German and Scandinavian Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing German and Scandinavian Theses and Dissertations by Author "Boos, Sonja"

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    Mythos als Zivilisationskritik: Die Pragmatisierung einer erweiterten negativen Dialektik in Werken Heiner Müllers
    (University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Zimmermann, Nora; Boos, Sonja
    This thesis analyzes three works of the GDR dramatist Heiner Müller: his early prose poem Orpheus gepflügt, his learning play Mauser, and his late piece Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten. It demonstrates how Müller, throughout different career stages, pragmatizes myth to further critical thinking. Ancient Greek myths and Christian symbolism play a crucial role in Müller’s strategy of calling into question the very systems that lay claim to an absolute truth. Müller both alludes to and openly employs myths to identify their inherent dialectical tension operative in everyday life as well as in secular explanatory models used to legitimize political agendas. He expands Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of negative dialectics through an emphasis on the mythical pole of the dialectical dyad “myth and enlightenment.” By drawing attention to myths inherent in civilization, Müller opens up space for the imagination and the potential of the irrational to initiate change.
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    Subjectivity and (De)Humanization in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Puppe and HBO’s Westworld
    (University of Oregon, 2020-09-24) Vigeant, Christine; Boos, Sonja
    This thesis examines representations of female android subjectivities across three successive texts and media corresponding with three time periods: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story Der Sandmann (1816), Ernst Lubitsch’s silent comedy Die Puppe (1919), and the HBO science fiction series Westworld (2016-2018). All three stories engage the intersections of epistemology, subjectivity and gender, and feature portrayals of female automata and androids which significantly complicate and disrupt the contested terrain of human subjectivity in knowledge production and the conceptualization of human identity. Each work is analyzed as a representative of its distinct literary and cultural context – German Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism, respectively– to trace the evolution of subjectivity and the perceptivity of the human being from the Enlightenment to the 21st century. This work poses fundamental questions about the essence of humanness and the distortive effects of media on the ability to recognize the human in times of rapidly developing technological progress.