Class Schedules

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

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

For thousands of years value has been scrutinized in philosophy, art history, and economic analysis, as it cuts across three constitutive aspects of social, cultural, and political life: economy, aesthetics, and ethics. Not only do we have and impose on the world our moral, aesthetic, and exchange values, but these three fields often become difficult to distinguish, as is evident in the slippery flexibility of words that allow us to say as much "this painting is bad or worthless" as "I think this person is bad or worthless," or "this is a bad, or worthless, remark" and "this is a bad or worthless check." This course will focus primarily on influential accounts of value in aesthetic theory, while also examining the ways in which aesthetic value demarcates itself from or implicates its moral and economic counterparts, and what the interplays among the three fields entail for aesthetic value. Our readings will focus on the impact of primarily German thought on the formation of modern aesthetic theory-from the early eighteenth century through the Enlightenment and Romanticism to high modernism and the Frankfurt School. Class and readings in English. Prerequisite(s): No pre-knowledge required. This course is appropriate for all level students.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

From disaster films, apocalyptic eco-literature, to conservationist warnings about the loss of nature, catastrophe holds a special place in the Western environmental imaginary. In this course, we will explore the role narratives of catastrophe play in framing our relation to the natural world through the study of literature, art, film, ecocritical and scientific writings. Where is the border between natural and anthropogenic ecological disasters? To what degree has our understanding of the natural world and ecological crisis changed from the pre-Romantic period to today? And how does the concept of nature at risk figure into contemporary environmentalist discourse, from the fear of species extinction and the idea of nature’s decline, to the desire to return nature to an imagined pure, wild state? We will examine such issues from an ecocritical perspective based on the insight that we are currently living in a new age of the Anthropocene, an epoch defined by human influence on the environment, a period in which the relation between nature and humanity has become more complex than ever, demanding new ways of thinking about our entanglement with the natural world. Sample topics include: anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and multispecies kinship; deep versus social ecology; environmental racism; hybridity and the animal-human relation; hyperobjects and the limits of the environmental imagination.

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 1933 to the present. Such topics include the debacle of fascism, WWII and the Holocaust, 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, German unification, multiculturalism, 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. 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 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 1933 to the present. Such topics include the debacle of fascism, WWII and the Holocaust, 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, German unification, multiculturalism, 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. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

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 1933 to the present. Such topics include the debacle of fascism, WWII and the Holocaust, 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, German unification, multiculturalism, 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. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

For Marx, "private capital" is an oxymoron - a contradiction in terms, since by its very nature capital is social. And "philosophy" is really not a thing, at least not the way it's always been defined, since the world of ideas has no existence independent of the material conditions of human existence. 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 read selections from Marx's early writings on religion and alienation through the theory of ideology, of commodity fetishism, and of primitive accumulation to his late programmatic texts in tandem with texts by 20th-century thinkers who critiqued and further developed Marx's thought (Lukacs, Gramsci, Lefort, Derrida).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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. Taught in English, with 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 oral presentations in German. Prerequisite(s): For the optional German component: GERM 308 or GERM 309, or study abroad, or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) established his place as one of the most important cultural figures of the 19th Century primarily through the 4-opera cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung. From initial conception to its first performance, the gestation of The Ring spanned more than 25 years (1848-1876). Wagner envisioned The Ring as a fusion of artistic disciplines, which he called the Gesamtkunstwerk or Total Work of Art. The object of this class is to disentangle the web of arts, philosophy and history that interact within Wagner’s magnum opus.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

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

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

Karl Marx revolutionized how we think about power and capitalism. But what is the role of art for Marx and later Marxists? What is art’s revolutionary potential? Should art be political, and if so, how? In this discussion-based course, we will examine how artists and intellectuals have grappled with these issues in light of Marx’s insights into the relation between power, ideology, and consciousness. Guided by introductory readings in Marxist philosophy and art theory, we will explore literary and visual artworks, from socialist fairy tales, avant-garde poetry and theater, to street murals, performance art, and film. Sample discussion topics include: labor, alienation, and modern technology; perception and the politics of the senses; global capitalism and colonialism; and revolutionary and utopian thought.

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

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

“Free choice is the only miracle the moderns recognize” (Karol Berger). Freedom currently occupies an ambiguous place in our collective state of mind: while the Right takes to the streets in the name of freedom, MLK’s ringing refrain, “free at last,” continues to resonate in the Left’s calls for social justice. Both camps typically rely on the same underlying concept of what freedom is: something an individual exercises with their free will. In this course, we will work to gain a measure of distance on this common view of freedom by counterposing it with premodern as well as modern strains of thought that go against the grain of classical liberalism. Readings from Aristotle, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Arendt, Buck-Morss, Mbembe, Badiou, Ahmad Yousif, and others. Weekly reading responses; three mid-length papers with revisions. No prerequisites, but be prepared to work your way through some densely argued texts.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

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 a critical investigation of important political, social, and aesthetic topics in German cultural history. These topics may include the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815), the 1848 European revolution, the impact of industrialization, the foundation of the German Reich (1870/1871), the economics and philosophical critique offered by socialism, the feminist movement, imperialism and WWI (1914-1918), the aesthetic revolution of modernism in the arts, and the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). We shall also introduce ourselves to aspects of the everyday life under two later major German phenomena: living as a “guest worker” (Gastarbeiter) in Germany during its “economic miracle” (Wirtschaftswunder—1955-1973), and living on the East side of the wall dividing Berlin (1961-1989). In addition to historical sources, we shall read literary texts and view art and films relating to these topics. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor. Taught in German. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice.

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 a critical investigation of important political, social, and aesthetic topics in German cultural history. These topics may include the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815), the 1848 European revolution, the impact of industrialization, the foundation of the German Reich (1870/1871), the economics and philosophical critique offered by socialism, the feminist movement, imperialism and WWI (1914-1918), the aesthetic revolution of modernism in the arts, and the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). We shall also introduce ourselves to aspects of the everyday life under two later major German phenomena: living as a "guest worker" (Gastarbeiter) in Germany during its "economic miracle" (Wirtschaftswunder-1955-1973), and living on the East side of the wall dividing Berlin (1961-1989). In addition to historical sources, we shall read literary texts and view art and films relating to these topics. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

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 a critical investigation of important political, social, and aesthetic topics in German cultural history. These topics may include the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815), the 1848 European revolution, the impact of industrialization, the foundation of the German Reich (1870/1871), the economics and philosophical critique offered by socialism, the feminist movement, imperialism and WWI (1914-1918), the aesthetic revolution of modernism in the arts, and the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). We shall also introduce ourselves to aspects of the everyday life under two later major German phenomena: living as a "guest worker" (Gastarbeiter) in Germany during its "economic miracle" (Wirtschaftswunder-1955-1973), and living on the East side of the wall dividing Berlin (1961-1989). In addition to historical sources, we shall read literary texts and view art and films relating to these topics. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

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, Heinrich von Kleist, Irmgard Keun, and Yoko Tawada; films and television series from Ernst Lubitsch to Tatort; documents on artificial intelligence, transhumanist politics, and the history of toys. Taught in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 308 or GERM 309; or completion of Macalester's or another approved study abroad program; or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials