The Limits of Literary Language: Linguistic Skepticism and Literary Experiment in Postwar Germany and Austria

This dissertation addresses the concurrent revival of experimental writing and linguistic skepticism in West Germany and Austria after 1945, concentrating on the work of Helmut HeiÃ?enbüttel, Konrad Bayer, Peter Handke, and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. While the immediate postwar years gave rise to a germanophone literature that was largely intolerant of formal experimentation--due to widespread adherence to a neo-Sartrean model of littérature engagée and a restorationist return to classical form--certain writers began to oppose this aesthetic conservatism in the early fifties. Influenced by international avant-garde developments--from concrete poetry to the nouveau roman--they developed a new form of German writing that actively experimented with literary and linguistic form. Their work was often accompanied by a sophisticated theoretical critique of language, connecting back via Wittgenstein and Whorf to the turn-of-the-century Sprachkrise and the writings of Mauthner and Hofmannsthal. I aim to offer an analysis of this language-skeptical approach to writing, showing how it was employed to create a cultural space for avant-garde literature in the postwar period--presenting experimental writing as a legitimate intellectual endeavor with tangible social value, despite its running contrary to prevalent models of politically engaged or formally conservative writing. Against the common literary-historical view of the sixties as the decade of the politicization of literature, I aim to show the existence of an alternate track of linguistic aesthetics propagated almost exclusively by writers of experimental literature, developing in the fifties and extending through the sixties and beyond. For these writers, a skeptical and analytical treatment of language became the necessary starting point for any progressive literature. I also aim to show how later writers like Handke and Brinkmann came to see this linguistic skepticism as en encumbering limitation of literary possibility. In their early-seventies work, which is often grouped with the movement of New Subjectivity, these writers adopt a pragmatic model of language as a flawed but functional tool for the communication of subjective experience, resulting in a writing that continues to explore the ambiguous link between word and world

Thus Saith the Lord : The Theological Rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This text seeks to explain the rhetorical appeals that Martin Luther King, Jr. used to persuade his audience of the fundamental truths of human dignity, sin, justice, and hope

HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE: THE STUDENT INTERPRETERS CORPS AND IMAGINED AMERICAN ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM IN CHINA, 1902-1941

The project of American economic imperialism in China during the first half of the twentieth century was first and foremost an imagined enterprise. This dissertation examines the role of the Student Interpreters Corps (SIC) in this endeavor. Studying language-trained intermediaries, this treatment is a first step towards studying history with an approach that is neither top-down nor bottom-up but rather middle-outward. Examining hitherto neglected personnel records and State Department correspondence, this study reveals the SIC as part of an imagined but unsuccessful program of economic imperialism. Although effective in garnering American business interest and support for Foreign Service reform and expansion, efforts to entice American merchants and companies to enter Asian markets (particularly in China) failed to yield a coherent, successful trade empire. However, the largely unstated goal of increased American power was achieved as the result of a bureaucratic imperative for specialization, professionalization, and institutional expansion set in motion during the establishment of the SIC. Examining the evolving roles and views of SIC-trained intermediaries, this dissertation finds that while the imagined trade empire failed to materialize, the SIC contributed to a developing American perception of China that envisioned increasingly greater American intervention in East Asia. In this millieu, a “Peking” order emerged by the mid-1920s that became influential in American East Asia policy towards the eve of Word War II that saw China as vital to American interests. Established as precursor of American economic empire in China, the SIC was instrumental in shifting discourse away from economic empire towards an interventionist American Orientalism. Trade expansion rhetoric waned and Orientalist language solidified as Japanese aggression became more blatant and the ascendance of Communism in China ever more certain. Highlighting the bureaucratic intermediaries as new method of studying history, this study indicates that the project of American economic imperialism was largely imagined, but one that transformed to accommodate evolving visions of expanding American power in East Asia. These conclusions offer new challenges to and opportunities for scholars of American foreign relations

A Preliminary Evaluation: Demographic and Clinical Profiles and Changes in Functioning in Children Receiving Psychosocial Rehabilitation

The present study is the first to examine the demographic and clinical profiles at intake of children with emotional disturbances who received Child Psychosocial Rehabilitation (CPSR), a relatively new treatment for children suffering with emotional disturbance(ED). Fifty-three children ranging in age from 4 to 18 years received CPSR from a for-profit outpatient child and adolescent mental health clinic located in southwestern Idaho for a minimum of six months. The children\u27s demographic and clinical profiles were examined. In addition, the relationship between the relative change in psychological, emotional, and behavioral functioning as measured by CAFAS (Hodges, 1989, 1994) and PECFAS (Hodges, 1994) scores and the children\u27s age, gender, ethnicity, current living arrangement, type of mental health diagnosis, and severity of impairment at intake were evaluated. Significant improvement in the children\u27s overall functioning was found after six months of treatment. No significant between-group differences were found for gender, age, ethnicity, living situation, diagnosis, number of diagnoses, and overall impairment at intake

Mapping the Space of Genomic Signatures

We propose a computational method to measure and visualize interrelationships among any number of DNA sequences allowing, for example, the examination of hundreds or thousands of complete mitochondrial genomes. An "image distance" is computed for each pair of graphical representations of DNA sequences, and the distances are visualized as a Molecular Distance Map: Each point on the map represents a DNA sequence, and the spatial proximity between any two points reflects the degree of structural similarity between the corresponding sequences. The graphical representation of DNA sequences utilized, Chaos Game Representation (CGR), is genome- and species-specific and can thus act as a genomic signature. Consequently, Molecular Distance Maps could inform species identification, taxonomic classifications and, to a certain extent, evolutionary history. The image distance employed, Structural Dissimilarity Index (DSSIM), implicitly compares the occurrences of oligomers of length up to $k$ (herein $k=9$) in DNA sequences. We computed DSSIM distances for more than 5 million pairs of complete mitochondrial genomes, and used Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) to obtain Molecular Distance Maps that visually display the sequence relatedness in various subsets, at different taxonomic levels. This general-purpose method does not require DNA sequence homology and can thus be used to compare similar or vastly different DNA sequences, genomic or computer-generated, of the same or different lengths. We illustrate potential uses of this approach by applying it to several taxonomic subsets: phylum Vertebrata, (super)kingdom Protista, classes Amphibia-Insecta-Mammalia, class Amphibia, and order Primates. This analysis of an extensive dataset confirms that the oligomer composition of full mtDNA sequences can be a source of taxonomic information.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1307.375