After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted into ethnic conflict and ultimately genocide. Nearly 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, died in the Bosnian War. Two decades later, the violence has ended but the conflict is still present in Bosnia; the societal segregation of the 1995 Dayton Accords, intended only as an immediate solution to the violence, still stands. Population and language distribution are evidence of this segregation. Bosnia’s two entities are home to two different ethnic majorities: Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH. In an environment so sensitive that the government recently feared that merely releasing statistics on ethnic populations might cause violence, the languages that represent these populations are important indicators of social presence and power. In order to evaluate the presence of the Serbian and Bosnian languages, as well as the English language, in Bosnia, signage on the main streets in the country’s capitals were photographed in great detail. It was hypothesized that linguistic majority would match ethnic majority on both main streets, and that English would appear frequently in advertisements. The number of photographs in which each language appeared was tallied up in order to determine how often the languages are typically used. Analyses of these results demonstrated that the English language is the second-most ubiquitous on both streets, after Bosnian, and the comparatively small presence of the Serbian language on both streets indicated that the linguistic environment in Bosnia is not conducive to peace and reconciliation.

This thesis compares two perspectives on the production of Holocaust memory: a novel that leads up to The Holocaust in Britain and one that reflects the hindsight perspective of a liberator in the Soviet Union. The novels are Virginia Woolf’s BETWEEN THE ACTS and Vasily Grossman’s LIFE AND FATE. The analysis offers a locus of analysis for the diasporic literary energy created by the catastrophe in the 20th and 21st centuries. The project offers a theorized standpoint on the role of literature on official historical archives. Proposing a method through which contemporary readers can engage the diasporic event of The Holocaust, the project adopts both the extended metaphor and literal expression of soundscapes. Soundscapes encompass the immaterial processes of memorialization and the literal sonic textures developed in Holocaust novels. The critical perspective incorporates contemporary notions of narratology, archival practices, and cultural manifestations of language into the notion of literary ethnomusicology.

This study examines how two media sources—one Russian and one Ukrainian—portray Russia and Ukraine before, during, and after the EuroMaidan crisis in Ukraine. Russian-language texts posted between January 2013 and December 2015 on the sites Ukranews.com (a Ukrainian news outlet) and TASS.ru (Russian) were organized in a corpus of over 20,000,000 words. This study analyzes the nouns “Россия” (“Russia”) and “Украина” (“Ukraine”) according to the verbal predicates that attach to either noun. The results demonstrate predictable variation in the agency of the two entities in response to cultural events and contexts. The analysis of the corpus data operationalizes a combined model of agency using Halliday and Matheissen’s (2004) classification of processes, shaped by the animacy of the actor, and Dik’s (1989) States of Affairs Matrix, which prioritizes the actor’s physical effect in space and time. In this study, predicates of “Russia” and “Ukraine” are given numeric scores based on the models. Then, a new method of checking the validity of these models is tested by examining other entities that take the same predicates as Russia and Ukraine. Measurements from discrete time periods reveal how the agency of both entities changed before, during, and after EuroMaidan.

The use and evolution of socialist realism, in both Stalinist times (Polevoi- A Story About a Real Man) and in post-soviet reflections (Pelevin- Omon Ra).

In this project, contemporary theater and performance art is examined in four cities in ex-Yugoslavia. War has pervaded all of the sites in some way, interrupting a sense of normalcy, altering the city physically as well as ideologically. For that reason, interaction with urban space becomes a central element in performances—whether it serves to preserve the city’s identity amidst destruction, to cleanse the city from the shame of official exploits, to break from the insular legacy of nationalism that flooded the streets, or to gather the city together in a process of collective healing.

Plenzdorf's works, one written before the fall of socialism in the German Democratic Republic (hereafter referred to as the DDR), and one after, portray relationships between fathers and sons, which act as a metaphor to express a personal perspective of the state, revealing that the DDR was neither as repressive or as omnipresent for the average citizen as outsiders are often given to believe. The father, or Übervater, a figure deeply rooted in the German consciousness, is represented by the state and proves itself as an entity which gives the protagonists in both works little notice, despite their best efforts to seek out a paternalistic presence.

Flanerie is the art of taking a walk, leisurely observing the movements and spaces of the city. By writing about cityscapes, urban realms, and the condition of society, flaneurs are able to describe the uniqueness of the metropolis and give life to the modern city—creating a photograph of an urban setting. In the early nineteenth century, and even today, flaneur literature has been ultimately dominated by men who have documented their cultural and aesthetic interactions with the city. During these times, unwritten rules have often excluded the female from participating in parts of the urban society. Today, these unwritten rules are still apparent as many park signs warn us to stay out of secluded areas after dark—implying the possibility of danger for women, but no necessarily for men. The controversy over the existence of the flaneuse or female flaneur has been the corner stone of many recent debates as a large body of scholarship has claimed that women have had no part in the art of flanerie. The questions still remain: was it possible for women to promenade in the streets of a male-dominated society and is it possible that female flaneur literature even exists? My answer to these questions is yes. Although the public sphere was dominated by the male figure as they confined women to the private realm of the home, there were notable women who proved to be exceptions to these rules. Recently, scholars have uncovered an array of female authors that have written in the art of flanerie. Irmgard Keun was one of the prominent exceptions who wrote many texts that are potentially important as cultural and historical documents of the time period in which she lived. In this thesis, I will investigate Keun's first two novels, Gilig—eine von uns and Das kunstseidene Madchen, as well as a few of her lesser known feuilletons that have scarcely been observed or considered as essential links to the rare works of the female flaneur. I will first discuss the problems of the flaneuse—being subjected to gender-stratified societies, being seen as a prostitute, and being confined to the private realm of the home. I will then argue several aspects of Keun's novels and feuilletons that are necessary to understand the practices of the modern flaneur and, more importantly, to liberate the controversial figure of the flaneuse.

In this thesis, I explore how, although Edith Södergran’s Vaxdukshäf poems seem to support new female roles in early 20th century European society, they also reflect on the danger in changing from traditional to modern roles. As the poems illustrate, this change can create an isolated woman, who becomes trapped in her new independence and is unable to alter herself to connect with others. In order to understand what is meant by traditional and modern female roles, I present a historical background that contrasts the woman of pre-20th-Century Europe with the new woman that emerged around the Turn of the Century. I do this by focusing on marriage, motherhood, the woman's role inside and outside of the home, valued feminine characteristics, and women's clothing.

This thesis explores why readers insist on interpreting Zehra Çirak's texts in light of her Turkish German background when she claims that her texts have little to do with her Turkish heritage and are more universally applicable. While readers can interpret her texts without considering the author's biography, thereby obtaining insights into their own personal identity, I suggest that it also makes sense for readers to interpret her texts with the author's biography in mind because of current events and the history of Turkish migrant labor in Germany. To explore different possible interpretations of her texts, I have categorized Çirak's poetry, found in four of her volumes of poetry, Vogel auf dem Rücken eines Elefanten (1991), Fremde Flügel auf eigener Schulter (1994), Leibesübungen (2000), and In Bewegung (2008), into two broad groups. First, I look at the few poems in which Çirak overtly addresses alterity by discussing the alienation of Turks. In these texts, the speakers use Turkish words or images that link the texts to Çirak's biography. Then I turn to look at poems that can only metaphorically be interpreted as addressing Turkish German integration into mainstream German society and discuss how even though the figurative language Çirak employs make her texts applicable to other situations or interpretations, the texts lend themselves to being read in light of multiculturalism. In both of these categories of poetry, Çirak uses metaphor to address alterity without pandering to stereotypes or setting categorical limits on Turks, Germans, or other members of her readership.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted into ethnic conflict and ultimately genocide. Nearly 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, died in the Bosnian War. Two decades later, the violence has ended but the conflict is still present in Bosnia; the societal segregation of the 1995 Dayton Accords, intended only as an immediate solution to the violence, still stands. Population and language distribution are evidence of this segregation. Bosnia’s two entities are home to two different ethnic majorities: Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH. In an environment so sensitive that the government recently feared that merely releasing statistics on ethnic populations might cause violence, the languages that represent these populations are important indicators of social presence and power. In order to evaluate the presence of the Serbian and Bosnian languages, as well as the English language, in Bosnia, signage on the main streets in the country’s capitals were photographed in great detail. It was hypothesized that linguistic majority would match ethnic majority on both main streets, and that English would appear frequently in advertisements. The number of photographs in which each language appeared was tallied up in order to determine how often the languages are typically used. Analyses of these results demonstrated that the English language is the second-most ubiquitous on both streets, after Bosnian, and the comparatively small presence of the Serbian language on both streets indicated that the linguistic environment in Bosnia is not conducive to peace and reconciliation.