Katharina Schafer – författare

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, University of Cologne, course: Einführungsseminar Literaturwissenschaft Teil B: The Neo-Slave Narrative, language: English, abstract: On nearly 500 pages Margaret Walker tells the story of her great-grandmother. Jubilee is the story about Vyry, a black female slave who longs for freedom and finally gains it, at least officially, after the Civil War years. Besides this individual destiny, the novel contains historical sections and information about political developments during that time, several complex characters in addition to Vyry and inside views even of white characters, detailed descriptions of the slaves’ everyday life, their family structures, their language and their hierarchies. My term paper will deal with those elements which turn Jubilee into a folk novel, i.e. an account of African American traditions which were passed from generation to generation orally. It was clear to me that Walker had intended to write a kind of folk novel when I readher dedication: She dedicated her first and only novel to her family, especially to herfour children so “that they may know something of their heritage”. Apparently, familyboundaries and traditions do not only play a major role in the novel but also did inWalker’s own life. After reading Walker’s essay “How I wrote Jubilee” there wasfurther evidence found for my initial intuition. There she mentions: “I always intendedJubilee to be a folk novel based on folk material: folk sayings, folk belief, folkways.”(Walker 1973: 62). Furthermore, the origin of Jubilee is a piece of oral tradition itself.According to the same essay, her grandmother had told her stories about slave life inGeorgia ever since she was a child (Walker 1973: 51). As an adult she carried out along-lasting research because she was determined “to authenticate the story I hadheard from my grandmother’s lips” (Walker 1973: 56). The task of this term paper will be to find instances where its characteristics as afolk novel become obvious. To fulfil this task I will begin with a summary of the noveland I will provide a working definition of the term “folklore”. Afterwards there will be acloser investigation of some folkloric categories which are represented in Jubilee.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne, course: Einführungsseminar Teil B: The English Lexicon, language: English, abstract: Centuries before the first dictionary was available, Chaucer used a wide range of words from various origins and worked with intellectual or technical terms as well as vulgar expressions. He also switched playfully between colloquial, formal and professional speech. Additionally he used different dialects to create his characters. Due to all this we can imagine how the Englishmen and –women of the 14th century spoke. Chaucer had not been able to give this heritage to later generations if he would not have been a great sociolinguistic observer, i.e. if he wouldn’t have watched people surrounding him closely and if he wouldn’t have paid attention to the way they talk. This term paper examines Chaucer’s use of dialects and vocabulary in his famous work The Canterbury Tales.

Welche Rolle spielen Emotionen bei der Konstruktion, Kommunikation und Nutzung von Zukunftsbildern? Sind Emotionen primär eine Komponente, die Vorurteile transportiert? In welchem Maße sind Forschende selbst Emotionen ausgesetzt, die die Methodenwahl und die Ergebnisse beeinflussen? In dem Sammelband kommt die gesamte Breite der Thematik „Zukunftsforschung und Emotionalität“ zur Sprache, von den philosophischen Grundlagen bis zu methodischen Fragestellungen und Erkenntnissen aus der Praxis, die die enge Verschränkung von Kognition und Emotion in allen Phasen von Vorausschauprozessen belegen.