Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


22171.pdf (835.24 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Rhetoric of Ruin: 9/11 in German Literature, Film and Culture

Hagen, Alexandra S.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1470672178

Abstract Details

2016, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: Germanic Languages and Literature.
This dissertation project examines contemporary German cultural products that reference the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In particular, the omnipresent fear of terrorism, the United States’ political involvement in Iraq, the German dissent, as well as its depiction in mass media underscore the importance of the portrayal of 9/11 in contemporary German literature, film, and culture. Key to the analysis is the reflection of the relationship between reality and the political, cultural, and aesthetic representation of the terrorist attacks in German literature, film and media published between September 11, 2001 and the present. I argue that mass media serve as the driving force behind all representation and conclude that the simultaneous broadcasting of media images nullifies the geographical distance between local witnesses in New York City and contemporaries around the world. Rather than fictionally reconstructing 9/11, authors rely on the televised images as a source of information. Hence the immediacy of television supersedes literature as a locus of remembrance. The continuously ambivalent, 200-year long German- American discourse provides a larger framework for the dissertation and its effort to understand representations of the attacks from outside the United States.
Harold Herzog, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Evan Torner, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Valerie Weinstein, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
146 p.
Germanic Literature
German Literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hagen, A. S. (2016). Rhetoric of Ruin: 9/11 in German Literature, Film and Culture [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1470672178

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hagen, Alexandra. Rhetoric of Ruin: 9/11 in German Literature, Film and Culture. 2016. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1470672178.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hagen, Alexandra. "Rhetoric of Ruin: 9/11 in German Literature, Film and Culture." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1470672178

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1470672178
1,992
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.