printer friendly pageGERMAN 13Q: Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern (DLCL 13Q, HUMCORE 13Q)
This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This third and final quarter focuses on the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon. N.B. This is the third of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take
HUMCORE 11 and
HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to
HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar). **NOTE** This class meets Monday and Wednesday in room 20-22K and Fridays in room 260-113 to attend a lecture along with the other two HUMCORE courses this quarter.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: Writing 2
Instructors:
Berman, R. (PI)
;
Starkman, R. (PI)
GERMAN 60N: German Crime
Crime is as old as humanity, as old as storytelling. Cain's murder of Abel, Antigone's burial of Polynices, Robin Hood's robbing from the rich: all of these testify to the ongoing fascination with crime and criminality, and to literature's role in policing, and probing, the boundaries of social legitimacy. This is a course about murders, break-ins, betrayals, sexual infidelity and violence, and crimes against humanity, and the ways those crimes, sometimes moral, sometimes legal, and sometimes not really even exactly criminal, teach us about German and German literature in recent centuries. Course material will include modern and classical crime fiction (Friedrich Glauser, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Jakob Arjouni, Thomas Glavinic), crime in novelistic, theatrical and poetic genres (Anna Seghers, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Schiller), and German-language television and film (Fritz Lang's "M,"Carol Reed's "The Third Man," "Tatort"). nThis course is for students with good knowledge of German. Students without German can participate in a special section with English language material.nGerman Studies Assistant Professor Lea Pao will teach this course.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
GERMAN 75N: Famous Last Words
What would you say if you knew it would be the last thing you would ever say? Who would you want to hear your words? Would you want to inspire somebody? Terrify them? Shout your defiance or your love in their direction?nThis is a course about last words the final utterances left as legacies for the world in the face of revolution, war, betrayal, heartbreak, or that simplest of endings, death. We will look at a wide variety of last words, including last words codified as genres¿quotations, suicide notes, epitaphs, dying declarations, Japanese death poems, confessions, and the like as literary devices (last sentences, envois, punch lines, epilogues), and as forms of social or cultural practice (the making of heroes, idols, and martyrs in religious, political, and popular culture). We will look at fictional last words, real last words, last words spoken by heroes, gods, and ordinary people. And we will end the course, each of us, by writing out our own last words imagining what we each would write, if we had to sum up what mattered most to us, and if we wanted some small selection of signs to stand in, as it has for many of the authors we will read, for our life and the legacy of it.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Pao, L. (PI)
GERMAN 88: Germany in 5 Words (GERMAN 101)
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.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Daub, A. (PI)
;
Deniz, M. (PI)
;
Forke, R. (TA)
;
Goodling, E. (TA)
;
Hoff, C. (TA)
;
Vialle-Giancotti, C. (TA)
GERMAN 97: 10 Poems That Will Change Your Life
This course is for anyone who has ever been afraid of poetry, anyone who has ever thought that poems are too difficult to understand, a course for anyone who has fallen in love with poetry before, and for anyone who has used a poem to make a difference in someone's life. You will learn how to read, understand, and if you don't already like poetry. We will read poems from different centuries, different kinds of writers, and different media (paper, computer screens, and even DNA); they will be about loss and love and war and loyalty and bacteria. Some of them will be about you. You will develop interpretive skills that come with this range of poetic forms and structures and will learn how to think about what it means for something to be poetic, whether it is a poem, a Leonard Cohen song, a last minute field goal, or a toilet. Can the poems in this class really change your life? (What would that even mean? We'll discuss.) Maybe; maybe not. But they're certainly going to try.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Pao, L. (PI)
GERMAN 101: Germany in 5 Words (GERMAN 88)
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.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Daub, A. (PI)
;
Deniz, M. (PI)
;
Forke, R. (TA)
;
Goodling, E. (TA)
;
Hoff, C. (TA)
;
Vialle-Giancotti, C. (TA)
GERMAN 109: The End of Europe (as we know it) - Germany and the Future of the European Union
Europe is struggling with the impact of the sovereign debt crisis of the Eurozone, mass migration, political extremism and xenophobia, external and internal security challenges, as well as political and social needs for reform to mention only some of the most pressing problems. The European Union, a project of an ever closer union of European states with currently 28 members started with the promise to provide peace, stability and prosperity. This narrative attracted new members in five enlargement rounds since the 1970s while today Eurosceptic parties, separatist movements as well as internal and external critics of the EU question the European integration project as such. nnThe course starts with the narrative of the success story of European integration and its achievements. This is followed by an analysis of current crises and future problems. In a third step we will discuss consequences and strategies to deal with challenges for Europe as a whole, as well as the EU and its members in particular. The course will follow ongoing debates within and outside of the EU. It includes global reflections on the state European situation and it makes comparisons with responses to similar challenges in other parts of the world.
Last offered: Autumn 2016
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
GERMAN 111: The End of the Western World (as we know it): German Responses to Global Challenges
Germany defines its foreign policy being based on two pillars: being a part of an integrated Europe and belonging to the Western World. For decades, America and Europe have remained closely connected politically, economically, and culturally. This close working relationship, however, now risks coming to an end, or getting substantially weakened. When asked to identify his "biggest foe globally right now," President Trump put the European Union on the list, along with China and Russia. Not only deeds but already words have far reaching consequences for Germany in a number of respects. The course addresses the question whether "The Western World" is coming to an end and discusses root causes and possible implications. As the course unfolds, we will cover a number of timely topics, including the future of NATO and why multilateralism matters, how an open society can survive the rising tide of populism, how migration is changing demographics and politics on both sides of the Atlantic, and the prospects for finding political solutions to climate change. We will even address German and European approaches to dealing with digitization and the protection of private data. The course will be discussion based, and include a number of illuminating studies; our goal is to increase students' understanding of the major challenges facing the decades-old American-European alliance and how Germany is dealing with them. Students will need no prior knowledge of Germany and the European Union. Knowledge of the American perspective is welcome but not required.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Bruckner, U. (PI)
GERMAN 116: Writing About Germany: New Topics, New Genres
Writing about various topics in German Studies. Topics based on student interests: current politics, economics, European affairs, start-ups in Germany. Intensive focus on writing. Students may write on their experience at Stanford in Berlin or their internship. Fulfills the WIM requirement for German Studies majors.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Starkey, K. (PI)
GERMAN 120A: Berlin: Literature, History, and Politics in the 20th and 21st Centuries
This course explores the city of Berlin through key contemporary and twentieth century prose as well as poems, films, music. Class discussions will focus on Berlin as the stage for crucial events in world history. Topics include contemporary Berlin as a magnet for bohemians and hipsters, migration to Berlin, the fall of the Berlin wall, student movements and radical politics in the city, cold war Berlin, the city under National Socialism, Weimar republic, revolutionary times, and the German Empire. We will read and discuss Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Celan, Alfred Döblin, Hans Fallada, Christa Wolf and others. Taught in German. Prerequisite:
GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Di Dio Di Marco, P. (PI)
Filter Results: