Class Schedules

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:
Writing WA
Internationalism

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 modernism-the historical era within secular capitalist modernity characterized by massive industrialization, increasing bureaucratization, the commodification and massive reproducibility of art, the destabilization of patriarchy, and the development of technology and media. In reading the works of this world-famous author we shall also try to grasp the meaning of the internationally (mis)used word, "kafkaesque." In addition to reading closely a selection of Kafka's short stories and excerpts from his novels, we shall also read Crumb and Mairowitz's graphic version of Kafka's life and work, and students will contribute with in-class presentations of their interpretations of Kafka's work, short papers, and a graphic group project. 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

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

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 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

Vampires are cyclical. Just a few years ago you ran into them anytime you walked into a bookstore or turned on the TV-just like in Victorian times when Bram Stoker's famous work emerged from a vampire craze. Vampires have always been popular fodder and will continue to be so, even if and as the image of the vampire shifts dramatically over time. The popularity of vampires has waxed and waned for over a hundred years, partially because vampirism can be used as a metaphor for almost anything-from the plague to sexuality to addiction. We will juxtapose classic tales of vampires as monsters with the more recent generation of vampires. What happened to change our imagination of vampires from monsters into hip, outsider superheroes? And what can the examination of vampires tell us about the context in which they were created?

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

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

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

Spinoza (1632-1677) has been called the “savage anomaly” of the Enlightenment because his philosophy enables an alternative or ‘hidden’ modernity based on the interdependence of beings rather than their hierarchy. Ever more political theorists, environmentalists, and ecologists are turning to Spinoza’s vision of a nonhierarchical union of nature and society that rejects anthropocentrism as the promise for a more equitable and sustainable life. In this course we shall focus on the foundation of Spinoza’s unconventional thesis: his intertwined conceptions of the human being as part of nature—as opposed to the prevailing notion of the human as an autonomous “imperium” in, yet above, nature—and of society as a continuation of nature—as opposed to the dominant theories of the “social contract” that ground society on its break with, or repression of, nature (Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant). We shall examine Spinoza’s entailed radical revision in understanding both the “political” and the “environment.” Beyond Spinoza’s Ethics and his Theologico-Political and Political treatises, we shall read major commentators both on Spinoza’s ethical and political theory—e.g., Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Edwin Curley, Gilles Deleuze, Michael Hardt, Pierre Macherey, Warren Montag, Antonio Negri—and on his role in environmental ethics and Deep Ecology—e.g., Bill Devall, Leslie Le Grange, K.L.F. Houle, Gal Kober, Genevieve Lloyd, Beth Lord, Arne Naess, Georg Sessions, Oli Stephano, Margaret Dauler Wilson. Core course toward the Critical Theory concentration; all readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course prepares students with advanced intermediate German language skills for upper-level courses in German Studies through advanced language instruction combined with a critical investigation of important political, social and aesthetic topics in German cultural history from 1815-1933. Such topics include the tension between the German Kulturnation and the political nation, the revolutionary impact of industrialization, the economics and philosophical critique offered by socialism, imperialism as discourse and political tool, and the aesthetic revolution of modernism in the arts. 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. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course focuses on the dialogue and mutual influence between the German- and French-speaking traditions of political economy and philosophical and theoretical thought, as it becomes evident in the relations among German Idealism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Psychoanalysis, (post-)Structuralism, and their productive interconnections in the development of Critical Theory. While becoming familiar with the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jacque Lacan, as well as the work of relevant thinkers who influenced their thought, we shall be examining the structural and conceptual homologies and differences among political economy, abstract thought, and human subjectivity. The last part of the course will focus on the relation between these interconnections (among economy, ideas, culture, and the constitution of identities) and the exercise of power in the era of global capitalism, as theorized by thinkers who draw on this German-French-speaking line of thought. This is a core course toward the Critical Theory concentration; all readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Students may take this offering for credit even if they took the same course Fall 2018; the material is different.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

"We are all cyborgs," Donna Haraway tells us: fabricated hybrids of machine and organism, and increasingly so in the digital age. In this course, we will explore the porous boundary between the human and the parahuman in literature, film, and popular culture. Robots and androids, puppets and marionettes, living statues and Doppelgänger, prosthetic devices from artificial limbs to canes and eyeglasses are just some of the phenomena that inhabit and traverse the border between wo/man and machine, the natural and the artificial. How does culture figure the border between the human and its others? How does this border shift through history? How are parahumans gendered? How natural and how artificial is gender? Texts by Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tieck, and Heine; films and television series by Fritz Lang, Rainer Maria Fassbinder, and others. Taught in German Prerequisite(s): GERM 308 GERM 309, or study abroad, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

"Spirit is bone," wrote Hegel, exploding traditional logic and by extension the way we think about ethics, politics, and society. Hegel's discovery that consciousness is an historical artifact cleared the way for neo-Marxist social theory (Adorno), feminism (Beauvoir, Irigaray), constructivist gender theory (Butler), to mention just a few who moved in the "wake of Hegel." In this course, after familiarizing ourselves with relevant issues in Kant (Hegel's main foil), we will work through Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit with an eye to its significance for issues of critical and social theory. Discussion topics include: "human nature" as a product of history; narrative as a way of "doing" philosophy; the master-slave dialectic; how an historical event like the French Revolution is part of "philosophy"; gender theory and Hegel's reading of Sophocles' "Antigone." No prerequisites except a willingness to work through densely argued texts. Weekly reading responses, 3 mid-length papers. Counts as a core course for the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials