Postgraduate research abstracts

Current topics of PhD research in German Studies at Birmingham include: transcultural childhood memories of the Second World War; cultural commemorations in the GDR; Nietzsche and the Dionysian; Goth subculture in the GDR; Thomas Mann and T. S. Eliot; and recent German novels set in the First World War.

Previous students have been awarded doctorates for work on Heinrich von Kleist, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Günter Grass and Salman Rushdie, the East German writer Wolfgang Hilbig, Oswald Spengler, a comparative study of British and German youth movements, and non-democratic Conservatism in Germany. Masters degrees have been awarded for research in a wide range of topics, including corpus linguistics, contemporary German-Swiss literature, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and post-‘Wende’ literary and political controversies.

A selection of recent postgraduate research theses is listed below (in reverse chronological order).

• Politics and the moving image: Contemporary German and Austrian cinema through the lens of Benjamin, Kracauer and Kluge
  Mukhida, Leila (2015)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5669/
• Literary uses of biblical imagery in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius, Kafka’s Die Verwandlungand Thomas Mann’s Der Erwählte
  Hunter, Helen Elizabeth (2014)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5684/
• Nietzsche, Goethe and the nineteenth-century tradition of Bildung
  Green, James Edward (2014)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5163/
• Shakespeare and German reunification: the interface of politics and performance
  Oliver, Kate Emily (2013)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4641/
• Dichter, Denker, Diplomaten: German writers and cultural diplomacy after the First World War (1919-1933)
  Windsor, Tara Talwar (2013)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4166/
• Eros and the Creative Process in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig and Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Il fuoco
  Wood, Jessica (2013)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4180/
• ‘The still point of the turning world': a comparative investigation of the portrayal of cyclical time and rebirth in T. S. Eliot’s 'The Waste Land' and Thomas Mann’s 'Der Zauberberg'
  Young, Primrose (2013)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4132/
• Agatha Christie's 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles': a case study in Dutch and German translation cultures using corpus linguistic tools
  Storm, Marjolijn (2012)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/3782/
• Narrating the self - women in the professions in Germany 1900-1945
  Guest , Sarah Alicia (2011)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/2967/
• An investigation of the relationship between National Armies and the concept of national identity with particular reference to Army recruitment campaigns in Germany and Britain
  Boehmker, Katharina (2011)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/1577/
• Johanna Ey: a critical reappraisal
  Hausmann, Michael (2011)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/987/
• Political and aesthetic concerns in Franz Grillparzer's historical dramas: a study of König Ottokars Glück und Ende, Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn and Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg
  Meikle, Katherine Elizabeth (2011)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/1766/
• The sins of the sons: a comparative analysis of guilt, atonement and redemption in Kafka's Die Verwandlung and Thomas Mann's Der Erwahlte with reference to Hartmann von Aue's Gregorius
  Hunter, Helen Elizabeth (2010)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/1257/
• Time, pain and myth in Ingeborg Bachmann's “Das Buch Franza” and Anne Duden's “Übergang”
  Shanmuganathan, Vasuki (2009)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/472/
• A study of various Nationalist appropriations of Nietzsche in the Weimar Republic
  Anderton, Rex (2009)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/367/
• Myths of War: Constructing and Challenging Literary Myths of War in Germany, 1914-1930
  Giles, Alice Shelley Minda (2009)
  M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/351/
• The Experience of Restlessness: A Study of Movement in the Shorter Fiction of Franz Kafka
  Reddig, Sania (2009)
  Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.
  http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/948/