Class Schedules

Emphasizing the active use of the language, this course focuses on vocabulary and structural acquisition as a way to develop elementary proficiency in speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension. Students both develop facility with German in highly structured contexts through work with authentic texts and become familiar with a variety of contemporary German-speaking cultures. Students will work with an open educational resource for this course: an interactive, online, and free textbook designed to meet the learning needs of Macalester students. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Emphasizing the active use of the language, this course focuses on vocabulary and structural acquisition as a way to develop elementary proficiency in speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension. Students both develop facility with German in highly structured contexts through work with authentic texts and become familiar with a variety of contemporary German-speaking cultures. Students will work with an open educational resource for this course: an interactive, online, and free textbook designed to meet the learning needs of Macalester students. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Emphasizing the active use of the language, this course focuses on vocabulary and structural acquisition as a way to develop elementary proficiency in speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension. Students both develop facility with German in highly structured contexts through work with authentic texts and become familiar with a variety of contemporary German-speaking cultures. Students will work with an open educational resource for this course: an interactive, online, and free textbook designed to meet the learning needs of Macalester students. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A five-credit accelerated course which covers the content and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course, with a separate curriculum for easy independent work, is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or for students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus two conversation laboratory hours. During Spring semester there will be an optional reading and translation lab.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A five-credit accelerated course which covers the content and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course, with a separate curriculum for easy independent work, is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or for students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus two conversation laboratory hours. During Spring semester there will be an optional reading and translation lab.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A five-credit accelerated course which covers the content and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course, with a separate curriculum for easy independent work, is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or for students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus two conversation laboratory hours. During Spring semester there will be an optional reading and translation lab.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A cyborg is any technologically enhanced human being. Defined this way, cyborgs are present wherever people grow attached to their technology: from brain-computer interfaces, to artificial limbs, to you and your smartphone. Arguably, humans have always been cyborgs, all the way back to homo sapiens—the animal whose distinguishing characteristic was their use of tools. In this course, we will explore the cyborg across a wide range of cultural and theoretical sources, from literature (E.T.A Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” on which the ballet is based; Goethe’s Faust; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) to film (Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the main inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner) to material history (puppets, marionettes, and 19th-century toy manufacturing in Nuremberg). We’ll read philosophical anthropology on the idea of the human as deficient being, compelled to reinvent itself with tools and technology in order to survive. Discussion topics will include: what does the cyborg in culture and theory tell us about the limits of the human? Where does culture begin and biology end? Why are cyborgs either hyper-gendered, androgynous, or both at the same time, and what does this tell us about gender? Weekly reading responses; several short essays spread over the semester; a final, building on the shorter essays. The course counts for the argumentative writing and internationalism general education requirements. Taught in English; no prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is designed to help students increase their proficiency in the German language while emphasizing authentic cultural contexts. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration and develop tools and discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Cultural topics are expanded and deepened. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 102 or GERM 110 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course is designed to help students increase their proficiency in the German language while emphasizing authentic cultural contexts. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration and develop tools and discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Cultural topics are expanded and deepened. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 102 or GERM 110 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course is designed to help students increase their proficiency in the German language while emphasizing authentic cultural contexts. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration and develop tools and discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Cultural topics are expanded and deepened. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 102 or GERM 110 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The course aims to help students attain a comfort level with extended discourse in German within culturally appropriate contexts. Students develop the ability to comprehend authentic spoken German on a variety of topics at length. They develop effective strategies for comprehending a variety of texts and text types. They gain increased facility with extended discourse, such as narrating and describing. Writing in German is also developed so that students can write extensively about familiar topics. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 203 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The course aims to help students attain a comfort level with extended discourse in German within culturally appropriate contexts. Students develop the ability to comprehend authentic spoken German on a variety of topics at length. They develop effective strategies for comprehending a variety of texts and text types. They gain increased facility with extended discourse, such as narrating and describing. Writing in German is also developed so that students can write extensively about familiar topics. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 203 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The course aims to help students attain a comfort level with extended discourse in German within culturally appropriate contexts. Students develop the ability to comprehend authentic spoken German on a variety of topics at length. They develop effective strategies for comprehending a variety of texts and text types. They gain increased facility with extended discourse, such as narrating and describing. Writing in German is also developed so that students can write extensively about familiar topics. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 203 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Marx's contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy-usually referred to as ideology-cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx's gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work-as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek-while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx's discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx's theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, McKenzie Wark).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What can a short text do that a long text can’t? This course will look for answers to this question by reading and discussing short prose works from the 12th century to the present. It will also introduce students to the field of Comparative Literature, the study of literature across national, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries. We will pursue the history of the novella—which is not a short novel but a literary form in its own right—from its emergence in the Renaissance (Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre) to its modern adaptations in German and French romanticism (Claire de Duras, Goethe, Kleist), the 19th century (Flaubert) and modernism (Kafka), through to contemporary authors like Annie Ernaux. We will explore the complexities of the essay from Michel de Montaigne, who created the genre in the 16th century, through Francis Bacon, whose scientific method relied on it, to its use as a hybrid form between science and literature in the early twentieth century (Freud) or by anticolonial writers (Fanon). And we will focus on the form that epitomizes the rhetorical virtue of brevitas: the aphorism, from the 17th century moralists (La Rochefoucauld), through the secular pietism of the 18th century (Lichtenberg), the 19th century’s answers to nihilism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), the uncompromising pessimism of Adorno, and the aphoristic art fiction of Sophie Calle. Our aim is to explore how these forms persist but are also being reworked by contemporary and postcolonial Francophone and German-speaking authors. In addition to works in these three genres, we will read short theoretical works fundamental to the discipline of Comparative Literature by Franco Moretti, Emily Apter, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Discussion questions will include: what are the literary and rhetorical effects of brevity? How can words gain by being few? What happens when texts get longer? How is literature a form of knowledge and science a form of literature? Taught in English, but students with knowledge of French and/or German will have the opportunity to read the texts and write on them in the original. Two short papers, one final paper with revision and project presentation. No prerequisites.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The task of ecocriticism is clear enough: to develop narrative and imaginative strategies that work against the efforts of capital to disguise its negative impact on the globe. But how is this task to be realized? Can literature really ‘save the planet’ — a hyperbolic cliché often employed in discussions of climate fiction or “cli-fi”? How do literary models relate to scientific models of climate change? And what is their function with respect to extra-literary and non-representational forces? This course will inquire into the operative function of climate fiction, a literary subgenre that addresses impending problems of the near future: global warming, widespread species extinction, and the increasingly futile attempt to ‘shift’ ecological burdens from the Global North to the Global South, as from the present to future generations. Texts will include novels, films images, together with scholarly articles on ecocritical topics. Suitable for all.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course prepares students with intermediate German language skills for upper-level courses in German Studies through advanced language instruction combined with the study of political, social, and aesthetic topics in the cultural history of Germany and related countries, from the cultural revolutions of the Enlightenment to the peaceful protests in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Major events in this itinerary include the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815); the 1848 European revolution; the industrial revolution; the unification of Germany (1870/1871); the economic and philosophical critiques offered by socialism and feminism; the modernist cultural and aesthetic revolution, and in particular the Jugendstil in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century;  imperialism and the two World Wars surrounding the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) by Nazism; and the subsequent division of Germany into four zones and, later, two countries, up until its reunification. In addition to historical sources and visual art, we shall read a literary text and watch a film relating to the life on the East side of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989). Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course prepares students with intermediate German language skills for upper-level courses in German Studies through advanced language instruction combined with the study of political, social, and aesthetic topics in the cultural history of Germany and related countries, from the cultural revolutions of the Enlightenment to the peaceful protests in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Major events in this itinerary include the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815); the 1848 European revolution; the industrial revolution; the unification of Germany (1870/1871); the economic and philosophical critiques offered by socialism and feminism; the modernist cultural and aesthetic revolution, and in particular the Jugendstil in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century;  imperialism and the two World Wars surrounding the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) by Nazism; and the subsequent division of Germany into four zones and, later, two countries, up until its reunification. In addition to historical sources and visual art, we shall read a literary text and watch a film relating to the life on the East side of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989). Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Like few other countries, Germany exemplifies how the migrant is the political figure of our time (Thomas Nail), exploding our image of "national" culture and putting flight and movement, rather than citizens and the state, in the focus of cultural scholarship. In this course, we will explore the political reality and the cultural imaginary of diverse forms of migration to and from Germany since the 19th century. Topics include: African "Vertragsarbeiter" in the GDR; refugees and asylum in Germany today; Hannah Arendt's critique of human rights; literature by migrant authors (Yoko Tawada, Zé do Rock, Tomer Gardi); German migration to the US in the 19th century; films by and about migrants (Fatih Akin, Christian Petzold); the "Willkommenskultur" in 2015 and its aftermath. Taught in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 308 or GERM 309; or completion of Macalester's or another approved study abroad program; or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course continues the development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, with increasing emphasis on the practice of reading and writing. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. Students also continue to explore contemporary German-speaking cultures. Students will work with an open educational resource for this course: an interactive, online, and free textbook designed to meet the learning needs of Macalester students. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 101 with a grade of C- or better, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course continues the development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, with increasing emphasis on the practice of reading and writing. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. Students also continue to explore contemporary German-speaking cultures. Students will work with an open educational resource for this course: an interactive, online, and free textbook designed to meet the learning needs of Macalester students. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 101 with a grade of C- or better, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course continues the development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, with increasing emphasis on the practice of reading and writing. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. Students also continue to explore contemporary German-speaking cultures. Students will work with an open educational resource for this course: an interactive, online, and free textbook designed to meet the learning needs of Macalester students. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 101 with a grade of C- or better, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A five-credit accelerated course which covers the content and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course, with a separate curriculum for easy independent work, is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or for students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus two conversation laboratory hours. During Spring semester there will be an optional reading and translation lab.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A five-credit accelerated course which covers the content and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course, with a separate curriculum for easy independent work, is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or for students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus two conversation laboratory hours. During Spring semester there will be an optional reading and translation lab.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

A five-credit accelerated course which covers the content and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course, with a separate curriculum for easy independent work, is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or for students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus two conversation laboratory hours. During Spring semester there will be an optional reading and translation lab.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course is designed to help students increase their proficiency in the German language while emphasizing authentic cultural contexts. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration and develop tools and discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Cultural topics are expanded and deepened. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 102 or GERM 110 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course is designed to help students increase their proficiency in the German language while emphasizing authentic cultural contexts. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration and develop tools and discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Cultural topics are expanded and deepened. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 102 or GERM 110 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course is designed to help students increase their proficiency in the German language while emphasizing authentic cultural contexts. Through exposure to a variety of texts and text types, students develop oral and written proficiency in description and narration and develop tools and discourse strategies for culturally authentic interaction with native speakers. Cultural topics are expanded and deepened. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 102 or GERM 110 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The course aims to help students attain a comfort level with extended discourse in German within culturally appropriate contexts. Students develop the ability to comprehend authentic spoken German on a variety of topics at length. They develop effective strategies for comprehending a variety of texts and text types. They gain increased facility with extended discourse, such as narrating and describing. Writing in German is also developed so that students can write extensively about familiar topics. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 203 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The course aims to help students attain a comfort level with extended discourse in German within culturally appropriate contexts. Students develop the ability to comprehend authentic spoken German on a variety of topics at length. They develop effective strategies for comprehending a variety of texts and text types. They gain increased facility with extended discourse, such as narrating and describing. Writing in German is also developed so that students can write extensively about familiar topics. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 203 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

The course aims to help students attain a comfort level with extended discourse in German within culturally appropriate contexts. Students develop the ability to comprehend authentic spoken German on a variety of topics at length. They develop effective strategies for comprehending a variety of texts and text types. They gain increased facility with extended discourse, such as narrating and describing. Writing in German is also developed so that students can write extensively about familiar topics. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour. Prerequisite(s): GERM 203 with a grade of C- or better, or placement test, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. In this course we shall approach films as a medium that, through all of its means (from dialogue to more formal aspects, such as camera angle or editing), raises and attempts to negotiate philosophical, ideological, and political issues and conflicts. We shall be exposed to different methodologies of film analysis while examining: (a) a few representative films of three influential European film movements (German expressionism, Italian Neo-Realism, French nouvelle-vague), as a means of tracing the itinerary of European cinema from an action-oriented to a reflection-oriented practice; (b) the British and later American work of Alfred Hitchcock, as a mode of cinematography that employs the "gaze" as a principle of structural organization; and (c), American films of the 1970's - 1990's, as attempts to represent the world of late capitalism.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Since its “discovery” by Europeans in the 15th century, America has occupied a uniquely ambivalent place in the imagination of Europeans: as a window onto its own future, and as its backward and uncouth child; as a vindicator of human dignity, and as a warning example of democracy’s worst outgrowths. In this new course, we will trace the “New World” in the geographical, sociological, politological, literary, and cinematic imagination of Europe since the advent of European colonization. The focus will be on the unique transnational entanglements that have joined Europe to its uncannily similar other since the early modern era and continue to do so today. Discussion topics include: “first contact”; mapping the new continent; cannibalism and the Eucharist; premodern anticolonialism; romanticism’s love/hate relationship to the US; democracy and the tyranny of the majority; European antiracism and its hypocrisies; “Indianthusiasm” and the politics of cultural appropriation; critical theory moves to California or “Frankfurt Goes L.A.”; European émigrés’ role in the US denazification program; re-education movies in post-war Germany; Kafka’s "America" in text and film; current perceptions of fascism rising in the US. Readings by Hans Staden, Michel de Montaigne, J.G. Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, G.F.W. Hegel, W. v. Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Alexis de Tocqueville, W.E.B. Du Bois, Max Weber, Erik Erikson, T.W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka; films by Leslie Fenton, Jacques Tourneur, J.-M. Straub and D. Huillet. Weekly reading responses, participation in a group presentation, two short papers, one 10-page final project. Counts as elective for the Critical Theory Concentration.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The big city is a relatively new phenomenon. Made possible by electricity, the automobile, and rapid industrialization, it introduced a shock into modern life that continues to resonate through literature, painting, dance, music, architecture, art, and film. This course invites students with intermediate German-language skills to examine two major capitals and the culture they engender. On the one hand Vienna, the epicenter of not one but two former empires, steeped in decadence and decay. On the other hand Berlin, a city that has always been defined by division: between socialists and fascists, between the Soviet east and American west, and now between the bike-riding center and car-centric periphery. The course is designed to prepare students for advanced German study, by focusing on original German-language documents written in and about these twin metropoles. Themes will range from the coffee house to the cabaret, from urban anonymity to the 'new woman,' from the shock of city dwelling to DADA. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The big city is a relatively new phenomenon. Made possible by electricity, the automobile, and rapid industrialization, it introduced a shock into modern life that continues to resonate through literature, painting, dance, music, architecture, art, and film. This course invites students with intermediate German-language skills to examine two major capitals and the culture they engender. On the one hand Vienna, the epicenter of not one but two former empires, steeped in decadence and decay. On the other hand Berlin, a city that has always been defined by division: between socialists and fascists, between the Soviet east and American west, and now between the bike-riding center and car-centric periphery. The course is designed to prepare students for advanced German study, by focusing on original German-language documents written in and about these twin metropoles. Themes will range from the coffee house to the cabaret, from urban anonymity to the 'new woman,' from the shock of city dwelling to DADA. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The big city is a relatively new phenomenon. Made possible by electricity, the automobile, and rapid industrialization, it introduced a shock into modern life that continues to resonate through literature, painting, dance, music, architecture, art, and film. This course invites students with intermediate German-language skills to examine two major capitals and the culture they engender. On the one hand Vienna, the epicenter of not one but two former empires, steeped in decadence and decay. On the other hand Berlin, a city that has always been defined by division: between socialists and fascists, between the Soviet east and American west, and now between the bike-riding center and car-centric periphery. The course is designed to prepare students for advanced German study, by focusing on original German-language documents written in and about these twin metropoles. Themes will range from the coffee house to the cabaret, from urban anonymity to the 'new woman,' from the shock of city dwelling to DADA. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Taught in English; there is an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do the reading and writing assignments and some of their oral presentations in German.What does the internationally (mis)used word "kafkaesque" actually mean? This course approaches Kafka's work both as a case for literary analysis and as one that offers insights into modernism. In one way or another, Kafka sheds light on massive industrialization, bureaucratization, the commodification of art, the destabilization of patriarchy, and the development of technology and media, as well as on the question: what is literature itself. In addition to a selection of Kafka's fiction, we shall read Crumb and Mairowitz's graphic version of Kafka's life and work, allowing students to produce their own graphic group project.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Designed as a capstone experience in German studies, the senior seminar guides students through the process of developing and executing a highly individual project on a self-chosen topic. While this can take the form of a traditional research paper, students are invited to develop creative projects as well-for example, a story, video, or comic-combined with a shorter accompanying paper. Over the course of the semester, students will brainstorm ideas, learn about the fundamental questions of German studies, receive instruction in the theories and methodologies that inform contemporary scholarship, and gain practice communicating the results of their research to their peers. (Furthermore, given the wide range of majors and minors paired with German, students will gain familiarity with the methodologies of disciplines beyond German Studies.) The seminar will culminate in a public event, in which participants showcase their projects to the rest of the Macalester German community. Taught in German. Prerequisite(s): One of the following: GERM 308 or GERM 309 or GERM 363 or GERM 364 or GERM 365 or GERM 366, or Study Abroad

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials