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Theses and Dissertations

The following resources are general indexes to theses and dissertations on all topics, including those on Germanic Studies. Dissertations are important as they often express the most innovative work on a topic; include comprehensive citations and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources; and provide detailed literature reviews and theoretical discussions.

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This index includes dissertations and masters theses from most North American graduate schools as well as many European universities. Full text is provided for most indexed dissertations from 1997 to the present, while most dissertations from 1980 on include abstracts written by the author. Orders for complete dissertations before 1997 may be placed online, but check UW's Library Catalog first to see if they are owned on campus. Free interlibrary loan may also be a possibility
• Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) Covers from 1920 to present. Includes doctoral dissertations about English language, literature, and culture published anywhere in the world
• DART-Europe DART-Europe is a project by research libraries and library consortia to improve global access to European research theses
• Dissonline.de - Digitale Dissertationen im Internet Open access dissertations online, a service of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, integrated into their larger catalog (after entering search, limit to Hochschulschriften and even further to Online Ressourcen ). Instructions, in German, here
• Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) OS offers free access to the full text of nearly 100,000 electronically stored UK theses; of the remaining 200,000 records dating back to at least 1800, many are available to be ordered for scanning through the EThOS digitisation-on-demand facility. A rich resource!
• Foreign Dissertations at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) CRL holds more than 800,000 foreign dissertations and Habilitationsschriften from universities outside of the US and Canada. If you know the exact title of a dissertation and do not find it in the CRL Catalog, CRL has a program to purchase foreign doctoral dissertations for scholars' individual research needs; such requests should be initiated via Interlibrary Loan
• Helveticat The catalog of the Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek; search for dissertations by combining diss with a keyword
• Index to Theses in Great Britain and Ireland A comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland since 1716. As of 2013, there were 589,028 theses in the collection, with 355,862 having abstracts
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). NDLTD supports electronic publishing and open access to scholarship in order to enhance the sharing of knowledge worldwide. Try the new Global ETD Search
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) Index of more than 1.5 million electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), with preference given to records of graduate-level theses freely available online
• Österreichische Dissertationsdatenbank This database references over 99,000 dissertations and theses held at Austrian Universities; about two-thirds are abstracted in both German and English
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Thesis Topics for Master Students

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Prof. Dr. Bettina Braun Zinn

Phonetic aspects of gender-neutral speech in German

Many speakers who use gender-neutral speech in German produce a glottal stop /ʃtʊdɛntʔɪn/. In this project you will compare the realization of gender-neutral speech for different speakers (those who find this distinction important and those who don’t). You will also investigate how the speakers deal with forms in which the stress pattern is different between the male and female forms (e.g., Professor vs. Professorin)

Prerequisites:

• knowledge of praat or another speech processing software
• knowledge of statistics

Language: 

German or English

Intonational meaning in one-word utterances (with R. Eckardt)

In mother-child interaction, mothers utter a whole range of semantically empty one-word utterances (e.g., hm?). In this project you will analyse an annotated corpus of spoken Germna mother-child interaction to classify the pragmatic content (intent) of these one-word utterances and to relate their function to intonational form to develop a model of intonational meaning.

• knowledge of pragmatics

Literature: Grice, M., Baumann, S., & Benzmüller, R. (2005). German Intonation in Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology. In J. Sun-Ah (Ed.), Prosodic Typology. The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing (pp. 55-83). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The role of intonation on lexical stress perception (with T. Rathcke)

There are studies showing that participants perceive high-pitched syllables as stressed (this happens, for instance, in a rising intonation pattern such as “Peter?” where the low-pitched stressed syllable is less often detected correctly than in a declarative utterance with a falling f0-contour. In this project you will use rhythm-beats to probe participants’ stress perception in different intonation contours.

• knowledge of psycholinguistics

Literature: Zahner, K., Kutscheid, S., & Braun, B. (2019). Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress. Journal of Phonetics, 74 , 75-95.

Prosody vs. syntax in the interpretation of questions as rhetorical or information-seeking (with N. Dehé)

Previous research has shown that listeners can use prosodic information (duration, voice quality, intonation) to decide whether a question is intended as rhetorical or information-seeking question (all else being equal). In this project you will investigate how this prosodic information compares to information from other linguistic areas, e.g. syntactic structure, use of particles

Literature: Braun, B., Dehé, N., Neitsch, J., Wochner, D., & Zahner, K. (2018). The prosody of rhetorical and information-seeking questions in German. Language and Speech 62(4), 779–807 . Kharaman, M., Xu, M., Eulitz, C. & Braun, B. (2019). The processing of prosodic cues to rhetorical question interpretation: Psycholinguistic and neurolinguistics evidence.  Proceedings of Interspeech . Graz, Austria.

The perception of bias in polar questions (with M. Romero)

Previous research has shown that speakers mark their own bias preferentially via word order in German (Gibt es nicht einen Bus? vs. Gibt es keinen Bus?), while English speakers make more use of prosody (in particular the final rise). In this project you test the perception and identification of speaker bias and test the roles of prosody and syntax therein.

Literature: Arnhold, A., Braun, B. & Romero, M. (2020). Aren’t prosody and syntax marking bias in questions? Language and Speech. Online first publication   https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830920914315

The marking of rhetorical question in Swiss German: Syntactic and prosodic cues (with N. Dehé)

Rhetorical questions (RQs) may be signaled by lexical or syntactic cues and/or by prosody. Regarding the prosodic marking of RQs, previous research on German has shown that tonal targets are aligned later in rhetorical wh -questions than in neutral wh -questions. Swiss German is an interesting test case for the marking of RQs as tonal alignment seems to occur later in Swiss German than in Standard German. Moreover, Swiss German employs various lexical cues to convey pragmatic meaning. In this project you will test whether Swiss German speakers use syntactic/lexical cues and/or prosody to mark a question as rhetorical. If prosody is a cue, you will further study tonal alignment patterns for the disambiguation of the two illocution types in more detail.

• knowledge of intonation
• basic knowledge of syntax

Literature: Braun, B., Dehé, N., Neitsch, J., Wochner, D., & Zahner, K. (2018). The prosody of rhetorical and information-seeking questions in German. Language and Speech 62(4), 779–807 . Leemann, A. (2012). Swiss German intonation patterns. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Brehmer Für die Themen für die MA-Arbeiten wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an Herrn Bernhard Brehmer. Please contact directly Mr. Bernhard Brehmer to determine the subject of your MA-Thesis.

Prof. Dr. Miriam Butt

Grammar Development

Develop a Grammar Fragment for a language using LFG/XLE.

Framing and Argumentation

Computationally analyze linguistic strategies involved in framing and argumentation. Other possible topics are the automatic detection of hate speech or the content of political manifestos.

Computational Morphological Analysis

Develop a computational analysis for morphophonological phenomena in a language using Finite-State Morphology.

Computational Semantics

Work on a topic within Natural Language Unterstanding: the automatic analysis semantic content.

Artificial Intelligence

Develop small AI systems. These could be Chatbots or systems involving machine learning from texts for a given task like text generation or classification or clustering of texts/phenomena.

Theoretical Linguistics

I am happy to supervise topics on the following: case, complex predicates, lexical semantics, grammar architecture, including the prosody-syntax-semantics/pragmatics interface. My area of specialization is South Asian languages, but I am happy to do other languages as well.

Historical Linguistics

Understanding language change, particularly with respect to case or auxiliary formation. This can be done purely from a general linguistics perspective or be combined with computational approaches (corpus linguistics and/or visual analytics).

Emotion-evoking language in Spanish political manifestos

In this thesis, you will examine the instances of emotion and emotion-evoking language in Spanish political manifestos and speeches. The aim is to create word lists that will help us in the analysis of emotional language in Spanish texts. 

Required skills:

• knowledge of Spanish; no programming skills required

Prof. Dr. Nicole Dehé

Prosody vs. syntax in the interpretation of questions as rhetorical or information-seeking (with B. Braun Zinn)

The intonation of faroese (with c. ulbrich).

Literature on the intonation of Faroese is scarce, except for some short and anecdotal descriptions in Lockwood (1977) and Árnason (2011). Speech data (from a map task study carried out in 2019) are available for analysis. Prerequisites: - Knowledge of Praat, some experience with intonational annotation / analysis - Interest in Faroese Literature: Árnason, Kristján. 2011. The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese. Oxford University Press. Lockwood, W. B. 1977. An Introduction to Modern Faroese (3rd printing). Tórshavn: Føroya Skúlabókagrunnur.

Topics related to ditransitives in Insular Scandinavian

The objective of your thesis will be to explore important issues relating to ditransitive verbs in Insular Scandinavian. The project that your thesis will be related to focused on three main issues: (a) inversion of the two objects (DO-IO orders in active clauses and theme passives), (b) the morphosyntax of ditransitive verbs (different cases and DPs vs. PPs) and related syntactic issues, and (c) the scope possibilities for the internal arguments of ditransitive verbs. Data have been elicited in a series of experimental studies at the University of Iceland, ready for analysis. If you are interested, we will contact colleagues in Iceland and discuss use of the data as well as a specific thesis topic.

Prof. Dr. Regine Eckardt

Ich betreue Abschlussarbeiten im Bereich Semantik, Pragmatik und Sprachgeschichte. Sie können theoretische Arbeiten, Literaturvergleichende Arbeiten oder empirische Studien anstreben. Hier ist eine Auswahl an exemplarischen Themen. Für Ihre eigenen Vorschläge bin ich immer offen.

Most topics can also be researched for English, and in English. See me in my office hours talk about your ideas and interests.

Perspektivierung und perspektivierende Ausdrücke

Mit perspektivierenden Ausdrücken wird die Meinung eines Sprechers wiedergegeben. Es gibt viele Formen der Perspektivierung: geschmacklich ( gut, lecker, ekelhaft ), emotional ( leider, gottlob ), epistemisch ( wohl, vielleicht ).

Da viele davon noch nicht genauer beschrieben wurden, können hier viele Einzelfallstudien durchgeführt werden..

Ein weiterer Aspekt perspektivierender Ausdrücke ist ihre Funktion in Medientexten. Welche Art von Mitteilung wird perspektiviert? Welche Perspektiven werden vermittelt?

Form und Funktion rhetorischer Fragen.

• Datenbezogen: in welchen Texten und Medien werden rhetorische Fragen vermehrt verwendet?
• Form: Wie werden rhetorische Fragen im Deutschen markiert? (Negativ-Polare Elemente, Negation, Partikeln, Adverbien usw.)
• Funktion: Kann jede beliebige Frage auch als rhetorische Frage verwendet werden? Wie sehen adäquate Verwendungskontexte für rhetorische Fragen aus?

Emphatische Negation in Zeitungstexten

• Pragmatik von negativ-polaren Elementen
• Einordnung weiterer Negationsformen des Deutschen in die Theorie: Niemals, nicht einmal, nicht ein einzige(s) … und ihre Verwendung in Zeitungstexten
• Verwendung und Funktion von von wegen!

Präteritumsschwund im Süddeutschen

In den süddeutschen Dialekten sind die morphologischen Formen des Präteritums fast völlig verschwunden; sie werden durch analytische Formen im Perfekt ersetzt.

• welche bedeutung hat in diesem System das Doppelperfekt ( Peter hat das Buch gelesen gehabt )?
• Überprüfung von Quellen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf die Verwendung von Perfekt / Präteritum
• Überprüfung von Quellen aus dem Bereich der Hanse auf die Verwendung des Perfekts / Präteritums im 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts
• eventuell für Romanisten: Quellen aus dem Norditalienischen Raum aus dem 14. Jahrhundert auf die Verwendung von Vergangenheitsformen hin überprüfen.

Argumente und Scheinargumente

Erarbeitung von fallacies (= Scheinargumenten) anhand von Lehrbüchern, und eine empirische Studie zu der Frage: Welche fallacies kommen bei (online-)Debatten am häufigsten vor? (Zur Eingrenzung empfiehlt sich ein Fokus auf Debatten zu einem bestimmten Thema, z.B. nur über Migration, nur über Corona, …)

Texte und Medien

Wie wird in Texten die Perspektive des Autors indirekt spachlich vermittelt? Wie setzen Journalisten subjektive Prädikate ein, um einen gemeinsamen Glaubenshintergrund zu suggerieren?

Semantik von Adjektiven

Die Natur von A+N-Komposita im Russischen: Zur Semantik von A + N – Phrasen im Russischen. Im Deutschen bedeutet rote Socke dasselbe wie „ist rot und ist eine Socke“. Im Russischen scheint es A+N-Verbindungen zu geben, in denen das Adjektiv nicht einfach zur N-Bedeutung dazukommt. Was ist die Semanitk dieser A+N-Verbindungen? Gibt es solche Beispiele auch in anderen Sprachen (z.B. „blauer Brief“)? Wo ist die Grenze zwischen kompositionaler und konventioneller Bedeutung?

Indirekte Sprechakte: Russisch und Deutsch im Vergleich

Befehle und auch manche Fragen können face-threatening acts sein. Oft wird behauptet, dass Sprecher auf indirekte Sprechakte ausweichen, um den FTA abzumildern. Ist diese Strategie empirische belegbar? Ist sie kulturspezifisch?

Prof. Dr. Carsten Eulitz

Underspecification of phonological features in the mental lexicon

In this thesis, you will be conducting an EEG study using a component of the event-related activity, called MMN, to generalize MMN effects demonstrating the underspecification of phonological features in the mental lexicon. This topic is conditional to the re-opening of the EEG lab. Required skills: Experimental linguistics and neurolinguistics, ideally experience with EEG measurements and data analyses Language of the thesis: English or German

Pre-attentive recognition of the language mode and nativeness in bilingual speakers

In this thesis, you will be conducting an EEG study using a component of the event-related activity, called MMN, to investigate the pre-attentive recognition of the language mode of bilingual speakers while producing CV syllables in the L1 or the L2 as well as the nativeness of their productions. This topic is conditional to the re-opening of the EEG lab. Required skills: Experimental linguistics and neurolinguistics, ideally experience with EEG measurements and data analyses Language of the thesis: English or German

You can come to me with ideas about projects on neurolinguistics topics. Language of the thesis: English or German

Juniorprof. Dr. Diego Frassinelli

Automatic generation of behavioral measures using Distributional Semantic information

In this thesis, you will use regression methods to predict (extra)linguistic information (e.g., behavioral norms like concreteness, valency, arousal) using distributional semantic representations. The main focus of this project is to identify the type of linguistic and non-linguistic information available in distributional representations and understand how to access this type of information. Required Skills: Understanding of distributional semantics; Understanding and running correlation and regression studies; Good knowledge of Python or R. Language of the thesis: English only

Investigating Multimodal Distributional Semantics

In this thesis, you will use existing multimodal distributional representations (e.g., visual vectors) in combination with purely linguistic vector representations to understand how information coming from multiple modalities can be combined to solve traditional tasks from lexical and distributional semantics. Required Skills: Understanding of distributional semantics; Understanding and running correlation and regression studies; Good knowledge of Python. Language of the thesis: English only

Building Multimodal Distributional Representations

In this thesis, you will build visual vectors using complex neural networks and test such representations on traditional tasks from lexical and distributional semantics. The main question in this project is the following: does the quality and type of pictures used to build such vectors significantly affect the final representation? Required Skills: Understanding of distributional semantics; Understanding and running correlation and regression studies; Very good knowledge of Python; good knowledge of neural networks. Language of the thesis: English only

You can come to me with ideas about projects that use corpus linguistic methods and distributional semantics to solve specific tasks. Language of the thesis: English only

Prof. Dr. Georg A. Kaiser Für die Themen für die MA-Arbeiten wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an Herrn George Kaiser. Please contact directly Mr. Georg Kaiser to determine the subject of your MA-Thesis.

Prof. Dr. Tanja Kupisch Für die Themen für die MA-Arbeiten wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an Frau Tanja Kupisch. Please contact directly Ms. Tanja Kupisch to determine the subject of your MA-Thesis.

Prof. Dr. Theo Marinis

Language policies in multilingual cities

The aim of the project is identify what language policies are in place in countries with large multilingual populations in Europe and beyond.

Language policies in Konstanz as an international city – the view of the Konstanz citizens

This aim of this project is to identify through a survey the needs of the citizens of Konstanz in terms of the language policies they would like to be implemented in the future in Konstanz. "Language policies in multilingual cities-2 and "Language policies in Konstanz as an international city – the view of the Konstanz citizens" are closely linked together.

Effects of Covid19 on children’s language development

The aim of this project is to find out through a survey with parents their perceptions about how social distancing has affected their children’s language development.

Evaluating flyers from the Centre for Multilingualism

As part of the Ringvorlesung students are developing material for families and professionals. This project will evaluate the material through questionnaires and interviews with parents, professionals, people working in local authorities

Any other topic related to language development

Processing of cognates in english-german bilinguals (to be supervised with elisabeth süß).

The aim of the project is to study the effect of lexical stress on cognate production. While cognates are produced faster and more accurately than non-cognates (cognate facilitation effect (CFE)), it is unclear if and how lexical stress affects the CFE. A production experiment will be conducted to fill this research gap by testing German-English bilinguals on a picture naming task in both German and English. The pictures will depict non-cognates, cognates with stress overlap, and cognates with stress mismatch.

Pronoun resolution in bi-/multilingual children (to be supervised with Angelika Golegos)

The aim of this project is to study how children produce and comprehend pronouns. Pronouns as referential expressions are crucial in everyday communication. The target like use of pronouns is considered to be a demanding task that costs a long developmental progress. It is little known about the strategies monolingual children are applying for producing and interpreting pronouns and even fewer studies investigate bilingual children strategies. In this project we address the question of pronoun use and interpretation by applying various tasks, e.g., story retelling, pronoun judgment task.

Irony comprehension in children (to be supervised with P10 project)

The aim of the project is to compare the comprehension of irony in monolingual (German) and bilingual children with Italian as a heritage language. Several tests will be used to assess the participants’ ability to understand irony, general cognitive abilities, and Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM is the ability to make inferences about other people’s beliefs, intentions, and states of mind. Your two objectives will be 1) to find out potential correlations between different tasks (within participants), and 2) to investigate two different dimensions of language acquisition (monolingual vs bilingual).

[Knowledge of Italian is not necessary; if present, the project can also include the heritage language.]

Irony comprehension – comparing native speakers and late learners of German (to be supervised with P10 project)

How do adults who learn German as a second language perform in Irony Comprehension tasks? Are there differences between groups with a different L1 (e.g., Italian vs Japanese)? In this project, you will be able to compare how Italian learners of German and another group of late learners perform in an Irony Comprehension task. The L1 of the second group of late learners can be chosen based on your linguistic experience.

Rhetorical questions in German and (a language of your choice) (to be supervised with P10 project)

The aim of the project is to test two groups of monolingual speakers, speakers of German and speakers of another language. The linguistic phenomenon under investigation is rhetorical questions, which involve different linguistic cues in different languages (syntax, lexicon, prosody). There will be three main experiments (perception, comprehension, production) and some additional tasks. Your objective will be to find out which cues trigger rhetorical interpretation in different languages.

Rhetorical questions in German monolinguals and Italian heritage speakers (to be supervised with P10 project)

The aim of the project is to compare heritage speakers of Italian and monolingual speakers of German on rhetorical questions which involve different linguistic cues in different languages (syntax, lexicon, prosody). There will be three main experiments (perception, comprehension, production) and some additional tasks. Your objective will be 1) to find out which cues trigger rhetorical interpretation in German, and 2) to investigate two different dimensions of language acquisition (monolingual vs bilingual).

Prof. Dr. Tamara Rathcke

The role of the media in interpersonal accommodation and sound change

Prof. Dr. Tamara Rathcke (with Prof.. Dr Theo Marinis) The role of media in interpersonal accommodation and sound change has been controversially debated, with compelling evidence yet to be provided. In this project, the role of media engagement will be examined and compared between L1 and L2 speakers of English. This work will inform both sociolinguistic theory and second language acquisition models.

• Understanding of the posits of accommodation theory
•  Readiness to learn new technical skills
•  Basic knowledge of statistical inference

Literature: J Stuart-Smith, G Pryce, C Timmins, B Gunter (2013). Television can also be a factor in language change: Evidence from an urban dialect. Language, 501-536.

Interpersonal accommodation during speed dating

Speed dating is one of the contexts that allows us to study verbal and non-verbal accommodation in highly relevant contexts. The time that speed-daters spend in each other’s company is very short, and what they say is often less important than how they say it. This project will study if and how communicative accommodation can explain and predict interpersonal attraction during speed dating. The data for this project was recorded at the Centre for General Linguistics in Berlin in mid-October, and is available in German.

• Good command of Praat or another speech processing software
• Basic knowledge of statistical inference

Literature:

Giles, H., & Ogay, T. (2007). Communication Accommodation Theory. In B. B. Whaley & W. Samter (Eds.), Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars (p. 293–310). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Prosodic interfaces between language and music

If music/singing is your thing, you may want to consider a dissertation topic on shared structures of music and language. Both are uniquely human abilities, and their shared cognitive underpinnings have been controversially debated for quite some time. You can take up different stances on the issue at hand, but a potential project involves the study of the so-called “speech-to-song illusion”, an illusory perception of singing in speech. The effect has been documented in many intonation languages but is limited (if at all present) in tonal languages. There is also quite large, to date poorly understood individual variation in the susceptibility to the effect. You can run this experiment with your own data, or use existing recordings. Prerequisites:

• Rock-solid knowledge of acoustic-phonetic concepts
• Understanding of key issues in speech and language processing

Falk, S., Rathcke, T. and Dalla Bella, S. (2014). When Speech Sounds Like Music. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance [Online] 40:1491-1506.

Perceptions of charisma in speech

We can easily say who we perceive as charismatic, but it is more difficult for us to say why. Some previous research has shown that for a person to radiate charisma, the content of their message is not as relevant as the way the message is delivered. If this fuels some research interest in you, the topic can be studied in different cultures and languages. An existing database of speeches given by British politicians during Brexit campaigns can also be used.

Rosenberg, A., & Hirschberg, J. (2009). Charisma perception from text and speech. Speech Communication, 51(7), 640–655.

Prof. Dr. Maribel Romero

Alternative Questions

Alternative questions like Is the baby awake or asleep? are realized using a wealth of different surface cues in different languages –prosodic, morpho-syntactic, lexical– and have special semantic and pragmatic properties. This makes the mapping from surface form to utterance meaning in this construction particularly interesting from a cross-linguistic point of view.

• How are alternative questions realized in less studied languages?
• What is their distribution in embedded environments?
• What is their distribution in matrix environments, i.e., do they have special discourse restrictions?

Biased Questions

There are many ways to ask one and the same question. Compare: (i) Is Amy at home? , (ii) Is Amy not at home? , (iii) Isn’t Amy at home? , (iv) Amy is at home? , (v) Amy is at home, isn’t she? . While some of these forms are neutral, others express some degree of bias towards or against the prejacent proposition ‘that Amy is at home’.

• How exactly do these forms differ from each other in terms of semantic/pragmatic behavior?
• What impact does prosody have in polar questions like (i)-(iii)? [Together with Prof. Bettina Braun]
• What readings do Rising Declaratives like (iv) allow in your native language?
• Besides a tag question form like (v), does your native language have other tag question forms? What are their semantic-pragmatic properties?

Quantifier meaning and semantic universals

Crosslinguistically, the meaning of lexical quantifiers –e.g., ‘every’, ‘some’, ‘no’, ‘most’,… – is known to obey a number of mathematical properties, including extension, isomorphism and conservativity. Recent efforts in Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Linguistics strive to derive these universal properties from (i) learnability considerations (using neural networks), (ii) the simplicity/informativeness trade-off and (iii) properties of logical operators and/or of natural language. For each such universal property:

• What explanation is best?
• Can several competing explanations be tested experimentally?
• If a particular reading of a specific quantifier in your native language seems to violate that universal property, can this reading be derived otherwise within the grammar of that particular language?

Tense and Aspect (with M. Butt)

Languages differ in how their tense and aspect paradigms are structured and what meaning distinctions they convey. For a given language, one can develop a grammar fragment on tense or aspect in LFG/XLE.

Discourse particles

Expressions like German schon and bloss or English totally and even , etc. often live a double life in the grammar: as adverbial elements contributing to the propositional content of the sentence (e.g., in The glass is totally full ) or as speech acts modifiers fine-tuning the illocutionary act performed (e.g., in You should totally click on that link ).

• Does the speech act use have any syntactic/semantic/pragmatic distribution requirements? If so, what is the underlying motivation for them?
• Can we pin down the content of the speech act reading with the help of experimental methodology?
• How should the speech act reading be theoretically modelled?
• How do the two readings –the propositional meaning and the speech act meaning– relate to each other?

Different attitude verbs –e.g. think , know , wonder — select for different types of complement clauses –e.g., that -clauses vs. interrogative clauses, indicative vs. subjunctive clauses, only V-final clauses vs. also V2 clauses. What guides this selection in each particular language? And can general semantic properties be identified that guide this selection cross-linguistically?

Meaning in Multilingualism (with T. Marinis or T. Kupisch)

What happens with the meaning of functional items –e.g., pronominal reference, definite and indefinite article, tense/aspect/mood morphology—in a multilingual setting? Do we observe transfer in their acquisition? Is there delay or acceleration in the acquisition process?

Open topic in Semantics and/or Pragmatics

If you have some ideas or interest on any other topic within semantics and/or pragmatics, feel free to come to my office hours.

Prof. Dr. George Walkden

Multilingualism and Mary, Queen of Scots

In this thesis, you will be conducting corpus-based research on the multilingual usage of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). Fluently multilingual from birth, Mary’s letters are written in French, Scots and English, and the aim of the thesis is to establish patterns and regularities in this usage, as well as potential cross-linguistic influences. Required skills: Corpus linguistics, ideally experience working with historical texts, some knowledge of French and English Language of the thesis: English or German

Language contact and syntax in Early Modern English

In this thesis, you will investigate the grammatical effects of lexical borrowings from French and Latin into English, with a specific focus on French and Latin verbs with non-finite complements. You’ll be testing the idea that these borrowings entered the system at a crucial time to trigger wider changes in complementation patterns. Required skills: Corpus linguistics, ideally experience working with historical texts, basic syntax Language of the thesis: English or German

Transylvanian Saxon in contact

In this thesis, you will investigate the Transylvanian Saxon variety of German, a language island in northern Romania. You will use the Audioatlas Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischer Dialekte to investigate some aspect of contact effects of Romanian and/or standard German on this variety and its geographical patterning. Required skills: High level of German, ideally experience in working with recorded spoken data Language of the thesis: English or German

You can come to me with ideas about projects with a historical or syntactic dimension to them, especially those that use corpus evidence. Language of the thesis: English or German

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German Studies Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the German Studies department.

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• 1 Bachelors Thesis
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• 1 Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969
• 1 Aesthetics
• 2 Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975
• 1 Aristotle
• 1 Arnim, Bettina von, 1785-1859
• 1 Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940
• 1 Bildungsromans
• 1 Colonialism
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• 1 Dauthendey, Max, 1867-1918
• 1 Deconstruction
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• 1 Fanon, Frantz, 1925-1961
• 1 Frankfurt school of sociology
• 1 Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt
• 1 German Empire
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• 4 German literature
• 2 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
• 1 Günderode, Karoline von, 1780-1806
• 1 Heiner Müller
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• 1 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770-1843
• 1 Institut für Sozialforschung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
• 1 Intentionality (Philosophy)
• 1 Interviews
• 1 Jakobus Marengo
• 1 Johann Peter Hebel
• 1 Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924
• 1 Keaton, Buster, 1895-1966
• 1 Kleist, Heinrich von, 1777-1811
• 1 Lang, Fritz, 1890-1976
• 1 Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, 1751-1792
• 1 Literary form
• 1 Literary theory
• 1 Luxemburg, Rosa, 1871-1919
• 1 Lyric poetry
• 1 Maharero, Samuel, approximately 1854-1923
• 1 Marx, Karl, 1818-1883
• 1 Materialism
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• 1 Morenga, Jakob, -1907
• 1 Motherhood
• 1 Nationalism
• 1 Nineteenth century
• 1 Orla Holm
• 1 Performance
• 2 Philology
• 1 Philosophy of law
• 1 Photography
• 1 Ponge, Francis
• 1 Postcolonial Studies
• 1 Psychoanalysis
• 1 Ralph Zürn
• 1 Raqs Media Collective
• 1 Richter, Gerhard, 1932-
• 2 Romanticism
• 1 Sayak Valencia
• 1 Schatz der Sierra Madre (Traven, B.)
• 1 Sturm und Drang movement
• 1 Suspension
• 1 Suzanne Césaire
• 1 Translation studies
• 2 Unica Zürn
• 1 Valentin, Karl, 1882-1948
• 1 W.G. Sebald
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• 1 Witbooi, Hendrik, -1905
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• 1 Yoko Tawada
• 1 literary field
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Anagram––Atithi––Anarchy, Sub Rosa, German Imperialism

Aussetzung und Resignifizierung. Suspensionen kolonialer Zugriffslogik in Mexiko, den Tropen und Deutsch-Südwestafrika

Clouds: Walter Benjamin and the Rhetoric of the Image

Die Berührung der Toten: Geschichte und Performanz in Heiner Müllers Dramatik

Gegen Onto/anthro/typologie: Karikatur, Charakter und Wortspiel bei Lenz, Marx und Goethe

Genre and National Identity in German Romanticism

Mourning (M)Others: Images of a Maternal Education

Nebeneinander, Miteinander, Querfeldein: Johann Peter Hebel - Walter Benjamin - W.G. Sebald

Nichtig-Notable: Widersprüche und Korrespondenzen im Sprechen mit Tisch in Text und Film

Poetics of Translation: Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt and Yoko Tawada

Poetiken der Sorge bei Goethe, Heidegger und Kafka [Poetics of Care in Goethe, Heidegger, and Kafka]

The Gap in "Green Germany": A Silence in German Environmental Justice Activist Discourse

Unclaimed Language: The Literary Criticism of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno

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As a result of the wide range of both concentration options and student interests in the department, and because of the equally wide range of faculty research and interests to support them, our seniors' honors essays address an unusually wide variety of topics -- from literature to philology, from medieval to modern, from narrative to lyric, from strictly German to comparative, from thematic to gender-oriented, from literature and film to politics and philosophy. Following is a sampling of recent senior thesis titles:

Kyra Jones '20 , "Geschlechtergerechte Sprache: Gender-Fair Noun Usage in German"

Brianni Lee '20 , "Searching for Happiness Within Unfreedom: Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory as an Authentic Social Critique and a Preservation of Hope"

Benjamin Altshuler '19 , "Dissolving Identity: Re-constructing the Third Reich Through the Cinematic Dissolve"

Daniel Menz '19 , "Mobilizing Memory: Social Movement Activism on Remembrance of the Holocaust and Nazi era in 1980s West Berlin"

Joseph André Zivny '19 , "Seeing as Feeling: Representations of Embodied Sight in Homo Faber and The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

Vince Guo '18 , "Does Brecht Still Hold?  Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui  as a Case for Adapting Bertolt Brecht’s Theater in the Twenty-First Century"

Maxwell Phillips '15 , "Formphantasien: Composing the Echoes of Adorno’s Musical Thought Today"

Michael Raleigh '15 , “'Nänie'”: Poetry and Setting"

Michael Ardeljan '13, "On the Cutting Edge: Prussian Battlefield Medicine and the Wars of German Unification, 1864-1871"

Daniel Asher Reichert '12 , "Brinkmann's Vision: The Aesthetic Fabrication of Rome" [on Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's Rom, Blicke ]

Jasmine Ford '10 ,  “Kein Ausländer und doch ein Fremder: The Construction of Contemporary Afro-German Identity through Hip-Hop”.

Shaun Patrick Hughes '10 , "Germany's Achtundsechziger Generation and the Rise of the Rote Armee Fraktion: Burned Children returning to the Fire as seen through Die Bleierne Zeit"

Preston Scott Copeland '09 , "Toxi Grows Up: A Changing Appraisal of the Afro-German Cinematic Image in Post-Reunification German through Branwen Okpako's Dreckfresser"

Nicole E. Rosner '08 , "The Network of (Image)ination: A Framework for Navigating the Literature of the Berliner U-Bahn"

Caroline Lillian Schopp '08 , "Monument and Counter-Monument: the Sculptural Libraries of Anselm Kiefer, Micha Ullmann and Rachel Whiteread"

Moira Gallagher Weigel '06 , "Holding the Hohlspiegel up to nature: Crises of reading, reflections, and inheritance in Shakespear and Kleist"

Joshua Henry Billings '06 , "Misreadings the Chorus: Nietzsche's Geburt der Tragödie as Methodological Critique"

Sharon Doku '05 , “Johann Eberlin von Günzburg's Lutheran Utopia Wolfaria (1521): Laws for a New German State” Alison Giordano '05 , “The Crisis of Identity in Schiele's Self-Portraits”

DoanNhi Dona Le '05 , “The Sound of Silence, as Written by Paul Celan and Composed by Harrison Birtwistle: A Contemporary Setting of ‘Tenebrae’”

Ruth Mirsky '05 , “Anxiety on the Silver Screen: Society and the Outsider in Paul Leni's Das Wachsfiguren-kabinett & The Man Who Laughs”

Anicia Chung Timberlake '05 , “Turning Inwards: Musical Tradition and German Identity in the Weimar Republic”

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Dissertation search tools available at Yale

• Orbis (Yale dissertations only) Orbis holds records for all Yale dissertations for which microfilm copies exist, i.e. all dissertations completed in departments of the Graduate School since 1965, plus select dissertations completed in departments of the Graduate School between 1892 & 1965. Yale dissertations can be located in Orbis by: (1) Entering the author / title in a Simple Search (2) Using the terms “dissertation” or “thesis” and words known to be in the bibliographic record in a Keyword search. more... less... If you do not locate a Yale dissertation in Orbis, check the card catalog at Manuscripts and Archives. Except for some early dissertations that are not available, all Yale dissertations are held at Manuscripts and Archives.
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses This database makes nearly every dissertation ever filed in the United States available in PDF format. Not all dissertations are available, however, as authors with dissertations under contract with a press are sometimes encouraged not to make their dissertations freely available. In these cases you can at least read an abstract. Note that you can search by school, department, and adviser.

From European institutions

• DART-Europe The European portal for finding electronic theses and dissertations. DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses.
• Deutsche Nationalbibliothek German dissertations since 1998 are comprehensively collected by the National Library of Germany, so search its online catalog by clicking on the link above.
• Dissonline Searches electronic university publications held by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, including dissertations and "Habilitationen".
• Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) EThOS offers free access, in a secure format, to the full text of electronically stored UK theses--a rich and vast body of knowledge.
• Index to Theses A Comprehensive Listing of Theses with Abstracts Accepted for Higher Degrees by Universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716. Abstracts are available from many theses since 1970 and for all since 1986.
• Österreichische Dissertationsdatenbank This database references over 55,000 dissertations and theses held at Austrian universities; select dissertations are available online.

From international institutions

• CRL Center for Research Libraries Foreign Doctoral Dissertations Holds 800,000 dissertations from universities outside the U.S. and Canada. However, only 20,000 of these are cataloged in the database. If you know the exact title of a dissertation and do not find it in the database, CRL recommends searching the CRL Catalog. If the title does not appear in the database or the catalog, contact CRL directly to inquire if it is held. CRL continues to acquire about 5,000 titles per year from major universities.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations (NDLTD) The NDLTD is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). The NDLTD Catalog contains more than one million records of electronic theses and dissertations. For students and researchers, the Union Catalog makes individual collections of NDLTD member institutions and consortia appear as one seamless digital library of ETDs.
• The Universal Index of Doctoral Dissertations in Progress This site holds a database of voluntarily-registered, author-identified doctoral dissertations in progress around the world. Its goal is to avoid duplications in doctoral dissertations, create the ultimate meeting place for researchers, and allow for interaction between them. Bear in mind, though, that only dissertations which have been registered by their authors can be found in the database. Registration and access to the database are free.
• Theses Canada This is your central access point for Canadian theses. From here you will be able to: - search AMICUS, Canada's national online catalog, for bibliographic records of all theses in Library and Archives Canada's theses collection; - access & search the full text electronic versions of numerous Canadian theses and dissertations; - find out everything you need to know about Theses Canada, including how to find a thesis, information on copyright, etc.
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• Last Updated: Oct 12, 2023 12:21 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.yale.edu/german

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About DissOnline

The German National Library houses the largest national collection of online dissertations in Europe. We have been collecting online dissertations and theses since 1998. Since then, the collection has grown to more than 284,000 documents (as of November 2020).

Since these activities began under the aegis of DissOnline more than 20 years ago, electronic publishing has become a part of everyday university life. This is due to the close cooperation between universities, their libraries and computer centres, and representatives of academia as well as the long-standing support provided through projects funded by the German Research Foundation ( DFG ).

The DissOnline project was brought to a successful, sustainable conclusion. Stakeholders whose initiative had supported DissOnline then became free to transfer their commitment to other areas. In June 2012, the DissOnline advisory committee therefore decided to integrate the functions and information on the website www.dissonline.de into the German National Library’s services. This is particularly relevant in terms of the deposit of works with the German National Library. The extended metadata format XMetaDissPlus enables all types of publications and documents available in subject-specific and institutional repositories and on university servers to be deposited in just one fully automated transaction.

Deposit information

The DissOnline portal is also integrated into the German National Library's catalogue as a search option. This means that online dissertations are listed as a component of the German National Library’s collection alongside traditional printed dissertations, other online university publications and academic literature. Our catalogue offers a wide variety of search options that are constantly being developed and optimised further. You will find an explanation of all the available search options here:

Guide to searching dissertations and theses in the German National Library’s catalogue (only available in German)

In order to enhance the international visibility of the collection, the metadata for all German online dissertations is continually delivered to DART , the European portal for online dissertations. NDLTD : Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations is committed to the promotion of electronic publishing in the academic sector beyond Europe. The International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) takes place every year.

Statistical information

Online university publications have been collected, catalogued and archived at the German National Library since 1998. The illustration shows how the percentage of online publications has developed over the years since this work began. Here it must be considered that although dissertations are subject to a mandatory publication obligation and an obligation to be placed on deposit with the German National Library, only an approximate impression of doctoral and publication activities in Germany can be given.

As the statistics refer to the year in which the publication was released rather than the year in which it was deposited, it is quite possible that figures may rise in succeeding years. This applies in particular to the most recent full year.

The DissOnline projects

• 1998–2000 Dissertations Online
• 2003–2004 Establishment of a coordinating body for online university publications
• 2005–2007 DissOnline Tutor
• 2005–2008 Establishment of a portal for online university publications

The intensive cooperation between all partners and sponsors also made it possible to start collecting dissertations and theses on a voluntary basis in 1998, eight years before the amendment to the Law Regarding the German National Library and the provision stipulating the mandatory deposit of online publications.

Last changes: 08.03.2021 Short-URL: https://www.dnb.de/dissonline

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How to Find German Dissertations

How to find austrian and swiss dissertations.

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The German National Library ( Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek ) receives a depository copy of dissertations written in Germany. They also have an extensive collection of dissertations written elsewhere about German topics.

• Go to Erweiterte Suche (Advanced Search) on the DDB OPAC .
• Set one of the search boxes to “Hochschulschrift,” and search for “diss?” (where “?” is the truncation operator). Set another search box to "Alle Wörter or Schlagwörter," and type in your search term(s).
• Click on the "suchen" button.

Having identified the dissertation you need, search for it in the Center for Research Library (CRL) Catalog  making sure that the "Dissertations" tab is selected at the top. If it is held by CRL, you can initiate an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Request to have UCLA Library borrow the dissertation on your behalf. If you do not find the title you want, you can request to have it purchased through CRL's Demand Purchase Program . If you need assistance with this process, please contact the Librarian/Curator for European Studies. 

Printed Bibliographic Sources for German Dissertations:

• Deutsche Nationalbibliographie und Bibliographie der im Ausland erschienenen deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen. Reihe H, Hochschulschriften. Monatliches Verzeichnis. Monthly bibliograpy. Frankfurt am Main : Buchhändler-Vereinigung.
• Deutsche Nationalbibliographie und Bibliographie der im Ausland erschienenen deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen. Reihe E, Monographien und Periodika -- Fünfjahresverzeichnis Five-yearly cumulation. Bearbeiter und Herausgeber: Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Published/distributed: 1986-1990- Frankfurt am Main : Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1992- . Available in YRL Reference Reading Room and at SRLF.
• Österreichische Dissertationsdatenbank Austrian Dissertation Databank.
• Gesamtverzeichnis Österreichischer Dissertationen. 1966- . Complete Directory of Austrian Dissertations. Organized by university and then alphabetically by author. Includes an author and subject index.
• Helveticat Helveticat is the online catalog of the Swiss National Library (NL). Add the word “diss” to your search terms in order to retrieve dissertations.
• Jahresverzeichnis der Schweizerischen Hochschulschriften = Catalogue des Écrits Académiques Suisses. 1897/98– This is the annual directory of Swiss university publications and includes dissertations published before 1999. Available online through HathiTrust.
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• Next: Libraries and Archives >>
• Last Updated: Mar 15, 2024 11:27 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/german

Guidelines for Master’s Theses

There are very few formal requirements when writing your master’s thesis. We have put together the most important of these as well as additional helpful information in our guidelines for master’s theses .

You can also download a style sheet . This is a pre-formatted Word document you can directly use to write your thesis.

Information about academic writing and how to avoid plagiarizing can be found here .

We have also provided a list of past master’s theses to help you brainstorm ideas for your own thesis.

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German Studies Dissertations and Theses

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Recent Submissions

"It just doesn't sound right": Spracherhalt und Sprachwechsel bei deutschen Kirchengemeinden in Cole County, Missouri : Resultate einer Spurensuche 

The Low German Dialect of Concordia, Missouri 

“Annexation or Reunification?” Linguistic Appraisal of German and Russian news reporting on Crimea 

The Establishment, Dissolution, and Restoration of Heimat in German-Jewish Narratives by Stefanie Zweig and Jeanine Meerapfel 

Das Gedicht als "Bedürfnis nach einem Ort": Zur Situation und Bildersprache des Exilanten SAID 

Goetz von Berlichingen: Die dreifache bearbeitung von Goethes Goetz in ihrer beziehung zur lebens-Beschreibung 

A comparison of the German märchen and the English fairy tales 

Hermann Hesse. Eine kritische würdigung seiner romane 

Thematic elements in thirty Neo-Latin epithalamia and their correspondences in the German Baroque Hochzeitsgedicht 

Goethe's Urfaust and the Enlightenment: Gottsched, Welling, and the "Turn to Magic" 

Don Carlos : an interpretation of Schiller's transition from storm and stress to classicism 

The nature element in Goethe's works, 1765-1788 

Eichendorff’s poetry, a study in German romanticism 

Story Time: The Expression of Temporal Events in Narration by L2 Learners of German 

The Legality of Existence in Exile from National Socialism: The Legal Delineation of Identity and Its Implications for Individuation and Migration as Manifest in German Exile Literature of the Period 1933-1945 

Input Processing and the Teaching of German Two-way Prepositions 

The didactic element in Hartmann's Der Arme Heinrich 

Das planzenreich in Go?thes Gedichten von 1771, bis 1786 

Ein vergleich zwischen Schillers Kabale und Liebe, Hebbels Maria Magdalena und Sudermanns Die Ehre 

Tradition und Moderne im deutschen Wald: Wilhelm Hauffs Das kalte Herz 

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Top Alexander, Mark. Nazi Collaborators and Cold Warriors: America's Belarusian Quislings. N George Washington University, Department of History. Advisor: Hope M. Harrison. April 2019. Abstract:

During World War II, opportunistic Belarusian nationalist leaders compromised the independence and integrity of their movement by tying it to Nazi Germany and becoming culpable in the crimes of the Holocaust. Fighting among themselves for control of the anticommunist Belarusian diaspora after World War II, many Belarusian nationalist collaborators became involved in the early Cold War anti-Soviet campaigns of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Virtually all of the leaders of the Belarusian Nazi puppet regime immigrated to the US in the early Cold War and continued their hardline anti-Soviet political activism in their new homes. These Belarusian collaborators became the focus of renewed government investigations into Nazi war criminals in the US and the center of a public scandal. This dissertation examines these understudied figures and their influence on world events from their place on the peripheries of power. It investigates leading Belarusian nationalists’ ties to Nazi Germany during World War II, their anti-Soviet covert operations with the CIA in the early Cold War, and their participation in American anticommunist politics. Finally, this dissertation explores how these figures affected the development of US government investigations into Nazi war criminals living in the US.

Barthold, Emily. The Thirty Years' War as Unifying Heritage: Historical Fiction, Ecumenism, and German Nation-Building (1871-1920). Georgetown University, German Department. Advisor: Mary Helen Dupree. April 2019. Abstract:

To investigate how historical fiction of the Thirty Years’ War could reinterpret this conflict as unifying heritage for Protestants and Catholics in Imperial Germany, this dissertation presents the results of a survey of thirty-four literary texts published between 1871 and 1920. Given the salience of confession in the popular imagination of the Thirty Years’ War, this dissertation explores how historical fiction about this event reflects Imperial German understandings of what it meant to be German and whether this “Germanness” was contingent upon confession. Essentially, this dissertation argues that historical fiction of the Thirty Years’ War: (1) masks contemporary concerns in historical imaginings to comment on topics such as national unity, ecumenical reconciliation, Macht - and Moralpolitik , women’s and Jewish (anti-) emancipation, and/or the legitimacy of violence; (2) consistently recasts power politics, as opposed to religion, as the force behind this war in order to present the collective trauma of the Thirty Years’ War as the crucible of German national identity and warning against the peril of internal German division; and (3) in a majority of cases portrays German national identity as compatible with the Protestant as well as Catholic confessions, and in a few cases with Jewish and other religious identities.

Borham, Holly. The Art of Confessionalism: Picturing Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic Faith in Northwest Germany, 1580-1620. Princeton University, Department of Art and Archaeology. Advisor: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. May 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation investigates the status of religious imagery in Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic contexts in the decades prior to the Thirty Years' War by investigating artworks commissioned for three neighboring Westphalian nobles: the Reformed Count Simon VI of Lippe at Schloss Brake in Lemgo, the Lutheran Prince Ernst of Holstein-Schaumburg in Bückeburg, and the Catholic Prince-Bishop Dietrich von Fürstenberg of Paderborn. In addition to sharing some of the same artists, who often drew from common print sources, the ties connecting these patrons included shared borders, mutual defense pacts, marriages, and friendships. Relying on such sources as diaries, contracts, inventories, and textual marginalia, along with church ordinances, sermons, and colloquy proceedings, this dissertation lays out the close relationships that existed between these three patrons of different religious confessions, reconstructs the history of their artistic commissions, yields insights into their stylistic and iconographic choices, and establishes each artistic project in its larger cultural and confessional context. This dissertation ultimately argues that confessional self-fashioning involves factors beyond theological conviction. The desire to be represented in a “princely manner” comparable with one's peers is transconfessional, leading to a re-evaluation of what defines Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic art at the turn of the seventeenth century.

Braun, Amy M. Impossible Communities in Prague's German Gothic: Nationalism, Degeneration, and the Monstrous Feminine in Gustav Meyrink's Der Golem (1915). Washington University in St. Louis, German and Comparative Literature. Advisor: Lynne Tatlock. May 2019. Abstract:

My dissertation investigates the contribution of Gustav Meyrink’s best-selling novel The Golem/Der Golem (1915) to the second revival of the international Gothic. While previous scholarship suggests that this genre disappeared from the German literary landscape in the 1830s, I interpret The Golem as a Gothic contribution to the “Prague Novel,” a trend in Prague-based, turn-of-the-twentieth-century German-language literature that found inspiration in the heated sociocultural and political tensions that characterized the milieu. Structured around the demolition of Prague’s former Jewish ghetto under the auspices of the Finis Ghetto plan, a historic Czech-led urban renewal project that leveled the district of Josefov/Josephstadt between 1895 and 1917, The Golem portrays a German speaker’s perspective on ghetto clearance and its impact on the city’s ethnic minority groups. Not only does Meyrink’s novel aestheticize the pessimism felt by many of Prague’s middle class and aristocratic German speakers living in a city governed by Czech nationalists; it also exemplifies the use of the Gothic mode to translate experiences of ethnic marginalization, the rise of nationalism, and fears of social degeneracy. The Golem opens a window onto the controversies and debates at the Jahrhundertwende that coalesced in radical municipal action targeting Prague’s German-speaking Christian and Jewish communities.

Dämon, Hanja. The German film industry under American and British control: 1945-1949. King’s College London, German Department. Advisors: Erica Carter and Lara Feigel. November 2019. Abstract:

This thesis analyses the reactivation of the German film industry between 1945 and 1949 in the British and US Zones of occupation. Film was at this time not only perceived as culturally and economically relevant, but also considered a means to potentially impart certain messages to audiences, and therefore deemed an important medium that required supervision especially in the first years after the war. As all German film production was subjected to Allied control, the thesis explores how British and US guidelines and regulations – notably the pre-censorship of film scripts at the beginning of the occupation – shaped individual projects after 1945. My focus on the two zones serves to analyse similarities and differences in British and US approaches to reestablishing the German film industry, making use of archival material. My research particularly emphasises that the British were not merely following the US-American lead, as has previously sometimes been suggested.

Egen, Christoph. What is disability? Devaluation and exclusion of people with disabilities from the Middle Ages to postmodernism. Leibniz University of Hanover. Advisors: Bettina Lindmeier, Christoph Gutenbrunner, and Hans-Peter Waldhoff. 2019. Abstract:

The concept of disability does not adequately reflect human diversity, but conveys the image of a seemingly homogeneous group of people, which is symbolically reduced to the pictogram of the wheelchair user. Christoph Egen looks at the questions of what "disability" is in the first place and how the social view of people with functional disabilities has changed from the Middle Ages to the present day. In doing so, he draws on the process sociology of Norbert Elias to investigate the processes of devaluation and exclusion of people – and thus makes a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary technical discussion.

Emrys, Brandon Chase. Subverting the Gazhe Gaze: Reclaiming Roma Identity in the European World and Beyond. University of Washington, Department of Germanics. Richard Block. June 2019. Abstract:

For centuries, the Romani people in Europe and North America have been the focus of a non-Roma gaze which simultaneously fetishizes and vilifies them. This ascription of a tropic identity serves to both reify the constructed identity of the non-Roma as societal elite and to ensure the Roma remain marginalized and divested of any voice or agency. Using Gayatri Spivak’s 1988 essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” as a point of departure, this dissertation explores the various methods by which the Roma strive to make their voices heard. Analyzing depictions of “Gypsy” figures in classical works of the European canon in order to highlight the language within which the Roma are situated, this dissertation then pivots to an examination of several key texts written by Roma authors, in order to observe their approaches to working within the context of these tropic ascriptions to negotiate a space from which they might successfully communicate with their non-Roma audience and be recognized as autonomous individuals. While it becomes apparent that cultural blending and invisibility, along with direct communication and engagement, are ineffective strategies met with resistance, the texts demonstrate a third, indirect strategy, running obliquely between passive silence and direct confrontation, which subverts the very gaze fixated upon them.

Frazier-Rath, Emily. Death, Deportation, Violence, Silence: Refugee Activism against Precarity in Germany. University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures. Advisor: Beverly Weber. April 2019. Abstract:

In my dissertation, I analyze contemporary activist projects as they have been undertaken by refugees in Germany. Thus, I have begun to build an archive of examples of a particular kind of activism that I conceptualize as refugee activism. I argue that as precariously situated individuals in German society, refugees have entered a discursive space in which they are viewed as the newest iteration of racialized, non-German “others,” and then are constructed as threats to the future of Germany and of Europe. Consequently, refugee activists have used a variety of strategies to address the ways they and other “others” have been excluded from fully participating in German society in the 21st century. Through analyses of refugee activist projects including social media campaigns, public demonstrations, concerts, a die-in, and more, I show how refugees expose the means through which contemporary discourses, practices, and policies around race, immigration, and difference in Germany reify exclusionary understandings of who belongs, who is worthy of living, and even who can be considered human. Simultaneously, I argue, through their activisms, refugee activists have built coalitions, declared new solidarities, and created communities, through which new ways of conceptualizing difference and difference-making in Germany have begun to take shape.

Gelman, Charles. The Extremist: Walter Benjamin and the Radical Critique of Society, 1912-1924. New York University, Department of Comparative Literature. Advisor: Richard Sieburth. April 2019. Abstract:

This study reassesses the development of Walter Benjamin’s work and its relation to historical materialism by examining the unlikely path by which he arrived at a position so distant from his native habits of thought. Benjamin’s early writings, it is argued, represent an abortive critique of bourgeois society, the ultimately nihilistic desperation of which is symptomatic of his simultaneous antipathy to bourgeois culture and unwillingness to take seriously the socioeconomic basis of bourgeois hegemony. The apocalyptic extremism to which he had come by the early 1920s reflects the exasperated radicalization of the romantic rejection of the Enlightenment and retreat into religion. His early work thus remains as a cautionary tale of what happens when the link between emancipation and demystification is severed. Examining the evolution of Benjamin’s thinking from his early work as a member of the German student movement through his work in the philosophy of language, epistemology, and philosophical aesthetics, and finally his theologico-political writings of the years immediately following World War I, this study advances a comprehensive critical reexamination of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, presenting a picture of Benjamin that little resembles any of those that have hitherto come to light.

Gengler, Peter. Constructing and Leveraging ‘Flight and Expulsion’: Expellee Memory Politics and Victimhood Narratives in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1944-1970. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, History Department. Advisor: Konrad H. Jarausch. April 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation examines the construction, instrumentalization, and institutionalization of a homogenized master narrative of “flight and expulsion” in West Germany between 1945 and 1970. I argue that expellee groups, historians, and politicians cemented a victimhood narrative that emphasized German suffering and Soviet barbarity in museums, literature, and the media in order to underpin arguments for social, material, and political claims. In this manner, expellee organizations fashioned a central concept of “flight and expulsion” and colonized public debates for decades, leaving a lasting impact on how contemporary Germany remembers the war and the integration of 10-12 million refugees. By examining the trajectory of the expulsion narrative, I seek to show the layering of memory, how it was used over time, and the defining impact that this victimhood discourse has had on German public memory and academic interpretation of the phenomenon. My work investigates the origins and evolution of a discourse that continues to inform German historical consciousness, thereby providing fresh insights into the relationship between memory politics, the production and narration of history, and political interest group advocacy.

Gilmour, Colin. Heldenpolitik : Ritterkreuz , Ideology and the Complexities of Hero Culture under National Socialism. McGill University, Department of History and Classical Studies. Advisors: Peter Hoffmann & Brian Lewis. January 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation explores the political history of Germany’s highest award for military excellence during the Second World War: the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, or Ritterkreuz . Expanding upon a limited foundation of existing scholarly research, its primary focus is to examine the role played by this famous medal as a vessel of “symbolic capital” for the National Socialist regime. Designed not only as a tool to help forge a new archetype for military heroism, it was also to represent the “revolution” that the Party claimed to have produced in German society and politics. Using this function as a framework, the component chapters of this study document different ways in which it informed or affected official usages of the Ritterkreuz and the activities of its recipients – called Ritterkreuzträger – during the war years. Through this investigation, the dissertation argues that while achieving an impact on wartime culture that continues to be felt in Germany today, both medal and men proved as much a source of frustration and embarrassment to the regime as they did ideological success. As such, it challenges several existing assumptions regarding the role of orders and decorations created by National Socialism while highlighting an underrecognized layer of complexity in its Heldenpolitik (Hero Politics).

Gindner, Jette. Capitalist Crisis and Radical Political Imagination in German Literature and Cinema After 1989. Cornell University, Department of German Studies. Advisors: Leslie A. Adelson and Paul Fleming. August 2019. Abstract:

“New Realisms” examines three moments of manifest economic crisis: East Germany after 1989, the Financial Crisis of 2008, and the contemporary labor market. Employing what I term a formalist materialism, critically differentiated from Caroline Levine’s Forms, this project explores how new literary and cinematic realisms mediate structures of economic crisis in aesthetic form. In contrast to recent scholarship, which casts new realisms as a response to the virtualization of everyday experience by social media, I argue that a renewed turn to realism in German literature and film is motivated by economic crises and can be understood as the artistic apprehension of transnationalism, financialization, and racialized-gendered precarity in cultural form. In contrast to discourse analyses of crisis in the work of Joseph Vogl, “New Realisms” foregrounds the epistemological value of art and the ways in which literature and cinema theorize economic-social life through formal strategies.

Grunewald, Susan. German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union: Life, Law, and Memory, 1941-1956. Carnegie Mellon University, Department of History. Advisor: Wendy Goldman. May 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation examines German prisoners of war (POWs) in the USSR from 1941 to 1956. The Soviet government kept roughly 1.5 million German POWs in labor camps after the end of the war, the largest and longest held group of prisoners of the victor nations. My dissertation explores the political, diplomatic, and economic motivations of the Soviet state, investigating the economic role the prisoners served in reconstruction, the diplomatic and legal tensions raised by repatriation, and material conditions in the camps and labor sites. It seeks to place the GUPVI POW camps into a larger conversation about Soviet forced labor and the infamous GULAG camp system. Using extensive GIS mapping, it assesses the significance of the POW contribution to Soviet reconstruction. Finally, it examines questions of memory, the differences among POWs repatriated to West and East Germany, and Russia’s own commemorative efforts.

Heiss, Lydia Helene. Literarische Identitätskonstruktionen und das Verhältnis zu Deutschland in ausgesuchten Werken zeitgenössischer jüdischer Schriftstellerinnen deutscher Sprache. University of Arizona, Department of German Studies. Advisors: Joela Jacobs &Thomas Kovach. April 2019. Abstract:

A declaration of her love for Germany by the Jewish author Lena Gorelik in her semi-autobiographical text Lieber Mischa ( Dear Mischa 2011) has led me to ask whether the Holocaust is still the point of reference and central characteristic of the self-conception of the contemporary or third generation of Jewish writers in Germany after 1945. In addition to Gorelik's text, this study analyzes Katja Petrowskaja's Maybe Esther (2014) and Olga Grjasnowa's All Russians Love Birch Trees (2012). The three Jewish women writers immigrated from Eastern Europe, live in Germany, and write in German. My analysis of the literary identities the authors constructed for their protagonists sheds light on current trends in contemporary Jewish life in Germany and demonstrates that they reject the special status assigned to them as ‘victims of the Holocaust’ or as ‘exotic’, both in the sense that they are seen as representatives of the Jewish minority and as ‘immigrants’ from the former USSR. This ascription of ‘otherness’ nourishes both philo- and anti-Semitic discrimination. Although the novels mark the Holocaust as an event that should never be forgotten, it is not history but rather the experience of ‘otherness’ that keeps Jewish life in Germany from being ‘normal.’

Hirstein, Mario. Gewalt und Spiele in den Filmen Michael Hanekes. University of Waterloo, Canada & Universität Mannheim, Deutschland. Advisors: Alice Kuzniar, Waterloo and Justus Fetscher, Mannheim. December 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation shows how Michael Haneke’s films expose the ludic qualities of today’s most common forms of violence. Time and again, the protagonists of Haneke’s films play violent games or are forced to play against their will, suffering in the process. Guilt and childhood, the virtualizing effects of games and videos and the modern media landscape, ritual sacrifice, ironic employment of a “dark pedagogy” and, most importantly, the ubiquity of game structures in the neoliberal present, are at the center of these games. While play and violence are intertwined in many ways, it is especially the meta-game of economics which conjoins both concepts. The structural violence that is inscribed in the global financial game is revealed throughout Haneke’s oeuvre, often through underprivileged “players” who are rejected from participating. Haneke’s involvement of the audience in meta-diegetic mind games (Elsaesser) is crucial for understanding cultural and economic violence as a constant in our daily lives.

Jangam, Urvi. Eine Ästhetik des Nicht-Visuellen. University of Mumbai, Department of German. Advisors: Vibha Surana Department German, university of Mumbai (Erste Betreuerin), Andrea Bogner Interkultureller Germanistik Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. September 2019. Abstract:

Die vorliegende Studie von mir als geburtsblinde Forscherin postuliert anhand der indischen Ästhetik des rasa (ästhetischer Genuss) eine eigenständige nicht-visuelle Ästhetik, die ihre Wurzeln vor allem in den vier Sinnen hat und eine neue Art des rasa, d. h. den nicht-visuellen ästhetischen Genuss (adrishya rasa) anbietet. Sie erörtert diese nicht-visuelle Ästhetik im Rahmen zweier grundlegender, wenig untersuchter Bereiche, nämlich der ästhetischen Wahrnehmung der Blinden und der literarischen Texte blinder Autor*innen. Ausgewählt wurden hierfür Reisetexte, Gedichte und Kurzprosa. Der indische ästhetische Rasa-Ansatz musste jedoch um eine neue Art des ästhetischen Erlebens erweitert werden, nämlich die des nichtvisuellen, um den Texten der blinden Autor*innen gerecht werden zu können. Die kritische und kontrastive Auseinandersetzung mit Texten von Geburtsblinden und Späterblindeten Schriftstellern deutet auf eine alternative Ästhetik hin, die so bisher kaum konzipiert wurde. Die unterschiedlichen Nuancen der nicht-visuellen Wahrnehmung werden in der Farbwahrnehmung, Raumwahrnehmung, nicht-visuellen Ästhetik in der Sprache, sowie Entstehung der Bilder dargestellt.

Jurgens, Laura. Martin Luther and Women: From the Dual Perspective of Theory and Practice. University of Calgary, Department of Classics and Religion. Advisor: Douglas Shantz. June 2019. Abstract:

This thesis argues that Martin Luther did not enforce his own strict theological convictions about women when he personally corresponded with women throughout his life. Luther’s conversations with female family members and Reformation women show that he often made exceptions to his own theology. Luther also did not enforce his theology throughout his pastoral care where he treated both men and women equally. Luther’s pastoral work shows that he allowed compassion and empathy to win over his own theological convictions about women. It is important to remember that Luther not only wrote about women in the abstract, but also lived both his public and private life among women. However, there have been no comprehensive studies that have examined his theological writings about women and personal encounters with women. For this reason, fundamental aspects of Luther have remained in the dark. As ‘actions speak louder than words,’ this thesis argues that the practical, as well as the theoretical need to be examined when attempting to provide an authentic assessment of the reformer’s attitudes towards women.

Kick, Verena. Negotiating the German Public Sphere: Workers, Soldiers, and Women in Photobooks of Weimar Germany. University of Washington, Germanics. Advisor: Sabine Wilke. June 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation focuses on the intersection of non-fiction writing and visual culture, specifically on the montage of texts and photos as an approach to examine the changing public sphere in Weimar Germany. “Negotiating the German Public Sphere: Workers, Soldiers, and Women in Photobooks of Weimar Germany” shows how photobooks employ montage strategies associated both with 1920s Soviet Cinema and Walter Benjamin’s concepts of montage and experience to specifically address workers, soldiers, and women. An analysis of Walter Benjamin’s Einbahnstraße (1928), Kurt Tucholsky’s and John Heartfield’s Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles (1929) and Ernst Friedrich’s two volumes of Krieg dem Kriege! (1924/1926) reveals how these photobooks offer an alternative to the biased portrayals of these social groups in Weimar Germany’s mass media. At the same time, particularly Tucholsky, Heartfield and Friedrich demonstrate to these groups, as the intended readers of their publications, the possibility of creating an effective consciousness to combat impending fascism. This work engages with the larger discussion of the representation of social classes in German literature and media, and it furthermore contributes to the scholarship on photobooks by elucidating previously uninvestigated uses of photographs and montage strategies.

Lundrigan, Megan. Holocaust Memory and Visuality in the Age of Social Media. Carleton University, Department of History. Advisor: Jennifer Evans. April 2019. Abstract:

Drawing from Holocaust studies, public history, photography theory, and new media studies, this dissertation argues that the amateur Instagram image is far from static. Existing spaces of Holocaust memory create preconditions for everyday publics to share their encounters with the Holocaust on their own terms. Thus, the final networked Instagram image is the product of a series of author interventions, carefully wrought from competing narratives and Holocaust representations. This work brings together seemingly disparate sources to find commonality between Instagram images, museum guestbook entries, online reviews, former concentration camps, and major Holocaust memorials and museums. This dissertation, one of the first studies of Holocaust visual culture on Instagram, underscores the fluidity of Holocaust memory in the twenty-first century. While amateur photography at solemn sites has sparked concern, this dissertation demonstrates that though the number of Holocaust survivors become fewer in number, the act of remembering the genocide can be coded into the everyday behaviour of the amateur photographers featured in this work. This work not only shares authority with everyday publics in their efforts to remember and memorialize the Holocaust, but reminds us that individual acts of remembrance can coalesce, contributing to a fluid and accessible archive of visual memory.

Middelhoff, Frederike. Literarische Autozoographien: Figurationenen des autobiographischen Tieres (1789-1922). [Literary Autozoographies: Figurations of the Autobiographical Animal (1789-1922).] Julius-Maximilans-Universität Würzburg, Institut für deutsche Philologie, Lehrstuhl für neuere deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Advisors: Roland Borgards & Isabel Karremann. February 2019. Abstract:

The dissertation probes the cultural and aesthetical dimensions of a yet unexplored genre in German literary history. Literary autozoographies are quasi-autobiographical first-person novels in which an animal becomes the narrator of his or her life. Yet in the ‘long nineteenth century’ the figure of the autobiographical animal was not merely a literary phenomenon. Reconstructing the (popular) scientific context of the genre, the project shows that the genesis and development of animal autobiographical writing in German-speaking countries was accompanied by a discourse which had animal psychologists, animal-rights activists, and natural historians not only think about animals’ autobiographical capacities but also quite literally speaking for animals. The thesis argues that literary autozoographies of horses, cats, and dogs were therefore part of a specific discursive formation and contributed to a specific knowledge on animal species but also reflected that this knowledge relies on attributions, projections, and aesthetic forms of production. Furthermore, the project delineates the connections and differences between literary autozoographies, picaresque novels, animal fables, fairy tales, and the genre of autobiography. It thus also contributes to a theory of genre and adds new insights to the field of animal studies.

Morrow, Susan. Schematism: Poetics on the Way to Kant, 1760–1790. Yale University, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Advisors: Rüdiger Campe & Paul Franks. April 2019. Abstract:

My dissertation reveals an unexpected genealogy for Kant’s concept of a Schema —that ‘third thing’, neither concept nor appearance, which plays the role of mediator in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), and which is identified in the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) as the primary mode of Darstellung . I argue that the theory of Schematismus is structured not only by problems arising within Kant’s account of knowledge but also by the implications of changes to the status of movement in artistic and poetic form in the mid to late 18th century. I claim that this reconfiguration consisted, first, in the interpretation of movement as an indexical sign of affect, second, in the identification of movement as a realization of affect, and, third, in the re-articulation of movement’s realization-function as an act performed by a cognitive capacity: imagination. To demonstrate this progression, I turn, respectively, to J.-G. Noverre’s conception of ballet as pantomime (1760), F.G. Klopstock’s poetic practice and theory of Wortbewegung (1764–79), and G.E. Lessing’s theory of aesthetic Illusion (1766). I conclude that Kant’s epistemological concern with Darstellung is conditioned by the reframing of poetic form’s newfound realization-function as an act of cognition.

Phillips, Reuben. Brahms as Reader. Princeton University, Department of Music. Advisors: V. Kofi Agawu & Scott Burnham. May 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation seeks to reframe the scholarly understanding of Brahms's creativity in the 1850s and ‘60s through a consideration of the composer's engagement with German literature. Drawing on archival research undertaken in Vienna, I argue that Brahms's early aesthetic worldview was fundamentally shaped by his devotion to reading. Part 1 provides the first comprehensive investigation of his notebooks of literary quotations known – since their abridged publication in 1909 – as Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein. Brahms's quotation collection is situated in three contexts: biographical representations of Brahms as a reader, the role played by Robert Schumann in shaping Brahms's literary enthusiasms, and the elevated status afforded to the activity of reading in German culture of the mid-nineteenth century. For Brahms, the process of copying out quotations served as a means of meditating on important ideas about the role of art in society, genius, originality, and artistic technique. In the second part of the dissertation I enlist some of Brahms's beloved works of German Romantic literature in the examination of two compositions from the 1860s: the Trio for Piano, Violin, and Waldhorn, op. 40, and the Magelone Romanzen, op. 33.

Pilz, Kristina. Writing Across Margins: Contemporary Afro-German Literature. University of Washington, Department of Germanics. Advisor: Brigitte Prutti. March 2019. Abstract:

My dissertation argues that Afro-German literature—a new strand in contemporary German literature since the late 1980s—functions as aesthetic activism by creating collective identity through textual practices. Joining the larger conversation in Black German Studies on Afro-German poetry and autobiography, this project focuses on writing practices in Afro-German feminist poetry by Helga Emde, Katharina Oguntoye, and May Ayim; Afro-German spoken word poetry by Chantal-Fleur Sandjon, Philipp Khabo Köpsell, and Samy Deluxe; Afro-German celebrity autobiographies by Abini Zöllner and Detlef Soost; as well as Afro-German memoirs by Theodor Michael and Gert Schramm. Black German textual practices develop parameters of collective identity that range from the emergence of Afro-German voices to a new understanding of Afro-German blackness; from a new recognition of Afro-German identities, to the rise of an Afro-German memory. The writing practices that shape parameters of collective identity—métissage, imagery, autofiction, multilayering—organize my dissertation and provide the categories for textual analysis. By combining close readings with aesthetic (e.g., Lionnet, Bürger, Gates, Wagner-Egelhaaf) and cultural theory (e. g. Du Bois, Gilroy, Hall, Silverman), my project demonstrates that Afro-German writing practices help to bend and transgress literary and social categories.

Reger, Maria. Ausgestoßen - Kriminelle, Feinde und Flüchtlinge in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. University of Connecticut, Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. Advisor: Sebastian Wogenstein. April 2019. Abstract:

Situated in the interdisciplinary field of literature and human rights, my dissertation contributes to our understanding of how societies draw, maintain, and challenge the line between the people who belong to a community and those who do not. Arguing that criminals, enemies, and refugees are epitomes of discursively and institutionally produced outcasts today, I analyze how fictionalized criminals, enemies, and refugees in contemporary German novels and theater are used as narratological and dramatic devices to (re)define the values and composition of the community. Specifically, I look at the criminal characters in Bernhard Schlink’s novel Das Wochenende (2008) and Nicolas Stemann’s staging of Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber (2008); at the enemy characters in Lukas Bärfuss’ novel Hundert Tage (2008) and Cihan Inan’s staging of Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea (2017); and the refugee characters in Merle Kröger’s novel Havarie (2015) and Elfriede Jelinek’s theater text Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013). My dissertation investigates literary and theatrical representational strategies of social inclusion and exclusion. It also provides a comparative account of how literature and theater imagine and mediate the identity of Europe’s German speaking communities today.

Resvick, Jessica C. Reading Recognition: The Poetics of Poetic Realism. University of Chicago, Department of Germanic Studies. Advisor: Christopher Wild. May 2019. Abstract:

This study examines the motif and operation of recognition in texts by Adalbert Stifter and Gottfried Keller. Combining newer media historical approaches to the period with traditional epistemological concepts, it refigures poetic realism in terms of its relationship to knowledge transmission. In the primary texts considered here, recognition (Aristotelean anagnorisis) frequently transpires through the act of reading (anagnosis). By engaging with chronicles, letters, or epigrams, protagonists come to sudden and occasionally fantastic insights about their obscured familial identities and, more generally, the congruence of their life with art. While the apparent artifice of these scenes seems to put them at odds with the tenets of realism, they in fact reveal the poetics of poetic realism by reflecting the conditions of the narrative’s production and reception. These self-reflexive scenes, ubiquitous in realist texts, at once engender “reality effects” and focus attention on the constructed character of such works. Close readings of canonical narratives, manuscripts, and personal journals demonstrate the media-specific ways these authors construct literary reality and the ways in which intra- and extradiegetic readers gain knowledge, via texts, about this reality. The recognition scene thus emerges as a hallmark of realist poetics and discloses a uniquely realist mode of reading.

Rettig, Noelle. From Aesthetic to Pathology: Reading Literary Case Studies of Melancholy, 1775-1830. Georgetown University, German Department. Advisor: Mary Helen Dupree. August 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation contributes to the ongoing discussion of the narrative representation of mental illness in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, at a time when the nascent disciplines of psychology and psychiatry began to come into their own, and the discourses of mind and body were renegotiated under advances in the medical sciences; I attempt, in other words, to examine how mental illness was conceptualized long before diagnoses such as depression, bipolarity, or schizophrenia made their way into mainstream scientific discourse. Even though “melancholy” continued to function during this time period as a blanket term for any number of mental, physical, and spiritual illnesses, thereby connoting a pathological state, it also began to take on a specifically “poetic” meaning, involving the subjective and transitory mood of the modern individual. As a focal point, I have chosen four primary texts: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774), Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber (1781), Karl Philipp Moritz’s Anton Reiser (1785-1790), and Georg Büchner’s Lenz (1836) – works which all represent melancholy at the interstices of science and subjectivity, reason and passion. In its entirety, the study investigates how multivalent images of melancholy are deployed in order to individuate characters and their respective psychologies, emotions, and affects.

Sieg Barthold, Emily. The Thirty Years’ War as Unifying Heritage: Historical Fiction, Ecumenism, and German Nation-Building (1871-1920). Georgetown University, German Department. Advisor: Mary Helen Dupree. April 2019. Abstract:

To investigate how literary narratives of the Thirty Years’ War reinterpreted this conflict as unifying heritage for German Protestants and Catholics, this dissertation presents the results of a survey of 34 historical novels published between 1871 and 1920. Given the salience of confession in the popular imagination of the Thirty Years’ War, this study explores how literary portrayals reflect Imperial German understandings of what it meant to be German and whether this “Germanness” was contingent upon confession. Despite the diversity of modes of historical and political thought during this period, this study argues that historical fiction of the Thirty Years’ War: (1) masks contemporary concerns in historical imaginings in order to comment on national unity, ecumenical reconciliation, and/or women’s and Jewish (anti-)emancipation; (2) recast power politics and greed, rather than religion, as the driving force behind catastrophic war in order to present the collective trauma of 1618-1648 as both the crucible of German national identity and a warning against the peril of internal German division; and (3) in a majority of cases portray German national identity as compatible with the Protestant as well as Catholic confessions, and in a minority of cases with Jewish and other religious identities.

Sorenson, Alexander. Trials by Water: Law, Sacrifice and Submergence in German Realism. Advisor: David E. Wellbery. University of Chicago, Department of Germanic Studies. April 2019. Abstract:

The dissertation analyzes one of the most recurrent (and troubling) motifs in modern German literature: death by drowning. Focusing upon both canonical and lesser-known texts by Adalbert Stifter, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Storm, and Theodor Fontane, it argues that these scenes of drowning function as narrative “knots” in which two concepts fundamental to the epistemology of realist writing intertwine: law and sacrifice. More specifically, it suggests that the narrative logic of drowning stages a conflict between the “surface” domain of law, on the one hand, and the hidden “depths” of the subjective interior, on the other. In each of the chosen texts, the resolution of this conflict takes the form of an act of sacrifice that either relinquishes some portion of the self for the sake of the law or immolates some form of law for the sake of the self. As such, the dissertation demonstrates how German Realism works through deeply embedded tensions that trouble the social and moral life of its age, a portrait which stands in contrast with the more conventional notion of realist aesthetics as a programmatic effort simply to make visible the quotidian contours of human life.

Uca, Didem. Coming of Age on the Move: Young Travelers, Migrants, and Refugees in 20th- and 21stCentury Literature in German. University of Pennsylvania, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Advisor: Catriona MacLeod. June 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation analyzes texts by eight twentieth- and twenty-first-century transnational, multilingual, and hyphenated authors–– Franz Kafka, Irmgard Keun, Elias Canetti, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Vladimir Vertlib, Yoko Tawada, Selim Özdoğan, and Saša Stanišić––whose young protagonists travel, migrate, and seek refuge due to different sociohistorical, political, and familial factors. Their child and adolescent protagonists must learn to negotiate various national, cultural, and linguistic contexts while facing intersecting forms of marginalization on the basis of factors such as race, religion, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, and linguistic background. As the protagonists come of age, they begin to find their voices, affecting both their engagement with their storyworlds and the narration of their stories. The dissertation makes two significant interventions. First, this is the only extended study of transnational German literature to consider age alongside other intersecting components of identity. Second, by combining sociocultural and narratological methods, the study develops an analytical framework to address issues of identity, politics, aesthetics, and form. By featuring young protagonists coming of age amidst literal, linguistic, and figurative border crossings, these texts play on, reimagine, and burst open tropes of the traditional Bildungsroman genre and thus constitute a newly theorized subgenre: the modern transnational Bildungsroman in German.

Valone, Fielder. The Power of Grievance: Ethnic Germans, National Socialism, and the Holocaust in the Incorporated Territories of Western Poland, 1939-1952. Indiana University, Department of History. Advisor: Mark Roseman. April 2019. Abstract:

My dissertation, which utilizes previously unexamined German and Yiddish sources pulled from half a dozen archives in Central Europe and the United States, analyzes the ethnic German ( Volksdeutsche ) minority in the Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany in 1939, and that group’s participation in the Final Solution of Polish Jewry. By focusing on the comparatively less well-documented activities of the Volksdeutsche population in western Poland, my project makes a crucial historiographical contribution to the growing body of literature on Eastern Europe’s German national minorities. And more: The study makes a unique argument about the socio-cultural motives that energize inter-ethnic violence between neighbors. The wartime collaboration of Poland’s German minority in the Nazi Final Solution was, I argue, an emotive response to social anxieties that were generated during the German invasion of September 1939. Local Nazi activists in western Poland manipulated ethnic German anxieties of demographic and social decline in order to provoke a genocidal response. Ethnic Germans could avenge the “original sin” of anti- Volksdeutsch e persecution by publicly mistreating, exploiting, and deporting their Jewish neighbors. In this way, fantasies of victimhood and suffering turned ordinary men and women into killers.

Von Holt, Isabel. Figurationen des Bösen im barocken Trauerspiel. Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften, Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie. Advisors: Peter-André Alt and Hans Richard Brittnacher. September 2019. Abstract:

The study “Figurationen des Bösen im barocken Trauerspiel” deepens the understanding of 17th century literary and cultural production by reassessing the dramatic writing from authors such as Andreas Gryphius and Daniel Casper von Lohenstein as an aesthetics of evil avant la lettre. The dissertation argues that by locating evil inside its human protagonists, these plays respond to and were shaped by an anthropological shift from malus to malum in the early modern episteme, anticipating an internalization or even psychologization of evil, which until now has been claimed only for the 18th century onward. This research intervenes in the continuous discussion that considers aesthetics of evil to be a particularly modern phenomenon by presenting an early modern perspective. It thus revises the situation of the Baroque at the threshold between the premodern and modern periods.

Watroba, Karolina. "Der Zauberberg" and the Pleasures of Immersive Reading. University of Oxford, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. Advisor: Ben Morgan. September 2019. Abstract:

This is the first study of Thomas Mann's "Der Zauberberg" ("The Magic Mountain", 1924) written from the perspective of its non-academic readers. I discuss hundreds of records of reading experiences - preserved in parentheses and asides and between the lines of traditional academic studies, on Internet fora and blogs, in reviews, essays and memoirs, marketing brochures from Davos and advertizing copy used to sell the novel, Mann's fan mail and his replies to it, and in books and films, whether popular, famous or half-forgotten. The reading records that I have brought together span the century since the novel’s publication, as well as numerous languages and several continents, and testify to an energetic confrontation with "Der Zauberberg" outside the ivory tower of academia. Using the common metaphor of immersion in a book, I discuss different examples of how and why non-academic readers have engaged with the novel and what it has meant to them, and what academic readers have missed by not attending to this wealth of untapped material.

Wangensteen, Kjell. Hyperborean Baroque: David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (1628-98) and the Rhetoric of Style. Princeton University, Department of Art & Archaeology. Advisor: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. June 2019. Abstract:

This dissertation examines the transformation of painting style and practice effected by the Swedish court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (1628–98). A native of Hamburg, Ehrenstrahl spent several years studying and working in various cities across Europe before rising to prominence in Sweden in the decades following the Thirty Years War. Much in demand by aristocratic clients, he primarily served two royal patrons during his long and distinguished career: Dowager Queen Hedwig Eleonora and her son, King Karl XI, who enlisted Ehrenstrahl’s talents for a series of ambitious cultural projects when the kingdom was at the height of its wealth and power. Though steeped in a variety of contemporary artistic models, ranging from Dutch still-life to English portraiture and High Roman Baroque allegory, Ehrenstrahl refused to confine himself to one particular genre or mode of painting following his arrival in Sweden. Rather, he appropriated, adapted, and synthesized various motifs and styles to suit many purposes, including his own advancement at court. While this dissertation comprises a monograph on Ehrenstrahl, its fundamental argument is a methodological one that predicates artistic “style” as a set of conscious decisions often made in service to practical and political aims, not just aesthetic ones.

Woodard, Stefanie M. The Latecomers: Ethnic German ‘Resettlers’ and their Integration into West Germany, 1970-1990. Emory University, Department of History. Advisor: Astrid M. Eckert. May 2019. Abstract:

“The Latecomers” examines the enduring presence of ethnic German identity in Upper Silesia, a western Polish borderland, and how this identity evolved through contact with and migration to West Germany. When emigration became possible in the 1970s and 1980s, “nationally indifferent” Silesians leveraged their historical ties to Germany to secure exit visas. Drawing on diaspora studies and migration scholarship, my dissertation treats events on both sides of the border as a continuous process of ethnic-identity formation. Through interviews and research in German and Polish archives, I argue that the resettlers’ borderland context enabled them to invoke their German ethnicity to receive privileged-immigrant status in West Germany or, later, to lobby for cultural rights in Poland. By interpreting this migration as embedded in its Cold War context, this dissertation reveals how an ethnically-coded conflict over victimhood and memory shaped not only the lives of individual émigrés from Silesia, but also West German-Polish relations as a whole.

Wörner, Corinna. Thomanerchor und Thomasschule Leipzig zwischen Anpassung und Resistenz in zwei politischen Systemen. Universität Hildesheim, Institut für Kulturpolitik. Advisors: Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich (Hildesheim) & Matthias Tischer (Neubrandenburg). July 2019. Abstract:

Johann Sebastian Bach was a projection screen for ideologically shaped cultural politics in both National Socialist Germany and the GDR. cultural politics. At the same time, artists served as propaganda instruments legitimation of both regimes. As cultural ambassadors of two dictatorships, Bach and the St. Thomas Boys Choir, Leipzig's oldest cultural institution, offered the rulers an ideal combination. The Thomaskantors Karl Straube, Günther Ramin, Kurt Thomas and Erhard Mauersberger walked a fine line between adaptation and between adaptation and resistance. They operated in the field of tension between artistic self-interest and political instrumentalization. In a sectoral comparison of dictatorships, qualitative and quantitative methods are used to examine different perspectives of actors in the Nazi and SED states. The focus is on organizational structure, clerical and non-clerical work and repertoire. The interdisciplinary longitudinal analysis examines lines of continuity and ruptures in the period between 1931 and 1972.

History Dissertation Topics

Writing a dissertation serves as the primary project of the academic element of your university experience. It is an opportunity to delve deeper into an academic topic of particular interest to you and your primary opportunity to demonstrate your capacity for independent research work within an academic environment. Your dissertation can either help develop a more nuanced understanding of existing scholarship, analyze existing scholarship through a new analytical prism or if you are particularly fortunate perhaps even shed new light on a subject. However, your dissertation evolves in its objective and scope, it is paramount that you choose a topic that can sustain your interest and help you maintain the motivation needed in producing a quality piece of academic research. The scope of historical periods studied in your degree programme means narrowing your focus on one particular topic can prove to be a daunting task. To aid you in choosing a topic for your dissertation, this article offers numerous topic suggestions across a broad span of historical periods. The suggestions offered cover the following periods in history: the Crimean War, Napoleon, Italian Unification, German Unification, the First World War, the Great Depression, Mussolini, Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia and the Second World War.

The Crimean War Dissertation Topics

Napoleon iii dissertation topics, italian unification dissertation topics, german unification dissertation topics, the first world war dissertation topics, britain 1918-1939 & the great depression dissertation topics, mussolini’s italy dissertation topics, nazi germany dissertation topics, stalin’s russia dissertation topics, the second world war 1939-1945 dissertation topics.

The Crimean War is considered to be the first ‘modern’ conflict, having influenced the course of all future wars. If you are looking to write your history dissertation on the Crimean War, the topics suggested below will give you an idea of where to start.

• What was the main cause of the Crimean war?
• Why could the Crimean War be considered to be a ‘modern’ war?
• What was the most important event in the Crimean War?
• Examine and explain French policy during the Crimean War.
• What were the consequences of the Crimean War?
• What role did religion play in in the Crimean War?
• What was the most significant event that served to settle the Crimean War?
• Why did so many attempts at peace fail with regards to the Crimean War?
• Why did the Crimean War end when it did?
• Why is the involvement of women in the Crimean War considered to be so significant?
• What were the objectives of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War?
• What factors motivated the French and British empires to oppose Russia and side with The Ottomans in the Crimean War?
• Was the Crimean War inevitable given the strategic objectives of the primary actors?

Napoleon III was the first President of the French Republic and the only Emperor of the Second French Empire. He rebuilt Paris to mirror what he had seen in London and sought to improve living standards, but his military policy has been called into question. Possible ideas for your history dissertation topics on Napoleon III could include:

• How and why did Napoleon III come to power?
• What was Napoleon III’s attitude towards the Vienna system and how did he put this policy into practice?
• What were the key facets of Napoleon III’s economic and social policies and how did they allow him to retain power?
• Was Napoleon III driven by a desire to liberalise or to rule?
• What were the main problems faced by Napoleon III when he came to power and were they successfully overcome?
• What was the significance of the role Napoleon III played in the Crimean War?
• How did Napoleon III’s ‘authoritarian’ system of government differ from those of previous French Emperors?
• What were the key principles behind Napoleon III’s foreign policy?
• What was the key reason for Napoleon III’s demise? Why was it so significant?
• How would you consider Napoleon III’s legacy to have influenced relations in Europe since his demise?
• Is it fair to consider Napoleon III a patron of the Arts?
• What factors underpinned Napoleon III’s decision to support Italian unification?
• Considering his numerous social and political achievements, why do you think Napoleon III’s legacy is considered to be negative by many historians?

This was the political and social movement that served to unify the different states of the Italian peninsula in the 19th century. It began with the end of Napoleonic rule and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and ended with the Franco-Prussian War, as Italy took shape as one nation for the first time. If you are looking to take a step back from British history, perhaps you could choose a dissertation topic that focuses on Italian Unification from the list of topics below.

• What were the main causes of Italian unification?
• What were the biggest issues facing the newly formed Italian government and how were they resolved?
• Evaluate Cavour’s contribution to Italian unification – was he the key reason why Italy was successfully unified?
• Which was more important with regards to unification – economics or foreign policy?
• What impact did the unification of Italy have on the functioning of the Vienna system?
• How did Italy’s approach to foreign policy reflect that of other nations at this time?
• Why had Italy existed for so long in a state of ‘disunity’?
• Evaluate whether Italian unification served to improve people’s standard of living?
• How successful was Italian unification? What, if anything, did unification achieve?
• Evaluate the significance of the contributions of Garibaldi to Italian Unification
• How did the unification of Italy impact the Balance of Power in Europe?
• Assess the position that Guiseppe Mazzini was the key driving force behind Italian Unification?
• Evaluate the various social factors that played into Italian Unification. Can one be considered to be most important?

Germany was effectively unified in 1871 when Otto von Bismarck managed to unify all the independent states into one state. Much debate surrounds whether or not there was a master plan to unify Germany or whether the aim was just to expand the Prussian State. Please see below a choice of free history dissertation topics concerning the subject of German Unification:

• Was German unification inevitable? Consider the events that led to unification to effectively determine whether Germany was always heading towards it.
• In what ways did German unification represent a victory for German liberals during this period?
• Explain the significance of the Schleswig Holstein crisis to German unification – was it the key reason for why unification was achieved?
• How important was Bismarck to the unification of Germany?
• Was German unification a success?
• What was Germany’s biggest achievement upon its unification?
• What issues did German unification fail to address?
• Did German unification serve to remove the divisions within society and government?
• Why was German unification so important for European society at this time?
• Consider the reasons why German unification was such a significant event.
• Evaluate the argument that German Unification was primarily an exercise in Prussian Nationalism.
• What was the role of Wilhelm I in the unification of Germany?
• What were the foreign policy implications for the existing major European powers of German Unification?

Although the war was ostensibly a global one, it predominantly took place in Europe after a chain reaction of war declarations leading to war on several fronts. It broadly encircled the European continent with an astronomical loss of life that was only ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The First World War is a major part of history that we have all heard about and which has many elements worthy of deeper analysis. For your history dissertation topics you could research further into one of these areas:

• Of the following events – (a) The Morocco Crisis (1905-1906); (b) The British agreement with Russia (1907); (c) The Bosnia Crisis (1908); (d) The Agadir Crisis (1911); (e) The Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913); and (f) The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand – evaluate which was most significant in causing the First World War?
• Was any one party to blame for the First World War, if so, who and why?
• Why was there so much unrest and rivalry amongst the European nations in the early part of the twentieth century and how could this be said to have led to the outbreak of war?
• Why did Gavrilo Princip assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Was the reasoning for this decision misguided?
• Why were the great powers of Europe able to contain the Balkan crises of 1912 and 1913, but unable to prevent this developing into a European-wide war in 1914?
• Why did German attitudes change towards Austria during this period? How could this change in attitude be said to have led to the outbreak of war?
• How did events going on in the rest of the world at this time lead to the outbreak of war in Europe?
• “Now we know where our enemy stands. Like a flash of lightning in the night, these events have shown the German people where its enemy is. When the hour of decision comes we are prepared for sacrifices, both of blood and of treasure” (From a speech made in the German Reichstag in November 1911 in Balfour. M The Kaiser Cresset (1964)) – How could it be argued Germany’s entry into the war was based on paranoia within government that influenced the general public in their push towards war?
• “The British Government cannot undertake to declare war, for any purpose, unless it is a purpose of which the people of this country” (Note to the Cabinet from the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, in May 1901) – What were the reasons why Britain entered the war and were they the right ones?
• Did the First World War achieve anything? Was it successfully resolved?
• Was World War I inevitable? If so, why?
• Focussing on a particular country, evaluate the role of intelligence agencies in the outcome of the war.
• Assess the strategic impact of the Battle of the Marne (1914). Can it justifiably be called the key battle of the war? If so, why?

Between the two World Wars, Britain was faced with numerable problems that various governments sought to resolve for the good of society. However, whilst successive governments were criticised, some significant advancements were made. The Great Depression was a period of British history that is perhaps overlooked more than it should be. Research in this area would make for very interesting reading, if you choose one of the following history dissertation topics:

• What were the main problems facing Lloyd George’s government in the immediate aftermath of the First World War and how successfully were these resolved?
• Why did the Labour government fall in Britain in 1924?
• Why were the effects of ‘The Great Depression’ so severe in the old industrial and mining districts of Britain?
• How did the return to the Gold Standard in 1921 only serve to exacerbate the oncoming effects of ‘The Great Depression’?
• What polices did the government introduce in an effort to resolve the ‘The Great Depression’ and did they achieve anything to limit its effects?
• What were the main problems faced by the British government in the Interwar period and were they ever effectively resolved?
• What factors outside of Europe caused ‘The Great Depression? Was it the economic breakdown in the US alone?
• Why did the world economy ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ so quickly?
• When the Second World War started to what extent was Britain ready for war?
• What was Britain’s greatest achievement in this period and what was its biggest failing?
• To what extent did the First World War directly contribute to the inability of government to respond to the Great Depression?
• Was Neville Chamberlain ‘the voice of the British people’ during the Munich crisis?
• An analysis of the policies and support for the fascist movement in Britain during the 1930’s?
• Was appeasement really a means to prepare Britain for the inevitable conflict with Hitler?
• Why did the Munich crisis fail to deliver ‘Peace in Our Time?’

Mussolini effectively became a dictator in Italy in 1922 and governed the country through the advancement of his fascist ideology. But although he initially won a great deal of popularity, he made the mistake of siding with the Nazis in the Second World War, to his cost. Perhaps you could choose this or other areas involving Mussolini for your history dissertation topics.

• What failings of previous governments made Italy so susceptible to fascist rule?
• Why did fascism seem such an interesting alternative for the Italian people – what was its appeal within sections of Italian society?
• What is the concept of ‘totalitarianism’ and how ‘totalitarian’ was Mussolini’s regime in Italy?
• Critically evaluate Mussolini’s period of government – could it be considered successful based on the benefits that accrued to the people?
• What happened in 1922 to ‘free’ the Italian Republic to Mussolini’s government and why was this event so significant?
• How and why, once Mussolini had attained power, did public opinion change?
• Choose one event and consider why this could be considered to be the defining moment that led to Mussolini’s downfall – why is this so important?
• Consider whether Mussolini had the same level of control in Italy that Hitler had attained in Germany and explain your answer through the exploration of social, political and economic factors.
• Was Mussolini’s government a continuation of, or departure from, previous Italian governments??
• Did Mussolini’s style of government overextend Italy’s resources during the Second World War?
• With reference to Antonio Gramsci’s speech to the Italian Parliament: 16th May 1925, consider the statement that ‘the fascist revolution (in Italy) was only the replacement of one administrative personnel by another.’
• Were Hitler and Mussolini ‘suspicious allies’ throughout the 1930’s?
• In what forms did the fascist government of Italy collaborate with, or oppose, the Catholic Church?
• Was the Fascist government of Italy anti-Semitic?
• Account for the repression of freemasonry by Mussolini, the forms this oppression took, and the reasons for this.

Hitler came to power as, first chancellor, and then dictator, of Germany in 1933. His Nazi Party utilised their propaganda to effectively destroy the last threads of democracy in Germany and went on to attempt to implement their ideology in Europe, with devastating results. The impact of Nazi Germany is key to the history of many countries within Europe, and indeed the world, and would be an excellent area to base your history dissertation on. Some key history dissertation topics related to Nazi Germany are listed below.

• Why did the Weimar Republic’s collapse serve to make Germany so susceptible to the rise of the Nazis?
• What was it about the Nazis that made them an attractive choice for government with a large section the German people?
• What did National Socialism stand for both before and after Hitler took over the party?
• Why was Adolf Hitler able to stay in power after it became apparent to many in Germany that the war was lost?
• Was Hitler successful in his handling of domestic affairs up until 1939?
• What was Hitler seeking to achieve when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939? Is there any way Hitler could have achieved his policy goals in this regard? Why did he not achieve the domination and control he was seeking?
• Did Hitler feel cheated by the Munich agreement? What were the longer-term consequences of Munich for his ambition?
• Why did the German people not respond more forcefully to prevent the Nazis in relation to their dealings with the Jewish population of mainland Europe?
• How did the Nazi regime use art and cinema for wider propaganda purposes?
• With a consideration of contemporary reporting of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, were they a success for the regime?
• Who were the leading women within the Nazi movement, and what did they contribute to the Reich?
• ‘Triumph of the Will’ (1935) – directed by Leni Riefenstahl – can be considered the greatest example of a Nazi propaganda film. With reference to this film and other propaganda measures by the Nazi’s, on what level does the film seek to appeal to the German people?
• Analyse the education policies of the Third Reich, their aims and whether these were ever met.
• To what extent did alternative youth movements such as The Swing Kids offer an alternative for German youth to the Hitler Youth movement?

As Stalin is such a prominent figure in history, you may consider choosing your topic from the history dissertation topics below. Stalin is still an extremely divisive figure in Russia today, and although admired by some for his role in modernising Russia and for his war leadership, he remains a figure of much suspicion for modern historians.

• What contributed to Stalin’s rise to power after the death of Lenin?
• What were the main problems facing Russian/Soviet society after the death of Lenin, and how, if at all, did Stalin resolve them?
• Was Stalin’s repressive approach to governing the Soviet Union at the time of the purges necessary?
• What were Stalin’s biggest successes and failings, and why were they so significant?
• How did Russia move from seemingly being one of the West’s staunchest allies during the Second World War to being universally feared thereafter?
• Why was the USSR allowed to expand to encompass other countries when a similar policy in Nazi Germany led to war?
• Consider the differences between communism and fascism through an evaluation of Hitler and Stalin’s policies, with a view to determining whether they shared political similarities.
• How and why did communism spread from the USSR to other parts of the world?
• To what degree was Stalin’s style of rule in the Soviet Union different from Lenin’s?
• How far could the Soviet Union’s policy goals under Stalin (1944-1947) be considered legitimate in international law?
• Were the 7-10 million deaths in the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1933 a deliberate genocide ordered by Stalin?
• From a Soviet perspective, what were the benefits of the Nazi Soviet Pact, 1939?
• Discuss Soviet Anti-Semitism during the Stalin dictatorship.
• An analysis of the Stalin/Churchill relationship throughout the Second World War.

Unlike the First World War, the Second World War was a war of more rapid advancement and was a complex affair with major campaigns across Europe and the rest of the world – the war was effectively the protection of freedom against the threat of conquest. Such an important event in history would make for excellent reading so you might be interested in the following history dissertation topics:

• Why did the Second World War start? What was the cause?
• Was the war between Finland and Stalin’s Russia an example of Finland losing the war, but winning the peace?
• What was the most significant event in the war that led to the war’s result? Why is the event you have chosen so significant?
• How did Britain survive after the fall of France as the key resistance to Nazi Germany’s complete conquest of Europe? What factor was particularly significant?
• At what point did the Axis powers lose the war? Why?
• What were the effects of the war upon European society in its aftermath?
• Why were the Germans almost completely successful until 1941? How did they so spectacularly lose their position of ascendancy?
• How great was the US’ impact upon the war? What changed when they entered the conflict in Europe?
• Could the Second World War have been resolved peacefully at any point?
• How close was Britain to asking for talks with Hitler after the fall of France?
• To what extent does the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands serve as a blueprint for their policies in other occupied territories?
• Was Rumania a willing, or coerced, ally to Nazi Germany in WW2?
• What was the key factor for German failure to break through in the Battle for Britain?

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'German Colonialism'

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Skwirblies, Lisa. "Theatres of colonialism : theatricality, coloniality, and performance in the German Empire, 1884-1914." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2017. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/106458/.

Bagchi, Kaushik. "Orientalism without colonialism? : three nineteenth-century German indologists and India /." The Ohio State University, 1996. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487935573771214.

Groeneveld, Sabina. "Qingdao (1897-1914) im Spiegel deutscher Selbstzeugnisse." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13721.

Levine, Rachel. "The Politics of Language and the Language of Politics : the Use of German and Kiswahili in German East Africa, 1885-1918." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015USPCA176.

Unangst, Matthew David. "Building the Colonial Border Imaginary: German Colonialism, Race, and Space in East Africa, 1884-1895." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2015. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/365905.

Mokopakgosi, Brian Tukana Otlhabanye. "German colonialism in microcosm : a study of the role of concessionaire companies in the development of the German colonial state in Namibia, 1890-1915." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.410236.

Kassi, Kassi Affo [Verfasser]. "From German Colonialism in the 19th Century to Two Germanies Africa Policies in ACP Context and Beyond / Affo Kassi Kassi." München : GRIN Verlag, 2021. http://d-nb.info/1234236761/34.

Kahn, Michelle Lynn. "Manufactured Morality: German-British Humanitarianism as Realpolitik Tool a Decade after the Boer and Herero Wars." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/427.

Duhaut, Noëmie. "Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, Maud S. Mandel (eds.): Colonialism and the Jews." HATiKVA e.V. – Die Hoffnung Bildungs- und Begegnungsstätte für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur Sachsen, 2018. https://slub.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A34576.

Bendix, Daniel. "Colonial power in development : tracing German interventions in population and reproductive health in Tanzania." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2012. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/colonial-power-in-development-tracing-german-interventions-in-population-and-reproductive-health-in-tanzania(0f306103-3b78-4d4a-8fb2-37d677f09f20).html.

Malik, Nasor. "Extension of Kiswahili during the German colonial administration in continental Tanzania (former Tanganyika), 1885-1917." Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2012. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-95596.

Schmidt, Elisabeth. "La presse dans les colonies allemandes en Afrique 1898-1916 : rapports à l'Allemagne et construction identitaire des colons." Paris 3, 2008. http://www.theses.fr/2008PA030104.

Scheele, Isabell. "Togo allemand - Dahomey français : relations transcoloniales à l'apogée de l'impérialisme européen." Thesis, Aix-Marseille, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017AIXM0319.

Malik, Nasor. "Extension of Kiswahili during the German colonial administration in continental Tanzania (former Tanganyika), 1885-1917." Swahili Forum; 3 (1996), S. 155-159, 1996. https://ul.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A11639.

Brammer, Birgit. "Adele Steinwender : observations of a German woman living on a Berlin mission station as recorded in her diary." Diss., Pretoria : [s.n.], 2008. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-08202008-173954/.

Verber, Jason. "The conundrum of colonialism in postwar Germany." Diss., University of Iowa, 2010. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/758.

Ikobwa, James Meja Lusava. "Gedachtnis und Genozid im zeitgenossischen historischen Afrika-Roman." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/79894.

Maderspacher, Alois. "European colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa : the Germans, French, and British in Cameroon, 1884-1939." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609449.

Andreys, Clemence. "Qingdao dans l’imaginaire colonial allemand du premier vingtième siècle." Thesis, Lyon 2, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011LYO20079.

Parkhurst-Atger, Isabella. "Franz Baermann Steiner - Précurseur du postcolonialisme." Thesis, Paris 3, 2010. http://www.theses.fr/2010PA030171.

Hanana, Chouk Imen. "Les rivalités coloniales germano-britanniques en Afrique noire entre les deux guerres : l'exemple de l'Afrique orientale et australe." Paris 12, 2004. https://athena.u-pec.fr/primo-explore/search?query=any,exact,990003947770204611&vid=upec.

Hanana, Chouk Imen Hanquart Évelyne. "Les rivalités coloniales germano-britanniques en Afrique noire entre les deux guerres l'exemple de l'Afrique orientale et australe /." Créteil : Université de Paris-Val-de-Marne, 2007. http://doxa.scd.univ-paris12.fr:8080/theses-npd/th0394777.htm.

Guerra, Hernandez Héctor Rolando 1969. "Ma(d)jermanes = passado colonial e presente diasporizado : reconstrução etnográfica de um dos últimos vestígios do socialismo colonial europeu." [s.n.], 2011. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/280790.

Hohenbild, Sonja. "Paths, Palimpsests and Voids of Dé kolon εl í za shɔn - Memorials and Memorial Cultures - Based on Examples/Voids in Sierra Leone_ and Germany_- A Path, Detours and [Proposal]-Essay in Notes and Images." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-22663.

Nadi, Selim. ""L'Europe est foutue" : fascisation et décolonisation : anticolonialisme et crainte du fascisme dans la genèse des nouvelles gauches radicales ouest-allemandes et françaises (1954-1975)." Thesis, Paris, Institut d'études politiques, 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019IEPP0026.

Levy-Jahanbakht, Dominique. "A la découverte de l'Iran entre tradition et modernité : récits de voyages en Iran entre 1906 et 1941 : quête de savoirs et discours interculturels de voyageurs germanophones." Thesis, Strasbourg, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018STRAC011/document.

Bullard, Daniel. "A deterritorialized history: investigating German colonialism through Deleuze and Guattari." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/47.

Davies, Margrit. "Public health and colonialism : the case of German New Guinea, 1884 - 1914." Phd thesis, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/143653.

Brummer, Christopher J. "Blood and iron in the sand : colonialism, politics and culture in German Southwest Africa /." 2001. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3019894.

Kennedy, Hollyamber. "Modernism’s Politics of Land: Settlement Colonialism and Migrant Mobility In the German Empire, from Prussian Poland to German Namibia, 1884-1918." Thesis, 2019. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-b3mb-ae55.

Bauer, Karel. "Sociologie genocidy v Německé jihozápadní Africe." Master's thesis, 2021. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-447238.

Santos, Cátia Alexandra Matos dos. "O sonho colonial do III Reich: A influência nacional-socialista na América Latina." Master's thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10362/60855.

Allen, Heather. "Experiencing literature – learning from experience: the application of neuroscience to literary analysis by example of representations of German colonialism in Uwe Timm’s Morenga." 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1993/4862.

Davis, Christian Stuart. "Colonialism, antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish descent in Imperial Germany, 1884-1912 /." 2005. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3176161.

Check, Nicasius Achu. "Conflict in the great lakes region of Africa : the Burundi experience, 1993-2000." Diss., 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1881.

Pereira, Natacha. "Portugal e Alemanha: o olhar colonial sobre a questão da "raça"." Master's thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10362/19753.

Sandler, Willeke. ""Colonizers are born, not made": Creating a Colonialist Identity in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945." Diss., 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10161/5543.

After the First World War, Germany lost its overseas territories, becoming Europe's first post-colonial nation. After 1919, and especially between 1933 and 1945, however, German colonialists advocated for the return of these colonies and for their central importance to Germany. This dissertation tells the paradoxical story of these colonialists' construction of a German national character driven by overseas imperialism despite the absence of a colonial reality to support this identity. In contrast to views of colonialism as marginal in Germany after the First World War or the colonialist organizations as completely subsumed under the Nazi regime, this dissertation uncovers both the colonialist organizations' continuing public presence and their assertive promotion of their overseas goals in the Third Reich. It also reveals the space available for debates over the contours of national identity in the public sphere of the Third Reich.

Using organizational records of colonialist groups and Nazi propaganda offices, the colonialist press and other publications, photography, graphics, films, and public opinion reports, this dissertation examines the vibrant two-million-strong colonial revisionist movement that flourished in the Third Reich. German colonialists, straddling between anachronistic fantasy and the National Socialist world-view, reintegrated overseas imperialism into Nazi Germany and thereby reinterpreted the meaning of Germanness. They proclaimed a new vision of German national identity that drew on the imagined glories of the past but also held out the promise of a revitalized future for Germany through Africa. They did so however in conflict with the Nazi regime's expansionist goals in Eastern Europe. Colonialists, however, elided disagreements in favor of projecting a public image that emphasized the deep interconnectedness of overseas colonialism and Nazi goals. Through their public agitation and cultural products, colonialists affirmed the continuing relevance of overseas colonialism to Germans in the Third Reich.

Reyes, Herrera Susana María. "La tejedora de coronas de Germán Espinosa (1982) : un ensayo de desmarginalización cultural." Thèse, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/11482.

Keady, Joseph. "A Translation of Dominik Nagl’s Grenzfälle with an Introductory Analysis of the Translation Process." 2020. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/881.