Senior Theses and Advisers

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