Senior Theses and Advisers

Bella J. Butler

Senior Thesis: DISRUPTING THE IMAGE: The Reinstatement of Female Subjectivity in the Work of VALIE EXPORT

Adviser: Devin Fore

Lena A. Molyneux

Senior Thesis: A Study of Oskar Schlemmer’s Diagrams

Adviser: Barbara Nagel

Magnus A. Von Ziegesar

Senior Thesis: Resistance and Play in David Benjamin Sherry’s American Monuments

Adviser: Joel B. Lande

Annie Xiong

Senior Thesis: Illustrated Magazines, Ethnographic Museums, and Human Zoos: Contextualizing Hannah Höch’s Aus einem ethnographischen Museum Ser

Adviser: Brigid Doherty

William Daniels

Senior Thesis: Neue Ansichten über Bachmanns Malina im Kontext des weiblichen Bildungsromans

Advisor: Johannes Wankhammer

John Ehling

Senior Thesis: Schreber, Remixed: Four Adaptations of Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken

Devin Fore

Kristiana Filipov

Senior Thesis: Only the Gods Are Real, Mythology and Postmodern Philosophy in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

Advisor: Barbara Nagel

Tommy Goulding

Senior Thesis: “Die Bandenführer schreiten daher wie Staatsmänner”: Reading Theories of Bonapartism in Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht

Advisor:Hal Foster

Ezra Y. Shin

Senior Thesis: Two Case Studies in the Cartographicity of Movement

Advisor:Susan Morrow

Corinna Brueckner

Reimagining the Revival: The Case for a Contemporary Staging of Haydn’s Opera Der Apotheker

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin

Charles Murphy

Soccer in Germany: On the Power of a National Sport

Advisor: Nikolaus Wegmann

Grace Rosenberg

The Shmatte Siddur: Tattered Order, Ordered Tatters, And Queering Yiddishkeit

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Ava Vilensky

“Dies Buch ist ausschließlich für die Frau geschrieben”: Unmasking Gender Ideology in the Health Rhetoric of Bess Mensendieck’s Körperkultur der Frau

Advisor: Susan Morrow

Julian Chang

“Ideology and Anxiety: Familiarity in Capitalism and the Strangeness Thereof”

Advisor: Johannes Wankhammer

Autumn Martin

“Surrealist Woman, Dismembered Doll, Horror Victim: Hans Bellmer’s Puppe Photographs”

Advisor: Barbara Nagel

Noam Miller

“Wissenschaftlichkeit in Freud: Scientific Reduction and the Ghost of the Entwurf”

Advisor: Brigid Doherty

Molly Banes

“Painting the New Woman: On the Late Weimar Paintings of Lotte Laserstein”

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin and Michael Jennings

Adam Bear

A Taxonomy of Trumpism: On the Contemporary Application of ‘fascism’,

Advisor: Adam Oberlin

Christina Chun

“Human as Woman: by Lou Andreas-Salomé: A Translation,

Advisors: Devin Fore and Barbara Nagel

Joshua Judd Porter

Out of the Trenches and into the Factories:  Der Arbeiter and Ernst Jünger’s Martial Modernity

Advisor: Devin Fore

Jason Qu

The Κᾰτέχων in Carl Schmitt’s Philosophy of World History Nonconceptuality, Weaponisation, and Politics of a Metaphorical Constellation

Advisor: Joel Lande

Nicholas Shashkini

Staatsferne, Nichtkommerzialität, and Aufklärung:  A Media-political Case Study of the West German Broadcasting System

Advisor: Barbara Nagel

Janice Cheon

“Against the Malaise of Time”: Embodied Fragmentation and the Temporalities of the Dada Creaturely, 1919-1937

Advisor: Devin Fore

Mason Cox

“Alexander Kluge, Registrations of Capitalist Conditions, and Constructions of History”

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Jaclyn Hovsmith

Making the Future Tense: An Exploration of Sexual Violence and Temporality in Christa Wolf’s Kassandra

Advisors: Inka Muelder-Bach and Barbara Nagel

Thomas A. Jankovic

Pre-figurative Political Strategies for Change in the West German Green Movement from 1968 to 1985

Advisor: Ann Marie Rasmussen

Leland Ko

Method in Madness: A Close Reading of Beethoven’s Late String Quartets from a Performer’s Perspective

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Estibaliz Matulewicz

“What Unites and Divides Humankind?” by Magnus Hirschfeld: A Critical Translation

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin

Danny Pinto

Zwischen Chilenidad und Ostalgie: Hybridität, Solidarität, und das Fremde: Chile-DEFA Films as Transnational Sites of Medialized Remembrance

Advisor: Nikolaus Wegmann

Hileman, Ryan J.

Störtebeker through the Ages: The Political Afterlife of a Folk Hero

Advisor: Joel Lande

Keiser, William Samuel

Trance Dance, Berlin to Tel Aviv: The Roots of Modern Israeli Dance Aesthetics in Early 20th Century German Dance

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Lawson, Christian Alwyn

The Historical Multi-Image of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BRD-Trilogie

Advisor: Joseph Vogl

Decitre, Marc

The Ecological Paradox: A Critique of Recent Environmental Discourse

Advisers: Michael Jennings and Thomas Y. Levin

Fleming, Allison

Mediated Bodies: Technologies of Communication and the Human Form Around 1900

Adviser: Devin Fore

Hadley, Spencer

Am Rande des Sagbaren: Rainer Maria Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus, Hugo von Hofmannsthal und der deutsche Stimmungsbegriff

Adviser: Nikolaus Wegmann

Lee, Sang

“At the Gate(s) of Mercy”: Reading Celan’s Jerusalem-Gedichte

Adviser: Michael Wood

Robinson, Alexander

An Ambivalence of Signs: The symbolic, literary, and psychoanalytic in Paul Klee’s 1920 Pandora constellation

Adviser: Brigid Doherty

Baker, Charles Carr

War is Not an Earthquake: Capitalism, Virtue and Resistance in Mother Courage and her Children

Adviser: Michael Jennings

Casserly, Isabel Lockett

Criminal Chronotopes: The Effect of Crime on Narrative Structure

Adviser: Devin Fore

Knight, Jackson D.

A European Crusade: An Analysis of the Saxon Wars and Charlemagne’s Efforts to Christainize the Pagan Tribes of Medieval Germany

Adviser: Sara S. Poor

Nuckols, Chad Logan

Lifting the Veil of Phantasmagoria: Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert as a Guide for the Critical Reader

Adviser: Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz

Albarran, Eleanor

A Modern Art of Education and the Education of Modern Artists: Comparing Waldorf and Bauhaus Pedagogies

Adviser: Michael Jennings

Morris, Colby

Die Flucht in den Rausch: Das Problem des Gehirnprinzips in Gottfried Benns Rönne-Novellen

Adviser: Devin Fore

Nelson, Andrew:

“Auf die Art und Weise kommt alles an” Approaching a Walserian Ethic in Jakob von Gunten

Adviser: Barbara Nagel

Smith, T.J.

Degenerate Aesthetics

Adviser: Devin Fore

Tuckwell, Richard

Heidegger’s Concept of World

Adviser: Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz

Aupiais, Juan-Jacques

Eros, Mythology, Subjectivity: Topoi in Hölderlin’s Early Odes

Advisor: Joel Lande

Mooney, Philip D.

Er hat es nicht angenommen: Karl Jaspers’ Metaphysical Guilt and Germany’s Modern Sonderweg

Advisor: Nikolaus Wegmann

O’Neil, Cody Lee

“Die Zeichen meines Morgens”: A Heliographic Account of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

Advisor: Sarah Pourciau

Pinkerton, Byrd

“Hear Yourself as Others Hear You” On the Aesthetic Politics of Gramophonic Self-Recording

Adviser: Thomas Y. Levin

Veltri, Gerardo

In-Betweens in Middle High German Arthurian Romance

Adviser: Sara S. Poor

Yuen, Hoi Ki

The Idea of Integration: The Naturalisation of Middle Eastern Immigrants in Germany

Advisor: Barbara Nagel

Burgher, Regina Ann

Melos in Drama: Exploring the Musical Mind through Melodrama in Wagner, Brecht, and Sirk

Advisor: Devin Fore

Seongcheol, Kim

Theory, Organization and Milieu in the West German Extra-Parliamentary Left, 1966–78

Advisor: Jan-Werner Müller

Kowalski, Jamie

Der Bildungsbergriff im Zeitalter seiner Auflösung: Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin and the German Tradition of Bildung

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Schwartz, Lauren Isabel

Poetry and Practical Purpose: Literary Encounters with the Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Advisor: Sarah Pourciau

Telljohann, Lillian G.

Of Modernity and on Modernity: Explorations of Meaning and Personhood in Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief and Contemporary Literature

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Kerck, Antoine

Germany’s Protestant Ethics and the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis: A Weberian Perspective

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Lebsack, Victoria

The ‘Vremde’ and the Fantastic in “Wolfdietrich”

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Stolzenberg, Stephen

Killer Communications: The Terror Attack as Medium and its Representations through Film

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Hendren, Lieve

Life as Art: Radical Social Change in Nietzsche

Advisor: Christiane Frey

Kurwa, Shelina

Illusions of India: the Distant Shore of the German Imagination

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Reilly, Kelly

Objective Gaze in Nature and the Nature of Objective Gaze: Rilke’s Aesthetics in the Context of Cézanne

Advisor: Devin Fore

Walsh, Matthew

Society Finds Closeness: Increasing the Cultural Relevance of Opera for Mass Audiences through the Metropolitan Opera’s ‘Live in HD’ Broadcasts

Advisor: Christiane Frey

Benitez, Robert Loen

The Construction of a Life Worth Living in German Queer Literature: 1919–1933

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Hopkins, Nicole Lynn

Father/Mother/Secret Lover: A Jungian Analysis of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Loewenstein, Jacob

Integrest State Support of the Culture Industry from UFA to Media: Televisual Policy to Resist Americanization

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin

Muenzel, Johannes

The “Private” Detective: Public and Domestic Masculinities in the West German Crime Film of the 1950’s

Advisor: Brian Hanrahan

Parks, Rebecca K.

Painting Politics: George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and the Experience of Germany’s Interwar Art and Politics

Advisor: Nikolaus Wegmann

Ziegler, Jayden

Generalization and Productivity in Morphological Paradigm Gaps: Varying Type Frequency and Competition

Advisor: Adele Goldberg

Chaney, Justine Mary

Contorting the Invisible: the Emergence of Corporal Punishment in German Narrative at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Advisor: Christiane Frey

Chereches, Anca

Combinatory Categorical Grammar and German Local Scrambling

Advisor: James Rankin

Denz, Jacob

‘Wichtig zu Lernen’: Einverständnis and Body Politics in Brecht’s “Lehrstücke”

Advisor: Devin Fore

Madole, Robert

The Specter of Automation: The Organic and its Limits in Robert Musil’s “Man Without Qualities”

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Porter, Allen

Immanence and Transcendence

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin

Colgan, Brendan

Nation Branding and National Identity: Making Euros and Sense of German Identity

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Harper, Jason

Datamoshing: Aesthetics of the Glitch

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin

Kim, Christine

More than Meets the Eye: Connections between Phenomenology and Art

Advisor: Arnd Wedemeyer

Kowen, Michael

Speculations about Speculation (about Speculation): Text as Text, Text as Theory

Advisor: Nikolaus Wegmann

May-Gamboa, Julio

Navigating the Metropolis: Advertising, the Bauhaus, and Objectification in Weimar Germany

Advisor: Brigid Doherty

Plaku, Bora

Faust as a Political Tool in National Socialism; Faust as a Political Tool in Resistance, with an Example by Klaus Mann

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Schlegel, Christian

Musil, Criticism, Musil-Criticism

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Frankle, Elissa P.

Iher Wege als Deutsche und Juden: Constructions of Identity in Jewish Museums in Bavaria

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Nunan, Timothy

Leopold Schwarzschild, Das Neue Tagebuch and Anti-Totalitarianism in Interwar Europe 1933–1941

Advisor: Anson Rabinbach

Burkle, Arthur

Love and Terrorism in Heiner Müller’s “Quartet”

Advisor: Nikolaus Wegmann

Lampert, Marcus

Walter Benjamin’s Fracture Cosmos: A Reading of “Einbahnstrasse”

Advisor: Michael  Jennings

Langer, Abigail E.

Verschiedene Gehirne: Medical Observation and Social Self-Destruction in the Poetry and Prose of Gottfried Benn

Advisor: Devin Fore

Stolzenberg, Emily

“Der Sinn von Politik ist Freiheit”: Conceptions of Politics and Freedom in Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt

Advisor: Arnd Wedemeyer

Dillon, Maggie Blair

The Threat of the Blur: Stress and Rupture in Gerhard Richter’s ‘October 18, 1977’

Advisor: Brigid Doherty

Fockele, Kenneth E.

The Poetics of Physical Love in Heinrich von Morungen and Walther von der Vogelweide

Advisor: Sara S. Poor

Purdie, Denise Rita

Technische Nothilfe: The Evolution of Perception in the Works of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Walter Benjamin and Robert Musil

Advisor: Michael Jennings

Shimp, Scott

Online Offentlichkeit: A Habermasian Analysis of the Blogosphere

Advisor: Thomas Y. Levin

Voute, Thomas M.

Shields and Swords: Stasi Surveillance through the Use of Informants

Advisor: Walter Hinderer