Courses

GERM B001 Elementary German

Fall 2023

Meets five hours a week with the individual class instructor, and one additional hour with a TA. This course is designed for students with no previous knowledge of German and will provide them with ample training across all modes of communication to develop their language competence in speaking, reading, listening, and writing. This course will cover an overview of German grammar and vocabulary that will allow students to talk about themselves and a variety of familiar and everyday topics, hold basic conversations, and describe events in the past while exploring contemporary life in German-speaking countries.

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GERM B002 Elementary German

Spring 2024

Meets five hours a week with the class instructor, and one additional hour with a TA. This course is designed as a continuation of 001, building on all skills and topics covered in the first semester. Strong emphasis on communicative competence both in spoken and written German in a larger cultural context and expanding learners' understanding of key aspects of contemporary life in German-speaking countries and selected literary genres. Prerequisite: GERM 001 or its equivalent as decided by the department and/or placement tes

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GERM B101 Intermediate German

Fall 2023

Meets three hours per week with the course instructor, and one additional hour with a TA. This course is designed to improve students' reading, speaking, listening, and writing skills through a thorough review of grammar and completion of exercises in composition and conversation. Study of selected literary and cultural texts and films will allow students to explore connections between language and culture and hone their communication skills. By engaging with authentic texts and materials, students will also explore the topography and recent history of contemporary Germany as visualized in the dynamic cityscapes across Germany and German-speaking countries. Prerequisite: Completion of GERM 002 or its equivalent as decided by the department and/or placement test.

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GERM B102 Intermediate German

Spring 2024

Meets three hours per week with the course instructor, and one additional hour with a TA. This course is the continuation of GERM 101,. We will concentrate on all four language skills--speaking, reading, writing, and listening comprehension and build on the knowledge that gained in the elementary-level courses and then honed in the previous semester. Study of a variety of authentic media and literary texts on course topics prepare students for advanced coursework in German. Prerequisite: GERM 101 or its equivalent as decided by the department and/or placement test.

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GERM B201 Advanced Training: Language, Text, Context

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Women's Experiences of History

Not offered 2023-24

Emphasis on the development of conversational, writing and interpretive skills through an introductory study of German political, cultural and intellectual life and history, including public debate, institutional practices, mass media, cross-cultural currents, folklore, fashion and advertising. Taught in German. Course content may vary.

Current topic description: This course considers German-language works that focus on women's experiences and recollections of major historical events of the 20th- and 21st centuries, such as the turn of the century, the post-war period, division of Germany and multiculturalism. Selected works include television, film, dramas and short stories such as the Netflix series Charité (2017), Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956), Claudia Rusch's collection of short stories Meine freie deutsche Jugend (2005), and works from May Ayim, Yoko Tawada and Emine Özdamar.

Writing Attentive

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GERM B202 Introduction to German Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): The German Fairy Tale

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Topics may vary.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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GERM B217 Representing Diversity in German Cinema

Spring 2024

German society has undergone drastic changes as a result of immigration. Traditional notions of Germanness have been and are still being challenged and subverted. This course uses films and visual media to examine the experiences of various minority groups living in Germany. Students will learn about the history of immigration of different ethnic groups, including Turkish Germans, Afro-Germans, Asian Germans, Arab Germans, German Jews, and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. We will explore discourses on migration, racism, xenophobia, integration, and citizenship. We will seek to understand not only the historical and contemporary contexts for these films but also their relevance for reshaping German society. Students will be introduced to modern German cinema from the silent era to the present. They will acquire terminology and methods for reading films as fictional and aesthetic representations of history and politics, and analyze identity construction in the worlds of the real and the reel. This course is taught in English

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Under Surveillance: From ETA Hoffmann to Christa W

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topics include Remembered Violence, Global Masculinities, and Crime and Detection in German. Current topic description (spring 2023): Under Surveillance: Literature and Visual Culture from the Enlightenment to the Present. Taught in English.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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GERM B245 Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Scenes of Observation:

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Taught in German. Course content varies. Previous topics include, Women's Narratives on Modern Migrancy, Exile, and Diasporas; Nation and Identity in Post-War Austria.

Current topic description: Scenes of Observation: Physicians, Scientists, and Experiments in German Literature. This course explores scenes of experimentation and medical observation in German literature from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, probing the nexus between literature, artistic practices, and the sciences. Figures of the scientist or the physician as observers of human behavior and natural phenomena often find themselves at the very threshold of knowledge, navigating structures of power that operate both socially and biologically. In the wake of the Age of Reason, they are both agents of order and originators of chaos, testing themselves, others, and cultural frameworks that give rise to their position and insights on the human condition. Disease, illness, gender, and disability become loci of investigation that unmoor the stability of scientific and medical observation. In the early twentieth century, scenes inside and outside of the clinic stage different dimensions of human life mediated through interactions with physicians, responding to new technological developments that begin to shift what it means to be human and to study the human. This course will feature works by Thomas Mann, among others, and writers who themselves were trained in the sciences or as physicians, including Gottfried Benn, Georg Büchner.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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GERM B316 Berlin in German Literature and Film

Not offered 2023-24

Taught in German. The major focus of this course is the spatialization of memory and history in exemplary novels and films on Berlin. These works analyze the palimpsestic sites of the city as a quasi-archive of political upheavals, public life, fine arts, the star-crossed German-Jewish symbiosis, World War II, and the cultures of the two postwar German states. Berlin underwent a tumultuous history in the twentieth century and encapsulates a kaleidoscope of modern German history, culture, and social life. Having served as the capital city of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701-1871), the German Empire (1871-1918), the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), the Third Reich (1933-1945), East Germany during the Cold War (1945-1990), and the reunified Germany, Berlin has captured different strata of history in its architecture, art, music, literature, and film. Since reunification, Berlin has been thriving and has become one of the most vibrant metropoles of the world, at once commemorating its past and addressing the constant challenges of an ever-changing world. Prerequisites: Placed at the advanced level in placement test; a 200-level course taught in German or with permission of instructor

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GERM B320 Topics in German Literature and Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Die Erzählkunst des Krimis

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in German. Recent topics include: Die Erzählkunst des Krimis; Funny Germans.

Writing Attentive

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GERM B321 Advanced Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Asia and Germany through Film
Section 001 (Spring 2024): The Letter, the Spirit, and Beyond

Fall 2023, Spring 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topic titles include: Asia and Germany through Film; The Letter, the Spirit, and Beyond: German-Jewish Writers and Jewish Culture in the 18th and 19th Century.

Current topic description: Asia and Germany through Film. This course is interested in exploring the transnational relationship between Germany and Asian countries through the study of German-language films. It allows students not only to learn the culture, history, and politics of Germany, but also of Asian countries, specifically China, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, and India. Since the 21st century is purported to become the Asian century, gaining cultural competence in Asia is an important part of a liberal arts education. The selected Asian German films cover the silent era to the present and represent a wide array of genres. Students will be acquainted with classical works by famous German directors, including Ernst Lubitsch, Richard Eichberg, Paul Wegener, Arnold Fanck, Hark Bohm, Fatih Akin, as well as by minority filmmakers of Asian origin, such as Byambasuren Davaa and Cho Sung-hyung. Important themes to consider are the colonial history of European powers and imperial Japan in Asia, the (racialized) representation of Asia and Asians in German-language film, Asian diaspora in Germany, and mutual perceptions of Germans and Asians. This course touches on prominent issues such as orientalism, race, gender, class, nation, cosmopolitanism, identity, and belonging. The language of instruction is German.

Current topic description: The Letter, the Spirit, and Beyond: German-Jewish Writers and Jewish Culture in the 18th and 19th Century: While Jewish history extends well over a thousand years in German-speaking lands, the political, cultural, and social changes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries lay the foundation for German-Jewish relations today, and begin articulating new dimensions of the experiences the "Other," treated metaphorically through the tension between the "Letter" and the "Spirit." Starting in the Age of Reason, this course focuses on depictions of Jewishness in the literary works and intellectual contributions by German and German-Jewish authors, and explores ways in which German-Jewish identity goes beyond "the Letter" and "the Spirit." The fragile utopia of religious tolerance staged in Lessing's Nathan the Wise is followed by grotesque antisemitic tropes in the folk tales and fairy tales in Romanticism, and in other nationalist, artistic endeavors such as those by Richard Wagner. Stories of disguise, concealment, and intrigue double as metaphors of assimilation and conversion of Jewish life, highlighting the complicated and conflicted place of many German-Jewish writers. The salons cultivated and attended by German-Jewish women such as Rahel Varnhagen and Fanny Lewald yield generative, philosophical thought and intellectual contributions. We will conclude by looking at twentieth century German-Jewish writers after the Holocaust, and the status of antisemitism and philosemitism in Germany today.

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Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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GERM B400 Senior Seminar

Senior Seminar. Students are required to write a long 40-page research paper with an annotated bibliography.

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GERM B403 Supervised Work

Major Writing Requirement: Writing Intensive

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GERM B421 German for Reading Knowledge

This course is designed to prepare students to read and translate challenging academic texts from German into English. It presents an intensive examination of basic German grammar and syntax, together with strategies that will enable students to read and understand German texts essential for advanced study or learning in disciplines across the arts, social sciences, and humanities. Previous experience in German is an asset, but is not a class prerequisite. This course does not fulfill the Language Requirement

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COML B242 German Encounters w East Asia: A Transnational Cinema Course

Not offered 2023-24

Due to increased mobility in the age of globalization, the encounter between East and West has shifted from the imaginary to the real. Actual encounters provide the potential for debunking cultural myths and prejudices that an orientalist lens tended to produce. East and West both carry their own traditions, value systems, and distinct cultural identities. This sparks conflicts, but also generates mutual interest. In present-day Germany, the Asian-German connection constitutes a neglected aspect of multicultural discourses and thus deserves more scrutiny. This transnational film course focuses specifically on encounters between German-speaking countries and East Asia. Using film as the main medium, this course touches on prominent issues such as orientalism, race, gender, class, nation, and identity, which have been much studied by literary and cultural critics in recent years.

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FREN B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Not offered 2023-24

By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. The class will be conducted in English with an additional hour in French for students wishing to take it for French credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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ITAL B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Fall 2023

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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