situation. The use of humor was a coping measure and a sign of defiance, that helped some of the victims of the Holocaust survive the attempted extermination of the Jews. Given the opportunity, I would widen my focus on this topic to include collective memory, as well, however the scope of such a project would be more fitting for a doctoral paper.
ContributorsWolfe, David (Author) / Alexander, Robert (Committee member) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / Ghanem, Carla (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
For over a century, writings in the Law & Literature genre have been largely restricted to works concerning lawyers and courtrooms. This despite early preeminent Law& Literature scholars' assertions that the genre should incorporate any writing that examines the intersection of law, crime, morality, and society. For over a half-century, Detroit novelist Elmore Leonard has been producing well-written, introspective novels about criminals, violence, and society's need to both understand and condemn these things, all under the broad, oft-marginalized genre of crime and detective fiction. This paper pairs the work of Elmore Leonard, using his successful novel Out of Sight as a stylistic framework, with the Law & Literature genre. After a dissection of the true definition of a Law & Literature and detective fiction, as well as an excavation of underlying themes and imports of Out of Sight, it is found that Law & Literature scholars need to be more inclusive of crime novels like Leonard's. And, given the characteristics of both genres, Leonard's novels are more appropriately classified as Law & Literature rather than detective fiction.
ContributorsWeier, Nicholas (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This project will attempt to supplement the current registry of lesbian inquiry in literature by exploring a very specific topos important to the Modern era: woman and her intellect. Under this umbrella, the project will perform two tasks: First, it will argue that the Modern turn that accentuates what I call negative valence mimesis is a moment of change that enables the general public to perceive lesbianism in representations of women that before, perhaps, remained unacknowledged. And, second, that the intersection of thought and resistance to heteronormative structures, such as heterosexual desire/sex, childbirth, marriage, religion, feminine performance, generate topoi of lesbianism that lesbian studies should continuously critique in order to index the myriad and creative ways through which fictional representations of women have evaded their proper roles in society. The two tasks above will be performed amidst the backdrop of a crucial moment in history in which lesbianism jumped from fiction to fact through the publication and obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall's novel, The Well of Loneliness. Deconstructive feminist and queer inquiry of under-researched novels by women from the UK and the US written within the decade surrounding the trial reveals the possibilities of lesbianism in novels where the protagonists' investment in heteronormativity has remained unquestioned. In those texts where the protagonists have been questioned, the analysis of lesbianism will be delved into more deeply in order to illustrate new ways of reading these texts. I will focus on women writers who, as Terry Castle suggests, "both usurped and deepened the [lesbian] genre" with the arrival of the new century (Literature 29). It is my attempt to combat heteronormativity through a more positive approach. As Michael Warner asserts, "heteronormativity can be overcome only by actively imagining a necessarily and desirably queer world" (xvi). This is not to say this study will be all roses and no thorns; a desirably queer world is not about a wish for an utopia. For this project, it is about rigorously engaging in the lesbianism of literature while acknowledging how a lesbian reading, a reading for lesbianism, can continue to both expand and enrich the critical tradition of a text and the customary interpretation of various characters.
ContributorsWagner, Johanna M. (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Mallot, Edward (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation examines the influential relationships between popular culture depictions of superheroes and the substantive, malleable, and real possibilities of human body transformation. Cultural discourses condition and constrain the ways in which identity and bodies are formed and expressed. This includes popular culture texts that, through their evocative narratives, provide guidance or solutions for dealing with real world problems. From the perspective of communication studies, this project involves examining ways people project and perform fantastic future versions of humanity in relation to popular culture artifacts, like superheroes, but also examines how such projections are borne out of and get expressed through our everyday, less than extraordinary experiences. Key theoretical tensions regarding identity and culture are elucidated. These tensions are then developed discursively into a genealogy of body transcendence that features the historicizing of social functions to determine from where such tensions and changes manifest, and how they ultimately affect us. Several key artifacts are introduced to help inform the investigation, including eight specific superhero body types that provide an ideal perspective through which transformative power can be observed. The superhero discourse is particularly relevant because it offers a utopian/dystopian tension regarding how the splendor and seduction of the discourse materializes in both liberating and problematic ways. Another aspect of this embodied approach involves adopting the alternate superhero persona of Ethnography Man. By undertaking my own identity transformations, I am better able to investigate spaces that encourage such identity slippage and play, such as the annual San Diego Comic Con International. The once strongly held perception that our bodies are fixed and stable is fast disappearing. In bridging the body with culture through a genealogy, it becomes much more apparent how body transformations will continue to manifest in the future. Therefore, from the experiences and analysis contained herein, implications regarding powerful discursive conditions and constraints that influence our ability to change take form in revealing, problematic, and sometimes unexpected ways. More specifically, implications of who has power, how it is exercised, and the effects of power will materialize and indicate whether or not everyday humans have the potential to become superheroes.
ContributorsBoras, Scott Daniel (Author) / McDonald, Kelly (Thesis advisor) / Goodall, Jr., H. L. (Committee member) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012