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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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• Theses and Dissertations

German Studies Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the German Studies department.

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• 1 Bachelors Thesis
• 12 Doctoral Dissertation
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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
• 1 Communism
• 1 Continental philosophy
• 1 Critical theory
• 1 Dauthendey, Max, 1867-1918
• 1 Deconstruction
• 1 Dorothea Strohal
• 1 Education
• 1 Enlightenment
• 1 Environmental justice
• 1 Fanon, Frantz, 1925-1961
• 1 Frankfurt school of sociology
• 1 Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt
• 1 German Empire
• 1 German Imperialism
• 4 German literature
• 2 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
• 1 Günderode, Karoline von, 1780-1806
• 1 Heiner Müller
• 1 Heiner Müller
• 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
• 1 Metaphysics
• 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
• 2 Walter Benjamin
• 1 Witbooi, Hendrik, -1905
• 1 Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941
• 1 Yoko Tawada
• 1 literary field
• 1 translation

Items (1-13) out of 13 results

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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

• Weimar Cinema

Dissertations

Sarah M. Harris Male Bias in Generic Statements: A Contrastive Analysis of English and German Nouns

Carolyn Hawkshaw The “Secret Inclination” of the German Weak Masculine Nouns: A Case of Usage-Driven Paradigmatic Change. A Diachronic Corpus Study (1350–1900)

Vera Felder Of Friends and Foes: A Corpus-Based Study of Conceptual Metaphor in the Discourse of Contemporary Right-Wing Populism in Germany

Landon Reitz Looking Up from the Page: Scenes of Reading in Medieval to Contemporary German Literature

Kumars Salehi The Dialectical Curmudgeon: Afterlives of Hegel in German Literature and Political Thought

Christine Vais A Diachronic Application of Frame Semantics to Meaning Change in Prepositions: The Case of German mit 

Evelyn Roth Meaning through Context – The Case of Discourse Neologisms: A Lexicological Approach to the Semiotic Nature and Function of Discourse Neologisms as an Extension to the Lexicographical Approach of Discourse Glossaries for COVID-19

Julia K. Schroeder Artificial Woman in the Box

Jonas Teupert Fugitive Forms: Literary Critiques of Modern Mobility

Melissa K. Winters From the Wartburg to Nuremberg: Richard Wagner, the Middle High German  Blütezeit , and Early Modernity

Jon Cho-Polizzi  A Different Village: Writing Place through Migration

Alicia Roy Authorship in Crisis: German Cinema and the Changing Roles of the Writer

Scott Shell The application of Peircean Semiotics to the Elder Futhark Tradition: Establishing Parameters for Magical Communication

Michael J. Fragomeni Optimality Theory and the Semiotic Triad: A New Approach for Songwriting, Sound Recording, and Artistic Analysis

Adrienne N. Merritt Recalling the Word: the Germanic Beguine “Sisters,” Memory, and the Question of Genre

Cara E. Tovey Life as a Dance: Lebensform and the Promise of an Alternative Modernity

Estes, George Phonetics and Sound Change:  Selected Problems in Germanic Phonology

Hench, Christopher Resonances in Middle High German: New Methodologies in Prosody

Hottman, Tara The Art of the Archive: Uses of the Past in the German Essay Film

Orich, Annika Artificial Aliens: Reproductive Imaginations in German Culture

Preseau, Lindsay “Kiezdeutsch, Kiezenglisch”: English in German Multilingual/-ethnic Speech Communities 

Fockele, Kenneth Songs of the Self: Authorship and Mastery in Minnesang

Haselbeck, Sebastian Dieses furchtbare Doppelgängertum der Repräsentation. Gespenstische Figuren der Souveränität zwischen 1910 und 1919

Ingalls, Jenna  Else-Lasker-Schüler’s Collaborative Avant Garde: Text and Image in Berlin c. 1910

Woods, Peter  Slovene Bilingualism and German Language Contact

Born, Erik Sparks to Signals: Literature, Science and Wireless Technology, 1800-1930

Johnson, Courtney Inside in the City: Domestic Space in the Literature and Film of Weimar Berlin

Savoth, Eric Responding to Pain: Emotion, Medicine, and Culture between German Naturalism and Modernism

Almog, Yael Hebrew Reminiscences: Global Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in the Rise of Hermeneutic Thinking

Dickinson, Kristin  (filed in Comparative Literature with Deniz Göktürk as Adviser) Translation and the Experience of Modernity: A History of German Turkish Connectivity

Dobryden, Paul Cinema as Environment: The Emergence of German Film Culture

Gordon, Kevin A. Traces in the Desert: The Poetics of Sand, Dust and Ash in German Literature

Manthripragada, Ashwin J. Constituting a Self through an Indian Other. A Study of Select Works by Stefan Zweig and Hermann Hesse

Musanovic, Emina The Shadow: An Unruly Modern Specter

Etzler, Melissa Writing from the Periphery: W. G. Sebald and Outsider Art

LeBlanc, Mary Ellen Inheritance and Inflectional Morphology: Old High German, Latin, Early New High German, and Koine Greek

Beals, Kurt From Dada to Digital: Experimental Poetry in the Media Age

Backman, Donald The Topographic Imagination: Kerouac, Regener, Kafka and the Quest for Self-Realization

Haubenreich, Jacob The Materialities of Writing in Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Kolar, Meredith Cognitive Structures Underlying Gendered Language Usage in Germany: Narration and Linguistic Fieldwork

St. Clair, Michael Germanic Origins from the Perspective of the Y-Chromosome

Zahrt, Jennifer The Astrological Imaginary in Early Twentieth-Century German Culture

Bergerson, Jeremy Apperception and Linguistic Contact between German and Afrikaans

Layne, Priscilla Black Voices, German Rebels: Acts of Masculinity in Postwar Popular Culture

Huffmaster, Michael Reading Kafka’s Mind: Categories, Schemas, Metaphors

Price, Timothy The Old Saxon Leipzig Heliand Manuscript Fragment (MS L): New Evidence Concerning Luther, the Poet, and Ottonian Heritage

Rahman, Sabrina Designing Empire: Austria and the Applied Arts, 1864-1918

Sakalauskaite, Aida Zoometaphors in English, German, and Lithuanian: A Corpus Study

Trop, Gabriel Aesthetic Exercises and Poetic Form in the Works of Hölderlin, Novalis, and Rococo Poets

Gramling, David Where Here Begins: Monolingualism and the Spatial Imagination

Henderson, Dayton The Cult of Antigone Conflicts in Commemorating Germany’s Fallen Soldiers

Kooiker, Jason Standard German and Dialect in the Swiss-German Classroom 

Schechtman, Robert Community and Utopia: The Discourse of Gemeinschaft and the Search for a New Modernity in Germany

Yamini-Hamedani, Azadeh Waves of Translation: Goethe, Hafez, Nietzsche, Zoroaster

more dissertations 2008-1908

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German Language and Literature: Dissertations & Theses

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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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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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• Next: Encyclopedias & Handbooks >>
• Last Updated: Mar 4, 2024 9:12 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/german

Dissertations

Abstraction and Institution

Verschollenheit: Figuren der Rechts(un)fähigkeit im Werk Kafkas

“Phenomenology of Video Games: Space, Time, and Perspective”

“The Other Among Us: Early Modern German Discourses on Atypical Bodies, 1500-1770”.

Uncommon Realities: Cultural Perspectives on Illusions

Large Print, Small Forms: The Birth of German Modernism from the Newspaper

“Manuscript and Medium: The Amanuenses of the Age of Goethe”

Artistry, Agency, and the Everyday in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg’s Works

“Mutterherz: Motherhood and Dedifferentiation in German Realism”

On Schicksal : The Return of Tragedy in Modernity

“Die Idylle in der Literatur der deutschen Nachkriegszeit”

The Economics of Sight: Early Photography and Commodity Capitalism, 1839-1867

How to Do Sleep with Words: Sleep Experiments in Literature, Science, and Society, 1899–1929

Mathematik ist immer Geist: The Persistence of Mathematical Humanism and Aesthetic Rationality in Postwar Germany

World Literature in Practice: The Orientalist’s Manuscript between the Ottoman Empire and Germany

Happy Endings: On Affirmative Art, PhD 2020

Concert Halls & Weekly Journals. Fictive Music Criticism in German Romanticism

Touching Temperature: Questions of Measurement and Feeling, 1870–1930

Old Books, New Times: Medieval Manuscripts and German Literature around 1800

Phlogisticated Relations: Lichtenberg and Ritter’s Readings of Chemistry

The Science of Expression: Ausdruckskunde and Bodily Knowledge in German Modernist Culture

Readers' Lore. Media, Literature, and the Making of Folk-Lore

The Romance of Love and Law: Marriage in Twelfth-Century German Romance

Rough Surfaces The Collage Works of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann

Collaborating with the Enemy Wartime Analyses of Nazi Germany

Borrowing Werther: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Reading as Listening: The Birth of Cultural Acoustics 1764–1803

Scenographies of Perception: Recasting the Sensuous in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, Proust

Schools for Seeing: German Photobooks between 1924 and 1937 as Perception Primers and Sites of Knowledge

Stories from Earth Adalbert Stifter and the Poetics of Earth History

Mysticism & Confessional Conflict in Post-Reformation Germany: The Mystical Theology of Valentin Weigel (1533–1588)

Cinema Non Facit Saltus : Early German Film and the Cinematic Psyche

Early German Cinema and Dogmatic Jurisprudence

Horror Vacui : A Cultural History of Air Around 1900

Conceiving Generation: The Novel and the Nuclear Family around 1800

Original Compiler: Notation as Textual Practice in Theodor Fontane

Eschatology and the Reinvention of History: Theological Interventions in German Modernism, 1920–1938

Creaturely Lives: Romanticism and the Rhetoric of Natural History

Ineffable Histories: German Mysticism at the Jahrhundertwende

Earwitnesses: Noise in German Modernist Writing

Rehabilitationen Roms: Die Römische Antike in Der Deutschen Kultur Zwischen Winckelmann und Niebuhr

Grounding Fictions: Systematic Skepticism and Critical Doubt 1792–1807

Epistemic Strategies in Twentieth-Century German Theatre: Brecht, Weiss, Müller

The Archimedean Podium: Public Speeches in Postwar Germany, 1953–1967

Sociability and Its Enemies Political Theory and Literature in West Germany After 1945

Medien der Unmittelbarkeit: Dingkonzepte und Wahrnehmungstechniken 1918–1939

Ein Unendlicher Dialog: Das Projekt Der Frühromantik In Den Athenaeums-Fragmenten

Explications: Etymology as Language Science, 1822–1941

Moving Bodies: Poetic Theatricality in the Late Enlightenment

Word and Image in the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk Manuscript and Cultural Contexts for the Vernacular Volume I and II

Gewalt Der Musik Literatur und Musikkritik UM 1800

New German Documentary: The Discourse of Personal Non-Fiction in the Age of Media Convergence

Acts of Understanding: Spontaneous Subjectivity, Hermeneutic Receptivity, and the Consequences of German Idealism

The Legacy of Chronos: Temporality of Revolution in Culture, Sciences, and Politics

Historical Fictions: Representations of Nineteenth-Century Jewish Salons

Reading Riddles: Rhetorics of Obscurity From Romanticism to Freud

The Space Between the Pictures: Photography, Literature, and the Late-Weimar Photo-Essay

Gelegenheitsdichtung und Geselligkeitsdichtung an Herzogin Anna Amalias Hof in Weimar und in Tiefurt (1754–1807) I & II

Constellation Nietzsche/Benjamin

Written Friendship Hannah Arendt, Brigitte Reimann, Christa Wolf

Forms of Disenchantment: Kant and Neo-Kantianism in the Early Work of Walter Benjamin

Motion Sickness: Literatures of Migration and Minority

The Promise and the Body: Marriage in German Literature around 1800

Transformations of the German Novel: Simplicissimus in Eighteenth-century adaptations

Department of German Princeton University 203 East Pyne Hall Princeton, NJ 08544 (609) 258-4142 [email protected]

© 2024 The Trustees of Princeton University Last updated: 4 April 2024

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Access to Dissertations

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global Includes more than 2 million entries.The single, central, authoritative resource for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses.
• EBSCO Open Dissertations
• Interlibrary Loan the Library does not routinely purchase dissertations from other institutions. However, many are available through InterLibrary Services. Search in WorldCat for easiest ordering.
• Request a purchase for the library If you would like the Library to purchase a dissertation, contact the Librarian for the Department.

DissOnline : Open access dissertations online, a service of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek .

Austrian dissertation database : now combined with the Verbundsuchmaschine

Helveticat . The Swiss National Library has a copy of all dissertations written in the country. Add the word “diss” to your search terms in order to retrieve dissertations.

EthOs : British Library dissertations

Index to Theses : comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts in universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland since 1716.

Buy Your Own

As a last resort , you can purchase dissertations directly.

Dissertation Express : US, from ProQuest

• Verify using the tools listed above that the document is not otherwise available to you free before ordering.
• If Interlibrary Loan can't locate a copy to borrow.
• Use a credit card or fax payment.
• Orders are shipped directly to you.

Submitting your dissertation

• Guidelines at JHU
• Graduate Board formatting details

Related Guide

• Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Print Catalogues

• Catalogues in the library collections will usually treat a particular subject, time period, or institution.
• You can locate printed catalogues of dissertations easily in the online catalog . 
• Or in WorldCat .
• For either database, do a Subject Keyword search on:  Dissertations Germany bibliography.
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• Last Updated: Aug 7, 2023 2:21 PM
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"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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• Arts & Sciences
• Graduate Studies in A&S

Recent Dissertations

Dissertations from 2006 to present.

Peter Ogunniran:  Mediating the Colonial Other in the German Empire

Rebecca Jordan:  The Cyborg Animal in the Anthropocene: Nonhuman Species’ Narratives of Survival in Contemporary German and North American Literature

Sandra Weber:  Desorientierung, Vertikalisierung und zerfallende Konturen: Ein Vergleich der literarischen Welten Kazuo Ishiguros, W. G. Sebalds, Peter Weiss’ und Franz Kafkas

Heidi Grek: Meta-Epic: Generic Interplay in Goethe’s Faust and its Significance for Weltliteratur

Anna-Rebecca Nowicki: Die Poetik der Abweichung: Menschen mit Behinderung und ihre Familien in der deutschen und österreichischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts

Claire Ross: Adaptation Artists: Aesthetic and Social Adaptation in the Work of Turkish German Author Yadé Kara

Amy Braun:  Impossible Communities in Prague’s German Gothic: Nationalism, Degeneration, and the Monstrous Feminine in Gustav Meyrink’s Der Golem (1915)

Mary Le Gierse:  A Critique of Pedagogy in Goethe's "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" (1795): Linking the Tower Society and the Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza

Simone Pfleger:  (Un)Doing and (Un)Becoming: Temporality, Subjectivity, and Relationality in Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Film

Darina Stamova:  Melancholie in Uwe Timms Romanen "Rot" und "Morenga"

Angineh Djavadghazaryans:  Shame in the Nineteenth-Century Village Tale in the German-Speaking Context, 1843-1897

Ervin Malakaj:  Anxious Telling: Narrative Modes and German Literary Production, 1871-1900

Brooke Shafar:  Imagination, Emotion, and Adolescent Socialization in German Literature from Romanticism to 1901

Benjamin Davis:  Masculinity and Politics in Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's Dramatic Works

Lisa Haegele:  Revisions of Violence in West German Cinema, 1960-1980

Petra Watzke:  Women in the Context of Industrialization and Labor in Nineteenth-Century German Literature by Women

Georgia Anna Leeper:  Feeling Doctrine: Religious Meanings of Emotion in Sixteenth-Century German Literature

Melissa Olson Meeks:  Fixed and Fleeting: An Exploration of Film Poster Art from Weimar Germany, 1919-1933

Corey Twitchell:  The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss

Russell Alt-Haaker:  Coloring Catastrophe: De/Coding Color in Representations of the Holocaust

Anne Jost-Fritz:  Nature in Contemporary German Photography

Faruk Pasic:  A Multiplicity of Masculinities: The Formation of National Identity in Imperial Germany and its Influence on Notions of the Masculine

Norma Suvak:  "Nur eine Hausfrau": Continuities and Discontinuities in Women's Advice Writing from 1865-1916

Jocelyn Aksin:  Representations of Memory in Texts by Turkish-German Authors

Sarah Hillenbrand Varela:  Ebner's Ethical Creatures: Animals and Humanity in the Work of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Ruxandra Looft:  Mobile Ideas and (Im)Mobile Subjects: Women Writers and Women's Fashion Magazines in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Austria

Shane Peterson:  Picturing the Text: Illustrated Editions of Marlitt, Raabe, and Storm In the Age of the Industrial Book (1857-90)

Magdalen Majors:  Reading, Travel and the Pedagogy of Growing up in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany

Christopher Bailes:  Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hermann Broch: The Need for Fiction and Logic: Moral Philosophy

Patrick Brugh:  Mediating War in Early Modern German Prose

Melissa Laugallies:  Magical Objects and Subverted Subjects: Fetishism and the Supernatural in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Tales

Anne Popiel:  Vilém Flusser’s Media Philosophy: Tracing the Digital in Nature through Art

Nancy Twilley:  Reading Gender in Late Nineteenth-Century German Young Adult Literature

Victoria Vygodskaia Rust:  Fashioning Women under Totalitarian Regimes: "New Women" of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia

Necia Chronister:  Topographies of Sexuality: Space, Movement, and Gender in German Literature and Film since 1989

Suzuko Knott:  Body – Language – Media: Transformation and Translatability in the Works of Yoko Tawada

Bartell Berg:  Nature and Environment in Nineteenth-Century Austrian Literature

Theodore Jackson:  Hesse as Ambivalent Modernist

Julia Kleinheider:  Illusions of Armor: The Haptic Body in Ernst Jünger’s Early Works

Erika Rinker:  (S)elective, Mimetic Aphasia: Stutter and Silence Fin-De-Siecle Critical Modernist Literature

Gwyneth Cliver:  Musil, Broch, and the Mathematics of Modernism

Per Simfors:  Extrakte des Schweigens Zu Sprache und Stil bei Peter Altenberg

Robert Feldman:  Journalismus als Beruf: Truth and the Anti-Semitic Journalist Stereotype in the Writings of Maxim Biller and Rafael Seligmann

Jason Baker:  Prussia’s Headless Horseman: Ideological Appropriations of Ferdinand von Schill in Nineteenth-Century German Literature

Gregory Knott : Arnold Stadler and the Metaphysics of Heimat

Heike Polster:  The Aesthetics of Passage: The Imag(in)ed Experience of Time in W.G. Sebald and Peter Handke

Nancy Richardson :  Darlings to Deviants: German Women Authors and the Taboo of Female Violence in Wilhelmine Germany (1880-1910)

Fred Yaniga:  Postmodernism in the Prose Writing of Thomas Bernhard

Kamaal N. Haque: The Dynamics of Space in Goethe’s “West-östlicher Divan”

Mary Krasan Rodena:  Uwe Timm’s Postcolonial Novels

Carrie Smith:  Realism’s Gross Anatomy: The Male Grotesque in 1960s West German New Realism and Black Realism

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German Studies

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How to Find German Dissertations

How to find austrian and swiss dissertations.

• Libraries and Archives
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Photo: Gissel Rios

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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Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

You are here, phd program in german, requirements for the phd program in german, 1. course work: .

Students take 4 courses per term for 2 years, with a total of 16 courses required; 3 of those courses may be audited; GMAN 501, Methods of Teaching German as a World Language, is required for all students. Students should consult with the Director of Graduate Study (DGS), who must approve each schedule. In addition, one or two of the courses taken for credit may be Directed Readings under the supervision of a faculty member, with the approval of the DGS. 

Up to 2 credits may be awarded for prior work done at the graduate level, provided the student’s first-year record at Yale is very good and courses taken for credit at Yale are not less than 12.

The German Literature Track: 4 courses may be taken outside the department. The German Studies Track: 7 courses may be taken outside the department. At least 4 of these courses should be taken in one department, program, or field which is then represented in the oral exams as the student’s “minor.”*

2. Languages:

In the third semester of study, students are required to give evidence of a reading knowledge of one language (other than their native language) that is highly relevant to the study of German literature and culture. The department strongly recommends French, but other languages may possibly be approved on consultation with the DGS. It is possible to fulfill this requirement by taking a language exam in the relevant department, by taking a reading course with a resulting grade of A, or by way of other measures of experience such as studying in another country.  

3. Teaching:

Students are typically required to teach in their third and fourth years. The sixth year, following the Dissertation Fellowship, is also in most cases a teaching year. In the third and fourth years, students teach the Elementary and Intermediate sequence (110-120-130), followed by a Teaching Fellow position with a faculty member in the German Department. Students in the combined German-Film program split their teaching equally between German and Film. In the sixth year, students are free to seek teaching in German or other departments. Teaching assignments should always be made in close consultation with the DGS, DUS and, if applicable, the dissertation advisor and Language Program Director. Teaching assignments are typically made in the late Spring for the upcoming academic year, but may not be fully finalized until the preregistration period for a given semester.

4. The Qualifying Examination (5th term):

The Qualifying Examination assesses the students’ knowledge and understanding of the discipline and their skills across a broad range of topics in the field. The examination is divided into two parts, to be taken during reading period of the fifth term of study.

Part I. Written examination. In this portion of the comprehensive the student will write a closed-book exam (four essays in six hours). Students may write in English or German; there will be a choice of questions. Sample questions are available.

SIX SECTIONS of examination in German literature and film are intended to give students an overview of the field:

6. German film of the 20th-21st century

The reading list is a departmental list, updated regularly by the faculty.

Preparation of readings should begin well in advance of the fifth term. Students are encouraged to form study groups and meet with faculty.

Part II. One-hour oral examination, a week after the written examination. In this portion of the comprehensive exam, the student will discuss the written exam with three examiners to elaborate on answers and hear comments. Students who fail the written or the oral exam can repeat the respective part once within a timeframe of eight weeks. 

5. Study Abroad:

Year-long or semester-long study abroad typically occurs in the fifth and sixth years, either in the context of the Dissertation Fellowship or with the support of external fellowships. Students also frequently participate in German Sommersemester courses (May-July) in the context of the Baden-Württemberg exchange.

6. The Prospectus and Prospectus Defense (6th term):

The prospectus for the dissertation must be submitted at the end of the sixth term of study, typically in May. It should be approximately 15-20 pages in length. It should: 

1. provide an overview of the dissertation project, 2. situate the project within the relevant secondary literature, 3. describe the scholarly contribution that the dissertation is expected to make, 4. give an overview of each chapter’s focus, and 5. it must include a bibliography of relevant primary and secondary texts.

The prospectus should be written in close consultation with the dissertation advisor, who must approve it before it is submitted to the faculty. 

Shortly after the student has submitted the prospectus, the faculty will convene to discuss the prospectus with the student. If serious concerns are raised, the student will be expected to revise the prospectus.

Students should also compile a reading list of 20-30 works relevant to their proposed project, which will also be discussed during the defense.

7. The Dissertation and the Dissertation Fellowship:

The culmination of the student’s work is the dissertation. Each student will choose a dissertation committee of three people, one (sometimes two) of whom will serve as the student’s primary advisor(s). Drafts of each chapter must be submitted in a timely fashion to all members of the student’s committee: the first chapter should be submitted to the committee by February 1 of the fourth year; the second chapter by January 1 of the fifth year. A formal chapter review will be held for the first chapter, during which the student will discuss his or her work with the members of the dissertation committee and the DGS. The first chapter of the dissertation should be presented in the departmental colloquium not later than the first semester of the fifth year. The dissertation is submitted in March of the sixth year, prior to the Graduate School’s announced deadline. Following the submission, the DGS will convene a dissertation defense. After a brief presentation on the theme, claims, and method of the dissertation, the committee, adviser(s) and DGS will ask questions. This may lead to broader discussions which typically include publication plans and postdoctoral goals. The defense is typically a public event, with invitation list to be decided in consultation with the DGS. The defense will be concluded by a vote of the committee, the adviser(s), and the DGS. Official approval of the dissertation takes place in the form of written evaluations; hence the defense is primarily meant as a capstone event and opportunity for conversation. The dissertation is ideally 200-250 double-spaced pages in length.

Helpful Links:

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs & Policies webpage Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs & Policies handbook The Combined PhD Program in German Studies/Film and Media Studies

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dissertations in german studies 2022

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Grube, Eric. An Intra-National Borderland: Regional Conflicts & Affinities Across the Austro-Bavarian Border, 1918-1955. Boston College, Department of History. Advisor: Devin O. Pendas, Nicole M. Eaton, Erin R. Hochman. July 2022. Abstract:

This dissertation studies the cooperation and competition among various right-wing paramilitaries in the southeastern portions of German-speaking Europe. My work overturns stereotypical, teleological narratives that presume any far-fight German extremism inherently meant “the rise of Nazism.” Instead, I reveal a complex mosaic of far-right paramilitary men, whose allegiances to and rivalries with each other oscillated with shifting situational contexts across one of the most contested and chaotic borders in interwar Europe. Consequently, my research results open new possibilities for conceptualizing volatile twentieth-century borderlands as stemming not just from international conflicts but also from intra-national infighting. Paramilitary men on both sides of the Austro-Bavarian border considered themselves German, but they conceived of their “Germanness” in very specific terms: southeastern, Catholic, and Alpine in contrast to the northern, Protestant, and Prussian variant of Germandom. How did right-wing groups blend greater German nationalism with their southeastern German regionalism? The hybridization of these two loyalties created an intoxicating affective brew that brought together right-wing agents on both sides of this border in fraternal solidarity but also instigated fratricidal violence, all as these German groups sought to settle the question of what it meant to be German. National identities founded on southeastern regional impulses thus formed a constitutive contradiction of greater German nationalism. The intersectionality of regionalism and nationalism generated internecine right-wing violence, as these groups disagreed over how to implement disparate versions of unification. The result was twenty years of street brawls, assassinations, terror, Putsch attempts, mobilizations, and transborder smuggling of munitions, troops, and funds. This region was thus a paragon of borderlands conflict. The crux was that it was an intra-national borderland: to these activists, national union should have been so simple, making it all the more frustrating when it eluded them. The assumed common nationality meant any perceived dissident was not simply a political opponent but something far worse: a traitor. Paradoxically, the supposedly “agreed-upon” national identity exacerbated borderland chaos and violence. Historians of Eastern and Central Europe have falsely conflated borderlands with spaces between nations in which multi-national populations struggle among each other for hegemony. My work overturns such assumptions by offering the first analysis of European borderlands violence stemming from a perceived communal nationality. This project thus serves as a needed corrective to the scholarship, offering a richly informed regional analysis with significant interventions in the broader fields of borderlands and right-wing extremism.

Healy, Charlotte. Paul Klee's Hand. New York University, Institute of Fine Arts. Advisor: Robert Lubar Messeri. May 2022. Abstract:

An essential yet largely unacknowledged component of the aesthetic of Swiss-born modern artist and Bauhaus master Paul Klee is an awareness of the human hand’s capacity to create and to touch. That is, Klee’s artworks make us aware of his hands and our own hands, of the hand as the artist’s primary tool and the body’s chief source of haptic sensory information. Klee endeavored to subvert the long-standing fetishization of the “artist’s hand” by curbing his natural skill as a draftsman. The rich and diverse textural effects visible on the surfaces of many of his pictorial works appeal to the sense of touch; this tactile quality is the result of his investigation and exploitation of the inherent physical properties of his materials, most notably textile substrates, malleable grounds, and pastose paints. Klee also employed several strategies to emphasize the handmade and one-of-a-kind nature of his artworks, suggesting that, unlike many of his Bauhaus colleagues, he saw fine art as more connected to manual craft than to technology or industry. This dissertation draws on a range of art historical approaches, from technical to theoretical to iconographic and thematic, in order to contextualize and explore these and other manifestations of the hand in Klee’s art and thought, particularly during the Weimar period.    

Prado, Dante. The Crisis of Laughter at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century: Laughter in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain . University of Calgary, Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Advisor: Martin Wagner. June 2022. Abstract:

Over the past decade, laughter has been the focus of significant research in literary and cultural studies, with scholars often concentrating on the period of Modernism (that is, the time around 1900) as a crucial moment in which debates about laughter intensified. However, the studies on laughter in Modernism have not yet paid any attention to one of the decisive novels from this period, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain ( Der Zauberberg , 1924), in which laughter features prominently. Additionally, scholarship on Thomas Mann has not critically attended to laughter in The Magic Mountain. To improve our understanding of the period of Modernism and this novel, I analyze the representation of laughter in The Magic Mountain against the background of two recent studies on laughter in Modernism (Parvulescu 2010; Nikopolous 2018) to reveal the extent to which Mann’s novel fits within existing conceptions of Modernist laughter. Anca Parvulescu considers that Modernist laughter challenges seriousness and, by disrupting norms of behaviour, possesses revolutionary potential, while Nikopoulos identifies Modernist laughter as a primarily negative sign, subject to pathological interpretations. The close reading of select laugh episodes (occurrences where laughter is highlighted or commented upon by the narrator or another character) demonstrates that the novel’s representation of laughter deviates from these recent characterizations of Modernist laughter. By drawing attention to the novel’s interest in the absence of laughter, the analysis shows another facet of Modernist laughter, not explained by characterizations of disruption or pathology. Namely, the study finds that the novel represents a crisis of laughter that is connected to a crisis of sociability and, as an extension of this, to a crisis of Bildung. This finding serves to distinguish between different characterizations and moments in the representation of laughter in the novel. The crisis of laughter observed in Mann’s novel could provide a different vantage point of Modernist laughter. Finally, the mentioned crisis could be extrapolated to other Modernist novels, especially German Modernist novels that dialogue with the Bildungsroman tradition.                                    

Reitz, Landon. Looking Up from the Page: Scenes of Reading in Medieval and Modern German Literature. University of California, Berkeley, Department of German. Advisors: Niklaus Largier, Lilla Balint, Jonathan Sheehan. July 2022. Abstract:

This dissertation examines scenes of reading – a literary motif where one or more figures are portrayed in the act of reading – in German literature from the High Middle Ages to today. Against the pressure to interpret such scenes as depictions of historic or exemplary reading practices, I analyze them as imaginative theorizations of reading, as nexuses of imagery, form, and content that reflect on, explicate, and influence the role of reading in a textual culture. As an integral part of a text’s poetical structure, these scenes render the reading process visible, exposing it to critique and reflection. In my analysis of several texts, including a medieval Arthurian romance, a late medieval devotional text, a nineteenth-century novella, and a contemporary narrative of migration, I demonstrate how the matrix of people, practices, and technologies that constitute reading scenes have affected and continue to affect popular as well as academic discourses on this fundamental cultural practice. By elucidating the theoretical and meaning-making capacities of scenes of reading, my project offers a unique approach to the study of reading: it incorporates the diversity of historic reading practices with the symbolic potency of reading’s representation to explicate reading’s poetological role in literature.

Schätz, Katharina. Österreichische Literatur auf dem Präsentierteller. Eine empirisch-historische Untersuchung des Literaturprogramms der österreichischen Kulturforen im Ausland. Universität Wien, Institut für Germanistik. Advisor: Wynfrid Kriegleder. July 2022. Abstract: 

The study focuses on the examination of the literary program of the Austrian Cultural Forums abroad and their predecessor institutions, restricted to the first four locations. While the institute in Rome dates back to the Cultural Agreement of 1935 and was reopened after the Second World War, the institutes in Paris (1954), London and New York (both 1956) were founded in connection with the State Treaty and offer a certain comparability of programming tactics due to their common Western orientation. Archival materials from Rome and New York, some of which were evaluated for the first time, as well as from the Austrian State Archives were used for the analysis, as were expert interviews with those responsible for programs in the Diplomatic Service and with German/Austrian studies scholars who (did) cooperate with the Cultural Forums on a regular basis. In a first step, the consistent guidelines, changes and ruptures in the literature segment were presented in the context of the possibilities and structures of foreign cultural policy as a means of state communication. The second part of the work is embedded in the framework of canon research, in which the concrete selection of literature is analyzed. In the pursuit of this, it was not only possible to ascertain sustainable effects achieved in a cultural diplomacy process, some of which radiate back to Austria, but also a kind of friction between the inner-Austrian literary landscape and the needs or possibilities of foreign cultural policy work. Depending on the constellation, these lead to divergent images of Austrian literature at home and abroad or to new approaches in the sense of targeted rapprochements. It could also be shown that the literary sector, which was always confronted with the language barrier, had a high status within cultural diplomacy at times over the last seventy years. 

Schmitz, Christoph. Chaos and Control: Indexicality and the Human Voice in Contemporary German Fiction. Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies. Advisor: Dr. Richard Langston. June 2022. Abstract:

When affordable recording technologies hit the mass market in the 1950s and 1960s, German writers discovered new poetic possibilities. By capturing concrete vocal traces, or indexes, of human beings, sound technologies like radios, tape recorders, and answering machines promised access to concrete lives and, subsequently, began crowding the pages of German novels. In so doing, they also questioned the traditional role of the narrative voice. This dissertation advances the concept of literary indexicality by arguing that one of contemporary German literature’s greatest innovations is its intermedial translation of acoustic signals into written words. Literary indexicality reveals how fiction engages indexical effects—the traces of human bodies commonly recorded by non-literary media—by transporting the immediacy of disembodied voices from recordings into fictional narratives.

Soria, Charlotte. May Day, Place and Time of the Social Construction of the National Socialist "People's Community" (1933-1939). Sorbonne Université, Histoire moderne et contemporaine. Advisor: Johann Chapoutot. December 2022. Abstract:

May Day, an eminently political holiday of the socialist workers' movement, became with the celebration of May Day 1933 an official holiday of the National Socialist regime, an embodiment of its social community project, the "Volksgemeinschaft". But did these political rituals really contribute to the creation of a social order or were they merely a deceptive reflection of the regime's communication? In fact, May Day - a public holiday and festive day since 1933/34 - was a device of power(s), of inclusion and exclusion, which aimed at this social fabrication through political and official celebrations but also through the development of leisure activities within enterprises. It contributed to the emergence of a new, unequal and racist social order through classical mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion or even social ascension for the benefit of the “Volksgenossen” and “Volksgenossinnen” thus defined, not only through coercion but also in a constant process of negotiation. The festive and media arrangements had disappointing results, as the organisers (Joseph Goebbels) did not succeed in implanting the partisan mobilisation model inherited from the NSDAP in the heart of German society. In addition to this model, which was particularly highlighted in the media, new social rights were created: the right to holidays - guaranteed by this public holiday, among others - the right to leisure and tourism, as well as access to the consumption of "community services", including the festive evenings organised everywhere for the benefit of Robert Ley's DAF. At the same time, Jewish Germans were excluded from these "community" rights with difficulty. This exclusion clearly defined the "People's Community", while its meaning remained open to debate between "Community of action" through participation, "Community of effort" through processes of distinction, and "Community of leisure".

Sullivan-Thomsett, Chantal. Protest Never Goes out of Style: The German Green Party and the Gentrification of Protest. University of Leeds, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. Advisors: Ingo Cornils & Jonathan Dean. December 2022. Abstract:

In many Western democracies, protest has become a normalised form of individual and collective political expression, even for political parties. Progressive political parties support, ‘sponsor’, and participate in street demonstrations and encourage and mobilise their party members to turn out. Yet, existing scholarly explanations for the interaction of institutional and extra-institutional politics often underplay the role protest plays for mainstream(ing) or established progressive political parties. Previous research focuses on conceptual frameworks which capture either party organisational types and structures, or party-internal ideological shifts. Indeed, such approaches underexplore the legacy of protest or social movement ancestry within a political party and ignore how this interaction of protest and party politics is experienced by individual party members. Using the contemporary German Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) as a case study, this thesis remedies this omission by analysing party and protest interactions as part of a broader political style I term ‘gentrified protest’. I apply the analytical framework of gentrified protest to data generated through interpretative ethnographic methods to demonstrate the ways that the German Greens in 2018/2019 exhibited the political style of gentrified protest. As a result, this analysis shows how the everyday activism of Green Party members still involves interaction with protest. These are demonstrated through party participation at non-violent, tame street demonstrations or the performance of support online. Protest remains an authentic feature within the German Green brand, highlighted by the concerted effort to maintain links with the party’s past during a rebrand of party principles. Party members, and their role as multi-level marketers performing personalised political communication in party and protest activism, legitimise and reproduce the party’s participatory and democracy-focused political style. However, this aesthetic of participation and democracy is not always experienced in reality, reminding scholars to interrogate ‘official’ party understandings and conceptualisations of party image, processes, and activism.

Yonover, Jason Maurice. Early Modern Naturalism in Modern German Thought. Johns Hopkins University. Advisors: Katrin Pahl, Yitzhak Y. Melamed. May 2022. Abstract:

In this dissertation, I explore how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century shapes of naturalism impact the thought of several key figures on the cusp of or firmly within the nineteenth-century German tradition. By “naturalism” I mean here the view according to which there is nothing but nature. In clarifying the legacy of early modern versions of this view in the modern German context, I contribute to recent scholarship in at least two main ways. Of course, any given intellectual context can be understood from any number of perspectives. But I argue across the dissertation that central German thinkers grasped the allure of strict early modern formulations of naturalism given their consistency, their explanatory power, and more—and were decisively also then forced to confront the difficulties such thinking presented for prevailing notions of God, humanity, and human knowledge in particular. In short, I propose in this dissertation that the naturalist perspective establishing robust continuity in nature posed a substantial challenge to an entire era, as is evident from a close look at several prominent representatives. Finally, although my aims in this dissertation are primarily intellectual-historical, I also ultimately suggest that the difficulties resulting from a consistent commitment to naturalism continue to loom large.