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W.G. Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur: German literature and the allied bombings of German cities in World War II
No full textThis thesis is a critical analysis of W.G. Sebald‘s Luftkrieg und Literatur (On the Natural History of Destruction) and its reception in the German media and in scholarship. Sebald‘s essay caused a public debate in 1997 over the ethical implications of a cultural memory of the Allied bombings of German cities in the Second World War. Since then, the essay has come to be understood as a foundational moment in the discourse surrounding 'German victimhood' in representations of the bombings and the expulsions of ethnic Germans from the Eastern territories
A study of the issues surrounding the understanding of historic military artefacts as primary source documents with particular emphasis on the sword
No full textLire désespérément… W.G. Sebald
No full textDans la foulée d’Évelyne Grossman et de sa réflexion sur « la paradoxale vitalité de la négativité dépressive » (L’angoisse de penser, 2008), cet article envisage l’exploration littéraire de la négativité et de la dépossession de soi, caractéristique d’une certaine modernité que l’on peut faire remonter à Mallarmé, en tant qu’elle peut fonctionner, pour le lecteur, à la manière d’un antidépresseur paradoxal. Questionnant d’abord de façon générale certaines conceptions « sublimantes », réparatrices ou rédemptrices de la littérature (Leo Bersani) et la prégnance des modèles platoniciens et aristotéliciens de la création comme pharmakon, l’auteure tente ensuite de cerner plus spécifiquement, à partir de l’oeuvre de l’écrivain allemand W.G. Sebald, le caractère tout à la fois anxiogène et libérateur de la symbolisation de la perte en littérature.Following Évelyne Grossman and her developments about the “paradoxical vitality of depressive negativity” (L’angoisse de penser, 2008), this article addresses the literary exploration of negativity and self-deprivation, characteristic of a certain modernity one can retrace up to Mallarmé, and proposes that it can function, for the reader, as a paradoxical antidepressant. Questioning at first more generally the current sublimating conceptions of literature and the impregnation of the platonician and aristotelian models of creation as pharmakon, the author seeks then to embrace more precisely, on the basis of the works by German writer W.G. Sebald, the all-together anguishing and liberating effect of the symbolization of loss in literature
Natural variation in Drosophila melanogaster
No full textThis work is dedicated to studying natural variation in D. melanogaster at the DNA sequence and gene expression level. In addition I present a new version of the DNA polymorphism analysis program VariScan, which includes significant improvements.
In CHAPTER 1 I describe a genome scan of single nucleotide polymorphism in two natural D. melanogaster populations (from Africa and Europe) on the third chromosome. Together with polymorphism data previously published for the X chromosome of the same populations, this allows a comparative study of the polymorphism patterns of the X chromosome and an autosome. The frequency spectrum of mutations and the patterns of linkage disequilibrium are investigated. The observed patterns indicate that there is a significant difference in the behavior of the two chromosomes, as has already been suggested by previous studies. To uncover the reasons for this a coalescent based maximum likelihood method is applied that incorporates the effects of demographic history and unequal sex ratios. For the African population the differential behavior of the chromosomes can be explained by its demographic history and an excess of females. In Europe, a population bottleneck and an excess of males alone cannot explain the patterns we observe. The additional action of positive selection in this population is proposed as a possible explanation.
In CHAPTER 2 I investigate the variation in gene expression of the two aforementioned populations. Whole-genome microarrays are used to study levels of expression for 88% of all known genes in eight adult males from both populations. The observed levels of expression variation are equal in Africa and Europe, despite the fact that DNA sequence variation is much higher in Africa. This is evidence for the action of stabilizing selection governing levels of expression polymorphism. Supporting this view, genes involved in many different functions, and are therefore on strong selective constraint, show less variation than do genes with only few functions. The experimental design allows the search for genes which differ in their expression patterns between Europe and Africa and might therefore have undergone adaptive evolution. Detected candidates include genes putatively involved in insecticide resistance and food choice. Surprisingly, many genes over-expressed in Africa are involved in the formation and function of the flying apparatus.
In CHAPTER 3 I present version 2 of the program VariScan. This program was designed to analyse patterns of DNA sequence polymorphism on a chromosomal scale. The functionality of the core analysis tool, the wavelet decomposition, is described. In addition, multiple improvements to the previous version are presented. The program now supports the “pairwise deletion” option. This is essential for analysing data at the chromosome scale, since such data often contains incomplete information. It is now possible to add outgroup information, which allows the calculation of additional statistics. Furthermore, the separate analysis of different predefined chromosomal regions is added as an option. To increase the user friendliness, a graphical user interface is now included as part of the software package. Finally, VariScan is applied to published and computer-generated data and the ability of the wavelet-based analysis to uncover chromosomal regions with interesting DNA polymorphism patterns is demonstrated
Traces of trauma in W.G. Sebald and Christoph Ransmayr
No full textBoth W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) and the Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr (1954-) were born too late to know directly the violence of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but these traumatic events are a persistent presence in their work. In a series of close readings of key prose texts, Dora Osborne examines the different ways in which the traces of a traumatic past mark their narratives. By focusing on the authors' use of visual and topographical tropes, she shows how blind spots and inhospitable places configure signs of past violence, but, ultimately, resist our understanding. Whilst links between the two authors are well-documented, this book offers the first full-length study of Sebald and Ransmayr and their complicated relation to the traumatic traces of National Socialism. - from book cover
Röntgenografisch onderzoek van aluminiumkristallen, ontstaan door rekristallisatie
No full textApplied Science
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