Psychiater: 'Amerikas Jungen in der Krise', titelt Die Welt am 2. Juni 1998 und ruft unter Bezug auf den Psychiater William Pollock von der Harvard University 'eine nationale Krise des Knabenalters' aus. Nachdem '[j]ahrelang (...) in den USA die Förderung von Mädchen Priorität' hatte, offenbaren die Statistiken nun eine erschütternde Bilanz: 'Im Pubertätsalter begehen in den USA fünfmal so viele Jungen wie Mädchen Selbstmord. Jungen machen 90 Prozent der Disziplinarfälle aus und brechen viermal häufiger die Schule ab.' Während es unter männlichen Jugendlichen zu immer mehr Gewalttaten, wie beispielsweise der weltweit durch die Medien gegangenen Serie von Bluttaten an amerikanischen Schulen kommt, die 2002 in einem Film wie Bowling for Columbine sogar noch einen künstlerisch-kritischen Ausdruck findet, und sich Deutschland noch von den Schockwellen des Erfurter Massakers erholt, leiden nach einer in L'Actualité médicale publizierten kanadischen Studie im Kindes- und Jugendalter deutlich mehr Männer als Frauen an Beeinträchtigungen beziehungsweise Erkrankungen.

Jewish literary studies holds a peculiar field position. Although the study of Jewish American literature has been a part of American literary studies at least since the famed ‘breakthrough’ of Jewish literature in the postwar years, it often continues to be treated as a self-enclosed world of its own, apart from both ethnic literary studies and the larger American literary field.

Diese Dissertationsarbeit konzentriert sich in ihrer Untersuchung auf englischsprachige Romane, die von zeitgenössischen Autorinnen arabischer Herkunft verfasst worden sind, und stellt sie in den Kontext postkolonialer und feministischer Literatur. Ahdaf Soueifs Roman In the Eye of the Sun (1992), Fadia Faqirs Roman Pillars of Salt (1997) und Leila Aboulelas zwei Romane The Translator (1999) und Minaret (2005) sind Gegenstand der Untersuchung. Zum Vergleich werden auch zwei deutschsprachige Romane von Autoren arabischer Herkunft miteinbezogen: Jusuf Naoums Nura. Eine Libanesin in Deutschland (1996) und Rafik Schamis Die dunkle Seite der Liebe (2004). Obwohl der Grad kolonialer Herrschaft Großbritanniens im arabischen Nahen Osten nicht so stark ausgeprägt war wie in den ehemaligen Kolonien, die nun Mitglieder des Commonwealth sind, und deswegen die untersuchten Romane nicht als Widerstandsliteratur wie viele andere Beispiele postkolonialer Literatur charakterisiert werden können, sind die Suche nach und Konstruktion von kulturellen Identitäten wichtiger Bestandteil der untersuchten Romane. Diese Literatur kann als Beispiel eines neuen Forschungsgebietes innerhalb des weiten Spektrums postkolonialer Literatur angeführt werden, die sich mit den Erfahrungen von Angehörigen ehemaliger britischer Kolonien befasst, die niemals Teil des Commonwealth waren. Als analytisches Hilfsmittel wird in der Arbeit der Begriff intermediacy verwendet, wie er von der amerikanischen Feministin und Ethnologin Sherry Ortner in ihrem grundlegenden Artikel zur Sexualisierung der Natur/Kultur Dichotomie definiert wird. Intermediacy wird als Zustand des Dazwischenseins verstanden, in dem klare geschlechtliche, kulturelle, ethnische und nationale Identitätsabgrenzungen dekonstruiert werden. Dieser Begriff ist besonders nützlich, die Konstruktion von literarischen Subjekten in den untersuchten Romanen zu verstehen, deren Protagonisten zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen, geographischen Räumen und Konstruktionen von geschlechtlichen und kulturellen Identitäten oszillieren. Gesellschaften des arabischen Nahen Ostens werden dargestellt, in denen traditionelle Geschlechterrollenverständnisse durch den Einfluss von Kolonialismus, Modernisierung und Globalisierung unterwandert worden sind. Die Protagonisten erscheinen verwirrt über ihre gesellschaftlichen Rollen, die zum großen Teil von traditionellen Werten bestimmt werden aber zugleich auch aufgrund verschiedener interner und externer Faktoren ausgehöhlt worden sind. Die Untersuchung wendet den Begriff intermediacy nicht nur im Bezug auf gender an, wie es Ortner tut, sondern auch auf die Fluidität kultureller Identitäten in einer globalisierten und postkolonialen Welt. Die untersuchten Romane porträtieren Individuen, die nach verlässlichen Markierungen ihrer kulturellen Identitäten suchen, wie z.B. in Form einer transnationalen und transkulturellen islamischen Identitätsstiftung, und zugleich das Scheitern dieser Sinnstiftungen erfahren müssen. Somit stellt diese Arbeit die behandelten Romane nicht nur in den Themenkomplex der Identitätskonstruktionen postkolonialer Literatur, sondern setzt sie auch mit der allgemeinen Dekonstruktion des Subjekts in postmodernen Romanen in Verbindung. / This thesis focuses in its analysis on novels written in English by contemporary female authors of Arab background and places their works within the context of postcolonial and feminist literature. Ahdaf Soueif’s novel In the Eye of the Sun (1992), Fadia Faqir’s novel Pillars of Salt (1997) and Leila Aboulela’s two novels The Translator (1999) and Minaret (2005) are subject of the investigation. For comparative reasons, two novels written in German by authors of Arab background are also discussed: Jusuf Naoum’s Nura. Eine Libanesin in Deutschland (1996) and Rafik Schami’s Die dunkle Seite der Liebe (2004). While the degree of colonial penetration of the Arab Middle East by Britain was not as strong as in the Commonwealth countries and therefore the discussed novels cannot be characterised as resistance literature as many other examples of postcolonial literature, re-negotiations and re-constructions of cultural identities nevertheless form an important part of the discussed novels. This literature can serve as an example of a new field of research within the broader context of postcolonial literature dealing with the experiences of inhabitants of former British colonies that were never part of the Commonwealth. As analytical tool the thesis uses the notion of intermediacy as developed by the American feminist and anthropologist Sherry Ortner in her seminal article on the gendering of the nature/culture dichotomy. Intermediacy is understood as a state of in-betweenness in which clear gender, cultural, ethnic and national boundaries are deconstructed. This notion proves to be particularly helpful in understanding the construction of literary subjects in the discussed novels whose protagonists oscillate between different cultures, regions and constructions of gender and cultural identities as part of their experience of intermediacy. Societies in the Arab Middle East are presented in which traditional gender roles have been undermined by the forces of colonialism, modernisation and globalisation leaving the protagonists confused about their social roles which are still determined by traditional values to a large extent but have been eroded by various internal and external factors. The thesis defines intermediacy not only in the context of gender, as originally conceived by Ortner, but also as applicable to the fluidity of cultural identities in a globalised and postcolonial world. The discussed novels portray individuals who search for secure markers of their cultural identities – in the form of a transnational and transcultural Islamic identity, for example – while experiencing the failure of these searches at the same time. In this sense, the thesis not only places these novels within the context of identity negotiations in postcolonial literature but also relates them to the general deconstruction of the subject in postmodern novels.

Diese Dissertation liefert einen kulturhistorischen Überblick über die Darstellung der Frauenfiguren Gertrude und Ophelia in Hamlet-Verfilmungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die beiden weiblichen Gestalten werden dabei im Hinblick auf ihr äußeres Erscheinungsbild wie auch ihre Charakterzeichnung vor dem historischen, kulturellen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Entstehungshintergrund der Filme beleuchtet. Die Analysen konzentrieren sich ausschließlich auf Kinofilme, da diese ein wesentlich breiteres Publikum erreichen als etwa die diversen Bühnen- oder Textfassungen des Stücks. Die erste der insgesamt zwanzig untersuchten Leinwandfassungen entstand im Jahre 1900, die letzte kam 2000 in die Kinos – die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt also eine genau 100-jährige Tradition der Hamlet-Verfilmungen. / This doctoral thesis provides a comprehensive historico-cultural analysis of the figures of Gertrude and Ophelia as portrayed in Hamlet film adaptations of the 20th century. The two female figures are examined with a special emphasis on their outward appearance and character disposition, which are set against the historical, cultural, political and social background of when the films were produced. These analyses focus exclusively on film adaptations made for cinematic release, which have a larger audience than the various book versions and TV and stage productions of the play. The first of the overall twenty Hamlet films discussed here was made in 1900, the last one in 2000 – the work at hand comprises therefore a one-hundred-year-old tradition of Hamlet film adaptations.

This dissertation focuses on selected novels written by contemporary indigenous authors from Aotearoa/New Zealand and examines the fictional imagination of the human body as a medium of cultural identity and memory. The novels discussed are Keri Hulme’s »The Bone People« (1984), »Nights in the Gardens of Spain« (1995) and »The Uncle’s Story« (2000) by Witi Ihimaera as well as James George’s »Hummingbird« (2003). In order to further decolonisation processes and to come to terms with the colonial past and the complexity of present realities, the fictional works position the human body as an active entity in the negotiation of specific cultural epistemologies. This project explores the narrative translation of corporeality that is used to locate alternative concepts of identity and cultural memory. Taking into account indigenous perspectives, this thesis makes use of the current theoretical approaches presented by pragmatism and affect theory in order to analyse the investment of the novels in feeling and the reciprocal relationship between text and corporeality depicted by the narratives. On the one hand, the novels aim to undermine oppressive and marginalising categories by placing particular emphasis on »sensuous gaps« in the text. On the other hand, the narratives intend to construct alternative identities and evoke specific aspects of indigenous histories and knowledge by imagining the human body in terms of »sensuous inscription«. The novels portray individuals who act from a place in-between different cultures, and articulate a desire to dissolve polarities and emphasise individual and cultural transformation as a formative element in the creation of complex identities and new perspectives. / Diese Dissertation stellt einige ausgewählte Romane, die von zeitgenössischen neuseeländischen Autoren mit Wurzeln in der Maori-Kultur stammen, im Hinblick auf deren Darstellung des menschlichen Körpers als Mittler kultureller Identität und Erinnerung in den Fokus. Betrachtet werden Keri Hulmes »The Bone People« (1984), die beiden Romane »Nights in the Gardens of Spain« (1995) und »The Uncle’s Story« (2000) von Witi Ihimaera sowie James Georges »Hummingbird« (2003). Im Zuge von Dekolonialisierungsprozessen, der Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Komplexität gegenwärtiger Realitäten positionieren die Fiktionstexte den menschlichen Körper als vermittelnde Instanz kulturspezifischer Epistemologien. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit richtet diese Arbeit auf die im fiktionalen Rahmen angestrebte Translation von Leiblichkeit, die zur Verortung alternativer Identitätskonzepte und kultureller Erinnerungsmuster sinnstiftend genutzt wird. Unter Berücksichtigung indigener Konzepte werden neuere Ansätze des Pragmatismus und der Affekttheorie für die literaturwissenschaftliche Analyse herangezogen, um die sinnlich-emotional gefasste Investition der Romane und die Wechselbeziehung zwischen Text und Körperlichkeit, die in den Fiktionstexten zum Tragen kommt, zu untersuchen. Dabei rücken die Narrationen zum einen eine Unterhöhlung einschränkender und marginalisierender Lebensmodelle durch eine Betonung »sinnlicher Risse« im Textfluss in den Vordergrund; zum anderen beabsichtigen sie durch eine »sinnliche Gravur« des imaginierten menschlichen Körpers eine Konstruktion alternativer Identitäten und kulturspezifischer indigener Erinnerungsstiftung. Die Romane zeichnen Individuen, die zwischen mehreren kulturellen Horizonten agieren, und artikulieren dabei ein Bestreben, Polaritäten aufzulösen und durch die Betonung individueller und kultureller Transformation komplexe Identitäten und neue Perspektiven zu verhandeln.

In the course of my degree studies it became apparent that there was little historical evidence of British working-class women writers. This led me to the question whether such women actually wrote or whether it was the case that their writing was not deemed good enough for publication. (Merelyn Cherry 75) In her essay entitled Towards a Recognition of Working-Class Women Writers, Cherry discusses the omission of these writers in literary studies. She concludes that their (supposed) underrepresentation is not a matter of publication, but is due to the fact that these authors are largely ignored by Western academics (cf. 115-118). In fact, there is sufficient evidence of women writing about the working classes. Relevant examinations of the British working-class novel that include female authors are Mary Ashraf’s Introduction To Working-Class Literature in Great Britain (1978), Gustav Klaus’ The Socialist Novel in Britain (1982), Pamela Fox’s Class Fictions (1994), Merylyn Cherry’s Towards a Recognition of Working-Class Women Writers (1994) and some excerpts from Ian Haywood’s From Chartism to Trainspotting (1998). Merylyn Cherry lists some of the writers whose works will be discussed in my thesis; however, she does not specify what is to be understood by “British working-class women writers”. Various questions arise at this point. What are the distinctive features of a contemporary working-class novel written by a woman author? Which narrative strategies are employed to create the literary working-class world of female characters? What type of work is performed by such characters? The difficulty in finding answers to these questions lies in the attempt to determine a typology of such novels. The text corpus of working-class fiction is clearly male-dominated, both in terms of male authorship and the depiction of working-men characters and their living environments in the novels. Women authors, who frequently produce(d) female counterparts to the working-men characters, have fallen into oblivion even within working-class studies. Ian Haywood, for instance, ignores three significant Welsh women writers of this category, even though his anthology entitled Working-Class Fiction, From Chartism to Trainspotting (1998) focuses on British writers. Uncovering these female writers and demonstrating the development of their fiction will be part of this thesis. Each traceable narrative of the kind shall be mentioned in chronological order. This is the first step to grasp the essence of these texts. It will become clear that a contemporary woman’s working-class novel emerged out of a “patchwork” of various writing traditions; and that the typology which I endeavor to establish does not cover the matter of common characterisations in this text corpus. None of the characters in my anthology can be labelled a “prototype”, since the characterisations vary greatly across the novels. In a second step, I will analyse twelve novels written between 1974 and 2008, which I will approach thematically. This way, I can converge a typology more closely. The three main topics which frequently appear across the novels are women’s class-consciousness, the mother-daughter relationship, and trauma caused by battering and sexual abuse. Hereby, I raise no claim to completeness. I have chosen twelve texts which I consider to be representative; and I will precede like the literary critic Gustav Klaus, who argued in his anthology entitled The Socialist Novel in Britain: “I have chosen to introduce many writers, limiting myself, however, to the discussion of one work each. This approach can best disclose the breadth and variety of fictional devices” (Klaus 1). I have chosen 1974 as a starting point of my analyses, since this is the publication year of Buchi Emecheta’s vanguard novel Second-Class Citizen. Being the first post-colonial woman author to write a novel about domestic violence against a Black and female working-class character, she may be considered a pioneer writer. Particularly against the background that the text was written during the years of second-wave feminism, which was “spearheaded by white middle-class women” (Louis Weis 246), the novel is a groundbreaking piece of working-class aesthetics. With this introduction of post-colonial women’s writings to the British literary scene in the early 1970s, representations of women’s lower-class life became enriched by a different writing tradition. New narrative forms and voices and various culturally determined characterisations were introduced to the literary scene. Out of this body of writing emerged a considerable phenomenon. In addition to the fact that they are also (like the “White” British texts) written from a “perspective of poverty”, a principle of postcolonial theory manifests itself in these texts: Frantz Fanon’s concept of the “schizophrenia of identity”. This “schizophrenia”, enacted via the powerful imposition of the dominant culture’s values onto the colonised subject, can also be detected as an underlying theme in the British working-class novels under discussion. The three main common topics which appear across the twelve novels to be analysed illustrate that this “schizophrenia” –a form of division– is a central textual element in most narratives under discussion. The female working-class character becomes a split subject at various levels. This division is, for instance, also caused by the male gaze and the violation of the female body, the character’s upward mobility and the consequent clash of working-class background and the “newly acquired” middle-class identity. It shall also be illustrated how this mechanism of splitting apart influences not only the themes, but also the stylistic devices employed in this body of writing. The idea of a division within female working-class characters has –tentatively– been raised by the literary critic Pamela Fox. In her book entitled Class Fictions she demonstrates how the white women characters are torn between the shame about their working-class background and the resistance to adjust to the cultural codes of the middle and upper classes. I will elucidate the concept of “division” and illustrate why it functions as an effective reading strategy to analyse the fictional texts. By deepening the idea of the split female subject against the background of gender, class and ethnicity, I endeavour to develop a contemporary approach to understanding these texts and to hereby draw closest to a typology of the novels. With the assistance of postcolonial critics and feminists such as Gayatri Spivak, bell hooks, Homi Bhabha and Frantz Fanon, I will repeatedly demonstrate how “class” intersects with the concepts of gender and ethnicity. Also, it shall be discussed if and how the idea of schizophrenia can perhaps be understood as a continuation of the most essential division in the context of working-class life: the division of labour. Works Cited Cherry, Merylyn. “Towards a Recognition of Working-Class Women Writers.” Writing on The Line. 20th Century Working-Class Writers. Eds. Sarah Richardson et al. London: Working Press, 1996. 75-119. Klaus, Gustav. The Socialist Novel in Britain: Towards the Recovery of a Tradition. Brighton: Harvester Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. Weis, Lois et al. “I’ve Slept in Clothes Long Enough. Excavating the Sounds of Domestic Violence among Women in the White Working-Class.” Domestic Violence at the Margins. Readings on Gender, Class and Culture. Eds. Sokoloff, Natalie & Christina Pratt. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 227-248.

Wie kein anderer Text des englischen Romanciers und Essayisten John Fowles ist 'The Ebony Tower' von Gemälden geprägt. Die Novelle verweist auf ihren 104 Seiten auf über vierzig Maler sowie auf die verschiedensten Maltechniken und Kunstrichtungen. Von zentraler Bedeutung ist hierbei die Stilrichtung der Internationalen Gotik, die durch Gemälde von Antonio Pisano (1395-1455), genannt Pisanello, sowie von Paolo di Dono (1397-1475), genannt Uccello, vertreten ist. Henry Breasley, weltberühmter Maler, magus in bezug auf den Leser sowie den Novizen und 'malenden Theoretiker' David Williams und in gewisser Weise auch Sprachrohr von Fowles, bezieht sich diskursiv sowie piktural, beispielsweise in seiner sehr erfolgreichen 'last-period series', gleich mehrfach implizit und explizit auf die beiden Italiener. Diesen kommt somit eine Schlüsselstellung nicht nur für die Interpretation von Breasleys Bildern, sondern auch für die von Fowles in 'The Ebony Tower' propagierte Kunst- und Lebensauffassung zu.

Topicalization refers to the sentence-initial placement of constituents other than the subject and is often listed as a non-canonical construction [cf. Ward, Gregory, Betty J. Birner and Rodney Huddleston (2002). “Information Packaging.” Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, eds. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1363–1447.]. In this paper, tokens of topicalization in the direct conversations in the International Corpus of English for Hong Kong and India and, for comparison, Great Britain are analysed. In order to find out if topicalization is a contact-induced feature, typological profiles with regard to topic-prominence [Li, Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson (1976). “Subject and Topic: A New Typology of Language.” Charles N. Li, ed. Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, 457–489.] are created for three Indo-Aryan, three Dravidian and two Sinitic languages. I suggest that the low frequencies of topicalization in Hong Kong English and the high frequencies of topicalization in Indian English are primarily due to differences in intensity of contact [Thomason, Sarah G. (2001). Language Contact. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.] and variety development [Schneider, Edgar W. (2007). Postcolonial English. Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]. Typological interference at the level of information structure is assumed to only come to the fore in further developed varieties and after prolonged contact.

TURNING PAGES is an annual journal of bright voices from all over the world in creative and original writing in English in short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama, as well as in drawings, art projects and many other related genres by students, academics, and writers. It is a production of the Chair of English Literatures at the English Department at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, and the first journal of its kind at the university. TURNING PAGES can be read in both ways, literally and metaphorically, implying that we need to turn the pages, that we need to demonstrate that literature has something to say and that it can also be interventionist as it shows how we can use our own imagination for the better. Therefore, TURNING PAGES will make readers not only literally browse through a variety of texts and turn pages, but it also seeks to reflect situations, events, experiences, or emotions that turn the page for individuals, or groups of people. The first issue of TURNING PAGES features a range of texts and artworks, including first-time writers as well as professional writers, such as Michael Augustin, Sujata Bhatt, Stephen Collis, Ian Watson and the renowned Belfast theatre company Play It By Ear.

TURNING PAGES is an annual journal of bright voices from all over the world in creative and original writing in English in short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama, as well as in drawings, art projects and many other related genres by students, academics, and writers. It is a production of the Chair of English Literatures at the English Department at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, and the first journal of its kind at the university. TURNING PAGES can be read in both ways, literally and metaphorically, implying that we need to turn the pages, that we need to demonstrate that literature has something to say and that it can also be interventionist as it shows how we can use our own imagination for the better. Therefore, TURNING PAGES will make readers not only literally browse through a variety of texts and turn pages, but it also seeks to reflect situations, events, experiences, or emotions that turn the page for individuals, or groups of people. The second issue of TURNING PAGES includes a variety of foci, ranging from meta-poetic texts and stories, to graphic artworks and illustrations via themes of belonging in an ever-changing world, tracing one’s origins, conquering personal struggles, or dealing with current incidents like COVID-19 and self-isolation. This issue combines students from diverse fields and backgrounds with professional writers from all over the world, such as Srishti Chaudhary, Andreas Gloge, Ogaga Ifowodo, Harald Linke, and Ian Watson.