Abstract
My dissertation is a comparative study of coming-of-age memoirs and novels set during the Third Reich and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I analyze texts from West Germany, East Germany, post-socialist China, and the United States, written by authors who were children under these two regimes. I examine how their lived experiences and the specific publishing contexts of their works shape the reconstruction of their childhood selves. Furthermore, this study considers how these authors, to varying degrees, challenge or respond to dominant memory discourses, reinforce revisionist histories, and, in the case of transnational publications, present these narratives to international audiences. While existing scholarship on Nazi and Maoist era literature has frequently examined childhood innocence and victimization, analysis of these literary representations has yet to fully consider the internalized censorship revealed in texts that attempt to confront, rather than evade, the past. I argue that internalized authoritarian thinking permeates the authors’ or narrators’ self- judgment of their former selves, persisting even when they intended to liberate themselves from the psychological impact of growing up under repressive regimes.
Committee Chair
Erin McGlothlin
Committee Members
Letty Chen; Nan Z. Da; Caroline Kita; Sarah Koellner
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Comparative Literature
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
4-24-2026
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/wv6x-2840
Recommended Citation
Xu, Shinan, "Children of the State: Coming-of-Age Narratives in the Third Reich and the Cultural Revolution" (2026). Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations. 3818.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/wv6x-2840