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GERMAN 120: Contemporary Politics in Germany

This course provides an opportunity to engage with issues and actors, politicians and parties in contemporary Germany, while building German language abilities. We will work with current events texts, news reports, speeches and websites. Course goals include building analytic and interpretive capacities of political topics in today's Europe, including the European Union, foreign policy, and environmentalism. Differences between US and German political culture are a central topic. At least one year German language study required.

Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI

Instructors: Berman, R. (PI)

GERMAN 120A: Berlin: Literature and Culture in the 20th Century and Beyond

Few cities have witnessed as many political and social changes, and inspired as much cultural production, as Berlin. This course will explore the way authors of all stripes have depicted the last 125 years of this complicated city in forms as diverse as vignettes, novels, poems, and films. We will look at historical moments such as the Golden Era of Weimar Berlin, the National Socialist period, and the Cold War, as well as artistic and literary movements including Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit. Reading and discussing the works of authors including Walter Benjamin, Vicki Baum, Alfred Döblin, Hans Fallada, and Durs Grünbein, we will explore the relationship between art and history, artist and city. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.

Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

Instructors: Hodrick, C. (PI)

GERMAN 120B: Fairy Tales

In this course, we will explore the fairy tale genre both from a systematic and historical perspective. We will start by asking how fairy tales differ from other short prose texts like legends and fables. We will then focus on bigger themes allowing us to discern differences within this literary form, namely: the fantastic and the real, motif constancy and variation, narration and orality, animality and the human. Over the course of the seminar, we will not only delve into the world-famous folk tale collection of the Grimm brothers, but also the more stylized Romantic `Kunstmärchen¿ tradition (Goethe, Brentano, Hoffmann). Examples from the later 19th-century (Keller, Storm) and the 20th century (Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Döblin, Bachmann) demonstrate attempts to reformulate the fairy tale tradition by transgressing its boundaries. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG3 or permission of instructor.

Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-A-II

Instructors: Starkey, K. (PI)

GERMAN 120C: German in Public: 99 German Songs

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.

Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

Instructors: Deniz, M. (PI)

GERMAN 120D: The German Graphic Novel

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, and social life of German graphic novels. We will look at early examples of text-and-image (Sebastian Brant¿s "Ship of Fools," a satire published in 1497, Heinrich Hoffmann¿s "Der Struwwelpeter," an 1845 children¿s book detailing various forms of misbehavior in spine-chilling visual detail, or Wilhelm Busch¿s 1895 tale of the mischievous brothers "Max und Moritz") and modern and contemporary comics, political caricatures, and graphic novels from Swiss, German, and Austrian artists (Nicolas Mahler, Gerhard Haderer, Manfred Deix, Ulli Lust, Max Goldt, or Anke Feuchtenberger). This course is in German; no prior knowledge of the topic is required. You will develop your German reading, speaking, and writing skills through a variety of short creative assignments and in-class discussions, develop critical reading skills as they attend to specific formal features, and improve your abilities to think historically about the emergence and development of aesthetic forms.

Terms: Aut | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

Instructors: Pao, L. (PI)

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