1 - 10 of 41 results for: GERMAN

Developing the courage to do what is right and maintaining the strength to resist evil in the face of personal persecution are fundamental human dilemmas. Many who lived in Nazi Germany had neither the courage, the intellectual and/or spiritual means, nor the strength to speak or act against the evil with which they were confronted. But some did possess courage and strength, and they serve as touchstones for understanding the best of the human spirit during the worst of times. This course focuses on documents generated by nonmilitary resistance groups during the period of National Socialism. Letters, essays, diaries, and statements on ethics from the Bonhoeffer and Scholl families form the core of the readings. The resistance novel, Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada, is also included. Texts will be read as historical documents, reflections of German thought, statements of conscience, attempts to maintain normal relationships with others in the face of great risk, as poetic works, and as guides for the development of an ethical life.

How do conservatives respond to the modern world? How do they find a balance between tradition and freedom, or between stability and change? This seminar will examine selections from some conservative and some classically liberal writers that address these questions. At the center of the course are thinkers who left Germany and Austria before the Second World War: Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. We will also look at earlier European writers, such Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as some recent American thinkers. Taught in English.

For Seniors who are declared German Studies majors. How to write about various topics in German Studies for a wide public through opinion pieces or blogs. Topics based on student interests: current politics, economics, European affairs, start-ups in Germany. Intensive focus on writing. Taught in English. Meets the Writing in the Major requirement.

Examination of political debates, politicians and parties in contemporary Germany with particular attention to the debate over the future of Europe. Looking closely at political discourse, from right to left, to understand how public discussion frames policy formation. At stake is the role Germany can play in the new Europe, against the background of its economic influence and its national past. Examination and analysis of public speeches by contemporary politicians such as Chancellor Angela Merkel and examples of debate from the Bundestag. Taught in German. Prerequisites: Some familiarity with German language

As early as the mid-19th century, the French poet Charles Baudelaire saw a new "art of memory" as a main characteristic of modernity. An exploration of the relationship between memory and modernism through an intensive reading of three major narrative texts: Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge," James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," and Marcel Proust's "Combray." Taught in English.

This course has two primary goals. First, it is designed to provide students with a visual and linguistic foundation for discussing and writing about German film from the Weimar period to the present. To that end we will review important genres, directors, and technological developments in the history of German film. Second, using film as a lens, we will examine several key moments in German cultural history from the 1920s to the present. Certain themes will reoccur throughout the course, including gender, the city, technology, violence, and social crisis. All materials and class discussion in German.(Meets Writing-in-the-Major requirement)

Introduction to the reading and interpretation of lyrical poetry in German from the 18th century to present. Readings include poems by Goethe, Holderlin, Brentano, Eichendorff, Heine, Rilke, Trakl, Celan, Brecht. Ways of thinking about and thinking with poetry. Attention to poetic form, voice, figural language, and the interaction of sensory registers. Taught in German.

Published in 1924, The Magic Mountain is a novel of education, tracing the intellectual growth of a budding engineer through a maze of intellectual encounters during a seven- year sojourn in a sanatorium set high in the Swiss Alps. It engages with the key themes of modernism: the relativity of time, the impact of psychoanalysis, the power of myth, and an extended dispute between an optimistic belief in progress and a pessimistic vision of human nature. Through its detailed discussion of disease (tuberculosis), this remarkable text connects the study of medicine to the humanities. There will be an exploration of this rich and profound novel both as a document of early twentieth-century Europe and as a commentary on the possibilities of education that are urgent for liberal arts education today. Taught in English.

This course provides insight into the literature and cultural history of 18th century Germany with a special emphasis on the themes of identity and romantic love in the force field of tradition and change. Taught in German.