German

2011-12

101 Elementary German I

Our multi-media course Fokus Deutsch is based on videos depicting realistic stories of the lives of present day Germans as well as authentic documents and interviews with native speakers from all walks of life. The video program, as well as related Internet webpages, will serve as a first-hand introduction to the German-speaking countries and will encourage students to use everyday language in a creative way. Text and audio-visual materials emphasize the mastery of speaking, writing, and reading skills that are the foundation for further study. Three hours a week for explanation and demonstration, one hour a week in small sections plus frequent viewing of video clips and Internet sites on Blackboard.

 

Fall semester. Senior Lecturer Schütz.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025

102 Elementary German II

A continuation of GERM 101, with increased emphasis on reading of selected texts. Three class meetings per week plus one additional conversation hour in small sections, with individual work on Blackboard.

Requisite: GERM 101 or equivalent. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer Schütz.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025

205 Intermediate German

Systematic review of grammar, aural and speaking practice, discussion of video and television programs, and reading of selected texts in contemporary German. Stress will be on the acquisition and polishing of verbal, reading, writing, and comprehension skills in German. Three hours per week for explanation and structured discussion, plus one hour per week in small sections for additional practice with German language assistants.

Requisite: GERM 102 or two years of secondary-school German or equivalent. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Gutzmann (Smith College).

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025

210 Advanced Composition and Conversation

Practice in free composition and analytical writing in German. Exercises in pronunciation and idiomatic conversation. Supplementary work with audio and video materials. Oral reports on selected topics and reading of literary and topical texts. Conducted in German. Three hours per week, plus one hour per week in small sections for additional practice with German language assistants.

Requisite: GERM 205 or equivalent, based on departmental placement decision. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025

312 Advanced Reading, Conversation, and Style I

Reading, discussion, and close analysis of a wide range of cultural materials, including selections from Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, essays, and short works by modern authors and song writers (Böll, Brecht, Biermann, Udo Lindenberg, etc.). Materials will be analyzed both for their linguistic features and as cultural documents. Textual analysis includes study of vocabulary, style, syntax, and selected points of grammar. Round-table discussions, oral reports and structured composition exercises. Students will also view unedited television programs, work with the Internet, and listen to recordings of political and scholarly speeches, cabaret, protest songs, and to authors reading from their own works. Conducted in German. Three class hours per week, plus an additional hour in small sections.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Fall semester. Senior Lecturer Schütz.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Fall 2008, Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2016, Fall 2020

314 Advanced Reading, Conversation, and Style II

Focusing on one contemporary novel, we will develop strategies for analyzing texts for their literary expression, their linguistic and stylistic features, and their cultural content. Additional materials (Internet, video, CD-ROMs, etc.) on literary and cultural topics as well as articles drawn from history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Three class hours per week, plus one hour with German Language Assistants.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer Schütz.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013

315 German Cultural History to 1800

An examination of cultural developments in the German tradition, from the Early Middle Ages to the rise of Prussia and the Napoleonic Period. We shall explore the interaction between socio-political factors in German-speaking Europe and works of “high art” produced in the successive eras, as well as Germany’s centuries-long search for a cultural identity. Literature to be considered will include selections from Tacitus’Germania, the Hildebrandslied, a courtly epic and some medieval lyric poetry; the sixteenth-century Faust chapbook and other writings of the Reformation Period; Baroque prose, poetry, and music; works by Lessing and other figures of the German Enlightenment; Sturm und Drang, including early works by Goethe, Schiller, and their younger contemporaries. Selected audio-visual materials will provide examples of artistic, architectural, and musical works representative of each of the main periods. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Rogowski.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

316 German Cultural History from 1800 to the Present

A survey of literary and cultural developments in the German tradition from the Romantic Period to contemporary trends. Major themes will include the Romantic imagination and the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the literary rebellion of the period prior to 1848, Poetic Realism and the Industrial Revolution, and various forms of aestheticism, activism, and myth. In the twentieth century we shall consider the culture of Vienna, the “Golden Twenties,” the suppression of freedom in the Nazi state, issues of exile and inner emigration, and the diverse models of cultural reconstruction after 1945. Authors represented will include Friedrich Schlegel, Brentano, Heine, Büchner, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Kafka, Brecht, Grass, Wolf, and Handke. Music by Schubert, Wagner, Mahler, and Henze; samples of art and architecture. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Brandes.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025

320 Fairy Tales

This course invites you to journey into the world of German fairy tales, sagas, and legends. Castles and humble huts, enchanted forests and crumbling ruins are the topographies of our critical inquiry into bewitching, at times haunting tales of power struggles, family conflicts, the rise from “rags to riches,” as well as cruel acts, punishments, and rewards. Our focus will be on folk and literary tales, chief among them the tales of the brothers Grimm. We will also examine other European traditions of storytelling and their continuing relevance as literary, cultural, and social documents for today. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Gutzmann (Smith College).

325 Romantic Couples

Can romantic love be pure passion? Or is it subject to rules designed to express feeling? The course explores the language and representations of love around 1800, during a time of profound social and aesthetic change. We will investigate the romantic yearnings for love as a meeting of autonomous subjects, leading to the discovery and realization of the self; the ecstasy of love and erotic misery; longings for everlasting fidelity and trust; issues of speechlessness and delusions; and the social marriage contract which gave rise to a desire to harmonize erotic and Platonic love and friendship. Readings will include romantic tales and fairy tales, novels, poetry, and letters by Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Schlegel, Bettina von Arnim, Tieck, Hoffmann, and Kleist; music by Schubert and Wagner; romantic painting by Friedrich, Runge, and the Nazarenes. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2011-12. Professor Brandes.

2023-24: Not offered

327 The Age of Goethe

Classical German literature and music, from the 1780s to the 1830s, has influenced German and Western culture until today. While considering music and art, this course will focus primarily on the greatest writers of the period: Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin. Placing their literature in the philosophical and political contexts of Idealism and of German enlightened absolutism, we will distinguish this “high art” from contemporary early romantic concepts as well as from German Jacobine activism, which was strongly influenced by the French Revolution. We will also examine the legacy of this rich cultural era in its impact on Western romantic, transcendentalist, and symbolist movements--and its influence on the rise of the myth of the Germans as a “nation of poets and thinkers.” Readings will include Goethe’s Faust I, Egmont, Iphigenie, and Römische Elegien; Schiller’s Die Räuber and Maria Stuart; Hölderlin’s Hyperion and selected poems; essays and manifestos by Kant, Fichte, and Forster. Listening assignments in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and selected Lieder of the period. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2011-12. Professor Brandes.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010, Fall 2017

331 Berlin, Metropolis

“Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!” to Berlin, Europe’s youngest metropolis. Virtually exploding in the early 1900s into a creative and influential urban center, the new Berlin reacted to the political challenges of imperialism, war, revolution, and inflation with wit, sarcasm, and radical politics--the perfect proving ground for those seeking personal freedom and political change, including artists, amateurs, reformers, and revolutionaries. We will trace the beginnings and flowering of urban modernism in Berlin public life, architecture, the fine arts and theater, up to the Nazi virulent attacks on modern art and urban lifestyles as “degenerate” in 1933. Course materials focus on the changes from pre-modern to urban metropolis, including such topics as alternative ways of life in the social and cultural spaces of the city; the celebration of the exotic; new concepts of sexuality and the body; ethnicity and difference; and the ill-fated German-Jewish symbiosis. Readings and viewings include novels, films, essays, design, architecture, theater, cabaret, jazz, and montage in the arts. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2011-12. Professor Brandes.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2009, Spring 2013, Spring 2016

333 Comedy and Humor

The course with the shortest reading list ever-not! Contrary to popular opinion, Germans (and their Austrian and Swiss neighbors) do have a sense of humor that has produced a wide variety of both high-brow and popular forms, ranging from the absurdist skits of Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt, to raunchy “Ostfriesenwitze,” and to the current boom in sex and “relationship” comedies in film. We will explore broadsheets and cartoons (Wilhelm Busch, Loriot, E. O. Plauen, Uli Stein), populist theater forms such as the operetta (Strauss, Lehar) and farcical “Volkstheater,” sophisticated literary comedies (Tieck, Büchner, Sternheim, Dürrenmatt), social satire in print and other media (Heine, Kraus, Tucholsky, Staudte, Irmtraud Morgner, Robert Gernhardt, Eckhard Henscheid, Luise Pusch, Elfriede Jelinek), parody pastiche in song and movies (Comedian Harmonists, Max Raabe, Bully Herbig), and political humor in cabaret from the Wilhelmine period, the Weimar Republic, inside and outside the Third Reich, communist East Germany, and the multi-ethnic Germany of today (Wedekind, Werner Finck, Erika Mann, Gerhart Polt, Sinasi Dikmen). Primary materials will be supplemented by theoretical readings, including Arthur Koestler, Volker Klotz, Susanne Schäfer, and-of course-Sigmund Freud. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Rogowski.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2012, Spring 2015, Fall 2018

334 Post-War German Culture, 1945-1989

How did post-war Germany respond to the dilemma of being the frontier between Communism and the Free World? How did the two German societies develop their own identities and adapt, rebel, or acquiesce culturally in regard to the powers in control? We will situate major literary and cultural developments within the context of political and social history. Topics include coming to terms with the Nazi past; political dissent, democratization, and economic affluence; reactions to the Berlin Wall; the student revolt and feminism; the threat to democracy and civil rights posed by terrorism; the peace movement in the East and the West. Readings in various genres, including experimental literary texts. Authors include Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Peter Schneider, and Peter Weiss in the West and Volker Braun, Heiner Müller, Ulrich Plenzdorf, and Christa Wolf in the East. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2011-12. Professor Brandes.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010, Fall 2016

338 Modern Drama

Why is drama an art form of such tremendous importance to Germans, Austrians, and the Swiss? Few cultures can boast a similar preoccupation with, interest in, and public support of, the theater. This course examines the rich legacy of dramatic innovation and experimentation from about 1890 to the present day, ranging from the scandals surrounding Frank Wedekind’s exposition of sexual hypocrisy to the iconoclastic provocations of present-day Regietheater. We will read and discuss selected plays by authors such as Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler, Georg Kaiser, Bertolt Brecht, Marie-Luise Fleisser, Peter Weiss, Heinar Kipphardt, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Max Frisch, Botho Strauß, Marlene Streeruwitz, Elfriede Jelinek and others. Readings will be supplemented by audiovisual materials on artists like Pina Bausch, Johann Kresnik, and Heiner Müller. Conducted in German.

Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2011-12. Professor Rogowski.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2019, Fall 2021

344 Popular Cinema

From Fritz Lang’s thrilling detective mysteries to Tom Tykwer’s hip postmodern romp Run Lola Run, from Ernst Lubitsch’s satirical wit to the gender-bending comedies of Katja von Garnier, this course explores the rich legacy of popular and genre films in the German-speaking countries. Topics to be covered include adventure films, comedies, and costume dramas of the silent period, including Fritz Lang’s Spiders (1919) and Joe May’s The Indian Tomb (1920); the musical comedies of the Weimar Republic and the “dream couple” Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch; Nazi movie stars and the “non-political” entertainment films of the Third Reich, such as Josef von Baky’s blockbuster Münchhausen (1943); the resurgence of genre films in the 1950s (“Heimatfilme,” romantic comedies, melodramas, etc.); the Cold War Westerns in the West (based on the novels by Karl May) and in the East (starring Gojko Mitic); the efforts to produce audience-oriented films in the politicized climate of the 1960s and 1970s; the big budget quasi-Hollywood productions by Wolfgang Petersen; and the recent spate of relationship comedies. We will discuss the work of, among others, actors and performers Karl Valentin, Heinz Rühmann, Zarah Leander, Hans Albers, Heinz Erhardt, Romy Schneider, Loriot, and Otto, and directors including Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Joe May, Wilhelm Thiele, May Spils, Katja von Garnier, Detlev Buck, Tom Tykwer, and Doris Dörrie. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-12. Professor Rogowski.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 2009, Spring 2017

347 Weimar Cinema: The "Golden Age" of German Film

(Offered as GERM 347 and FAMS 323.)  This course examines the German contribution to the emergence of film as both a distinctly modern art form and as a product of mass culture. The international success of Robert Wiene’s Expressionist phantasmagoria, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), heralded the beginning of a period of unparalleled artistic exploration, prior to the advent of Hitler, during which the ground was laid for many of the filmic genres familiar today: horror film (F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu), detective thriller (Fritz Lang’s M), satirical comedy (Ernst Lubitsch’s The Oyster Princess), psychological drama (G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box), science fiction (Lang’s Metropolis), social melodrama  (Pabst’s The Joyless Street), historical costume film (Lubitsch’s Passion), political propaganda (Slatan Dudow’s Kuhle Wampe), anti-war epic (Pabst’s Westfront 1918), a documentary montage (Walther Ruttmann’s Berlin – Symphony of a Big City), and the distinctly German genre of the “mountain film” (Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light). Readings, including Siegried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Lotte H. Eisner, Béla Balázs, and Rudolf Arnheim, will address questions of technology and modernity, gender relations after World War I, the intersection of politics and film, and the impact of German and Austrian exiles on Hollywood. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Spring semester. Professor Rogowski.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010, Spring 2012, Spring 2015, Spring 2020

349 Witches: Myth and Reality

This course examines the historical construction of the witch and the context of the women (and men) labeled as witches. Our main topics will be: European Pagan religions and the spread of Christianity; the “Burning Times” in early modern Europe, with an emphasis on the German situation; 17th-century New England and the Salem witch trials; the images of witches in folklore and fairy tales in the context of the historical persecutions; and some contemporary Wiccan/witch practices in their historical context.  Readings are drawn from documentary records of the witch persecutions and witch trials, literary representations, scholarly analyses of witch-related phenomena and themes, and essays examining witches, witchcraft, and the witch persecutions, including from contemporary feminist and/or neo-Pagan perspectives.  Readings and discussions will be supplemented by related material taken from current events in addition to visual material (videos, slides) drawn from art history, early modern witch literature, popular culture, and documentary sources. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Fall semester. Visiting Professor Frackman (University of Massachusetts).

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011

350 Rilke

The course will explore the rich legacy of one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. We will examine Rilke’s peculiar background in the German-speaking minority in Hapsburg Prague; his situation in the literary world of fin-de-siècle Munich; the significance of his encounter with Lou Andreas-Salomé; the intellectual experiences that shaped his outlook on life and on poetry (Nietzsche; Russia and Tolstoy; Paris and Rodin); his artistic breakthrough in the two-volume New Poems (1907) and the concept of the "Ding-Gedicht"; the existential crisis reflected in the modernist novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910); his reflections on the role of poetry in a modern world of uncertainty in texts such as A Letter to a Young Poet (1903); his artistic crisis of the 1910s; and the extraordinary double achievement of 1922, The Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus.  Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-12.  Professor Rogowski

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010, Spring 2013, Spring 2016, Fall 2019

351 Joyful Apocalypse: Vienna Around 1900.

Between 1890 and 1914, Vienna was home to such diverse figures as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Gustav Mahler, Leon Trotsky, and-Adolf Hitler. Which social, cultural, and political forces brought about the extraordinary vibrancy and creative ferment in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? The course will examine the multiple tensions that characterized “fin-de-siècle” Vienna, such as the connection between the pursuit of pleasure and an exploration of human sexuality, and the conflict between avant-garde experimentation and the disintegration of political liberalism. Against this historical backdrop we shall explore a wide variety of significant figures in literature (Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Musil, Kraus), music (Mahler, R. Strauss, Schönberg), and the visual arts (Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, O. Wagner, A. Loos). We will explore the significance of various intellectual phenomena, including the psychoanalysis of Freud and the philosophies of Ernst Mach and Ludwig Wittgenstein. We shall also trace the emergence of modern Zionism (Theodor Herzl) in a context of growing anti-Semitism, and discuss the pacifism of Bertha von Suttner in a society on the verge of the cataclysm of the First World War.  Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-12. Professor Rogowski.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2019

352 Kafka, Brecht, and Thomas Mann

Representative works by each of the three contemporary authors will be read both for their intrinsic artistic merit and as expressions of the cultural, social, and political concerns of their time. Among these are such topics as the dehumanization of the individual by the state, people caught between conflicting ideologies, and literature as admonition, political statement, or escape. Readings of short stories and a novel by Kafka, including “The Judgment,” “The Metamorphosis,” and The Castle; poems, short prose, and plays by Brecht, e.g., The Three-Penny Opera, Mother Courage, and The Good Woman of Setzuan; fiction and essays by Mann, including “Death in Venice” and Buddenbrooks.  Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Spring semester. Professor Brandes.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2012, Spring 2015

354 Nietzsche and Freud

Modern thinking has been profoundly shaped by Nietzsche’s radical questioning of moral values and Freud’s controversial ideas about the unconscious. The course explores some of the ways in which German literature responds to and participates in the intellectual challenge presented by Nietzsche’s philosophy and Freud’s psychoanalysis. Readings include seminal texts by both of these figures as well as works by Rilke, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Musil, Schnitzler, and Expressionist poets.  Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-12. Professor Rogowski.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Spring 2017

360 Performance

(Offered as GERM 360, EUST 360 and FAMS 316.) What is performance? What constitutes an event? How can we address a phenomenon that has disappeared the moment we apprehend it? How does memory operate in our critical perception of an event? How does a body make meaning? These are a few of the questions we will explore in this course, as we discuss critical, theoretical, and compositional approaches in a broad range of multidisciplinary performance phenomena emerging from European--primarily German--culture in the twentieth century. We will focus on issues of performativity, composition, conceptualization, dramaturgy, identity construction, representation, space, gender, and dynamism. Readings of performance theory, performance studies, gender studies, and critical/cultural studies, as well as literary, philosophical, and architectural texts will accompany close examination of performance material. Students will develop performative projects in various media (video, performance, text, online) and deliver a number of critical oral and written presentations on various aspects of the course material and their own projects. Performance material will be experienced live when possible, and in text, video, audio, digital media and online form, drawn from selected works of Dada and Surrealism, Bauhaus, German Expressionism, the Theater of the Absurd, Tanztheater, and Contemporary Theater, Performance, Dance, Opera, New Media, and Performance Art. A number of films, including Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Oskar Schlemmer’s Das Triadische Ballett, Fernand Léger’s Ballet Mécanique, and Kurt Jooss’ Der Grüne Tisch, will be also screened.  Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-2012.  Professor Gilpin.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2014, Fall 2017, Fall 2020, Spring 2023

363 Traumatic Events

(Offered as GERM 363, EUST 363, and FAMS 370.) How is memory constructed and represented? How is it possible to bear witness, and what exactly is involved? Who is authorized to testify, to whom, when? Whose story is it? Is it possible to tell "the story" of a traumatic event? What are the disorders of testimony, and how and where do they emerge? This course will observe the workings of trauma (the enactment and working-through of collective and individual symptoms of trauma), memory, and witnessing in various modes of everyday life. We will examine notions of catastrophe, disaster, accident, and violence, and explore the possibilities and impossibilities of bearing witness in many forms of cultural production: in fiction, poetry, architecture, critical theory, oral and written testimonies, visual art, monuments, memorials, philosophy, science, cartoons, film, video, theater, television reportage, newspaper documentation, performance, online, and in our public and domestic spaces. We will study various representations of trauma, paying particular attention to events in Germany and Europe from the twentieth century, as well as to 9/11 and other recent international events. Material to be examined will be drawn from the work of Pina Bausch, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Cathy Caruth, Paul Celan, Marguerite Duras, Peter Eisenman, Shoshana Felman, Florian Freund, Jochen Gerz, Geoffrey Hartman, Rebecca Horn, Marion Kant, Anselm Kiefer, Ruth Klüger, Dominick LaCapra, Claude Lanzmann, Dori Laub, Daniel Libeskind, W.G. Sebald, Art Spiegelman, Paul Virilio, Peter Weiss, Wim Wenders, Elie Wiesel, Christa Wolf, and others. Conducted in English with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-12. Professor Gilpin.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Fall 2010, Fall 2014, Fall 2018

364 Architectures of Disappearance

(Offered as GERM 364 and EUST 364.) This course will address a number of developments and transformations in contemporary urban architecture and performance from an international perspective. We will explore issues including, but not limited to, trauma, memory, absence, perception, corporeality, representation, and the senses in our examination of recent work in Germany and elsewhere, and read a number of texts from the fields of philosophy, critical theory, performance studies, and visual and architectural studies, in an attempt to understand how architecture is beginning to develop compositional systems in which to envision dynamic and responsive spaces in specific cultural contexts. We will focus our research on the work of a number of German and international architects, performance, and new media artists, including Jochen Gerz, Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, Horst Hoheisel, Micha Ullman, Shimon Attie, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Greg Lynn, Mark Goulthorpe, R & Sie(n), Axel Kilian, Paul Privitera, Hani Rashid and Lise-Ann Couture, Herzog and de Meuron, Archigram, William Forsythe, Jan Fabre, Rachel Whiteread, Rebecca Horn, Sasha Waltz, Richard Siegal, Michael Schumacher, Robert Wilson, the Blix Brothers of Berlin, Pina Bausch, Granular Synthesis, Sponge, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Toni Dove, and many others.  Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-12. Professor Gilpin.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2013, Spring 2016, Spring 2019, Fall 2022, Spring 2025

365 Making Memorials

(Offered as GERM 365 and EUST 365.) This is a course about what happens to difficult memories: memories that are intensely personal, but made public, memories that belong to communities, but which become ideologically possessed by history, politics, or the media. How are memories processed into memorials? What constitutes a memorial? What gets included or excluded? How is memory performed in cultural objects, spaces, and institutions? What is the relationship between the politics of representation and memory? Who owns memory? Who is authorized to convey it? How does memory function? This course will explore the spaces in which memories are “preserved” and experienced. Our attention will focus on the transformation of private and public memories in works of architecture, performance, literature, and the visual arts primarily in Germany, Europe, and the United States. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.

Omitted 2011-2012. Professor Gilpin.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2016, Fall 2021

366 Bauhaus

(Offered as GERM 366 and EUST 246).  This course will explore in detail the art, architecture, history and theory of the influential German art school, the Bauhaus. The subject of recent blockbuster exhibitions in New York and Berlin, this course will make use of many new publications and critical viewpoints. We will begin with the school's origins during WWI and the German Revolution, its spectacular contributions and controversial development during the Weimar Republic, and conclude with the demise of the Bauhaus by the National Socialists. We will trace the forced exile of many Bauhaus artists and architects, as well as analyze Bauhaus legacies (at Black Mountain College, the Ulm School of Design, the New Bauhaus Chicago, Yale, and Harvard, and in the Situationists' New Babylon project). The course will include the work of the architects Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Mies van der Rohe and Lilli Reich; the art and design (textiles, metal work, prints, photographs, typography, paintings, sculpture, etc.) of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stözl, Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joseph Albers, and Oskar Schlemmer; and the writings of important Weimar writers and theorists, such as Erich Maria Remarque, Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukács, and Siegfried Kracauer. Students will be responsible for in-class presentations, a book review, and a final paper. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of their reading in German.

Fall semester. Visiting Professor Koehler (Hampshire College).

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011

490 Special Topics

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

498, 499 Senior Departmental Honors

Spring semester. The Department.

Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025

Non-Language Courses

368 SPACE

(Offered as GERM 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 368.) This research seminar will explore conceptions of space as they have informed and influenced thought and creativity in the fields of cultural studies, literature, architecture, urban studies, performance, and the visual, electronic, and time-based arts. Students will select and pursue a major semester-long research project early in the semester in consultation with the professor, and present their research in its various stages of development throughout the semester, in a variety of media formats (writing, performance, video, electronic art/interactive media, installation, online and networked events, architectural/design drawings/renderings), along with oral presentations of readings and other materials. Readings and visual materials will be drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy; from architectural, art, and film theory and history; from performance studies and performance theory; and from theories of technology and the natural and built environment. Emphasis on developing research, writing, and presentation skills is a core of this seminar.

For spring 2012, we will focus on the river as the generative and dynamic concept that will guide our explorations of space and of different kinds of spaces, in conjunction with the European Union/Five College project on Riverscaping/Alles am Fluss: Rethinking art, environment and community/Kunst--Umwelt--Nachbarschaft neu denken. Students will pursue research projects concerning the visual arts, history, literature, environment, ecology, visibility/interactivity, conditions and movements of the river (specific rivers including the Elbe River in Hamburg, Germany and the Connecticut River here in the Pioneer Valley), and explore the visions, challenges, and possibilities of creating spaces in which art can happen and in which creative processes can transform communities. Students will have the opportunity to present their final research projects at the European Union/Five Colleges Riverscaping conference on Europe Day, May 9, 2012. One three-hour meeting per week.

Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, film/video, interactive installation, and/or the environment. Conducted in English.  German majors will select a research project focused on a German Studies context, and will do a substantial portion of the readings in German.

Limited to 15 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting.  Spring semester.  Professor Gilpin.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2018, Spring 2022, Fall 2024