printer friendly pageGERMAN 221: From Enlightenment to Realism: German Literature 1750-1900 (COMPLIT 321A, GERMAN 321)
How German writers respond to the rise of historical awareness in the long nineteenth century. The role of historical precedents and models, especially Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman legacies, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the French Revolution and its aftermath. The vexed relation between cultural production, material circumstances and political agency. The belatedness of German modernity and the anomalous character of Germany's development. France as a screen for the projection of nationalist and utopian fantasies. Authors include Herder, Goethe, Fichte, Heine, Büchner, Marx, Nietzsche, Fontane. Taught in German. Undergraduates enroll in 220 for 5 units, German graduate students enroll in 320 for 8 units.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5-8
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Dornbach, M. (PI)
GERMAN 222: Wrestling with Modernity: German Literature and Thought from 1900 to the Present (COMPLIT 222A, GERMAN 322)
Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Undergraduates enroll in 222 for 5 units, graduate students enroll in 322 for 8 units.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5-8
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Eshel, A. (PI)
GERMAN 246: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Written in the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Hegel's masterpiece is a freewheeling philosophical story about what Hegel takes to be the experiential path that consciousness must traverse from rudimentary awareness to insight into the absolute truth. Experience, as Hegel understands it, is a necessary process in the course of which consciousness becomes estranged from itself in order finally to recognize itself in its object. This recognition seals the knowledge that thought is not finite and constrained by an inert reality but absolutely free, the only source of authority for modern subjects. We will ask whether Hegel's thesis about the supremacy of conceptual thought is compatible with his reliance on narrative form and dramatic impersonation. How does Hegel's survey of rival models of consciousness and forms of life relate to historical reality? Is the ideal of modernity upheld by Hegel still relevant in the light of recent developments? Discussion and readings in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Dornbach, M. (PI)
GERMAN 262: The Total Work of Art (TAPS 262S)
Frequently associated with the work of Richard Wagner, The Total Work of Art (or Gesamtkunstwerk) is a genre that aims to synthesize a range of artistic forms into an organic unity, a unity that both models and helps to forge an ideal state. This seminar will examine the history of the Gesamtkunstwerk from its roots in German Romanticism to the present day, focusing on the genre's relations with technology and mass culture across a wide range of media. Creations we will consider include Wagner's Festival Theatre at Bayreuth, Walter Gropius' plans for a Totaltheater, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's radio-oratorio The Lindbergh Flight, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, Walt Disney's theme parks, Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and Bill Gates' "home of the future." Taught in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Smith, M. (PI)
GERMAN 271: Futurity: Why the Past Matters (COMPLIT 271A)
Drawing on literature, the arts, political discourse, museums, and new media, this course asks why and how we take interest in the watershed events of the modern era; how does contemporary culture engages with modern, made-made disasters such as the World Wars or 9/11? Readings and viewings include the literature of G. Grass, W. G. Sebald, Ian McEwan, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy; the cinema of Kathryn Bigelow and Steven Spielberg; speeches by Barak Obama; and the theoretical writing of Walter Benjamin, Hayden White, Fredric Jameson, among others. Taught in English.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Eshel, A. (PI)
;
Johnsrud, B. (PI)
HISTORY 30Q: English Society Through Fiction
Preference to sophomores. England from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century through the reading of seven novels ranging from Henry Fielding's
Joseph Andrews, to Evelyn Waugh's
A Handful of Dust. Focus is on the novels themselves and the historical context of the novels to acquire a knowledge of British history over two hundred years.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
HISTORY 48N: African History through Literature and Film
Literary and cinematic works as a window into the history of sub-Saharan Africa.; and the difficulty of using artistic works as historical sources, the value of art as representation and artifact of the past. Premodern traditions of political narrative; art in the era of the slave trade; the impact of colonialism on African intellectuals; the political uses of art by nationalists; and the struggle to represent rapidly changing social and culture norms.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Hanretta, S. (PI)
HISTORY 50A: Colonial and Revolutionary America
(Same as
HISTORY 150A. History majors and others taking 5 units, register for 150A.) Survey of the origins of American society and polity in the 17th and 18th centuries. Topics: the migration of Europeans and Africans and the impact on native populations; the emergence of racial slavery and of regional, provincial, Protestant cultures; and the political origins and constitutional consequences of the American Revolution.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 78N: Latin American Movies of Revolution
In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Mexican, Cuban, Chilean and Nicaraguan revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Wolfe, M. (PI)
HISTORY 114: Origins of History in Greece and Rome (CLASSHIS 117)
The beginnings and development of historical writing in the ancient world. Emphasis on major classical historians and various models of history they invented, from local to imperial, military, cultural, biographical, world history and church history. Focus on themes of power, war, loss, growth and decline, as put by the ancients into historical narrative forms and probed by way of historical questioning and explanation. Attention to how these models resonate still today. Readings in translation: Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Livy and others.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Ceserani, G. (PI)
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