Department ofGermanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

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Jake Van der Kolk defends Ph.D. dissertation on Austrian writer Hermann Broch

Jake Van der Kolk defends Ph.D. dissertation on Austrian writer Hermann Broch

On August 16, 2017, Ph.D. candidate Jake Van der Kolk successfully defended his thesis, entitled “The Self-Destructing Text: Hermann Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil and the Limits of Avant-Garde Narrative.” The thesis examines how the notoriously difficult novel The Death of Virgil (1945) by Hermann Broch — written largely in the US where Broch was in exile during WWII — engages the reader in literary and existential self-inquiry, and in so doing demonstrates the impossibility of avant-garde narrative. Congratulations, Jake!