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

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Baruch 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 on Spinoza's ethical and political theory and on his role in environmental ethics and Deep Ecology.

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

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

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Designed as a capstone experience in German studies, the 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): One of the following: GERM 308 or GERM 309 or GERM 363 or GERM 364 or GERM 365 or GERM 366, or Study Abroad

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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

The first decades of the 20th century produced some of the most innovative works in literary history, permanently transforming how we see, hear, and otherwise perceive the world around us. More than any aesthetic movement before or since, modernists including Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gertrude Stein, and Marcel Proust were keenly aware of both the limits of language and the inevitability of their transgression. They used words in ways that stretch sense to the point where it breaks, but with the aim of revealing a richer domain of finer-grained perception that is obscured by our everyday linguistic and intellectual habits. Over the course of the semester, we will read literary and theoretical accounts that both thematize and perform their own linguistic (in)capacities: to represent, to translate, to obscure, to estrange, to reveal. We will also examine some instances of modernist music, painting, and film. Our aim is to arrive at a nuanced understanding of how words work, contrasting linguistic phenomena with other forms of expressive media, and inquiring into the potential of language to articulate non-linguistic modes of experience. All readings in English. The course has no prerequisites and is open to first years.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

“Forever Young: The Vampire Comes of Age” looks critically at the ways in which vampire narratives focus on and represent the transition from childhood to adulthood, a common theme in many of these stories. The vampire topic provides an introduction to the liberal arts: close analysis reveals the changing undercurrents of pop culture and shows how critical thinking helps us understand the world around us. Vampires have existed throughout human history as empty metaphors that we fill with whatever scares or disgusts or delights us, and in this case, we will use the material not only as a prompt to build critical thinking and writing skills but also as a vehicle to understand the students’ transition to college life. Students will critically examine the metaphor of vampires and then engage in reflective practices to relate the material to their own lives and their transition to college. In this discussion-based course we’ll analyze a number of novels, films, and tales. We’ll learn about information literacy by searching for secondary literature related to our texts in the library databases, and we’ll write a lot about vampires. We’ll gather outside of class time and enjoy some snacks with our film screenings. And along the way, we’ll talk about college life and academics at Mac. Content Warning: please note that the course material includes violence, gory content, and sexual assault.

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

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. A widespread tendency in contemporary Western societies is to associate metaphysics with religion, if not with what is often dismissively called the "irrational." This course will dismantle this myth by reading closely European philosophy and political theory, mostly since the seventeenth century, in their relation to theology and their reception by twentieth-century critical theory. This will allow us to examine the ways in which secular thought emerges not as an alternative to metaphysics-something which thought cannot supersede anyway-but rather as a different way of dealing with the very same metaphysical questions and issues that concern religion, from the meaning of life to the imminence of death, and from (actual or imagined) guilt to the hope for redemption. We shall endeavor to identify the similarities and differences between the 'secular' and the 'religious' ways, including their respective relations to rationality and their functions in ideology. Readings may include: Aristotle, Talal Asad, George Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke, Richard Dienst, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Peter Harrison, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Carl Schmitt, Baruch Spinoza, Alberto Toscano, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Taught in English. “Free choice is the only miracle the moderns recognize” (Karol Berger). Freedom has for some time now occupied an ambiguous place in our collective state of mind: while the Right takes to the streets in the name of freedom, MLK’s “free at last” continues to resonate in the Left’s calls for social justice. Both see freedom in a distinctly modern light, as a naturally given or innate property of humans as individual agents of choice. In this course, we will work to gain a measure of distance on this common view of freedom by counterposing it with premodern concepts as well as modern strains of thought that go against the grain of classical liberalism. As Hannah Arendt pointed out, not until the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th centuries did anyone see freedom as inherent in or even attainable by an individual human; and from Hegel and Marx to Adorno, Badiou, and Agamben, freedom means something quite different from what we think of as individual free will: not something I have by default and that others might limit, but something I need others for in order to realize. Readings from Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Du Bois, Sartre, Lorde, Mbembe, Badiou, Ahmad Yousif, Toni Morrison, and others. Several reading responses; one short and two 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 the study of political, social, and aesthetic topics in the cultural history of Germany and related countries, from the cultural revolutions of the Enlightenment to the peaceful protests in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Major events in this itinerary include the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815); the 1848 European revolution; the industrial revolution; the unification of Germany (1870/1871); the economic and philosophical critiques offered by socialism and feminism; the modernist cultural and aesthetic revolution, and in particular the Jugendstil in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century;  imperialism and the two World Wars surrounding the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) by Nazism; and the subsequent division of Germany into four zones and, later, two countries, up until its reunification. In addition to historical sources and visual art, we shall read a literary text and watch a film relating to the life on the East side of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989). Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Deemed unsuitable for children (too gruesome!), the Grimm Brothers’ original fairy tales have been revised to suit popular sensibilities ever since their first appearance in 1812. What hasn’t changed is their ability to point up what is wrong with the “real” world and to gratify a simple but irrefutable sense of justice. The course traces the history and adaptions of the Grimms’ tales with an eye to understanding their cultural and psychological functions and the reasons for their perennial appeal. We will ask: what is folklore? What is German romanticism and why did its fairy tales come to define the genre? What do fairy tales tell us about the history of childhood and of gender? Readings include both well-known and obscure tales from the Grimms; screenings may include The Company of Wolves, Into the Woods, The Lion King, Mulan. Three papers and regular reading responses. Taught in German. Prerequisites: German 308 or 309, or study abroad, or permission of the instructor. Offered fall term of even-numbered years.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials