Bücher von Elena Mertel

Academic Paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 8,5 (Niederländisches System), University of Groningen, course: Theories of International Relations, language: English, abstract: This paper tries to shed light on the discussion of moral distinction betwenn child soldiers and adult soldiers, as well as combatans and non-combatans.The presence of armed children in war zones has become a sad reality in contemporary conflicts all around the world. Many non-governmental armed forces would not even be able to participate in war without recruiting children. However, strategies to cope with the situation lack sufficient definitions of where to draw the line between soldier and child. Does it include those children who are actively taking part in armed conflicts? Or do children -similar to adult soldiers - lose their immunity as soon as they take up arms? While there are numerous legal and theoretical attempts on the rights and duties of adult soldiersthe contemporary issue of child soldiers seems to challenge these thoughts. This is because our general moral intuition understands children as vulnerable beings in need of protection. The image, however, is diametrically opposed to armed juveniles on the battlefield and thus creates a moral dilemma.Therefore, the author argues that no clear cut distinction between combatants and non-combatants and further between children and adults can be made. To substantiat her claim, she will approach the issue from its theoretical basis by having a closer look on depicted definitions first and from its feasibility in war second. Based on her findings, she claims that it is not possible to make a clear cut distinction and thus that there are good reasons to treat child soldiers no different than regular combatants. In the following conclusion she will briefly suggest additional guidelines to provide a more thoughtful and secure framework for every soldier- child and adult - on the battlefield.

Academic Paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 7,5 (Niederländisches System), University of Groningen, course: Capita European Integration, language: English, abstract: The significance of the Eastern European area for the European Union has become visible with the Eastern enlargement in 2004.Ever since then the question remains how to interact with the bordering neighbor countries. This paper aims to examine theEuropean Neighbourhood Policy from a rationalist-constructivist perspective. Furthermore, parallels between the decision-makingprocess for the Eastern enlargement will be drawn by paying special attention to Frank Schimmelfennig's contributions to theissue. I conclude that despite the absence of accession talks, a potential future accession perspective displays the highestincentive for Eastern neighbors to participate in the ENP and that there is a possibility for renegotiating accession by making use of rhetorical action.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", language: English, abstract: This thesis aims to examine the interrogation and performance of generic lives and gendered selves in the poetry of John Berryman and Anne Sexton. In doing so I will give answers to the following questions: In how far did social norms influence the lyrical I¿s way of thinking and acting?Or were those societal restrictions excluded from the isolated situation of the poem? Are gender conventions more present in poems featuring a female persona? Not more than 60 years ago North America was strongly biased with unrealistic gender roles. Women were stereotyped as housewives whose greatest struggles were keeping husband and children satisfied, the household and their good looking. However, thousands of women missed to meet those expectations and considered themselves as individual failures. However, not only women suffered from social etiquette that was imposed on them. The excessive promotion of virility equally troubled many men.Then, in the 1960s, there was a significant change. Influenced by the radical formations of various citizen movements gender concepts were challenged - not only in a political context but also within the arts. For the first time after centuries, poetry, again, dealt with political issues. This was the time of the Beats and the Confessional Poets. The latter group is often associated with poets such as John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. The works of Berryman and Sexton will be examined in more depth. Both of them used their poems to express their personal views on the conventions of the period. What was intended to serve as a form of self-therapy turned into poetic empowermentfor many Americans who experienced similar circumstances, but were too afraid to talk about it publicly. In this respect, Anne Sexton has often been considered as a precursor of following feminist movements. The lyric of the male poets of the time, however, has mostly been ignored in this context. Both poets were working during the 1950s and 60s, both experienced socially imposed gender treatments, both lived the 'generic life'. The expression refers to the seemingly predetermined lifestyle of these poets including parental difficulties in their childhood, excessive alcohol and drug abuse, mental disorders, publicly displayed affairs, as well as suicidal tendencies.While Sexton¿s poetry continuously tackles the problem of gender conventions, Berryman¿s remarks on the topic are rather subtle.

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Manifestations of Cultural Concepts in Medieval English Literature, language: English, abstract: To find answers to the following questions I will examine two representations of Death in literature in the following essay. First, I will refer to the medieval motif of the danse macabre with special attention on the German Totentanz and the French danse macabre poems that were freely translated into English by the monk John Lydgate in the beginning of the 15th century.Already as early as in the Old Testament death was represented by the apocalyptic horsemen; In early Norse mythology by the goddess of Death named Hel and in the Middle Ages by skeletons that rose from their graves, as well as by the image of the Grim Reaper with his black cape and a scythe, which is still popular nowadays. What do those figures have in common? In what aspects do they differ? And in how far have the common interpretation of personified Death changed over the centuries?

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", language: English, abstract: This paper aims to examine today's representation of common curse words in a linguistic approach. I will have a look at five frequently used swearwords in the English language and evaluate those due to social features of the speaker and the addressee by using data from the BNCweb corpus.In addition to that I will either prove or disprove some of the following assumptions made by Timothy Jay and Kristin Janschewitz for the circuit of the BNCweb corpus: ¿Swearing is influenced by pragmatic (contextual) variables such as the conversationaltopic, the speaker-listener relationship, including gender, occupation, and status, and the social-physical setting of the communication with respect to whether the swearing takes place in a public or private location, one¿s jurisdiction over the location, and the level of formality of the occasion.¿To narrow this down, I categorize my research in four classes: context, status, gender and additionally age. Finally, I conclude whether the above-mentioned social features influence a native English speaker's disposition to swear.

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", language: English, abstract: The following thesis aims to give an insight into Anne Sexton's life and work. First, I will give an overview of Anne Sexton's biography, concentrating on her childhood and youth, the beginning of her illness, the marriage and her "other" character as a poet. Further, I will focus on her poetry with special remarks on the motif of suicide. Due to the multiplicity of her works and an even greater amount of diverging analytical approaches, I am going to concentrate on a selection of concepts, including the aspect of guilt, escape from life, society, religion, love and spirituality. I will pay special attention to the poem "Wanting to Die" and examine the representation of suicide along the poem.Anne Sexton is counted among the most influential American poets of modern times. She was raised in a society in which women could only reach feminine fulfillment by being the perfect suburban housewife: healthy, attractive and only concerned about her husband, children, and the household. A society in which mental disorders and depression were seen as inappropriate behavior or harmless housewife blues. A society in which thousands of women missed to meet those expectations and considered themselves as individual failures. Anne Sexton was one of them. Raised by callous parents, she found herself deeply depressed and overstrained in a household with a husband and two small children. What followed were several suicide attempts, psychiatric treatment and her so-called rebirth at twenty-nine, when she started writing poetry, that was centered on her personal feelings and experiences.What was intended to serve as a form of self-therapy was soon becoming a poetic confession dealing with topics many women and suicide patients had experienced but had been too afraid to talk about. To do something that was valued by others gave Anne Sexton strong self-esteem, but also created a wide gap between her public representation and her personal state of being. Critics were in disagreement whether she was groundbreaking confessional or narcissistic or completely insane. Or everything at once. Dealing with such a complex personality a variety of questions come to mind: To what extent did Anne Sexton's biography influence her writing? Did writing poetry help her to overcome times of despair or did it even enhance her mental disorder? How is the topic of suicide depicted in her poems? Can Anne Sexton be considered as a forerunner for later feminist movements?

Akademische Arbeit aus dem Jahr 2015 im Fachbereich Politik - Thema: Europäische Union, Note: 1,3, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Veranstaltung: Analysing Policies of the EU, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Als die weltweite Finanzkrise im Herbst 2009 schließlich auch Europa erreichte, war noch nicht abzusehen in welchem Ausmaß diese die Stabilität der Europäischen Union ins Wanken bringen würde. Die Erschütterung des Bankensystems, die vor allem die Peripherieländer der Eurozone traf, führte zu einer Reihe von Rettungsmaßnahmen, die jedoch nur eine kurzzeitige Verbesserung der Lage herbeiführten, die Situation aber auf längere Sicht erschwerten. Die bis dato wirtschaftlich starke Eurozone drohte aufgrund einer unzureichenden Krisenbekämpfung zu scheitern, da es weder klare Gesetzesregelungen zur Abwicklung notleidender Banken gab, geschweige denn ein Organ auf EU-Ebene mit der Bevollmächtigung über mögliche Hilfsmaßnahmen zu entscheiden. Eine bereits vor Einführung der gemeinsamen Euro-Währung oft diskutierte Angelegenheit kehrte somit mit aller Dringlichkeit zurück in den Fokus der politischen Debatte: die Schaffung einer einheitlich europäischen Bankenunion war schon lange überfällig und sollte nun, in der Hoffnung die weitere Ausbreitung der Krise in den Griff zu bekommen, schnellstmöglich umgesetzt werden. Am 30. Mai 2012 sprach der damalige EU-Kommissionspräsident José Manuel Barroso in Brüssel erstmals von der Einführung der Europäischen Bankenunion. Seitdem spalten die Verhandlungen bezüglich ihrer Umsetzung die Eurozone. Auch wenn sich bereits etwas getan hat, beispielsweise im Zuge der Schaffung einer gemeinsamen Bankenaufsicht, trifft die Europäische Union in einigen Bereichen, wie der Frage, ob es zukünftig eine harmonisierte Einlagensicherung geben wird, auf Kritik ¿ nicht selten gerade von deutscher Seite. Deswegen ist die Frage, ob die Schaffung der Europäischen Bankenunion eigentlich im deutschen Interesse ist, noch immer brandaktuell. Bei der Beantwortung dieser Frage werde ich mich auf die Rational Choice Theorie stützen, welche besagt, dass (politische) Akteure Entscheidungen stets rational treffen mit dem Ziel der eigenen Nutzenmaximierung. Dieser Ansatz ist hier gerade interessant, weil eine langfristige Nutzenmaximierung nicht unbedingt im Einverständnis mit kurzzeitigen Verbesserungen stehen muss.