Gutenberg Open Science

The Open Science Repository of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

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Recent Submissions

  • Item type: Item , DissertationAccess status: Open Access ,
  • Item type: Item , DissertationAccess status: Open Access ,
    New black aesthetics: contemporary African American poetry and the poetics of form
    (2025) Sawade, Laura; Scheiding, Oliver
    This dissertation, "New Black Aesthetics: Contemporary African American Poetry and the Poetics of Form," examines how Terrance Hayes, Tracy K. Smith, Claudia Rankine, and Amanda Gorman transform poetic form into a site of racial and cultural negotiation. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s New Formalism, the study argues that poets of the New Black Aesthetics reimagine form as a political and historical instrument. Through lyrical forms, such as the sonnet, erasure, documentary, and visual poetry, they reclaim the aesthetic space of American verse as a democratic forum for racial recognition and historical recovery. The dissertation proposes the concept of a "poetics of recognition" to describe how these poets curate and reinterpret the African American archive, confronting historical erasure and reasserting Black cultural memory. Through a New Formalist lens, the study shows how formal experimentation enables Black poets to merge the personal and the historical, the aesthetic and the political, transforming poetry into an agent of social change. Ultimately, this dissertation contends that the New Black Aesthetics articulate a new vision of American democracy through form—one grounded in inclusivity, interracial dialogue, and the continual reformation of the poetic tradition.
  • Item type: Item , DissertationAccess status: Open Access ,
    Roman masculinity and latin poetic funerary epigraphy in the North-Western provinces (1st century B.C. - 3rd century A.D.)
    (2025) de Klerk, Gabriël; Horster, Marietta
    This dissertation investigates the construction and representation of Roman masculinity through Latin poetic funerary inscriptions from the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire between the first century B.C. and the third century A.D. While studies of Roman masculinity have traditionally relied on elite literary sources, this research employs funerary verse epigraphy as an alternative lens to explore how gendered ideals were expressed by a broader social spectrum, including freedmen, soldiers, artisans, and provincial citizens. By analysing the epigraphic language of emotion and virtue, two fundamental dimensions of Roman masculine identity, this study examines how men and women in the provinces articulated moral and emotional values within commemorative contexts. This research demonstrates that ancient Roman emotions, as represented in funerary verse, were not as rigidly gendered as literary sources suggest. Rather, emotional expression appears to have transcended gender boundaries, indicating that Roman men were equally capable of displaying feelings such as grief, love, and joy. For the concept of virtue, both men and women were depicted in funerary epigraphy as embodying Roman moral values, expressed either explicitly or through symbolic allusion. Most references were brief and formulaic, though verse inscriptions occasionally offered fuller reflections on moral character. The most frequently invoked virtues (pietas, fides, and innocentia) were not selected along gendered lines but rather according to relational or social relevance. By integrating gender theory, epigraphic studies, and emotion- and virtue research, this dissertation contributes to the broader understanding of Roman identity formation, showing that masculinity in antiquity was not a monolithic ideal but a negotiated, performative construct: one materially and poetically inscribed across the empire’s funerary landscapes.