Julia Merkel – författare

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,25, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut fur England und Amerikastudien), course: Grace Paley, language: English, abstract: Grace Paley is a well-renowned author of prose and poetry, a political activist, and a passionate mother and grandmother. She never detached her working as an author from her family life and her own family relationships, but made it a central subject of her work. Her life and work resist separation; it would only result in artificial and false distinctions. Besides political concerns and feminist issues, the family and generational relationships are the main focus in both Grace Paley's life and work. I will analyze this in three steps: first I will examine her biography and its influence on her work. In a second step I argue that the subject of family is a central and repeating issue in Grace Paley's work, exemplifying this on a selection of short stories and poems. In the third and final section I will show how family matters are interwoven with feminist issues.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Frankfurt (Main) (England- und Amerikastudien), course: Discourses of Slavery, language: English, abstract: Der Roman "e;The Known World"e; ist der einzige Roman von Pulitzer Preistrager Edward P. Jones, und trotzdem war er ein groer Erfolg. Er hat in der amerikanschen Gesellschaft eine erneute Diskussion losgetreten uber die wenig bekannte historische Tatsache der schwarzen Sklavenhalter in den Sudstaaten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Es wird die moralische und soziale Komponente des Phanomens, wie es im Roman dagestellt wird, untersucht. Ist die Sklaverei vielleicht unter einer dunnen Oberflache farbenblind? Welche Umstande brachten Afro-Amerikaner dazu Sklaven zu halten? Welche Auswirkungen hatte diese Form der Sklaverei und unterschied sie sich uberhaupt von der von Weien ausgeubten Form? Die Arbeit zeigt anhand der Beispiele in "e;The Known World"e;, dass Sklaverei in seinen Auswirkungen keine Unterschiede macht, und in seiner inhumanen zerstorerischen Kraft alle sozialen Strukturen vernichtet und in der Tat farbenblind ist.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut fur England- und Amerikastudien), course: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Southern Literature, language: English, abstract: In times of the decline of the family as a social parameter we witness an unquestionable popularity of the family novel in American literature. Are authors writing desperately against the unraveling nuclear family, against patchwork constellations and second and third marriages? Is this merely nostalgic reminiscence, a longing for the long lost? In my paper I will argue that the portrayal of the family in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Cynthia Shearer's The Wonder Book of the Air is a rigid dissection of the pathological cycle of dysfunction, family often produces. It leaves every generation with the burden of the latter's failures and a lifelong struggle against reproducing revictimization

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Frankfurt (Main) (IEAS), language: English, abstract: “The past is never dead. It is not even past” (Faulkner 1976: 81), the lawyer Gavin Stevens unforgivingly says to Temple Drake in William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun during the trial against her maid Nancy, who is accused of killing Temple’s child. Temple has told him, “Temple Drake is dead” (ibid. 80) to emphasize her allegedly changed and improved self and to express her determination not to take any responsibility for her actions in the past. She wants to put everything that has happened behind her and open a new chapter in her life. Stevens can neither accept nor understand such an attitude. For him, Temple’s plan to entirely leave the past behind is futile and impossible to ever become reality. Nothing is ever forgotten or overcome, and the past will influence and haunt anybody trying to escape. The past not only won’t but can’t be subdued. The ever-reappearing topic of the past overshadowing the presence and determining the future is a Southern subject par excellence. A persistent urge to look back and an almost loathing attitude toward progress and the modern way of life and fast-paced society are omnipresent in Southern culture, literature, and life. Author Allan Gurganus says about his childhood and youth in North Carolina in the 1950s that it was like growing up in the nineteenth century. The South’s past is in its present almost to the point of complete denial of the latter (see Grant 105f.).The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era left the South economically and culturally isolated. But the War Between the States only finished what had started much earlier. The Southern claim to a special position, its feeling of moral and cultural superiority and distinctiveness, and its chosen isolation have its roots as early as in the beginning 18th century. These feelings and the need to cultivate and preserve a certain type of community and individual perceived as being superior only recurred even stronger after the shameful defeat the South suffered. The gap between the North and the South deepened tremendously, and soon the extreme isolation and seclusion became both voluntary and involuntary. The downfall and the exploitation during the era of Reconstruction left a scar that has been hurting until this present day. [...]