GERM 1015/5015 (3)  German for Reading Knowledge

1:00 - 1:50 MWF

Ms. Schenberg                                                           

This course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates who need to develop the skills necessary for reading and translating scholarly German and/or to pass the graduate reading exam. Nightly homework assignments from the textbook, combined in the later part of the course with readings and translation of texts from students’ chosen fields of study, will help students attain their desired research skills in German.

            No prior knowledge of German is required.

            Undergraduates should register for GERM 1015, graduates for GERM 5015.

Undergraduates: Please note that German 1015 does not fulfill the foreign language requirement.

Textbook: R. Korb, German for Reading Knowledge, 7^th Edition: https://www.amazon.com/German-Reading-Knowledge-World-Languages/dp/1133604269

GERM 3000 (3)  Advanced German: Identity and Belonging 

12:30-1:45 TR

Mr. Schmid

How do the languages we speak shape our identity? Where do we belong? What does it mean to be a speaker of German? In this content-based language course, we will investigate questions of language, identities and belonging. Among other topics, we’ll explore German as a pluricentric language and discuss what it means to feel “at home” in the German language, by reading texts from authors like the Japanese and German-language writer, Yoko Tawada, and others. Together, we will work on your communication skills in German and practice your speaking and writing. To help you communicate confidently in German, we will systematically review grammar topics at the upper intermediate level, selectively target grammar topics at the advanced level, and place special emphasis on questions of German sentence structure.

Prerequisite GERM 2020 or GERM 2050 or instructor’s permission. If you haven’t taken GERM 2020 or GERM 2050, and are interested in taking this course, please email Marcel Schmid at ms5qt@virginia.edu!

GERM 3110 (3) Literature in German II

12:00-12:50 MWF

Ms. Zuerner 

TBA

GERM 3230 (3)  Contemporary German 

2:00-3:15 TR

Mr. Bennett

TBA

GERM 3290 (1)  German Studies Round Table

5:00-5:50 W

TBA

The German Conversation class is designed for students who wish to improve their ability to express themselves in German. In a small-group setting, we will focus on communications skills and discuss topics ranging from personal interests to current events. This course is open to all language levels.   

GERM 3300 (1) Language House Conversation  

TBA

Ms. Parker
 

For students residing in the German group in Shea House. May be taken more than once for credit. Departmental approval needed if considered for major credit. Prerequisite: instructor permission."

GERM 3620 (3)  New Voices in German; Transnational and Multilingual                     Literature Today     

11:00-12:15 TR

Ms. Gutterman   

What do German speakers read these days? In “New Voices in German,” we will explore a selection of prose works fresh off the press and ask how these works critically engage with Germany’s multilingual and transnational literary landscape. Readings include Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Der Hof im Spiegel, Fatma Aydemir’s Dschinns, Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther, Khuê Phạm’s Wo auch immer ihr seid, and Saša Stanišić’s Herkunft. See the schedule below for more information on these authors. This course is especially suited to students who wish to enhance their vocabulary through focused reading and develop their writing and conversational skills. GERM 3559 is conducted in German. Prerequisite: GERM 3000 or equivalent. 

GETR 3526/HIEU 3390 (3)  Nazi Germany  

10:00-10:50 MW

Ms. Achilles   

This course examines the ideological foundations, political structures, social dynamics, and unprecedented crimes of the Nazi “Third Reich,” Course topics range from the upheavals of WWI to the formation of Hitler’s genocidal regime and its continued legacies for us today. Throughout this course, we will pay particular attention the role of ordinary people in the persecution and murder of Jewish people and other minority groups. We will end our class with a discussion of post-war memory culture, including Holocaust monuments and museums, and the representation of the Third Reich in popular culture.

Students should know that we will cover a number of topics that may be disturbing or distressing, such as antisemitic ideologies, racial persecution, mass killings, and other atrocities committed by the Nazis and their allies and collaborators. Please consider your comfort level with these topics and do not hesitate to contact me (Prof. Achilles) at ma6cq@virginia.edu if you have questions or concerns about this class.

GETR 3392 (3) Fairy Tales 

9:30-10:45  TR

Mr. Schmid

In fairy tales, everything is possible: throw a frog against the wall, it may well turn out to be a prince in disguise; go visit your grandmother and you may realize that she has been eaten and replaced by a wolf; and if you have plans for the next hundred years, you better beware of being pricked by a spindle. Entering the world of fairy tales often feels like passing into an elaborate dream: it is a world teeming with sorcerers, dwarves, wondrous objects, and animals that speak. In this seminar, we focus on tales from fairy tale traditions in Germany and around the world. Why did the Grimm brothers bother to collect fairy tales? How does Disney depict the fairy tale in film? –  These are some of the questions that our seminar addresses.  Requirements include regular attendance, active participation, an exam, and written assignments.

GETR 3393 (3) Serial Media 

5:00-7:30  W 

Mr. Schmid

Have you ever binge-watched a show on Netflix? Have you ever not been able to put down a book? You had to know what was going to happen in the next episode or the next chapter. In this class we will not only reflect on and analyze this experience, we will also investigate its history: the history of serial media.

Over the past 20 years we have witnessed in a revolution in serial media: The medial possibilities made available through online streaming have inspired a trend away from the theater in favor of the laptop, and the primacy of feature length film has been upset by the advent of the so-called second golden age of television. Together we will explore the history of serial forms, particularly through its German tradition beginning with the 19^th century serial journal projects of the Romantics and culminating with the contemporary German Netflix show “Dark,” a show that, like the American hit “Stranger Things,” involves parallel dimensions and supernatural elements. Finally, with the help of the work of German intellectuals such as Paul Kammerer and Carl Gustav Jung, we will explore the connection between seriality and coincidence.

GETR 3330 (3) Introduction to German Studies

9:30-10:45 TR

Mr. Schmid 

GETR 3462/HIEU 3462 (3) Neighbors and Enemies 

2:00-3:15 MW

Ms. Achilles

A biblical injunction, first articulated in Leviticus and then elaborated in the Christian teachings, stipulates that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself. This course explores the friend/enemy nexus in German history, literature and culture. Of particular interest is the figure of the neighbor as both an imagined extension of the self, and as an object of fear or even hatred. We will examine the vulnerability and anxiety generated by Germany’s unstable and shifting territorial borders, as well as the role that fantasies of foreign infiltration played in defining German national identity. We will also investigate the racial and sexual politics manifested in Germany’s real or imagined encounters with various foreign “others.” Most importantly, this course will study the tensions in German history and culture between a chauvinist belief in German racial or cultural superiority and moments of genuine openness to strangers. In the concluding part of this course, we will consider the changing meanings of friendship and hospitality in a globalizing world. 

GETR 3464 (3) Medieval Stories of Love and Adventure

2:00-3:15 TR, 3:30-4:45 TR

Mr. McDonald 

An interactive course, involving reading, discussion, music, and art, that seeks, through selected stories of the medieval period, to shed light on institutions, themes, and customs. At the center is the Heroic Circle, a cycle with connections to folklore, the fairy tale, and Jungian psychology—all of which illuminate the human experience. Discover here the genesis of Arthurian film, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and more. All texts on Collab.

Second Writing Requirement

Cultures and Societies of the World

GETR 3470 (3) Writing and Screening the Holocaust 

5:00-7:30 T

Mr. Grossman

This course examines how writers  and filmmakers working in various genres and modes seek to respond to the event commonly referred to as the Holocaust. How did victims and witnesses write about the events as they happened? How did the event impinge on memory in the post-1945 period? How did trauma find expression? How did others --  philosophers, writers of fiction, memoirists, and filmmakers deal with these problems?  Readings to include: Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, Charlotte Delbo, Borowski, Theodor Adorno, Alexander Kluge, Ruth Kluger, and others. We will screen parts Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and parts of Claude Lanzman’s 9 ½ documentary Shoah, and possibly other films.

GETR 3559 (3) Hollywood Exile: German Filmmakers Flee Fascism

3:30- 4:45 MW

Mr. Dobryden

In the 1930s, many people employed in the German film industry whose lives were threatened by fascism took refuge in Hollywood. This course examines the contributions exiled directors, writers, actors, and others made in genres ranging from comedy and melodrama to film noir. In addition to indicting fascist violence, reflecting on the trauma of forced migration, and rousing anti-fascist affect, these films often turned a critical eye on the U.S. Selected films include: Fury (Lang, 1936), Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942), A Foreign Affair (Wilder, 1948), and All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955).

GETR 3600/ENGL 3500 (3) Faust 

2:00-3:15 MW

Mr. Grossman

Goethe's Faust has been called an "atlas of European modernity" and "one of the most recent columns for that bridge of spirit spanning the swamping of world history." The literary theorist Harold Bloom writes:  "As a sexual nightmare of erotic fantasy, [Faust] ... has no rival, and one understands why the shocked Coleridge declined to translate the poem. It is certainly a work about what, if anything, will suffice, and Goethe finds myriad ways of showing us that sexuality by itself will not.  Even more obsessively, Faust teaches that, without an active sexuality, absolutely nothing will suffice." 

 Taking Goethe's Faust as its point of departure, this course will trace the Faust legend from its rise over 400 hundred years ago to the modern age.  Retrospectively, we will explore precursors of Goethe's Faust in the form of the English Faust Book and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker, to which Goethe responded.  We will then read Goethe's Faust, parts I and parts II (either in its entirety or in excerpts), in part as a response to Rousseau’s  Although now a major work in the European canon, Goethe sought in his Faust to radically transform central tenants of the legend and to challenge many conventions of European culture, politics, and society.  We will also study Byron's melancholy attempt in Manfred to respond to part I of Goethe’s Faust create a theater of the emotions that explores problems of power, sexuality, and guilt.  And we will venture into the twentieth-century, viewing first F.W. Murnau's avant-garde Faust film (1926) as a response to contemporary European/German society and technology, and Istvan Szabo’s film Mephisto (1981), which wrestled with Nazism in the land of Goethe's Faust.

 Our aims will be to ask why writers repeatedly returned to the Faust legend and how, in re-working Faust, they sought to confront the political, social, and cultural problems of their own times.  Requirements:  one short paper (5 pages), one mid-term exam, long paper (10-12 pages), active class participation, including short written contributions to online discussion.