Courses at Bryn Mawr

This page displays the schedule of Bryn Mawr courses in this department for this academic year. It also displays descriptions of courses offered by the department during the last four academic years.

For information about courses offered by other Bryn Mawr departments and programs or about courses offered by Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, please consult the Course Guides page.

For information about the Academic Calendar, including the dates of first and second quarter courses, please visit the College's master calendar.

Spring 2013

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
GERM B002-001	Elementary German	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:00 AM-10:00 AM MWF	Taylor Hall B	Kenosian,D.
			Lecture: 8:45 AM- 9:45 AM TTH	Taylor Hall B
			Drill: 6:30 PM- 7:30 PM M	Thomas Hall 111
			LEC: 6:30 PM- 7:30 PM TH	Thomas Hall 111
GERM B102-001	Intermediate German	Semester / 1	Lecture: 11:00 AM-12:00 PM MWF	Taylor Hall B	Schlipphacke,H.
GERM B202-001	Introduction to German Studies	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW	Taylor Hall B	Schlipphacke,H.
GERM B231-001	Cultural Profiles in Modern Exile	Semester / 1	Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH	Dalton Hall 212A	Seyhan,A.
GERM B245-001	Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture: A History of Queer Bodies	Semester / 1	Lecture: 7:00 PM- 9:30 PM M	Dalton Hall 2	Schlipphacke,H.
			LEC: 7:00 PM-10:00 PM SU	Dalton Hall 2
GERM B320-001	Topics in German Literature and Culture: Germ Literary Culture in Exile	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM TH	Taylor Hall, Seminar Room	Seyhan,A.
GERM B399-001	Senior Seminar	Semester / 1	Lecture: Date/Time TBA		Dept. staff, TBA

Fall 2013

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
GERM B001-001	Elementary German	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:00 AM-10:00 AM MWF	Dalton Hall 25	Kenosian,D.
			Lecture: 8:45 AM- 9:45 AM TTH	Dalton Hall 25
GERM B101-001	Intermediate German	Semester / 1	Lecture: 12:00 PM- 1:00 PM MWF	Thomas Hall 111	Kenosian,D.
GERM B213-001	Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities: Rhetoric and Interpretation after Post-Modernism	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM MW		Interim,R.
GERM B421-001	German for Reading Knowledge	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	Taylor Hall B	Seyhan,A.

Spring 2014

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
GERM B002-001	Elementary German	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:00 AM-10:00 AM MWF	Dalton Hall 25	Kenosian,D.
			Lecture: 8:45 AM- 9:45 AM TTH	Dalton Hall 25
			Drill: Date/Time TBA
GERM B102-001	Intermediate German	Semester / 1	Lecture: 11:00 AM-12:00 PM MWF	Taylor Hall B	Meyer,I.
GERM B202-001	Introduction to German Studies	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	Taylor Hall B	Dept. staff, TBA
GERM B223-001	Topics in German Cultural Studies: Global Masculinity: Male Body in Contemp Cinema	Semester / 1	LEC: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH	Carpenter Library 25	Dept. staff, TBA
			Film: Date/Time TBA
GERM B245-001	Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture: Nation and Identity in Post-War Austrian Literatur	Semester / 1	LEC: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW	Taylor Hall, Seminar Room	Meyer,I.
GERM B303-001	Modern German Prose: Tall Tales: Modern German Fiction 1795 to Present	Semester / 1	LEC: 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM T	Taylor Hall, Seminar Room	Meyer,I.
GERM B399-001	Senior Seminar	Semester / 1	Lecture: Date/Time TBA		Dept. staff, TBA

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Courses at Haverford Fall 2013

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
GERMH001A01	Elementary German	Semester 1/1	MWF 9:30-10:30: TTh 9-10		Imke Brust
GERMH101A01	Intermediate German	Semester 1/1	MWF 10:30-11:30		David Kenosian
GERMH201A01	Advanced Training: Language, Text, and Context	Semester 1/1	TTh 11:30-1:00		Ulrich Schönherr
GERMH223A01	Writing Nations: Africa and Europe	Semester 1/1	M 1:30-4:00		Imke Brust
GERMH320A01	Contemporary German Fiction and Film	Semester 1/1	W 1:30-4:00		Ulrich Schönherr
GERMH399	Senior Seminar	Semester2/1	TBA		Ulrich Schönherr / Imke Brust

 

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Courses at Haverford Spring 2014

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
GERMH002B01	Elementary German		MWF 9:30-10:30: TTh 9-10		Imke Brust
GERMH102B01	Intermediate German		MWF 10:30-11:30		Ulrich Schönherr
COMLH 200	Introduction to Comparative Literature		MW 2:30-4:00		Ulrich Schönherr
GERMH 262	Post-Wall German and European Film		MW 11:30-1:00		Imke Brust
GERMH399B01	Senior Seminar		TBA		Ulrich Schönherr/ Imke Brust

 

2013-14 Catalog Data

GERM B001 Elementary German Fall 2013 Meets five hours a week with the individual class instructor, two hours with student drill instructors. Strong emphasis on communicative competence both in spoken and written German in a larger cultural context. Language Level 1

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GERM B002 Elementary German Spring 2014 Meets five hours a week with the individual class instructor, two hours with student drill instructors. Strong emphasis on communicative competence both in spoken and written German in a larger cultural context. Language Level 1

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GERM B101 Intermediate German Fall 2013 Thorough review of grammar, exercises in composition and conversation. Enforcement of correct grammatical patterns and idiomatic use of language. Study of selected literary and cultural texts and films from German-speaking countries. Two semesters. Language Level 2

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GERM B102 Intermediate German Spring 2014 This course is the continuation of GERM 101 (Intermediate German I). We will concentrate on all four?language skills--speaking, reading, writing, and listening comprehension. We will build on the knowledge ?that students gained in the elementary-level courses and then honed in GERM 101. This course will also provide students with an introduction to selected aspects of German culture. Language Level 2

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GERM B202 Introduction to German Studies Spring 2014 In this course, we will concentrate on all four language skills - speaking, reading, writing and listening comprehension. However, we will place a special emphasis on the skills of reading and writing. In addition, you will be introduced to different literary and non-literary text genres. You will practice writing in different genres, ?as well. We will read newspaper articles, film reviews, fairy tales, short stories, and poetry. We will also screen ?a film. Division I or Division III Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Critical Interpretation (CI)

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GERM B212 Readings in German Intellectual History: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and the Rhetoric of Modernity Not offered 2013-14 Study of selected texts of German intellectual history, introducing representative works of Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Jürgen Habermas, Georg W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Werner Heisenberg, Immanuel Kant, G. E. Lessing, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schiller, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The course aims to introduce students to an advanced cultural reading range and the languages and terminology of humanistic disciplines in German-speaking countries, and seeks to develop their critical and interpretive skills. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Inquiry into the Past (IP) Cross-listed as PHIL B204

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GERM B213 Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities
Section 001 (Fall 2013): Rhetoric and Interpretation after Post-Modernism Fall 2013 An examination in English of leading theories of interpretation from Classical Tradition to Modern and Post-Modern Time. This is a topics course. Course content varies. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ITAL B213 Cross-listed as RUSS B253 Cross-listed as PHIL B253

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies
Section 001 (Fall 2012): Crime and Detection in German Literature and Cultu
Section 001 (Spring 2014): Global Masculinity: Male Body in Contemp Cinema Spring 2014 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Division I or Division III Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as HIST B247 Cross-listed as COML B223

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GERM B231 Cultural Profiles in Modern Exile Not offered 2013-14 This course investigates the anthropological, philosophical, psychological, cultural, and literary aspects of modern exile. It studies exile as experience and metaphor in the context of modernity, and examines the structure of the relationship between imagined/remembered homelands and transnational identities, and the dialectics of language loss and bi- and multi-lingualism. Particular attention is given to the psychocultural dimensions of linguistic exclusion and loss. Readings of works by Julia Alvarez, Anita Desai, Sigmund Freud, Milan Kundera, Friedrich Nietzsche, Salman Rushdie, and others. Division III: Humanities Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as COML B231 Cross-listed as ANTH B231 Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures Counts toward International Studies Major

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GERM B245 Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture
Section 001 (Spring 2013): A History of Queer Bodies
Section 001 (Spring 2014): Nation and Identity in Post-War Austrian Literatur Spring 2014 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English. Division III: Humanities Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ENGL B260 Cross-listed as COML B245 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

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GERM B262 Topics: Film and the German Literary Imagination
Section 001 (Fall 2012): Coming of Age: Picturing the Time of Childhood in Not offered 2013-14 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Division III: Humanities Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ENGL B261 Counts toward Film Studies

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GERM B303 Modern German Prose
Section 001 (Spring 2014): Tall Tales: Modern German Fiction 1795 to Present Spring 2014 This is a topics course. Topics vary. Taught in German.
Current topic description: Auf welche Weisen produzieren erzählende Texte Bedeutungen? Mit welchen Mitteln hinterfragen sie ethische, historische oder soziale Zusammenhänge? Was für Zwecke erfüllen erzählende Texte? Können erzählende Texte den Leser/die Leserin manipulieren? Wir werden Erzählprosa aus dem 18., 19. und 20. Jahrhundert lesen und dabei nicht nur die Form der Texte untersuchen, sondern auch die Inhalte und Fragen, die sie aufwerfen. Division III: Humanities

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GERM B305 Modern German Drama Not offered 2013-14 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in German. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as COML B305

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GERM B310 Topics in German Literature Not offered 2013-14 This is a topics course. Course content varies. One additional hour of target language instruction TBA. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as HEBR B310

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GERM B320 Topics in German Literature and Culture
Section 001 (Spring 2013): Germ Literary Culture in Exile Not offered 2013-14 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Previous topics include: Romantic Literary Theory and Literary Modernity; Configurations of Femininity in German Literature; Nietzsche and Modern Cultural Criticism; Contemporary German Fiction; No Child Left Behind: Education in German Literature and Culture. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as EDUC B320 Counts toward Film Studies

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GERM B321 Advanced Topics in German Cultural Studies Not offered 2013-14 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Topic for 2011-12 is The Transnational Cosmopolitanism of Swiss Literature. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as HART B348 Cross-listed as COML B321 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

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GERM B329 Wittgenstein Not offered 2013-14 Wittgenstein is notable for developing two philosophical systems. In the first, he attempted to show that there is a single common structure underlying all language, thought and being. In the second, he denied the idea of such a structure and claimed that the job of philosophy was to free philosophers from bewitchments due to misunderstandings of ordinary concepts in language. The course begins by sketching the first system. We then turn to his rejection of the earlier ideas as outlined in Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. We also examine contemporary interpretations of Wittgenstein's later work. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as PHIL B329

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GERM B380 Topics in Contemporary Art Not offered 2013-14 This is a topic course. Course content varies. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as HART B380

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GERM B399 Senior Seminar

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GERM B403 Supervised Work

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GERM B421 German for Reading Knowledge This course will provide graduate and undergraduate students with the skills to read and translate challenging academic texts from German into English. We will quickly cover the essentials of German grammar and focus on vocabulary and constructions that one can encounter in scholarly writing from a variety of disciplines. Does not fulfill the Language Requirement.

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Course Descriptions at Haverford College

COMLH 200   Introduction to Comparative Literature (Schönherr, U.)
The course offers a comprehensive introduction to literary history from the Renaissance period to the present, by focusing on a) the changing relationship between literature and religion, b) the construction of identities (class, gender, race), c) the representation of history, and d) models of literary self-referentiality. In addition, the class will introduce a variety of literary and cultural theories necessary for the analysis of (non)fictional texts.

GERMH 001/002   Elementary German ( Brust, I.)

 

GERMH 101/102  Intermediate German (Schönherr, U.)

Meets three hours a week with the individual class instructor, one hour with student drill instructor.Thorough review of grammar, exercises in composition and conversation. Enforcement of correct grammatical patterns and idiomatic use of language. Study of selected literary and cultural texts and films from German-speaking countries.

GERMH 201  Advanced Training: Languag, Tet and Context (Schönherr, U.)
This course is intended for students who wish to refine their speaking, writing, and reading skills beyond the Intermediate level. Designed as a comprehensive introduction to modern German culture, we will discuss a variety of literary, political, historical and philosophical texts, including feature films and video materials. In addition, students have the opportunity to enrich the curriculum, by giving class reports on current events of their choice. Weekly grammar reviews will complement these activities.

GERMH 223   Writing Nations: Africa and Europe (Brust, I.)
This course will explore ideas of nation-building in regard to the transnational relations between Europe and Africa. We will discuss African and European experiences of nation-creation to distinguish between exclusionary and inclusionary visions of nation states, and focus in particular on literary texts from Great Britain, Germany, and France in comparison with literary texts from Nigeria, South Africa, and Algeria.

GERMH 262  Post-Wall German and European Film (Brust, I.)
This course will explore what role film plays in the conceptualization of the nation in post-wall Germany. In the second part of the semester we will discuss how the accelerated integration of the European Union since the 1990s has affected film production within the European Union. The fall of the wall quickly entailed a heated discussion about the aesthetic value of politically engaged art. Looking at film in the united Germany, we will contemplate if and in what ways German filmmakers still make an argument for politically engaged cinema. In addition, this class also aims to highlight transnational aspects of post-wall German film by including films of German-Turkish, Austrian, and Swiss filmmakers. Furthermore, we will focus on the aesthetic, and political ideas that shape contemporary European films, and explore transnational aspects of European film.

GERMH 305 German Theatre: A Moral Compass?(Brust, I.)

In 1784 Friedrich Schiller started a discussion about theatre as a moral institution. With this in mind, this course will provide an overview of the historical development of drama within the German-speaking world and also explore foreign influences on German drama. We will read and watch a variety of different plays from Lessing to Brecht, and engage with different theatrical genres: classical, epic, documentary, absurd, and feminist theatre. In addition, we will discuss the function of the institutionalization of theatre within the German national imaginary, with a particular focus on gender and race. This course is taught in German.

GERMH 319 Intermedial Transformations: Musico-Acoustic (Schönherr, U.)
Cross-listed with COML, Music, and Gender & Sexuality Studies

How could an apparently innocent medium such as music become the contested subject of cultural-political debates over the last 2000 years, upon which even the decline and/or continuation of civilization depends? How shall we understand the longevity of the myth of music’s power, even though mythological figures such as Orpheus already demonstrated its ultimate powerless­ness? Why did literary authors so often favor music over their own medium, and even regarded music as a utopia of expression capable of representing the ineffable? How can we explain the gendering of music as the other of male reason and patriarchal order that threatens the socio-cultural monopoly of men? And how shall we explain the persistence of these questions after the emergence of new audio-visual media of recording, reproduction, and transmission that dissolved the natural connection between voice and body, instrument and sound, time and space, that led to a radical transformation of our culture? The course intends to explore these questions, by drawing on the rich and diverse representation of music in all its socio-aesthetic complexity from antiquity to the present. The thematic scope will range from mythological, philosophical, and religious interpretations of music through issues of gender, race, and politics in literature, opera, and film, to theories of intermediality, and psycho-analytical implications of voice and sound. Focusing on exemplary models, we will reconstruct the changing social functions and highly ambiguous attitudes towards music in Western culture, oscillating between fear and fascination. In addition, we will also continuously confront the semiotic question of whether literature can justifiably be read in analogy to musical forms, and whether music as a language is also plausible in reverse.

GERMH 320   Contemporary German Fiction and Film (Schönherr, U.)
One of the most interesting and exciting aspects of contemporary German-speaking literature is its aesthetic diversity which eludes any clear-cut literary-historical definition. Instead, we are confronted with the co-existence of multiple liter­ary models, including documentary, feminist, meta-fictional, autobiographi­cal, and immigrant literatures - compelling evidence that the notion of a single German literature has become totally obsolete. The course is designed to reflect this aesthetic plurality that has shaped German-speaking culture over the last three decades. Focusing on exemplary texts, the seminar will closely examine the diverging literary concepts and writing practices, characteristic of the literary scene today.

GERMH 321  German Colonial History in Africa and Afro-Germans (Brust, I.)

This course will provide a historical overview of German colonial history in Africa, and critically engage with its origins, processes, and outcomes. We will first scrutinize colonial efforts by individual German states before the first unification of Germany in 1871, and then investigate the colonialism of Imperial Germany. In particular, we will focus on the time after the 1884/1885 Berlin Conference that sought to regulate the so-called “Scramble for Africa”.

In addition, we will also familiarize ourselves with the presence of Afro-Germans and Afro-Europeans, and how their perception, reception, and representation changed over time. Furthermore, we will briefly touch on contemporary relations between Germany / Europe and Africa. Our discussions will explore issues of race and gender, and draw on a variety of different materials such as historical, political, economic, medical, sociological, and literary texts and visual media. The course is taught in English, with an extra session in German.

GERMH 399 Senior Seminar (Schönherr, U./Brust, I..)