Browsing by Subject "Minority literature"
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Item Spouses, lovers, and other strangers : men, women, and relationships in the works of Rafik Schami(2016-05) Brining, Holly Renee; Belgum, Kirsten, 1959-; Hess, Peter; Harlow, Barbara; Fulk, Kirkland A; Straubhaar, SandraSyrian-German author Rafik Schami has a literary career spanning approximately thirty years. Although his native Syria often forms the backdrop for his stories, Schami’s intended audience is clearly German-speaking because he composes his works in German. As most of the discourse on minority literature in Germany focuses on Turkish-German literature, an examination of Schami’s texts would offer another perspective on this phenomenon. This dissertation project focuses on several novels from Rafik Schami, including Reise zwischen Nacht und Morgen, Die dunkle Seite der Liebe, Die Sehnsucht der Schwalbe, and Das Geheimnis des Kalligraphen, all of which thematize various types of interpersonal relationships, including familial and romantic. With few exceptions, men and women inhabit different worlds, and this complicates their ability to maintain a connection to one another. The world of women is frequently depicted as exotic or secretive, whereas the world of men is one of brutality. This separation of men and women is imposed by political and cultural means. In his characterization of the relationships between men and women, the author draws attention to their respective situations and criticizes the forces that draw them apart. Most of the scholarship on Rafik Schami’s texts has focused upon intercultural communication, migration, and exoticism. Very little attention has been paid to issues of gender, although relationships and differences between men and women inhabit a significant portion of his novels. This project employs a close reading of thematic as well as structural elements in order to examine the respective worlds of men and women and the author’s critique of the factors which led to this division. The project will also examine the reception of the author’s works in order to characterize their position within contemporary German literature.Item Testing the seams of the American dream : minority literature and film in the early Cold War(2011-08) Burns, Patricia Mary; Bremen, Brian A.; Wilks, Jennifer; Lee, Julia; Miller, Karl; Kackman, MichaelTesting the Seams of the American Dream: Minority Literature and Film in the Early Cold War delineates the concept of the liberal tolerance agenda in early Cold War. The liberal tolerance message of the U.S. government, the Democratic Party, and others endorsed racial tolerance and envisioned the possibility of a future free from racism and inequality. Filmmakers in often disseminated a liberal message similar to that of the politicians in the form of “race problem” films. My shows how these films and the liberal tolerance agenda as a whole promises racial equality to the racial minority in exchange for hard work, patriotism, education, and a belief in the majority culture. My first chapter, “Washing White the Racial Subject: Hollywood’s First Black Problem Film,” performs a close reading of Arthur Laurents 1946 play Home of the Brave, which features a Jewish American protagonist, in conjunction with a reading of the 1949 film version, which has an African American protagonist. The differences between the two texts reveal the slippages in the liberal tolerance agenda and signal the inability of filmmakers to envision racial equality on the big screen. “The American Institution and the Racial Subject,” my second chapter, discusses the 1949 film Pinky as well as Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gómez and Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter. All of these works suggests that the attainment of education promises entry into the mainstream by racial minorities, yet Paredes and Sone question this process by interpreting it as resulting in the dual segregation of their protagonists. My third chapter, “Earning and Cultural Capital: The Work that Determines Place,” looks at the promise that with hard work anyone can attain the American Dream. I show how the 1951 film Go for Broke!, Ann Petry’s The Street, and José Antonio Villarreal’s Pocho work to dispel this American myth. My final chapter, “The Regrets of Dissent: Blacklists and the Race Question,” examines the 1954 film Salt of the Earth alongside Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go and John Okada’s No-No Boy to reveal the dangerous mixture of race and dissent in this era.