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Our multi media course 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.
Fall and spring semesters. Lecturer Gomoluch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023A 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 Moodle.
Requisite: GERM 101 or equivalent. Spring semester. Lecturer Gomoluch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Systematic 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. Professor Gilpin.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Practice 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.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Reading, 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. Lecturer Gomoluch.
2022-23: Not offeredFocusing 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. Instructor will contact enrolled students to arrange meeting times and location Spring semester. Lecturer Gomoluch.
2022-23: Not offeredAn 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.
2022-23: Not offeredA 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.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023“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”. 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. Spring semester. Professor Brandes.
2022-23: Not offeredMigration is integral to the human experience, having become more common as our global economy encourages the free movement of people and ideas. About twenty percent of all people living in Germany today have a migration background, making life between cultures central to the ongoing discussion “What is German?” Over the centuries, many foreign-born persons immigrated into the German lands, and Germans fled from their home country, either to escape political repression or to look for better opportunities. We will explore issues of exile, alienation, gender, race, migration, and post-migration since the late eighteenth century, focusing on the German experience. Readings will include literature and essays by Herder, Chamisso, Heine, Kafka, Brecht, Anna Seghers, Thomas Mann, Paul Celan, Jurek Becker, and Thilo Sarrazin as well as texts in German by various foreign-born writers currently living in Germany, among them Herta Müller, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Yadé Kara, Wladimir Kaminer, Feridun Zaimoğlu, and Rafik Schami. Films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fatih Akin, Angelina Maccarone, Jörg Grünler, Tamara Staudt, Lars Becker, Züli Aladağ, Yasemin Şamdereli. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Brandes.
2022-23: Not offered
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 2012-13. Professor Rogowski.
2022-23: Not offeredThe 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 (no knowledge of German required), with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Spring semester. Professor Rogowski.
2022-23: Not offered(Offered as GERM 365 ARCH 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. Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, the visual arts, interactive installation and/or the environment. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Limited to 20 students. Fall semester. Professor Gilpin.
2022-23: Not offered(Offered as GERM 368, ARCH 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 373.) 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.
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.
2022-23: Not offeredFall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022