Class Schedules

Introduction to German language and culture. Emphasis on comprehension of oral and written contemporary German as well as developing elementary oral proficiency. The course emphasizes vocabulary recognition and acquisition within a variety of concrete contexts. Students develop facility with German within highly structured contexts. Contemporary culture in German-speaking countries provides the content of the course. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Students with any previous training in German must take the German placement exam. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Introduction to German language and culture. Emphasis on comprehension of oral and written contemporary German as well as developing elementary oral proficiency. The course emphasizes vocabulary recognition and acquisition within a variety of concrete contexts. Students develop facility with German within highly structured contexts. Contemporary culture in German-speaking countries provides the content of the course. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Students with any previous training in German must take the German placement exam. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Introduction to German language and culture. Emphasis on comprehension of oral and written contemporary German as well as developing elementary oral proficiency. The course emphasizes vocabulary recognition and acquisition within a variety of concrete contexts. Students develop facility with German within highly structured contexts. Contemporary culture in German-speaking countries provides the content of the course. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Students with any previous training in German must take the German placement exam. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Introduction to German language and culture. Emphasis on comprehension of oral and written contemporary German as well as developing elementary oral proficiency. The course emphasizes vocabulary recognition and acquisition within a variety of concrete contexts. Students develop facility with German within highly structured contexts. Contemporary culture in German-speaking countries provides the content of the course. For beginning students with no previous German language instruction. Students with any previous training in German must take the German placement exam. Three hours per week plus laboratory conversation hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

An five-credit accelerated course which covers material and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

An five-credit accelerated course which covers material and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

An five-credit accelerated course which covers material and proficiency development normally covered in GERM 101 and GERM 102. The course is for students with prior experience with German who need a concentrated review or students with previous other foreign language background who wish to work at an accelerated pace. Three hours per week plus conversation laboratory hour.

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

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

One often hears horror movies referred to as trash. Does horror necessarily deserve this condemnation (or plug)? Why does an occasional horror film like Get Out or The Silence of the Lambs win respectability or even a best-picture Oscar? What are the criteria by which we decide whether any film or work of art is good, bad, or perhaps not art at all? The course will examine horror films from various eras and places, some of which were repudiated at their release only to be recuperated later as art-house classics. But all challenge cultural assumptions about art and horror as mutually exclusive categories, and all employ shock, horror, or the uncanny as compelling means of representing social anxieties and historical traumas. Our objective will be to reflect on questions of aesthetic value, and to explore the themes, narrative strategies, and audience effects of horror. We will draw on a variety of theoretical approaches like Freud’s description of the uncanny or Todorov’s concept of the fantastic. In some sense horror cinema was “born” in Weimar Germany, so we will begin with silent German films, but our investigations will extend to Universal Studio’s depression-era horror (which owed a debt to German expressionist cinema) and to modern horror (Argento, Romero, Cronenberg, Haneke, Peele). Course prerequisite: guts. First, films like Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) or Franju’s Les Yeux sans Visage (1960) will disabuse you of any notion that Quentin Tarantino invented grossness. Second, you may find that by seriously engaging film studies, introducing theoretical concepts, and “over”-reading, the course will “ruin the fun.” My hope is that the opposite will be the case (and that fun and work are no more mutually exclusive than art and horror). Student obligations: a series of short papers, oral presentations, and one longer research paper. Two exams and an informal log responding to class readings. Hopefully the Twin Cities will offer some cultural events relevant to our theme that we can visit as a class.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

“Kafkaesque” is a word that has become part of everyday vocabulary in innumerous languages, used by millions of people who might or not have ever read Kafka. Evidently, the work of this German-speaking Jewish author from Prague captured something about modern life that no word could express except one deriving from his own name. This is probably why ‘everybody knows’ the word and ‘nobody can explain’ it. To understand therefore the “Kafkaesque” is to understand at once Kafka’s work and modern life, at least as we know it since the early twentieth century. To do so, in this course we are going to read closely some of Kafka’s stories and excerpts from his novels, as well as some influential commentaries on both his work and the conditions of modernity. We shall also have the chance to see and compare adaptations of his work (including his diaries) in the media of graphic novel and film. All readings will be in English. The course requires no pre-knowledge and is appropriate for all level students. This is a core course toward the Critical Theory Concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is a language course in which participants expand their abilities in all four language modalities - particularly oral and written expression - through engagement with numerous aspects of the life, literature, and culture of German-speaking countries and their multicultural societies, as well as their relations to the world. Including an extensive review of important advanced language topics, this course offers students the opportunity to improve their German to university-level proficiency. Every semester. (4 credits) Prerequisite(s): GERM 204, placement test or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is a language course in which participants expand their abilities in all four language modalities - particularly oral and written expression - through engagement with numerous aspects of the life, literature, and culture of German-speaking countries and their multicultural societies, as well as their relations to the world. Including an extensive review of important advanced language topics, this course offers students the opportunity to improve their German to university-level proficiency. Every semester. (4 credits) Prerequisite(s): GERM 204, placement test or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is a language course in which participants expand their abilities in all four language modalities - particularly oral and written expression - through engagement with numerous aspects of the life, literature, and culture of German-speaking countries and their multicultural societies, as well as their relations to the world. Including an extensive review of important advanced language topics, this course offers students the opportunity to improve their German to university-level proficiency. Every semester. (4 credits) Prerequisite(s): GERM 204, placement test or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course prepares students for upper-level courses in German Studies through the critical investigation of important political, social and aesthetic topics in the context of German cultural history from 1815-1945. Such topics include the tension between the German Kulturnation and the political nation, the economics and philosophical critique offered by socialism, imperialism as discourse and political tool, the aesthetic revolution of modernism in the arts, and the debacle of fascism and the Holocaust.  In addition to historical sources, students read literary and autobiographical texts, view films, and investigate examples of material culture from a variety of periods. Conducted in German. Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite: GERM 305, placement test, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What happens when God dies? And what if he’s always already been dead? Few authors have pursued the consequences of secular modernity as persistently as Nietzsche and Freud, both of whom were reacting to Darwin’s discovery of natural selection, which did away with nature as proof of God. Focusing on the related domains of ethics, subjectivity, aesthetics, and cultural value, we will explore how modern thought tries, and just as frequently fails, to overcome its religious past. Discussion topics include: the loss of “truth” as a meaningful term; ethics beyond good and evil; alienation, ideology, and false consciousness; art as ersatz-God; mourning, trauma, and transience. Readings include all or parts of: Nietzsche, Daybreak, The Gay Science and The Genealogy of Morals; Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Totem and Taboo. Requirements: Readings, three papers, weekly reading responses. Alternate years.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores depictions and concepts of "class" in literature, film, and political discourse since the French Revolution. Discussion topics include the invention of the bourgeois family; the Lumpenproletariat (prostitutes, rogues, vagabonds) in literature and art; revolutionary culture and politics in the inter-war period; depictions of class in contemporary mass culture. How does "class consciousness" emerge in German history? Is class an economic necessity or a consequence of culture and politics? Why is culture still fascinated by class? Taught in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 308, GERM 309, or the equivalent.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Continuation of introduction to German language and culture. Vocabulary acquisition continues within broader contexts. Emphasis on both oral and written production with continuing development of reading and listening skills. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using primarily concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. The course provides an introduction to extended reading in German as well. 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

Continuation of introduction to German language and culture. Vocabulary acquisition continues within broader contexts. Emphasis on both oral and written production with continuing development of reading and listening skills. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using primarily concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. The course provides an introduction to extended reading in German as well. 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

Continuation of introduction to German language and culture. Vocabulary acquisition continues within broader contexts. Emphasis on both oral and written production with continuing development of reading and listening skills. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using primarily concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. The course provides an introduction to extended reading in German as well. 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

Continuation of introduction to German language and culture. Vocabulary acquisition continues within broader contexts. Emphasis on both oral and written production with continuing development of reading and listening skills. Students develop creativity and facility with the language using primarily concrete vocabulary within meaningful contexts. The course provides an introduction to extended reading in German as well. 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 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

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

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

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 Renaissance to the 20th century. 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 Italian Renaissance (Boccaccio) to its modern adaptations in German romanticism (Kleist) and French realism (Flaubert). 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 (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Sigmund Freud). 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), romanticism (Goethe), the 19th century’s answers to nihilism (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche), to the crypticism of Kafka, the irony of Brecht, and the uncompromising pessimism of Adorno. 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? Requirements: 3 mid-length papers with revisions; one class presentation. Taught in English, but texts will be made available to those who can and would like to read them in the original.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is a language course in which participants expand their abilities in all four language modalities - particularly oral and written expression - through engagement with numerous aspects of the life, literature, and culture of German-speaking countries and their multicultural societies, as well as their relations to the world. Including an extensive review of important advanced language topics, this course offers students the opportunity to improve their German to university-level proficiency. Every semester. (4 credits) Prerequisite(s): GERM 204, placement test or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is a language course in which participants expand their abilities in all four language modalities - particularly oral and written expression - through engagement with numerous aspects of the life, literature, and culture of German-speaking countries and their multicultural societies, as well as their relations to the world. Including an extensive review of important advanced language topics, this course offers students the opportunity to improve their German to university-level proficiency. Every semester. (4 credits) Prerequisite(s): GERM 204, placement test or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This is a language course in which participants expand their abilities in all four language modalities - particularly oral and written expression - through engagement with numerous aspects of the life, literature, and culture of German-speaking countries and their multicultural societies, as well as their relations to the world. Including an extensive review of important advanced language topics, this course offers students the opportunity to improve their German to university-level proficiency. Every semester. (4 credits) Prerequisite(s): GERM 204, placement test or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course prepares students for upper-level courses in German Studies through the critical investigation of important political, social and aesthetic topics in the context of German cultural history from 1945 through the present. Such topics include the tension between consumer culture and Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the West Germany of the 1950s, the theory and practice of collectivism in East Germany, the significance of the Wall, political upheaval and terrorism in West Germany, real existierender Sozialismus in the East, German unification, multiculturalism, and contemporary topics such as environmentalism and sustainability. In addition to historical sources, students read literary and autobiographical texts, view films, and investigate examples of material culture from a variety of periods. Conducted in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 305, placement test, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course approaches Kafka's work both as a case for literary analysis and as a text that reveals insights into modernity - the historical era characterized by capitalism, secularization, the nation-state, increasing bureaucratization, the commodification of art, the development of technology and media. In addition to reading closely a selection of Kafka's short stories and exerpts from his novels, we shall also read some influential commentaries on his work, as well as texts that address major phenomena that characterize modernity. Taught in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 308, GERM 309 or the equivalent.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Marx’s main political discovery – that capital is by nature social, making “private capital” a contradiction in terms – is, if anything, still more relevant in today’s world than it was in his. The same is true of Marx’s main philosophical discovery: that the history of thought is a mere reflection of the material conditions of human existence, making philosophy a kind of ideology and “freedom of thought” an illusion. In this course, we will try to recover the revolutionary force of these arguments with a focus on what they show us about the illusory or fantastic character of modern life. From the early critique of alienation to the late analysis of surplus value, Marx showed over and again how the so-called rational world is not as rational as it seems: specters, fetishes, deceptive appearances, “false consciousness” are just some of the features of life under capital that Marx exposes and that continue to haunt our world (just think of how we appeal to the “magic of the market,” its “invisible hand” or to “creative destruction”). We will spend about 2/3 of the semester reading Marx, then turn to 20th-century thinkers who built on and critiqued his thought. Readings will include selections from: Marx’s early critique of Hegel; his writings on religion; his analysis of alienation; the German Ideology; Capital; texts by György Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Derrida. Requirements: three mid-length papers and a “flipped classroom” discussion facilitation session. Taught in English. Core course for Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Designed as a capstone experience in German studies, the seminar brings together fundamental questions engaged by the field of German studies, and enhances students' understanding of the theories and methodologies informing contemporary scholarship. Part of the seminar will be devoted to study of an aspect of German studies; students will then conduct independent research, which will serve as the basis of class discussions during the latter part of the semester. Changing topics may include: Constructing National Identity; Radicalism and Conservatism in Modernism; Goethe's Faust ; Centrality and Marginality in German Culture; Translingual Interventions: Migration and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Germany, Stardom and Charisma. Taught in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 308.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials