Results for GERMAN

This course explores German history, culture and politics by tracing five (largely untranslatable) words and exploring the debates they have engendered in Germany over the past 200 years. This course is intended as preparation for students wishing to spend a quarter at the Bing Overseas Studies campus in Berlin, but is open to everyone. Taught in English.

Is there a difference between art and propaganda? How do writers express their political values? Who gets to decide what counts as literature? Or who counts as German? This introductory course will focus on these questions and more as we discuss works of prose, poetry, theater, and film from the German-speaking world in the context of 20th century political developments, including the World Wars and the Holocaust, the Cold War and German Reunification, and the rise of multiculturalism. Course materials in the original German include selections from Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Ingeborg Bachmann, May Ayim, and others. Taught in German. GERLANG 3 or equivalent required.

This small, individualized course will offer students the chance to work on their spoken expression and critical thinking, in German. Topics will change each quarter but will span contemporary politics and culture, film, literature, and visual arts. The focus will be on speaking German in small groups, as opposed to formal presentations or written assignments. Students will have the opportunity to pursue topics of personal interest, as well as work collaboratively and individually on projects intended to foster advanced communicative skills.

Repeatable for Credit. Instructor Consent Required

How the literature of the period between 1750 and 1900 gives voice to new conceptions of selfhood and articulates the emergent self-understanding of modernity. Responses to unprecedented historical experiences such as the French Revolution and the ensuing wars, changes in the understanding of nature, the crisis of foundations, and the persistence of theological motifs. Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Kleist, Heine, Buchner, Keller, and Fontane. Taught in English, readings in German.

This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.

This small, individualized course will offer students the chance to work on their spoken expression and critical thinking, in German. Topics will change each quarter but will span contemporary politics and culture, film, literature, and visual arts. The focus will be on speaking German in small groups, as opposed to formal presentations or written assignments. Students will have the opportunity to pursue topics of personal interest, as well as work collaboratively and individually on projects intended to foster advanced communicative skills.

How does theology inform culture and politics in our age of high technology? Are there religious underpinnings in the contemporary world to categories of creativity, charisma and community? This course explores theoretical approaches to the ongoing resonance of theology through readings by Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Oswald Spengler, René Girard and others and through regular visits by Peter Thiel. To be considered for enrollment in this course, please complete and submit this short application by October 19, 2022, 11:59pm PST. Students accepted to participate in this course will be notified on October 26, 2022 by 6:00pm. Auditors are not permitted. Please use this url to fill out the application: https://forms.gle/PM2mTYot6eGnNPpL8

What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.

Martin Heidegger is one of the most influential and contested philosophers of the modern era. This seminar will offer close readings of Heidegger's first book following the Second World War: Martin Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege). We will discuss Heidegger's aesthetic theory ("The Origin of the Work of Art"), his reaction to Hegel's notion of experience, Nietzsche's dictum "God is dead," and Heidegger's unique understanding of poetry, poetics and poetic thinking in "Why Poets?" The seminar will also explore how some of Heidegger's ideas have left a lasting mark in contemporary discussions regarding truth, experience, art, and literature.

In April of 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a huge controversy erupted in Germany on the relation between Postcolonial and Holocaust Studies. Previously, in 2012, Judith Butler on the occasion of being awarded the Adorno Prize was assailed for her support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This time, the philosopher Achille Mbembe, from Cameroon, the former German colony, was accused of antisemitism. His comparison of Israel with the apartheid state in South Africa and his critique of Palestine's occupation as a form of settler colonialism is condemned for relativizing the Holocaust and questioning the Israeli state's right to exist. The allegation of "postcolonial antisemitism" resurfaced in 2022 in the context of the Documenta 15 in Kassel. The curators, ruangrupa, an Indonesian art collective, are accused of antisemitism, of supporting BDS and of the "silent boycott" of Jewish-Israeli artists.These controversies confront us with the challenge of how to think together antisemitism and racism. In this class, we will engage with critical scholarship to address the conundrums of memory politics and to engage with the "unfinished conversations" between Jewish and Postcolonial Studies. The course will be taught by Professor Nikita Dhawan (Technical University Dresden), who is the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor in German Studies.

This course reviews the research literature on metaphor with a particular emphasis on literary comprehension.

How the literature of the period between 1750 and 1900 gives voice to new conceptions of selfhood and articulates the emergent self-understanding of modernity. Responses to unprecedented historical experiences such as the French Revolution and the ensuing wars, changes in the understanding of nature, the crisis of foundations, and the persistence of theological motifs. Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Kleist, Heine, Buchner, Keller, and Fontane. Taught in English, readings in German.

This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.

How does theology inform culture and politics in our age of high technology? Are there religious underpinnings in the contemporary world to categories of creativity, charisma and community? This course explores theoretical approaches to the ongoing resonance of theology through readings by Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Oswald Spengler, René Girard and others and through regular visits by Peter Thiel. To be considered for enrollment in this course, please complete and submit this short application by October 19, 2022, 11:59pm PST. Students accepted to participate in this course will be notified on October 26, 2022 by 6:00pm. Auditors are not permitted. Please use this url to fill out the application: https://forms.gle/PM2mTYot6eGnNPpL8

What's happening in German Studies today? The GSLS invites 3 speakers per quarter to present on their work and research in German literature, culture, politics, and history, offering students an insight into the current field of German Studies and an engagement with topics ranging from medieval fabrics to the refugee crisis. Luncheons are scheduled every first Tuesday of the month. To earn the unit for this course, students will attend the lecture, read 1-2 articles or book chapters written by the speaker of the week, and complete one short 2-page writing assignment (this could be a reflection, a review, a creative assignment, a poetic adaptation of a talk - we'll discuss).

Colloquium for graduate students in German Studies. Taught in English. May be repeated for credit.

Repeatable for Credit

Repeatable for Credit. Instructor Consent Required.