German Department
Course Descriptions
Spring 2021
(Check SIS for room assignments)
GERM 1015 (3) German For Reading Knowledge
1:00-1:50 MWF Ms. Schenberg
This course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates who wish 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 participants attain their desired research skills in German. Regular tests and quizzes will help students gauge their progress through the course.
No prior knowledge of German is required.
GERM 3000 (3) Advanced German
10:00-10:50 MWF Ms. Gutterman
11:00-11:50 MWF
"Advanced German" is designed for students at the intermediate level, who wish to continue developing their ability to speak, listen, read, and write in German. The course will provide a systematic overview of German grammar at the upper intermediate level, and selectively target grammatical topics at the advanced level. GERM 3000 will prepare you for upper-level German courses, assisting you in firmly achieving competence level B1 and working towards level B2.1-B2.2 of the Common European Framework (CEFR).
Prerequisite GERM 2020 or GERM 2050 or instructor’s permission.
GERM 3010 (3) Texts and Interpretations
11:00-11:50 MWF Mr. Dobryden
“Texts and Interpretations” is designed a) to introduce students to the practice of reading and interpreting texts, and b) to further students' overall German language proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking. Students will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with different genres and media, as well as with the technical terms necessary to discuss and analyze them. Each module will focus on a theme. Students will engage in class discussions and group work, which will take the form of creative tasks such as short performances of a scene, recitations (Lesetheater), or transformations of a text into a different genre in order to explore the conditions of meaning-making. Guided reading and writing assignments will exercise students’ critical thinking skills. Active participation is required throughout the course. All work will be conducted in German.
Prerequisite GERM 2020 or instructor’s permission.
GERM 3120 (3) Literature in German 1
2:00-3:15 MW Ms. Gutterman
What’s the point of Literature? What are the conditions for love? Is reality an illusion? Where lies the line between revenge and justice – and what choice of action does the individual have when faced with abuse of power? In this course we will closely read and discuss literatures in German from the 18th and 19th centuries, with texts ranging from Kant’s answer to the question Was ist Aufklärung?, to Kleist’s Penthesilea, Lessing’s Emilia Galotti and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann. Together we will discover how the questions raised by these texts form constellations with our current cultural discourses, and we will trace the way these literatures from the past find new shapes in contemporary theater productions and film adaptations – such as, for example, Paul Berry’s Oscar-nominated stop-motion film The Sandman (1991), or one of the most successful German theater productions of the early 2000s, Michael Thalheimer’s Emilia Galotti for the Deutsches Theater Berlin (2001). ‚Literature in German I‘ serves as an introduction to the literature of the 18th and 19th century, while enhancing students’ German language skills, particularly in the areas of speaking, writing and reading. Active participation, including group work, is required throughout the course, and all work will be conducted in German. Prerequisite German 3010 or instructor's permission.
GERM 3290 (1) German Studies Roundtable
5:00-6:00 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 levels.
GERM 3526 (3) Start-Up in German
12:00-12:50 MWF Ms. Parker
Germany has a lively startup scene and its mid-sized manufacturers, collectively known as Mittelstand, are thriving. This class prepares students to communicate effectively in the world’s fourth largest economy by focusing on the process of starting a new business on a basic level. Necessary language tools and cultural information will be acquired while developing ideas, marketing strategies and other steps in the process. The language of instruction and of all course materials is German. Requirements include regular attendance, project presentation and a portfolio. No final exam.
Prerequisite GERM 2020 or instructor’s permission”
GERM 3559 (3) Internet Literacy in German
2:00-3:15 TR Mr. McDonald
The “textbook” for this course is the Internet, abounding with texts and images that further German language skills, at the same time they promote knowledge of current conditions in the German-speaking world. In this course, we draw on Internet resources to fuse language learning and culture. For each class session, students search out German sites of interest, then share stories with the class through oral reports. Mid-term and final individualized projects.
GERM 4600 (3) Fourth-Year Seminar - Jahrhundertwende
12:30-1:45 TR Mr. Grossman
The period known as the Jahrhundertwende (or turn-of-the-[twentieth]-century) in the German and Austrian contexts is one of profound contradiction: Imperial rule and nationalist challenges to empire, vast accumulation of wealth and a growing proletariat, strict bourgeois morality and unleashed sexual energies, liberal sentiments and the rise of seething, pent up forces, both liberatory and reactionary. It was a period of confidence in the future and cultural despair.
In this seminar, we will ask how writers and artists around 1900 responded to this world of contradiction, giving rise to bold artistic and literary forms and movements (Naturalism, Impressionism, Jugendstil, Expressionism, Dada) and giving expression to varied sensibilities—social, aesthetic, and otherwise (fin de siècle, Dekadenz, Menschheitsdämmerung, etc.). Together we will explore the way these writers brought art into conversation with new thinkers and styles of thought—from positivist philosophy to Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Bergson, and others. They often questioned the nature of “reality” and the “self,” going so far as to ask whether “reality” and the “self” exist at all, even as they probed the unconscious, its forms and desires, or engaged in social or political criticism. In this class we will ask: What is the role of art? What is the nature of the self? Of reality? What is at stake in plumbing the unconscious? In what ways were fundamental assumptions about life called into question? And what assumptions were left unexamined?
The seminar will be taught in German. The first two-thirds of the semester will be devoted to assigned readings, in response to some of which students will write short papers (1-2 pp.). The remainder of the semester will be devoted to research projects of students’ own devising, which will lead to a 10-page paper, to be developed in stages and with feedback on work in progress. We will conclude with short presentations of students’ projects (whether in progress or in finished form).
Readings may be drawn from: Freud, Nietzsche, G. Hauptmann, F. Wedekind, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Stefan George, Gottfried Benn, Ricarda Huch Else Lasker-Schüler, and others?
GETR 3330 (3) Introduction to German Studies
3:30-4:45 TR Mr. Schmid
German culture is more than Bratwurst and Lederhosen. It is highly paradoxical, and produced stellar poets and thinkers like Goethe, Schiller, and Freud, as well as the nightmare of the 20th century: Hitler and the Nazis. It is famous for its car culture but also for the first ecology movement. In this class we will examine German culture in the past two centuries with short texts on German identities, boarders, and colonialism, German films and series, Romantic paintings, and Holocaust memorial sites. Requirements include regular attendance, active participation, and short written assignments.
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 fairy tales and dream narratives from the romantic period into the present. Why did the Grimm brothers bother to collect fairy tales? What does all this have to do with Germany’s emergence as a nation? How does Disney depict the fairy tale in film? – These are some of the questions that our seminar addresses. Authors to be discussed include: Goethe, the brothers Grimm, Bettelheim, Hoffmann, Freud, Saint-Exupéry, Tolkien, and others. Requirements include regular attendance, active participation, and short 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 19th 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 3471 (3) Weimar Cinema
3:30-4:45 MW Mr. Dobryden
This course will familiarize students with the formally adventurous and globally influential cinema of the Weimar Republic. We will examine key films from a range of genres (including horror, comedy, science fiction, crime, and melodrama) by directors such as Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and G. W. Pabst. Situating the films within the cultural upheavals of the period from 1918 to 1933, we will discuss the aftereffects of WWI; the politics of class and gender; discourses on nature and technology; relationships between aesthetics, spectatorship, and politics; and processes of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization. Students without experience in film studies are welcome—the course will also double as an introduction to discussing and analyzing film.
GETR 3559 (3) Pursuing Happiness
2:00-3:15 TR Ms. Martens
Fictions of happiness pursued--and found! Through the ages, people have sought happiness and formulated conceptions of what happiness means. Happiness could be something we once had--then lost--but might find again; something we might achieve by acting wisely or performing meritorious deeds; something possible through escape; alternatively, something available in the here and now; bound up with love or recognition from others; or a byproduct of creativity, independent of others. This course is not a self-help course. Don’t take it expecting to find the key to happiness. This is a literature course. We’ll read fiction, poetry, theory. But we will read some cheerful and uplifting (or at least moderately cheerful or uplifting) literature, as an intellectual antidote to the gloom and doom of the current pandemic, while we wait for a scientific antidote. Texts to be chosen from Chrétien, Rousseau, Schiller, Novalis, Wordsworth, Emerson, Valéry, Hunt, Rilke, Hilton, Stevens, Giono, Nabokov, I. Grekova, Wolf.
GETR 3590 (3) Medieval Stories of Love and Adventure
3:30-4:45 TR Mr. McDonald
On the basis of a close reading of the History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffrey of Monmouth), Poor Henry (Hartmann von Aue), Erec (Chrétien de Troyes), Yvain (Chrétien de Troyes), Perceval (Chrétien de Troyes), Parzival (Wolfram von Eschenbach), and Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg), this course aims to extract and trace the lineaments of the Arthurian legend, circa 1135 to circa 1215, as represented in literature. Students also explore the permutations of Arthuriana in film, music, and modern media. Topics include the Monomyth of Joseph Campbell, the operas of Richard Wagner, Moorish Spain, and the trickster-figure. Drawing on an extensive repository of Resources on Collab that embraces medieval customs, realia, and intellectual life, Harry Potter, and much more, students submit weekly reports and evaluations. Two content quizzes and two term papers on a topic of choice are required.
This course completes the Second Writing Requirement. No knowledge of the medieval period or the works in question is assumed.
GETR 3693 (3) Holocaust Testimonies
4:00-6:30 T Mr. Finder
This course, which meets once a week for 2 ½ hours, explores what it means not only to read or listen to but also to see testimony by survivors of the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews. Videotaped Holocaust testimony has been crucial to our ever-evolving understanding of the Holocaust since it became popular in the 1980s. It is becoming ever more important as the number of aging Holocaust survivors dwindles year by year. In our course, we will make extensive use of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony, developed and housed at Yale University’s Sterling Library. We will watch Holocaust testimony collected by the Fortunoff Archive. The Fortunoff Archive has its own history, which we will examine. We will not limit ourselves to Holocaust testimony, however. We will also view and analyze testimony by survivors of other genocides and atrocities. The purpose of this course is to enable students to develop the theoretical background and skills of close reading and close viewing necessary to analyze a wide range of Holocaust testimonies on many different subjects and to compare Holocaust testimony with testimonies of survivors of other genocides and atrocities.
GETR 3695/ (3) The Holocaust and the Law
HIEU 3695 11:00-12:15 TR
12:30-1:45 TR Mr. Finder
This course explores the pursuit of justice after the Holocaust. We will study legal responses to the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews through the lens of pivotal post-Holocaust trials, including the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trial, the 1961 Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, and the 1963-1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. We will watch films to examine the cinematic representation of Holocaust-related trials. Mindful of the postwar historical context, we will pose the question whether these trials and others serves justice on the perpetrators and delivered justice not only to the victims but also to history and memory. In this vein, we will ask how the pursuit of legal justice after the Holocaust affects our understanding of the legal process.
GETR 3710 (3) Kafka and His Doubles
ENGL 3710 11:00-12:15 TR Ms. Martens
The course will introduce the enigmatic work of Franz Kafka: stories including "The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "A Country Doctor," "A Report to an Academy," "A Hunger Artist," "The Burrow," and "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"; one of his three unpublished novels (The Trial); the Letter to His Father; and some short parables. But we will also look at Kafka's "doubles": the literary tradition he works with and the way in which he, in turn, forms literary tradition. Thus: Kafka: Cervantes, Kafka: Bible, Kafka: Aesop, Kafka: Dostoevsky, Kafka: Melville; Kafka: O'Connor, Kafka: Singer; Kafka: Calvino, Kafka: Borges. Readings will center on four principal themes: conflicts with others and the self (and Kafka's psychological vision); the double; the play with paradox and infinity; and artists and animals. A seminar limited to 17 participants. Requirements include a short midterm paper (5-7 pages) and a longer final paper (10-12 pages)