In 2016, the Bulgarian poet and philologist Plamen Doynov initiated a poetic project called “The New Political Poetry” (NPP). Doynov presented examples of his new political poems at two readings in 2016 and 2019 and published “fragments of a manifesto” in his poetry collection “The Tyrants’ Ball” (2016). The NPP strives to overcome the trauma of politicized ideological writing in the communist era. This article analyzes Doynov’s NPP project against the background of a general tendency towards political engagement in literature that has recently emerged in Bulgaria as well as elsewhere in Europe and beyond. It posits that Doynov’s New Political Poetry, alongside other literary trends in contemporary Bulgaria, paradoxically addresses the political precisely by returning art to heightened cultural autonomy, and rejects the idea of engagement in a narrower sense.

The essay will compare Pushkin’s “Poltava” (1828) and Ivan Volkov’s “Mazepa” (2014), a counterargument to Pushkin’s text. Volkov’s poem not only demonstrates the topicality of Pushkin’s classic but also reveals the latter’s hidden layers of meaning. Both poems renew the tradition of the verse epic. However, they turn the foundation story, typical for the epic, towards tragedy, focusing on the fall of Ukraine rather than the success of Russia’s imperial gesture. Volkov reverses the dominant perspectives and advances the Ukrainian point of view, while Pushkin displays a double-voiced strategy that disrupts the ostensible political message. The heroic panegyric also becomes fragile: in both poems, neither Mazepa nor Peter are ‘masters’ of history. Furthermore, in both texts, the status and function of the omniscient poet as epic narrator is challenged and transformed. Pushkin, in particular, uses his narrator as a mask; yet, in so doing, he also invites the reader to regard the ‘author,’ ‘Pushkin,’ with greater scrutiny and makes him a device that structures the work as a whole. Finally, in both poems, Ukraine’s lost fight for independence in a past age reflects a lack of freedom within the Russian state. Pushkin’s and Volkov’s poems are thus not so much texts about history as they are agents of history. Where they expose that history as constructed, they appeal to a critical position that would interrogate the driving narratives and political forces of the present.

This article examines “China” in contemporary American poetry using the example of Timothy Yu’s poems, titled “Chinese Silence,” which rewrite and / or parody texts from the American literary canon as well as public communication. It proposes a hall-of-mirrors reading of these poems in order to show how Yu’s poems refer to, reflect on, and relocate other authors’ writing of “China.” It argues that Yu’s poems, instead of making claims for an authentic “China,” attempt to bring Chinese Americans’ lived experience into the American literary tradition.

This article gives an overview of the tradition of setting Japanese protest poetry to music since 1945 and examines the relationship between the socio-political movement, poetry and music. In particular, it deals with the origin and development of the Utagoe movement, established shortly after the World War II, as well as the musical adaptation of politically relevant poetry, which has its origin in the tradition of Brecht’s song. These forms of setting Japanese protest poetry to music are associated with the poetic-musical works that were written immediately after the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima in 2011.

In this article, I analyze the character of hyper-naturalism and exaggerated tactility in dramatic poems by contemporary Russian-Georgian philosopher and writer Keti Chukhrov. I argue that, while descriptions of violence, physiological functions, and abject poverty are common for post-Soviet art, in Chukhrov’s work these elements perform radically different task than in the pessimistic and de-ideologized chernukha, or the style of grim realism. Her approach to matter is also distinct from the historic Russian avant-garde tradition, which relished intensified sensations but did not offer constructive ways of inscribing their immediacy into coherent cultural continuity. Instead, her dramatic poems bear pedagogical, even rehabilitative stakes for recuperating the individual sensations of alienated people into meaningful and shared cultural experiences. In this article, I discuss her approach to drama as mobilizing the tradition of Soviet Marxist defectology, a special educational method of socializing disabled, cognitively impaired, or otherwise disadvantaged people. Pioneered in the Soviet Union in the 1920s by Lev Vygotsky and suppressed in the 1930s, defectology found further application in the 1960s and 1970s in the work of the Zagorsk boarding school for the deafblind, led by Vygotsky’s student Alexander Mescheriakov and Evald Ilyenkov, a Marxist-Hegelian philosopher who is a central figure for Chukhrov’s philosophical research. One of the key tasks of Meshcheriakov and Ilyenkov was to help their deafblind students to overcome isolation through learning to translate their purely tactile sensations into deliberate communicative acts. While Zagorsk offered Ilyenkov an opportunity to test and apply his theory of the collectivist formation of personality, for Chukhrov it is theater that has become the sphere for experimental, practical extension of her scholarly research into Soviet Marxist thought and socialist culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Her dramatic texts offer models of alternative subjectivization for post-Soviet people to allow themselves once again to recognize the presence of universal values and greater cultural commons behind individual, alienated sensations and experiences.

During the 1960s and 1970s the poetic reception of Karl Marx begins to increase in Germany. In this regard, it can be observed that Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s poetic and essayistic reception of Marx is not only quite complex, but also unorthodox. By focusing on the anthology „Gespräche mit Marx und Engels,“ edited by Enzensberger, his comedy „Der Untergang der Titanic“ and his poem „Karl Heinrich Marx,“ the diverse forms of reference to this philosopher are analyzed. It can be demonstrated that Enzensberger uses the montage technique masterly to avoid one-dimensional confessions.

Dieser Band versammelt Beiträge zum Thema Politik in der Gegenwartslyrik verschiedener Sprachen und Länder. Den Aufsätzen liegen Vorträge zugrunde, die im Rahmen von Workshops und Konferenzen der DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe „Russischsprachige Lyrik in Transition: Poetische Formen des Umgangs mit Grenzen der Gattung, Sprache, Kultur und Gesellschaft zwischen Europa, Asien und Amerika“ (2017-2023) gehalten wurden. Die Veranstaltungen fanden in den Jahren 2018-2019 statt – in einer Zeit, als weder die Corona-Pandemie noch der schreckliche Invasionskrieg Russlands in der Ukraine oder der Krieg im Gaza-Streifen absehbar waren.

This paper presents the results of the human-robot interaction (HRI) study with German native speakers addressing the robot in their L1 and in L2 English. The aim of the experiment is to test the strategies of providing clarifications when talking to the voice assistant in a task involving teaching complex vocabulary. The analyses is based on spectral (F1, F2, and mean F0) and temporal (vowel length) features excerpted from the target words. With reference to a theoretical framework of hyperarticulation and hypoarticulation, these acoustic measures were compared across the iterations of the target words (first vs. second iteration). Results showed that participants, when asked for clarification by an inanimate interlocutor, do not hyperarticulate, but try to preserve the surface representation of target words across the iterations. These findings suggest that acoustic characteristics of clarifications directed to voice assistants differ from the ones directed to human interlocutors.

There is no longer any doubt about the general effectiveness of psychotherapy. However, up to 40% of patients do not respond to treatment. Despite efforts to develop new treatments, overall effectiveness has not improved. Consequently, practice-oriented research has emerged to make research results more relevant to practitioners. Within this context, patient-focused research (PFR) focuses on the question of whether a particular treatment works for a specific patient. Finally, PFR gave rise to the precision mental health research movement that is trying to tailor treatments to individual patients by making data-driven and algorithm-based predictions. These predictions are intended to support therapists in their clinical decisions, such as the selection of treatment strategies and adaptation of treatment. The present work summarizes three studies that aim to generate different prediction models for treatment personalization that can be applied to practice. The goal of Study I was to develop a model for dropout prediction using data assessed prior to the first session (N = 2543). The usefulness of various machine learning (ML) algorithms and ensembles was assessed. The best model was an ensemble utilizing random forest and nearest neighbor modeling. It significantly outperformed generalized linear modeling, correctly identifying 63.4% of all cases and uncovering seven key predictors. The findings illustrated the potential of ML to enhance dropout predictions, but also highlighted that not all ML algorithms are equally suitable for this purpose. Study II utilized Study I’s findings to enhance the prediction of dropout rates. Data from the initial two sessions and observer ratings of therapist interventions and skills were employed to develop a model using an elastic net (EN) algorithm. The findings demonstrated that the model was significantly more effective at predicting dropout when using observer ratings with a Cohen’s d of up to .65 and more effective than the model in Study I, despite the smaller sample (N = 259). These results indicated that generating models could be improved by employing various data sources, which provide better foundations for model development. Finally, Study III generated a model to predict therapy outcome after a sudden gain (SG) in order to identify crucial predictors of the upward spiral. EN was used to generate the model using data from 794 cases that experienced a SG. A control group of the same size was also used to quantify and relativize the identified predictors by their general influence on therapy outcomes. The results indicated that there are seven key predictors that have varying effect sizes on therapy outcome, with Cohen's d ranging from 1.08 to 12.48. The findings suggested that a directive approach is more likely to lead to better outcomes after an SG, and that alliance ruptures can be effectively compensated for. However, these effects were reversed in the control group. The results of the three studies are discussed regarding their usefulness to support clinical decision-making and their implications for the implementation of precision mental health.

This thesis deals with the construction of investment screening mechanisms across the major economic powers in Europe and at the supranational level during the post-2015 period. The core puzzle at the heart of this research is how, in a traditional bastion of economic liberalism such as Europe, could a protectionist tool such as investment screening be erected in such a rapid manner. Within a few years, Europe went from a position of being highly welcoming towards foreign investment to increasingly implementing controls on it, with the focus on China. How are we to understand this shift in Europe? I posit that Europe’s increasingly protectionist shift on inward investment can be fruitfully understood using an economic realist approach, where the introduction of investment screening can be seen as part of a process of ‘balancing’ China’s economic rise and reasserting European competitiveness. China has moved from being the ‘workshop of the world’ to becoming an innovation-driven economy at the global technological frontier. As China has become more competitive, Europe, still a global economic leader, broadly situated at the technological frontier, has begun to sense a threat to its position, especially in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. A ‘balancing’ process has been set in motion, in which Europe seeks to halt and even reverse the narrowing competitiveness gap between it and China. The introduction of investment screening measures is part of this process.

In Luxemburg helfen externe Schulmediator*innen bei schulischen Konflikten. Die Anlaufstelle unterstützt bei drohenden Schulabbrüchen und Konflikten, die bei der Inklusion und Integration von Schüler*innen mit besonderem Förderbedarf oder mit Migrationshintergrund entstehen. Michèle Schilt sprach mit der Leiterin der Servicestelle, Lis De Pina, über die Arbeit der Schulmediation.

Sie haben eine spannende politische Diskussion in der Klasse. Das Gros Ihrer Schüler*innen ist wach, interessiert und engagiert. Alles läuft prima. Doch dann passiert's: Einer oder eine von ihnen stellt – absichtlich oder unreflektiert – eine extremistische oder verschwörungstheoretische Aussage in den Raum. Und nun?

Konflikte sind unvermeidlich. Sie treten auch in einer demokratischen Schulkultur auf. Die Etablierung einer konstruktiven Konfliktkultur bietet aber die Chance, Streitigkeiten als Lerngelegenheiten und zur persönlichen wie organisatorischen Weiterentwicklung zu nutzen.

While humans find it easy to process visual information from the real world, machines struggle with this task due to the unstructured and complex nature of the information. Computer vision (CV) is the approach of artificial intelligence that attempts to automatically analyze, interpret, and extract such information. Recent CV approaches mainly use deep learning (DL) due to its very high accuracy. DL extracts useful features from unstructured images in a training dataset to use them for specific real-world tasks. However, DL requires a large number of parameters, computational power, and meaningful training data, which can be noisy, sparse, and incomplete for specific domains. Furthermore, DL tends to learn correlations from the training data that do not occur in reality, making DNNs poorly generalizable and error-prone. Therefore, the field of visual transfer learning is seeking methods that are less dependent on training data and are thus more applicable in the constantly changing world. One idea is to enrich DL with prior knowledge. Knowledge graphs (KG) serve as a powerful tool for this purpose because they can formalize and organize prior knowledge based on an underlying ontological schema. They contain symbolic operations such as logic, rules, and reasoning, and can be created, adapted, and interpreted by domain experts. Due to the abstraction potential of symbols, KGs provide good prerequisites for generalizing their knowledge. To take advantage of the generalization properties of KG and the ability of DL to learn from large-scale unstructured data, attempts have long been made to combine explicit graph and implicit vector representations. However, with the recent development of knowledge graph embedding methods, where a graph is transferred into a vector space, new perspectives for a combination in vector space are opening up. In this work, we attempt to combine prior knowledge from a KG with DL to improve visual transfer learning using the following steps: First, we explore the potential benefits of using prior knowledge encoded in a KG for DL-based visual transfer learning. Second, we investigate approaches that already combine KG and DL and create a categorization based on their general idea of knowledge integration. Third, we propose a novel method for the specific category of using the knowledge graph as a trainer, where a DNN is trained to adapt to a representation given by prior knowledge of a KG. Fourth, we extend the proposed method by extracting relevant context in the form of a subgraph of the KG to investigate the relationship between prior knowledge and performance on a specific CV task. In summary, this work provides deep insights into the combination of KG and DL, with the goal of making DL approaches more generalizable, more efficient, and more interpretable through prior knowledge.

Power motivation is considered a key component of successful leadership. Based on its dualistic nature, the need for power (nPower) can be expressed in a dominant or a prosocial manner. Whereas dominant motivation is associated with antisocial behaviors, prosocial motivation is characterized by more benevolent actions (e.g., helping, guiding). Prosocial enactment of the power motive has been linked to a wide range of beneficial outcomes, yet less has been investigated what determines a prosocial enactment of the power motive. According to Personality Systems Interactions (PSI) theory, action orientation (i.e., the ability to self-regulate affect) promotes prosocial enactment of the implicit power motive and initial findings within student samples verify this assumption. In the present study, we verified the role of action orientation as an antecedent for prosocial power enactment in a leadership sample (N = 383). Additionally, we found that leaders personally benefited from a prosocial enactment strategy. Results show that action orientation through prosocial power motivation leads to reduced power-related anxiety and, in turn, to greater leader well-being. The integration of motivation and self-regulation research reveals why leaders enact their power motive in a certain way and helps to understand how to establish a win-win situation for both followers and leaders.

The microbial enzyme alkaline phosphatase contributes to the removal of organic phosphorus compounds from wastewaters. To cope with regulatory threshold values for permitted maximum phosphor concentrations in treated wastewaters, a high activity of this enzyme in the biological treatment stage, e.g., the activated sludge process, is required. To investigate the reaction dynamics of this enzyme, to analyze substrate selectivities, and to identify potential inhibitors, the determination of enzyme kinetics is necessary. A method based on the application of the synthetic fluorogenic substrate 4-methylumbelliferyl phosphate is proven for soils, but not for activated sludges. Here, we adapt this procedure to the latter. The adapted method offers the additional benefit to determine inhibition kinetics. In contrast to conventional photometric assays, no particle removal, e.g., of sludge pellets, is required enabling the analysis of the whole sludge suspension as well as of specific sludge fractions. The high sensitivity of fluorescence detection allows the selection of a wide substrate concentration range for sound modeling of kinetic functions. - Fluorescence array technique for fast and sensitive analysis of high sample numbers - No need for particle separation – analysis of the whole (diluted) sludge suspension - Simultaneous determination of standard and inhibition kinetics

Redox-driven biogeochemical cycling of iron plays an integral role in the complex process network of ecosystems, such as carbon cycling, the fate of nutrients and greenhouse gas emissions. We investigate Fe-(hydr)oxide (trans)formation pathways from rhyolitic tephra in acidic topsoils of South Patagonian Andosols to evaluate the ecological relevance of terrestrial iron cycling for this sensitive fjord ecosystem. Using bulk geochemical analyses combined with micrometer-scale-measurements on individual soil aggregates and tephra pumice, we document biotic and abiotic pathways of Fe released from the glassy tephra matrix and titanomagnetite phenocrysts. During successive redox cycles that are controlled by frequent hydrological perturbations under hyper-humid climate, (trans)formations of ferrihydrite-organic matter coprecipitates, maghemite and hematite are closely linked to tephra weathering and organic matter turnover. These Fe-(hydr)oxides nucleate after glass dissolution and complexation with organic ligands, through maghemitization or dissolution-(re)crystallization processes from metastable precursors. Ultimately, hematite represents the most thermodynamically stable Fe-(hydr)oxide formed under these conditions and physically accumulates at redox interfaces, whereas the ferrihydrite coprecipitates represent a so far underappreciated terrestrial source of bio-available iron for fjord bioproductivity. The insights into Fe-(hydr)oxide (trans)formation in Andosols have implications for a better understanding of biogeochemical cycling of iron in this unique Patagonian fjord ecosystem.

COVID-19 was a harsh reminder that diseases are an aspect of human existence and mortality. It was also a live experiment in the formation and alteration of disease-related attitudes. Not only are these attitudes relevant to an individual’s self-protective behavior, but they also seem to be associated with social and political attitudes more broadly. One of these attitudes is Social Darwinism, which holds that a pandemic benefits society by enabling nature “to weed out the weak”. In two countries (N = 300, N = 533), we introduce and provide evidence for the reliability, validity, and usefulness of the Disease-Related Social Darwinism (DRSD) Short Scale measuring this concept. Results indicate that DRSD is meaningful related to other central political attitudes like Social Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism and neoliberalism. Importantly, the scale significantly predicted people’s protective behavior during the Pandemic over and above general social Darwinism. Moreover, it significantly predicted conservative attitudes, even after controlling for Social Dominance Orientation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected schooling worldwide. In many places, schools closed for weeks or months, only part of the student body could be educated at any one time, or students were taught online. Previous research discloses the relevance of schooling for the development of cognitive abilities. We therefore compared the intelligence test performance of 424 German secondary school students in Grades 7 to 9 (42% female) tested after the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., 2020 sample) to the results of two highly comparable student samples tested in 2002 (n = 1506) and 2012 (n = 197). The results revealed substantially and significantly lower intelligence test scores in the 2020 sample than in both the 2002 and 2012 samples. We retested the 2020 sample after another full school year of COVID-19-affected schooling in 2021. We found mean-level changes of typical magnitude, with no signs of catching up to previous cohorts or further declines in cognitive performance. Perceived stress during the pandemic did not affect changes in intelligence test results between the two measurements.

Estimating the amount of material without significant losses at the end of hybrid casting is a problem addressed in this study. To minimize manufacturing costs and improve the accuracy of results, a correction factor (CF) was used in the formula to estimate the volume percent of the material in order to reduce material losses during the sample manufacturing stage, allowing for greater confidence between the approved blending plan and the results obtained. In this context, three material mixing schemes of different sizes and shapes (gypsum plaster, sand (0/2), gravel (2/4), and Posidonia oceanica fibers (PO)) were created to verify the efficiency of CF and more precisely study the physico-mechanical effects on the samples. The results show that the use of a CF can reduce mixing loss to almost 0%. The optimal compressive strength of the sample (S1B) with the lowest mixing loss was 7.50 MPa. Under optimal conditions, the addition of PO improves mix volume percent correction (negligible), flexural strength (5.45%), density (18%), and porosity (3.70%) compared with S1B. On the other hand, the addition of PO thermo-chemical treatment by NaOH increases the compressive strength (3.97%) compared with PO due to the removal of impurities on the fiber surface, as shown by scanning electron microscopy. We then determined the optimal mixture ratio (PO divided by a mixture of plaster, sand, and gravel), which equals 0.0321 because Tunisian gypsum contains small amounts of bassanite and calcite, as shown by the X-ray diffraction results.

Family firms play a crucial role in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). They are characterized by a long tradition, a strong connection to the region, and a well-established network. However, family firms also face challenges, especially in finding a suitable successor. Wealthy entrepreneurial families are increasingly opting to establish Single Family Offices (SFOs) as a solution to this challenge. An SFO takes on the management and protection of family wealth. Its goal is to secure and grow the wealth over generations. In Germany alone, there are an estimated 350 to 450 SFOs, with 70% of them being established after the year 2000. However, research on SFOs is still in its early stages, particularly regarding the role of SFOs as firm owners. This dissertation delves into an exploration of SFOs through four quantitative empirical studies. The first study provides a descriptive overview of 216 SFOs from the DACH-region. Findings reveal that SFOs exhibit a preference for investing in established companies and real estate. Notably, only about a third of SFOs engage in investments in start-ups. Moreover, SFOs as a group are heterogeneous. Categorizing them into three groups based on their relationship with the entrepreneurial family and the original family firm reveals significant differences in their asset allocation strategies. Subsequent studies in this dissertation leverage a hand-collected sample of 173 SFO-owned firms from the DACH region, meticulously matched with 684 family-owned firms from the same region. The second study focusing on financial performance indicates that SFO-owned firms tend to exhibit comparatively poorer financial performance than family-owned firms. However, when members of the SFO-owning family hold positions on the supervisory or executive board of the firm, there's a notable improvement. The third study, concerning cash holdings, reveals that SFO-owned firms maintain a higher cash holding ratio compared to family-owned firms. Notably, this effect is magnified when the SFO has divested its initial family firms. Lastly, the fourth study regarding capital structure highlights that SFO-owned firms tend to display a higher long-term debt ratio than family-owned firms. This suggests that SFO-owned firms operate within a trade-off theory framework, like private equity-owned firms. Furthermore, this effect is stronger for SFOs that sold their original family firm. The outcomes of this research are poised to provide entrepreneurial families with a practical guide for effectively managing and leveraging SFOs as a strategic long-term instrument for succession and investment planning.

Das Praxisprojekt „Mosel-AdapTiV“ verfolgt das Ziel, die Klimaanpassungskompetenz der Mosel-Kommune Traben-Trarbach zu erhöhen. Die Abschlussbroschüre fasst zentrale Ergebnisse und Berichte zusammen.

Anmerkung: Es handelt sich um die 1. Auflage der Dissertation. 2. überarbeitete Auflage siehe: "https://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2166". Ausgangspunkt der politisch-ikonographischen Untersuchung, in deren Zentrum zwei Staatsporträts König Maximilians II. von Bayern stehen, ist die Beobachtung, dass diese beiden Bildnisse grundsätzlich unterschiedliche Inszenierungsformen wählen. Das erste von Max Hailer gefertigte Werk zeigt Maximilian II. im vollen bayerischen Krönungsornat und greift eine tradierte Darstellungsweise im Staatsporträt auf. Es entstand zwei Jahre nach Maximilians II. Thronbesteigung und damit nach den revolutionären Unruhen der Jahre 1848/49 im Jahr 1850. Das zweite wurde von Joseph Bernhardt 1857 bis 1858 gemalt und im Jahr 1858 zum zehnjährigen Thronjubiläum des Monarchen erstmals präsentiert. Die Inszenierung ändert sich im zweiten Bildnis: Das bayerische Krönungsornat ist der Generalsuniform gewichen, ebenso weitere Details, die sich noch in der ersten Darstellung finden: Draperie und Wappen fehlen, der übliche bayerisch-königliche Thronsessel ist durch einen anderen ersetzt. In den Hintergrund gedrängt ist die Verfassung, immerhin seit 1818 staatliche Rechtsgrundlage des bayerischen Königreichs. Die beiden Staatsporträts Maximilians II. leiten offensichtlich von den Herrscherbildnissen im vollen bayerischen Krönungsornat seines Großvaters Maximilian I. und Vaters Ludwig I. über zu einer solchen in Uniform mit Krönungsmantel wie sie sich bei Napoleon III. und Friedrich Wilhelm IV. finden und wie sie sein Sohn Ludwig II. weiterführte. Es stellt sich somit die Frage, welche Faktoren zu diesem prägnanten Wandel in der Inszenierung Maximilians II. als König von Bayern führten. Die Arbeit geht der These nach, dass beide Darstellungen grundlegend auf eine reaktionäre, gegen die Revolution 1848/49 gerichtete Politik ausgelegt sind, wobei dieser reaktionäre Charakter in Maximilians II. Bildnis von 1858 noch eine Steigerung im Vergleich zu derjenigen von 1850 erfährt. Zudem wandelt sich die innenpolitisch-historische Ausrichtung des ersten Porträts bei der zweiten Darstellung des bayerischen Monarchen in eine außenpolitisch-progressive. Die Legitimation Maximilians II. begründet sich nicht mehr, wie bei ersterem, in der Geschichte und der Herrschaft der Wittelsbacher, sondern in seinen eigenen Errungenschaften und seiner eigenen Herrschaft. Dieser Wechsel der politischen Bildaussage fußt sowohl auf den politischen Veränderungen und Entwicklungen innerhalb und außerhalb Bayerns als auch auf der Entwicklung des Staatsporträts in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Nach nur zehn Jahren wird so eine veränderte Botschaft über Maximilians II. Position und Machtanspruch ausgesendet.

Diese Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit der Fragestellung, ob und wie Intersektionalität als analytische Perspektive für literarische Texte eine nützliche Ergänzung für ethnisch geordnete Literaturfelder darstellt. Diese Fragestellung wird anhand der Analyse dreier zeitgenössischer chinesisch-kanadischer Romane untersucht. In der Einleitung wird die Relevanz der Themenbereiche Intersektionalität und asiatisch-kanadische Literatur erörtert. Das darauffolgende Kapitel bietet einen historischen Überblick über die chinesisch-kanadische Einwanderung und geht detailliert auf die literarischen Produktionen ein. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass, obwohl kulturelle Güter auch zur Artikulation von Ungleichheitsverhältnissen aufgrund von zugeschriebener ethnischer Zugehörigkeit entstehen, ein Diversifizierungsbestreben innerhalb der literarischen Gemeinschaft von chinesisch-kanadischen Autor:innen identifiziert werden kann. Das dritte Kapitel widmet sich dem Begriff „Intersektionalität“ und stellt, nach einer historischen Einordnung des Konzeptes mit seinen Ursprüngen im Black Feminism, Intersektionalität als bindendes Element zwischen Postkolonialismus, Diversität und Empowerment dar – Konzepte, die für die Analyse (kanadischer) Literatur in dieser Dissertation von besonderer Relevanz sind. Anschließend wird die Rolle von Intersektionalität in der Literaturwissenschaft aufgegriffen. Die darauffolgenden exemplarischen Analysen von Kim Fus For Today I Am a Boy, Wayson Choys The Jade Peony und Yan Lis Lily in the Snow veranschaulichen die vorangegangen methodischen Überlegungen. Allen drei Romanen vorangestellt ist die Kontextualisierung des jeweiligen Werkes als chinesisch-kanadisch, aber auch bisher vorgenommene Überlegungen, die diese Einordnung infrage stellen. Nach einer Zusammenfassung des Inhalts folgt eine intersektionale Analyse auf der inhaltlichen Ebene, die in den familiären und weiteren sozialen Bereich unterteilt ist, da sich die Hierarchiemechanismen innerhalb dieser Bereiche unterscheiden oder gegenseitig verstärken, wie aus den Analysen hervorgeht. Anschließend wird die formale Analyse mit einem intersektionalen Schwerpunkt in einem separaten Unterkapitel näher beleuchtet. Ein drittes Unterkapitel widmet sich einem dem jeweiligen Roman spezifischen Aspekt, der im Zusammenhang mit einer intersektionalen Analyse von besonderer Relevanz ist. Die Arbeit schließt mit einem übergreifenden Fazit, welches die wichtigsten Ergebnisse aus der Analyse zusammenfasst und mit weiteren Überlegungen zu den Implikationen dieser Dissertation, vor allem im Hinblick auf sogenannte kanadische „master narratives“, die eine weitreichende, kontextuelle Relevanz für das Arbeiten mit literarischen Texten aufweisen und durch einen intersektionalen literarischen Ansatz in Zukunft gegebenenfalls gewinnbringend ergänzt werden können.

This thesis deals with REITs, their capital structure and the effects on leverage that regulatory requirements might have. The data used results from a combination of Thomson Reuters data with hand-collected data regarding the REIT status, regulatory information and law variables. Overall, leverage is analysed across 20 countries in the years 2007 to 2018. Country specific data, manually extracted from yearly EPRA reportings, is merged with company data in order to analyse the influence of different REIT restrictions on a firm's leverage. Observing statistically significant differences in means across NON-REITs and REITs, causes motivation for further investigations. My results show that variables beyond traditional capital structure determinants impact the leverage of REITs. I find that explicit restrictions on leverage and the distribution of profits have a significant effect on leverage decisions. This supports the notion that the restrictions from EPRA reportings are mandatory. I test for various combinations of regulatory variables that show both in isolation as well as in combination significant effects on leverage. My main result is the following: Firms that operate under regulation that specifies a maximum leverage ratio, in addition to mandatory high dividend distributions, have on average lower leverage ratios. Further the existence of sanctions has a negative effect on REITs' leverage ratios, indicating that regulation is binding. The analysis clearly shows that traditional capital structure determinants are of second order relevance. This relationship highlights the impact on leverage and financing decisions caused by regulation. These effects are supported by further analysis. Results based on an event study show that REITs have statistically lower leverage ratios compared to NON-REITs. Based on a structural break model, the following effect becomes apparent: REITs increase their leverage ratios in years prior REIT status. As a consequence, the ex ante time frame is characterised by a bunker and adaption process, followed by the transformation in the event. Using an event study and a structural break model, the analysis highlights the dominance of country-specific regulation.