321 - 330 of 530 results for: ARTINST::ccguide

For much of the twentieth century Berlin has been at the epicentre of geopolitics, the Berlin Wall standing as the physical manifestation of a fragile world order. Huge social and political upheavals in the city have inspired much cultural production. Through novels, poetry, films, speeches and more we will examine the Golden Era of Weimar Berlin, the National Socialist period, the Cold War division, reunification, and the contemporary city. Authors include Keun, D¿blin, Fallada, Schernikau, Wolf, Brussig, Erpenbeck. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.

Fairy tales loom largely in our lives. They are 'weird,' but not shallow or irrelevant: they tell the 'extraordinary' in different traditions and facilitate cross-and transcultural dialogues between them. In this course, we will read German fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers, Novalis, Tieck, Bettina von Arnim, E.T.A. Hoffmann, etc., focus on their connections to the stories in other traditions, and explore their transformations in various media from oral storytelling to films, comic books, and music videos. We will reinterpret these fairy tales by using methodologies derived from psychoanalysis, folklore, gender, and race studies and open a creative environment for your own tales. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.

Germany is the land of Beethoven and Brahms, but has also given the world Marlene Dietrich, Nena, and Rammstein. This course aims to introduce you to a variety of music repertories, and a range of ways through popular songs to think and talk about 200 years of German history, art, culture, and politics. While we explore some of the great ¿classics¿ of the musical canon in the German speaking countries, we will also discover the social, critical, and political impacts expressed and triggered by folksongs, rock, punk, hip-hop, techno, and heavy metal music. Our focus will be on particular German genres and obsessions by listening not only good songs but also bad ones, very goofy and entertaining pieces. A class to hum along to! Taught in German. Prerequisite: One year of German or permission of instructor.

This class will address major works by Franz Kafka and consider Kafka as a modernist writer whose work reflects on modernity. We will also examine the role of Kafka's themes and poetics in the work of contemporary writers.

"Only a fool reads poetry for facts": To read a poem with the same fact-seeking attention required by using a dictionary, reading a newspaper article, or following a recipe is, perhaps, foolish. But if it is, it is so only because it means the reader has not understood what a poem is supposed to do. Consider Wittgenstein's famous warning: "Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information." A poem, even though it is made of the same (kinds of) words as information, ought not to be treated as information (the sentence seems to say). Distinct in their respective functions, poetry and information form two ends of an opposition: one for the creative possibilities for human expression, the other for the practical and mechanical tasks of everyday life.nBut what really "is" information? Has poetry not, since the beginning of time, also functioned as vehicle for storing, quantifying, and communicating things¿from historical events, the law, to agricultural manuals, just as "informational" texts do? How has the emergence of technological media in our so-called Information Age altered, reinforced, or revolutionized the place of poetry in the realm of human communication?nThese questions will motivate this course, which is also a general introduction to poetry and poetics. We will closely read German texts from the Musipilli to digital-born poetry, and secondary material from thinkers and theorists such as Schlegel, Schleiermacher, Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Flusser, and Bense, to learn how various methods of reading and literary criticism - from formalism and structuralism to Digital Humanities approaches - have developed alongside something like "information" as literary quality and social form.nAssistant Professor Lea Pao will teach this course.

This course surveys different genres and of premodern German literature, including mysticism, Romance, heroic epic, lyric poetry, and the early novel. Texts include: the Nibelungenlied, Hartmann von Aue's Erec, Mechthild von Magdeburg's Flowing Light of the Godhead, and Fortunatus. All texts available in English and German.

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.

Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.

Today, Iranian plays both in traditional and contemporary styles are staged in theater festivals throughout the world and play their role in forming a universal language of theater which combine the heritages from countries in all five continents. Despite many obstacles, some Iranian plays have been translated into English and some prominent Iranian figures are successful stage directors outside Iran. Forty-six years ago when "Theater in Iran" (a monograph on the history of Iranian plays) by Bahram Beyzaie was first published, it put the then contemporary Iranian theater movement "which was altogether westernizing itself blindly" face to face with a new kind of self-awareness. Hence, today's generation of playwrights and stage directors in Iran, all know something of their theatrical heritage. In this course we will spend some class sessions on the history of theater in Iran and some class meetings will be concentrating on contemporary movements and present day playwrights. Given the dearth of visual documents, an attempt will be made to present a picture of Iranian theater to the student. Students are expected to read the recommended available translated plays of the contemporary Iranian playwrights and participate in classroom discussions. NOTE: To satisfy WAYS requirements, you must enroll in the course for a minimum of 3 units. Please contact your academic advisor for more information regarding University WAYS requirements.