Courses
GER 111 - Beginning German I
This course is an introduction to reading, writing, and speaking German. Grammar instruction is supplemented with cultural materials from German-speaking countries. Classroom activities include poetry readings, film clips, and internet research.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
GER 112 - Beginning German II
This course is an introduction to reading, writing, and speaking German. Grammar instruction is supplemented with cultural materials from German-speaking countries. Classroom activities include poetry readings, film clips, and internet research.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
GER 211 - Intermediate German I
This course is designed to enhance students' skills in reading, writing, and speaking German. Along with a systematic grammar review, we explore literary, historical, and cultural topics, drawing on a variety of texts, including short stories, films, paintings, and newspaper articles. One hour per week is spent in small conversation workshops, and students regularly complete listening comprehension exercises online.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
GER 212 - Intermediate German II
This course further enhances students' skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. In this semester, we complete the systematic grammar review, while continuing to explore literary, historical, and cultural topics. In addition to films, poems, and short stories, students will read an extended literary work-Kafka's Die Verwandlung/The Metamorphosis.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
GER 311 - Advanced German I: Twentieth-Century Art and Politics (Berlin)
This class is designed to help students develop advanced competence in written and spoken German. There will be regular essay assignments, oral presentations, and group projects. We will discuss twentieth-century German culture and history, primarily through literary and filmic representations of Berlin. We will explore the city as the center of emergent mass culture in the early twentieth century, the capital of National Socialism, the divided capital of the Cold War era, the symbol of the united Germany, and the multicultural core of contemporary German society.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 312 - Advanced German II: Contemporary German Literature
This course is designed to further students' advanced competence in written and spoken German. Students will participate in a literature course but will write short papers in German and complete weekly grammar assignments. See GER 335 for description.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 335 - Contemporary German Literature
This seminar focuses on literature written between 1990 and the present. We will explore topics such as the unification of Germany, multiculturalism, globalization, postfeminism, and the representation of the German past. Special attention will be paid to experimental forms of writing such as the prose poem, pop literature, the deconstruction of narrative patterns, and "the new storytelling." Authors include Ingo Schulze, Christian Kracht, Judith Hermann, Zafer Şenocak, Jenny Erpenbeck, W.G. Sebald, Katja Petrowskaja, Herta Müller, and Yoko Tawada. Conducted in German.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 346 - Introduction to Media Studies
Since Marshall McLuhan's pronouncement that "the medium is the message," scholars have studied the ways in which media technologies-from the printing press and the postal service to electric lighting and Wi-Fi-support and transform our lives. This course offers and introduction to major theorists and debates in media studies through close analyses of films, literature, and theoretical texts. In keeping with McLuhan's dictum, our focus will be not so much on understanding individual media, but on understanding from the perspective of media. Questions that will concern us include: What is (and isn't) a medium? What do media do? To what extent do we create media, and to what extent do media create us? Readings from Plato, McLuhan, Kittler, Benjamin, Adorno, Heidegger, and Donna Haraway; art by Antonioni, Lang, Kafka, Hitchcock, Hoffman, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Spike Jonze. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 347 - Ecocinema
What new forms of indebtedness and devastation has the era of the Anthropocene ushered in? This seminar will address cinema's contributions to the environmental humanities as a medium engaging with and reflecting on the transformations of our natural environs through human activity. The course considers how the constructing and reconstructing of the natural world in film pertains to questions of war, devastation, resource exploitation, colonialism, representations of the non-human, gender, race, and indigeneity, as well as ecological utopias and dystopias. The seminar will bring a number of landmark German films into dialog with representatives of North American and Asian cinema. Films by directors such as Fritz Lang, Leni Riefenstahl, Werner Herzog, Bong Joon-ho, Denis Villeneuve, Hayao Miyazaki, and Debra Granik, among others, will serve as case studies allowing us to explore key shifts in the Anthropocene and the complex intersection of environment, politics, and aesthetics in modern and contemporary history. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 349 - Cinema and Politics
This course offers an introduction to German cinema, focusing on the question: "What makes a film political?" From Expressionist film to New Wave cinema to the contemporary Berlin school, the German cinematic tradition includes numerous films with a political agenda. The "political" may take on the form of critique: of authorities and hierarchies, of racism and anti-Semitism, of the repression of the Nazi past, of capitalism and consumer society. Or it may aid the creation of inclusive communities by expanding our sense of who can talk and be heard, what can be seen and felt. We will watch groundbreaking films by German and other European directors, including G.W. Pabst, Fritz Lang, Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, Roberto Rossellini, Alain Resnais, Helke Sander, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ulrike Ottinger, Fatih Akin, and Christian Petzold. Theoretical readings by Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno, Arendt, Mulvey, Rancière, and others. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 356 - Inhuman Environments in Literature, Art, and Thought
From the history of polar exploration to contemporary reality tv shows, such as Survivor, human beings have demonstrated a fascination with environments that are hostile to human life. No longer the exclusive purview of intrepid explorers, these inhuman environments may soon be the norm as the result of climate crisis and environmental degradation. This course examines how inhuman environments have been conceptualized and represented in literature, film, art, and theoretical writings. Why are we fascinated with environments in which humans struggle to survive? What does it mean for humans to be adapted to an environment, how have we adapted environments to us, and what are the consequences of these adaptations? How might the intellectual and literary history of these inhuman environments inform how we approach our present moment and our environmental future? Readings, films, and artworks from David Thoreau, Theodor Storm, Marlen Haushofer, Gerhard Richter, Werner Herzog, Charles Darwin, Jakob Johann von Uexküll, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 358 - Representing Genocide
This course asks how film and literature can help us recognize, explain, and respond to genocide, a crucial feature of twentieth-century history. In the first half of the semester, we will focus on representations of the Holocaust, asking questions such as: How do authors and filmmakers grapple with events that shatter traditional forms of perception and comprehension? How do they portray human agency in an age of bureaucratically administered mass destruction? In the second half of the semester, we will compare the Holocaust to other cases of genocide and mass violence, including American slavery and the genocides in Turkey, Cambodia, and Rwanda. Throughout, we will explore a wide range of genres and media, including testimonies, memoirs, fiction, graphic novels, and feature films. We will also discuss the representation of victims and perpetrators, different forms of witnessing, and the aesthetics of shock and horror. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 375 - Thinking Machines: Androids and Automatons in Science and Literature
At the onset of modernity, the human being acquired a new kind of shadow: the android or machine-man, an automaton capable of replicating behaviors that had previously been the exclusive domain of humans. Since then, the question of what a human being is has been closely bound up with the question of what an automaton isn't. This course tracks the interwoven fates of androids and humans from Descartes through to the present day, examining the ways in which machines have served as a foil for artists, scientists, and philosophers to understand what (if anything) is particularly human about human beings. Questions that will occupy us include: What abilities have historically been thought to distinguish humans from mere machines? And what happens when, as a result of scientific and technological progress, machines become capable of replicating human speech, motion, affection, thought, or labor? Texts and films from Diderot, Hoffmann, Freud, Kafka, Foucault, Marx, Lang, Turing, and Scott, among others. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 391 - German Theory I
The Idealist Revolution and Beyond
This course offers an introduction to German Idealist philosophy. We will begin by looking at Kant's doctrine of freedom and its importance for the understandings of subjectivity elaborated by his inheritors. In the second part of the semester, we will read several nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers who both extend and critique this tradition. Authors will include Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Arendt, Adorno, Źiźek, and Malabou. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
Introduction to Critical Theory
This course explores the German philosophical tradition since Kant, focusing on the emergence of the modern notions of class, race, and gender. We will be particularly concerned with how these traditional concepts are being rethought in contemporary postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and Afropessimism. In addition to philosophical texts, we will be working with literature, film, and video art. Authors will include Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Arendt, Spivak, Mbembe, and Moten. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
GER 392 - Studies in German Theory II
Plants and Politics
Modern botany came into its own as a project of European colonialism. Building an empire meant remaking ecosystems at home and abroad, so the study of plants was as much an economic as a scientific endeavor. The guiding question of this seminar will be why botany was and continues to be a preoccupation of poets and philosophers. In the course of the semester, we will explore the intimate relationships between aesthetic and scientific accounts of the plant kingdom from the eighteenth century to the present, looking at works of poetry and prose, photography, and film. We will also consider attempts to envision a postcolonial botany. Throughout, we will be concerned with the unique urgency that informs contemporary reflections on the environment. Authors will include Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Dickinson, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Freud, Rilke, Celan, Walcott, Kincaid, and Graham. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).