German (GERM)

For Graduate Language Auditors only.

Part I of Level I. The two-course sequence of Level I introduces students to various aspects of the German-speaking world as a way of enabling them to begin building communicative abilities in German in all four language modalities: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Instruction proceeds from guided to more creative and independent work. The courses incorporate a variety of activities that are based on a range of topics, text types, and different socio-cultural situations. Through diverse collaborative and individual tasks, students begin to find personal forms of expression that are based on these materials. Students learn basic strategies for reading, listening, and writing, and for participating in every-day conversations. In the process they become familiar with and learn to use with some confidence the major sentence patterns and grammatical features of German as well as high-frequency vocabulary of everyday life. Integration of current technology (e.g., the Internet, e-mail, video) familiarizes students with the German-speaking world while at the same time enhancing language learning.

Part 2 of Level I. The two-course sequence of Level I introduces students to various aspects of the German-speaking world as a way of enabling them to begin building communicative abilities in German in all four language modalities: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Instruction proceeds from guided to more creative and independent work. The courses incorporate a variety of activities that are based on a range of topics, text types, and different socio-cultural situations. Through diverse collaborative and individual tasks, students begin to find personal forms of expression that are based on these materials. Students learn basic strategies for reading, listening, and writing, and for participating in every-day conversations. In the process they become familiar with and learn to use with some confidence the major sentence patterns and grammatical features of German as well as high-frequency vocabulary of everyday life. Integration of current technology (e.g., the Internet, e-mail, video) familiarizes students with the German-speaking world while at the same time enhancing language learning.

In the intensive track, the two-course sequence of Level I is taught in one semester. The course introduces students to various aspects of the German-speaking world as a way of enabling them to begin building communicative abilities in German in all four language modalities: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Instruction proceeds from guided to more creative and independent work. The course incorporate a variety of activities that are based on a range of topics, text types, and different socio-cultural situations. Through diverse collaborative and individual tasks, students begin to find personal forms of expression that are based on these materials. Students learn basic strategies for reading, listening, and writing, and for participating in every-day conversations. In the process they become familiar with and learn to use with some confidence the major sentence patterns and grammatical features of German as well as high-frequency vocabulary of everyday life. Integration of current technology (e.g., the Internet, e-mail, video) familiarizes students with the German-speaking world while at the same time enhancing language learning.

This course is the first half of the two-part course sequence at Level II. The course is organized topically to familiarize students with contemporary life in the German-speaking world. In Intermediate I, students explore the following themes: • Where home is: What does “Heimat” mean? • National pride – a German debate • From art to kitsch: the cultural city of Vienna The primary text type that is used at this level to explore each theme is the story, — personal, public and literary stories. Students typically encounter each text first in class and then engage it further out of class in preparation for subsequent in-depth thematic discussions in class. Class discussions often involve role play and/or group work as a way to enhance conversational and negotiating abilities. The course’s emphasis on improving students ability to narrate, compare and contrast, express opinions, and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing lays the groundwork for the historical treatment of stories and histories in Level III. By the end of the level II students • will have a good understanding of contemporary life in the German-speaking world with some in-depth knowledge of major social, political and cultural issues; • will be able to comprehend authentic materials ( video, native speaker conversation) with global comprehension and some fine point knowledge analysis; • will be able to produce spoken and written discourse from description to narration, to formulation of argument and/or hypothesis, incorporating an increasing variety of style and complexity.

This course is the second half of the two-part course sequence at Level II. The course is organized topically to familiarize students with contemporary life in the German-speaking world. In Intensive Intermediate, students explore the following themes: • Nature, people, environment • Fairy tales • The German-speaking world from a view of a foreigner The primary text type that is used at this level to explore each theme is the story, — personal, public and literary stories. Students typically encounter each text first in class and then engage it further out of class in preparation for subsequent in-depth thematic discussions in class. Class discussions often involve role play and/or group work as a way to enhance conversational and negotiating abilities. The course’s emphasis on improving students ability to narrate, compare and contrast, express opinions, and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing lays the groundwork for the historical treatment of stories and histories in Level III. By the end of the level II students • will have a good understanding of contemporary life in the German-speaking world with some in-depth knowledge of major social, political and cultural issues; • will be able to comprehend authentic materials (video, native speaker conversation) with global comprehension and some fine point knowledge analysis; • will be able to produce spoken and written discourse from description to narration, to formulation of argument and/or hypothesis, incorporating an increasing variety of style and complexity.

In the intensive track, the two-course sequence of Level II is taught in one semester. The course is organized topically to familiarize students with contemporary life in the German-speaking world. In Intensive Intermediate, students explore the following themes: • Theme 1: Where home is: What does “Heimat” mean? • Theme 2: National pride – a German debate • Theme 3: From art to kitsch: the cultural city of Vienna • Theme 4: Nature, people, environment • Theme 5: Fairy tales • Theme 6: The German-speaking world from a view of a foreigner The primary text type that is used at this level to explore each theme is the story, — personal, public and literary stories. Students typically encounter each text first in class and then engage it further out of class in preparation for subsequent in-depth thematic discussions in class. Class discussions often involve role play and/or group work as a way to enhance conversational and negotiating abilities. The course’s emphasis on improving students ability to narrate, compare and contrast, express opinions, and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing lays the groundwork for the historical treatment of stories and histories in Level III. By the end of the level II students • will have a good understanding of contemporary life in the German-speaking world with some in-depth knowledge of major social, political and cultural issues; • will be able to comprehend authentic materials ( video, native speaker conversation) with global comprehension and some fine point knowledge analysis; • will be able to produce spoken and written discourse from description to narration, to formulation of argument and/or hypothesis, incorporating an increasing variety of style and complexity.

This course is the first half of the two-part course sequence at Level III. The course is designed to provide students thorough exposure to contemporary historical and social issues in Germany from 1945 to the present. In Advanced I, the students explore the following two themes: • Germany after 1945: end of war, division of Germany, rebuilding the country • Two German states (1949-1989) Drawing on the dual meaning of the German word Geschichte (i.e., history and story), the theme-oriented instructional units in Level III emphasize personal and public stories in German history, while connecting oral narratives with written narratives. Students improve their ability to narrate, compare and contrast and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing. Through the integration of all modalities, this course promotes accuracy, fluency and complexity in language use. The development of advanced reading and writing is considered the primary means for expanding students' language abilities at this level of language instruction. By the end of Level III, students will • have an understanding of post-war historical events and of contemporary life in Germany; • know how to approach authentic materials (television, news programs; videos) and use acquired knowledge to discuss and understand related issues; • produce paragraph-length dialogue, moving from the personal to the public narrative and to the formulation of argument and critical analysis in a formal setting; • possess knowledge of phrases necessary to engage in meaningful interactive discussion; • read non-fiction and literary texts independently; • improve their writing abilities through regular composition assignments • possess strategies for vocabulary building and reading.

This course is the second half of the two-part course sequence at Level III. The course is designed to provide students thorough exposure to contemporary historical and social issues in Germany from 1945 to the present. In Advanced II, the students explore the following two themes: • Fall of the wall and its consequences • Germany: en route to a multi-cultural society Drawing on the dual meaning of the German word Geschichte (i.e., history and story), the theme-oriented instructional units in Level III emphasize personal and public stories in German history, while connecting oral narratives with written narratives. Students improve their ability to narrate, compare and contrast and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing. Through the integration of all modalities, this course promotes accuracy, fluency and complexity in language use. The development of advanced reading and writing is considered the primary means for expanding students' language abilities at this level of language instruction. By the end of Level III, students will • have an understanding of post-war historical events and of contemporary life in Germany; • know how to approach authentic materials (television, news programs; videos) and use acquired knowledge to discuss and understand related issues; • produce paragraph-length dialogue, moving from the personal to the public narrative and to the formulation of argument and critical analysis in a formal setting; • possess knowledge of phrases necessary to engage in meaningful interactive discussion; • read non-fiction and literary texts independently; • improve their writing abilities through regular composition assignments • possess strategies for vocabulary building and reading.

In the intensive track, the two-course sequence of Level III is taught in one semester. The course is designed to provide students thorough exposure to contemporary historical and social issues in Germany from 1945 to the present. In Intensive Advanced, the students explore the following four themes: • Germany after 1945: end of war, division of Germany, rebuilding the country • Two German states (1949-1989) • Fall of the wall and its consequences • Germany: en route to a multi-cultural society Drawing on the dual meaning of the German word Geschichte (i.e., history and story), the theme-oriented instructional units in Level III emphasize personal and public stories in German history, while connecting oral narratives with written narratives. Students improve their ability to narrate, compare and contrast and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing. Through the integration of all modalities, this course promotes accuracy, fluency and complexity in language use. The development of advanced reading and writing is considered the primary means for expanding students' language abilities at this level of language instruction. By the end of Level III, students will • have an understanding of post-war historical events and of contemporary life in Germany; • know how to approach authentic materials (television, news programs; videos) and use acquired knowledge to discuss and understand related issues; • produce paragraph-length dialogue, moving from the personal to the public narrative and to the formulation of argument and critical analysis in a formal setting; • possess knowledge of phrases necessary to engage in meaningful interactive discussion; • read non-fiction and literary texts independently; • improve their writing abilities through regular composition assignments • possess strategies for vocabulary building and reading.

Witches in History, Literature, and Film This course is an entry point to the Cultural Humanities and Arts at Georgetown University. It examines the construction and representation of the witch in the context of history, literature, and film, with an emphasis on historical and cultural products from German-speaking areas and Europe more broadly. The course investigates what is clearly one of the most disturbing and inexplicable occurrences in human history. Unlike the Holocaust, to which the witch hunts are frequently compared, the persecution of witches cannot be viewed as a relatively brief and unusually violent historical anomaly, since it continued over several hundred years; the witch hunts cannot be explained in the context of national specificity since they spanned almost the entire European continent and migrated to early America; nor can these events be blamed on any single “madman.” As a historical phenomenon, the witch persecution defies simplistic explanations and thus lends itself particularly well to the kinds of investigation this course intends. In order to examine the construction and representation of the witch in the context of history, literature, and film, the course explores three specific textual areas: - Historical and trial records on the “Burning Times” in early modern Europe, with an emphasis on the German lands. - Literary works and films with a focus on cultural products from German-speaking areas and Europe such as • fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney • contemporary filmic depictions of the witch theme - Scholarship interpreting and analyzing historical, literary, and other artistic sources COURSE GOALS The complexity of the course topic lends itself well to critically engage, in discussions and in writing, three issues that can be seen as central to a course in the Cultural Humanities and Arts, namely (1) interdisciplinarity, (2) contextualization in history, and (3) the “human experience.” By the conclusion of the course, students will be able to • understand how the Cultural Humanities and Arts have historically shaped our “humanity,” both as a set of common practices that unite us and as a set of distinct traditions that underscore and celebrate our differences. • Exercise critical thinking skills through engagement a variety of historically situated cultural products • Collaborate with peers. • Engage with difference and diversity by thinking across cultures. • Articulate ethical points of view in relation to arts, culture, and interpretation. COURSE MATERIALS • Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, Edward Peters and Charles Kors, eds. (2nd edition, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) • Caryl Churchill, Vinegar Tom. Play. • Other readings as well as films will be made available electronically on Canvas

This seminar-style course will focus on three themes. First, we will explore classics of early German cinema from the 1920s and 30s and contextualize them with some of the less famous – but equally good – films of the time by directors like Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, Robert Wiene, and others. Secondly, we will look at typical examples of directors of the New German Film from the 60s and 70s and how they tried to reshape viewing practices and filmic aesthetics. The third theme will be to discuss contemporary films that explore changes in post-1989 Germany and in Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Weekly viewings of films; some reading of film history and criticism; six short writing assignments (two per theme); final paper.

Women on Screen – A Century of Women in German Cinema This course offers an overview of German cinema by examining the portrayals of women in films from the past 100 years. We will move from looking at films of Weimar Germany (1919-1933) that created an image of women as dangerous seductresses, so-called femmes fatales, to the representation of women during the Nazi-era that aimed to replace this image often with the idea of the morally good and pure woman. It would take a few decades after WWII for new female images to appear on screen. We will look at the representation of women in the 1970s and 80s by renowned directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff, and also consider the view of women in films produced in the former GDR. Due to the impact of the women’s movement in the 1970s, women finally also moved behind the camera. Female directors, such as Margarethe von Trotta, Doris Dörrie, and Maren Ade, continue to shape and expand the representations of female characters. In addition to watching and examining films, we will also read texts on film theory and draw on readings from gender and sexuality studies for analyzing the films. This course will be taught in English.

A House Divided: Catholic-Protestant Conflict in Literature and Media Four centuries after Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, literary and artistic representations of the Catholic-Protestant conflicts that shook Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are more popular than ever. From Hilary Mantel’s bestseller Wolf Hall to popular TV series such as Reign and The Tudors, dramas that chronicle the confessional conflicts of early modern Europe continue to fascinate audiences all over the world. This course will explore and compare representations of confessional and sectarian conflict in works of literature, films, and other media from the seventeenth century to the present day, focusing in particular on Germany and Central Europe, Ireland and Great Britain, and North America. Class discussions will emphasize the following themes and questions: • Religion: How are religious differences between Catholicism, Protestantism, and other faiths defined in these texts? What theological issues do they address, and what are the real-life consequences of those issues? How are they connected with other aspects of identity such as gender, race, and class? What possibilities for reconciliation or coexistence are depicted? • Mythmaking: How do these texts contribute to the process of mythmaking (e.g., through depictions of martyrs and military heroes)? What myths are undermined or debunked? • Politics: In what ways are representations of confessional conflict used to work through questions about legitimation, rule of law, democracy, and the modern state? • Aesthetics: How do these texts link Catholicism and Protestantism with specific aesthetic regimes, visual and auditory cultures, and art forms? Do these associations reflect actual historical and theological practices or simply the biases of the authors? • Genre: How do these texts exploit, expand, or subvert literary and cinematic genres (e.g., historical fiction, the costume drama)? Taught in English

This course aims to familiarize students with academic forms of discourse in all modalities, particularly reading, writing, and speaking. It is a required course for German majors and strongly recommended for students who are planning to study abroad or are otherwise interested in using German in a professional environment (e.g., the business world, banking, non-governmental agencies, think tanks). Themes addressed in the course include some of the following topics: the role of German past in the German society today, the higher education scene in the German-speaking countries, the role of Germany in the European Union, environmental protection, issues of migration and identity, political movements, etc. Students will be guided to attain a level of accuracy, fluency, and complexity in German that should enable them to interact competently and comfortably in private as well as some public settings where they begin to address a range of issues in contemporary German public life. Accordingly, the course places particular emphasis on language use in public settings, referring to various socio-cultural and political issues or addressing how historical events and interpretations shape contemporary sensibilities and policies. Its particular focus is on language use in academic settings, so that students can perform the kinds of tasks that define academic work, in listening, reading, writing, and speaking. It emphasizes individual progress since students are likely to have different language and learner profiles and therefore different needs. Advanced levels of ability in German mean that a non-native user is able to use different discourse styles with their respective register requirements and ways of structuring texts. The course facilitates acquiring that ability level by a focus on public genres, in spoken and in written language (e.g., narratives, reports, journalistic treatments of issues, political speeches, institutional self-representation in catalogs). In each case we will examine the relationship between meaning/content and linguistic forms, from the organization of whole texts all the way down to specific choices in vocabulary and grammar. A variety of individual and group/ partner tasks should enable learners to become aware of the necessary genre conventions and to make the kind of choices that will enable them to present themselves as competent and credible non-native users of German in public settings. Increasing accuracy, fluency, and complexity of language use, along with an expanded vocabulary range, are part of that desired level of ability.

This three-credit Level IV course aims to develop the advanced literacy abilities of summarizing, interpreting and questioning, and presenting and substantiating arguments in professional and academic settings, primarily in speaking but also in writing, through the in-depth exploration of current political, social, and cultural issues in Germany as they are portrayed and discussed in major media outlets. This semester the course will focus on the following three contemporary issues (with possible adjustments): - Nationale Identität und Fußballpatriotismus: Redefinition of national identity in the post-war period and its expression in the context of soccer. - Demographischer Wandel: The changing demographics in Germany, particularly the ongoing debate regarding the declining birth rate; - Die Stationierung deutscher Streitkräfte im Ausland: Controversy concerning the role of German armed forces abroad, with particular focus on Afghanistan. In order to develop students’ ability to discuss these issues at an advanced level, the language used in public to debate the issues will be examined and will serve as a model for student appropriation and eventual production. As with all Level IV courses in the Georgetown German Department, students’ language production moves from a primarily narrative focus to a more analytical and interpretive focus. Because of this framework and its emphases, this course in particular is seen as helpful preparation for the SFS oral proficiency exam.

This course examines stories of crime, murder, and madness in 18th to 20th-century German literature, in drama, novella, poetry, novel, and film as expressions of the search for understanding what might be called the “darker” side of human existence, in the individual and in society. Seen more broadly, literary treatments of the topic are a search for a more expansive, multi-dimensional ‘truth’, often linked to issues of culpability and justice that frequently pertain to the treatment of non-mainstream, less privileged members of society. We will explore how German literature has used various genres to highlight, expose, assert or question accepted moral values by showing that which is deemed to be evil, mad, or criminal – and, upon closer inspection, might not be! In addition, we will work with secondary literature that introduces you to various issues pertaining to the theater, the novella, poetry, the novel, and film in relation to literary periods and styles. We will relate this literature to the persistent moral and ethical questions associated with the topics of murder, mysteries, and madness. As a level-IV course, “Mysteries, Madness, Murder” seeks to • refine students’ perception of literary style • enable students to discuss, orally and in writing, ethical and social issues on a stylistically sophisticated level • present principal analytical approaches and forms of expression for literary analysis, in preparation for more research-oriented courses on Level V

“Love” in all of its manifestations might well be the most popular topic of literature throughout all cultures and historical periods. Yet despite this universal appeal, notions and representations of love have changed (and continue to change) quite dramatically over time and across various cultures and subcultures. This course explores the literary and visual discourses on love and its manifestations in romantic relationships by looking at selected texts and films from 18th century Germany to the present. Based on these texts, we will discuss the class and gender-specific implications of the changing notions of “love” both for the individual and for society. Students will encounter multiple genres and perspectives on the topic of “love” in different historical periods. By reading independently and working collaboratively with texts and films, students will increase their understanding of textual organization and of academic language use in German.

This course is a Level IV undergraduate course with a content focus on economic and business issues as related to today’s Germany. With all topics, emphasis is placed on cross-cultural comparisons between the U.S. and Germany. The content foci are explored through exposure to a variety of genres and close analysis of discursive practices prevalent in formal, business-oriented German. Students are guided towards acquisition of advanced language abilities as they examine textual organization features and expand their repertoire of specific technical vocabulary and grammatical structures necessary for making meaning in a business domain.

Germany has been seen as a country famous for its strong commitment to mastering environmental challenges, promoting initiatives to fight global warning, and developing groundbreaking environmental technologies. - What are the major literary texts that help us understand how Germany became a forerunner in environmental thinking and policy construction? - How is climate change discussed in the German scientific and popular media discourse? What metaphors are used? - How are national and international political mechanisms for fighting against climate change represented in the German press? - What is the discourse of the local measures taken to foster environment protection and reduction of green gas emissions? - What are the typical ways of representing individual voices of the German citizens involved in nature protection and sustainable use of energy? This course explores the topic of environmentalism, climate change, and environment protection initiatives in Germany after 1945 to the present by focusing on a variety of written texts and media (2 feature films and a cartoon) that address the questions raised above. The course is structured into 3 thematic units: - Major milestones in the history of German environmentalism (1950s to 1980s) - Climate change in German scientific and media discourse - Environment protection initiatives: global and local measures

Ghosts, dwarves, mermaids, and souls sold to the devil – these are only a few of the creatures found in Romantic tales. This course explores the most fascinating and multi-faceted period in German literary and cultural history – Romanticism. Students will become familiar with the biographies, works, and aesthetic ideas of some of the major as well as some of the lesser-known authors of the period. The inclusion of music and the visual arts aims to offer a well-rounded picture of this important period. The three content areas will be closely coupled with fostering academic-level language abilities, stressing close reading and interpretation. An emphasis on genre will enable a focused and productive approach to the texts in the course. Course themes include: - Theme I: Uncanny tales - Theme II: Music and the visual arts - Theme III: The Romantic theorist, writer, and critic The course aims to foster students’ academic-level writing and speaking abilities. All assignments will be carefully modeled by the instructor. Students will collect all work done for the course in an electronic course portfolio.

Theater – as institution and aesthetic experience - has been a dominant force in German culture and has greatly influenced the concept of Germany as a Kulturnation. This course aims to provide a socio-historical and literary perspective on German theater from the late 18th to the end of the 20th century. We will explore the following topics through a variety of texts and genres: plays (tragedy and comedy), (auto)biographies, aesthetic/programmatic statements, socio-historical overviews, playbills, reviews of performances, and secondary literature. I. Theater and Nation: Kulturnation Deutschland II. Theater and Class: nobility, bourgeoisie, proletariat III. Theater and Women: as playwrights and actresses We will read, analyze, and interpret dramas from both male and female as well as canonical and non-canonical authors, for instance, Friedrich Schiller, Georg Büchner, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Elsa Bernstein , Berthold Brecht and Elfriede Jelinek. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on acquiring content knowledge in combination with refining and improving students’ advanced language abilities. Learners will become more sophisticated users of German through genre-specific written and oral tasks such as plot summaries, Diskussionsprotokolle, oral presentations, leading of class discussions, creative rewrites of scenes, etc. Students should be willing to perform dramatic readings and excerpts from plays. Depending on student interest, a final performance could be included in course. Assessment: Preparation and class participation 30% 3 major written assignments 30% Oral presentations 20% Final performance 20%

Level V course. This seminar-style course explores the incredible artistic and intellectual vitality of the Weimar Republic, the time between the end of World War I and the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Many of the works of architecture, art, literature, film, and philosophical thought that were created back then remain a standard for us today. We will read literature and essays, view films and consider artistic developments within the context of three interlocking spheres of experiences that characterize the Weimar Republic. First, we will look at the immediate post-war and revolutionary period with its often messianic understanding of future possibilities and pragmatic approaches to building a republic. Then we will look at the experience of socio-economic upheaval and instability caused by both hyper-inflation and mass unemployment. Finally, we will focus on political radicalization and increasingly violent conflicts within the political system.

Germany 1871-1990: Experiences of Modernity. The course combines selected readings of non-fiction, historical accounts, political treatise, and literary works with a generous cross-section of films to look at some major cultural developments in Germany between the founding of the second empire in 1871 and the reunification of Germany in 1990. A particular focus will be on issues of modernity (and post-modernity) such as technological advances, urbanization, mass society, democratization, totalitarianism, migration, and globalized economic development. Students will have extensive reading assignments and watch one to three movies every week. The readings will be complemented by writing assignments in three distinctive genres (narrative of a story-line; analytical interpretation of multiple non-fiction texts and films; evaluation of divergent positions) and a formal oral presentation of additional materials.

All Eyes on Berlin – The German Metropolis in Film and Text In this course we will look at Germany’s capital from two angles: as a site of filmmaking and as an inspiration for literary imagination. A modern metropolis like Berlin with its fast-paced lifestyle and its constantly developing infrastructure and architecture has always fascinated writers and filmmakers. In addition, as Germany’s capital of newspapers, publishing houses and filmmaking, Berlin also offered the necessary conditions for the production of texts and films and, even more so, was also always home to a mass audience eager to both read about their Berlin and to watch films taking place in their city. The way we see and imagine big cities today is informed by their literary and visual representations, particularly of the German capital and its turbulent history throughout the 20th century, including its current developments that still grant Berlin its status of the German metropolis. In this course, we will examine texts and films from the beginning of the 20th century up until today, including comparing visual and textual representations of Berlin. Films include Berlin, Sinfonie einer Großstadt (1927), Berlin – Alexanderplatz (1931; and excerpts from Fassbinder’s film from 1980), Der Himmel über Berlin (1987), Lola rennt (1998), Gespenster (2005), Victoria (2015) and parts of the TV series Babylon Berlin (2017). Texts include poems, novels (excerpts) and short stories by Alfred Döblin, R. M. Rilke, Erich Kästner, Irmgard Keun, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Christa Reinig, Ingeborg Bachmann and Jenny Erpenbeck, among others.

Light and Darkness: Early German Film and Modernity. This course examines how the artistic, cultural, and political state of Germany between 1910 and 1945 is addressed through and film, but also in autobiographical texts, and historical accounts. Students will examine how the wounds and memories of the “Great War” continued to fester not primarily in the form of combat movies but as a subtext in melodramas, thrillers, and vampire films of the 1920s and 1930s. Analyzing topics such as individualism, urbanization, and capitalism will provide some of the context for the class discussion and film analysis. Students will be introduced to the subjective and existential experiences of the conditions produced through modernity. They will explore techniques of expressionist filmmaking and how modernity and the Great War influenced film history. The course will introduce students to phenomena such as Schaulust (“visual pleasure”), the use of form and space in film, propaganda films, Vaterland movies, as well as reflections of suffering, violence, and death. Students will learn how German cinema from the 1920s to 1945 was affected by the political environment, the concept of nation, and the socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices of the time. Films we will discuss include The Student of Prague (1913), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night (1979), Metropolis (1927), Berlin- Symphony of a Big City (1927), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Kuhle Wampe or who owns the World (1932), Triumph of the Will (1934), Hitler Youth Quex (1933). Through readings and in-class discussions, students will be introduced to theoretical discourses, formal aspects, and historical contexts of early German cinema. In addition to shorter writing tasks, students will complete two 5-7 pp. essays and two shorter response papers (two pages each). Modelled by the instructor, students will also introduce assigned films. Scene selection to introduce form, context, and content of a given film will complement the written work and the classroom discussion of individual assignments.

Babylon, Berlin, Bauhaus – Weimar Germany in the 20th and 21st Century In 2017, the German TV series Babylon Berlin became an international hit, bringing the Weimar Republic to viewers all over the globe. As the series’ title indicates, it takes place in Germany’s fast-paced metropolis. Lavish sets recreate the streets, cafés and nightclubs of 1920s Berlin and even a steam engine is headed towards the city in the opening scenes, just like in Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 silent film Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt. With a production budget of $44 million, it should not be a problem to bring Berlin and Weimar Germany from 1929 to viewers in 2018, right? But is it the historic Berlin of 1929? Then again, is there such a thing as an authentic depiction of bygone times? Instead of examining the series for its historical authenticity, let’s ask: What does it represent of Weimar Germany and what not? (For instance, National Socialists do not appear despite the NSDAP gaining attention again in 1929.) And, more importantly, how does it represent Weimar and its culture compared to literary works and visual arts from the time period? To this end, we will explore Weimar Germany’s social, political and economic history, and its cultural innovations that would greatly influence not only the rest of the 20th century, but also the 21st century. To this day, Weimar Germany is remembered for its important contributions to Modernism in art, photography, architecture, literature, music and cinema. This includes movements such as Expressionism, Dada and New Objectivity, the German art school Bauhaus and prominent names, including Alfred Döblin, Bertolt Brecht or Fritz Lang.

This course examines the historical development of linguistic variation in the sphere of German-speaking countries and places these developments into conversation with issues of identity, equity, power, and policy in contemporary German-speaking societies. Students will complete an independent research project (e.g., interview, survey, corpus search, linguistic landscape) in order to document some aspect of linguistic diversity and explain/interpret the documented phenomena in terms of their effects on both individual speakers and societies at large.

Der Tatort, literally ‘the scene of the crime,’ is the longest running and most popular German TV police series; the 50th anniversary of Tatort was widely celebrated in November 2020. Furthermore, the Tatort has been credited with reflecting social and cultural changes in German society over the past five decades. This close tie between a fictional police series and social history is in part the result of the public broadcasting system (and its many regional stations) that produces the Tatort and that has to pay close attention to a mainstream television audience. Unlike other police series, the Tatort is shot in many locations throughout Germany and even Austria and Switzerland, each featuring a group of local detectives. The course investigates this unique lens on German society by focusing on the following aspects: ● Introduction to the history and regional concept of the Tatort, with special emphasis on the successful relaunch of the series in the early 2000s. ● Popularity of the series across generations; fan culture; synergy effect of websites and social media. ● Changing genre conventions and introduction of new types of detectives: blue collar (Schimanksi), women (Odenthal and others), ethnic minorities (Batic and others). ● Changing crime scenes, ranging from interpersonal and familial conflicts to global crime networks and terrorism. Following introductory readings on the genre of crime fiction in general and the Tatort in particular, students will view selected Tatort episodes as part of their homework assignments, starting with some of the early ones of the 1970s. (Students are encouraged to watch the Tatort in groups of 2-3 and to read plot summaries, available on Wikipedia or “das erste”, prior to viewing a new Tatort episode). In the second part of the semester, students will work in pairs and introduce a new Tatort to the class. Advanced language acquisition is fully integrated into the subject matter of the course. Supporting materials for genre-specific conventions and terminology (e.g., film analysis, film reviews, etc.) will be provided and practiced. Throughout the semester, we will pay attention to language use (e.g., by looking closely at some Tatort scripts and by identifying formal and informal responses on Tatort websites) and to visual and narrative genre conventions of police series (e.g., alternatives to the traditional “whodunit” approach). Finally, we will examine specific investigative approaches and their ethical and legal implications. For instance, in contrast to the focus on scientific investigation methods in popular US police series like CSI the Tatort series often examines the motives and social conditions of the perpetrator. Overall, students will acquire the visual, linguistic, and cultural vocabulary to critically discuss the Tatort series and its role in German society. Course structure Teil I: Einführung zum Tatort: die Anfänge in den 70er Jahren [Taxi nach Leipzig, 1970] – Reifeprüfung, 1977 Teil II: Neue Ermittlertypen & soziale/gesellschaftspolitische Themen: 1980er-1990er Jahre [Die Neue, 1989] – Engelchen flieg, 1998 – [Duisburg/Ruhrpott, 1991] Teil III: „Neue“ Verbrechen -- Tatorte im Zeitalter der Globalisierung, 2000 bis heute Blutdiamanten, 2006 – Sonnenseite, 2006 – Willkommen in Hamburg, 2013 Teil IV: Psychologie der Täter – Psychologie der Ermittler Vom Himmel hoch, 2018 – Herz aus Eis, 2009 – Sturm, 2017 Please note: only a few of the episodes are available with German subtitles; for a couple of other episodes I have access to the script and we will spend some time reading and analyzing sections thereof. For episodes with neither subtitles nor script, reading the plot summaries ahead of time is especially important. I also urge you to watch those episodes more than once. Our discussion will often focus on visual and other (non-verbal) aspects of these episodes. Complete comprehension of the dialogue is not expected but please alert me if you have trouble understanding important scenes. Assessment Attendance: in case you cannot attend please let me know before class! Unexcused absences will affect your final course grade; also, please come to class even if occasionally you did not complete all of the assignments (you will fall further behind if you miss class). In most cases, assignments will be heavier from Thur.-Tue. than from Tue.-Thur. Class preparation (incl. blog responses to the assigned Tatort), Brief presentations, and class participation 30% Formal presentation in pairs on one Tatort episode 15% Two short papers (film review; scene analysis) w. rewrite 30% Final creative project in groups 25%

Protest in Poetry, Prose and Performance (A Level V course) This upper level undergraduate course (taught in German) explores how writers and artists have voiced protest and critique over the course of the last century in response to major social problems and political crises with special focus on fascism, war, racism and xenophobia, and environmental destruction. We will start out by exploring what “protest” in the context of artistic expression can mean, and how this relationship has been defined by writers, artists and critics over the past century (Brecht, Adorno, Breger, Obexer, among others). At a more general level, we will discuss how protest is linked to the power of the arts to imagine alternative worlds. The course is organized thematically; throughout a range of literary and artistic genres - and genre-specific approaches to voicing or staging protest - will be explored. These genres include poetry, prose, and drama, but also activist performances and manifestos. Twice during the semester, students will have the opportunity to meet and engage with artists via Zoom: multi-media poet and performer Nika Pfeifer (Vienna, Austria) and author and activist Maxi Obexer (Berlin, Germany). (Both previously taught at Georgetown as Kade writers-in-residence.) While Pfeifer has focused some of her multi-media work on environmental crises, Obexer has employed a range of genres to protest the treatment of refugees in contemporary Europe. In the last part of the course, students will work on their own creative projects that give voice to protest regarding a pressing current issue or concern.

Turkish-Germans and Turks living in Germany together comprise Germany’s largest ethnic minority group. Beginning in the 1960s, so-called Gastarbeiter were recruited from Turkey to provide labor needed to fuel Germany’s postwar economic miracle. Turkish immigrants introduced ethnic, religious, and economic difference into a German society that had been radically homogenized as a result of Nazi genocide. Although it was originally assumed that the residence of Turkish migrants would only be temporary, many chose instead to bring their families to join them, and to relocate permanently to Germany. As this new group struggled to define its place in German society, competing models have been submitted for how this might best be accomplished. German reactions, meanwhile, have ranged from the exclusionary practices of reactionary xenophobia to progressive struggles in support of an integrated society welcoming of diversity. Using literature, film, and the press, we will examine important moments and key social debates in the history of this struggle. Primary course readings will be predominantly in German (approximately 70 pages per week). Class discussion will be conducted in German, and all written work will be submitted in German. Course Goals: • To learn the socio-economic history of the Turkish ethnic group in Germany, from the arrival of “guest workers” in the 1960s to the politically and culturally engaged (integrated?) Turkish-Germans of today, and to become acquainted with the public debates surrounding the terms of German—Turkish coexistence, especially in the past decade • To gain an understanding of the ways in which contrasting notions of cultural identity and relations shape historical narratives of migration, as well as literary histories • To analyze and interpret the self-representations and interventions by cultural Turkish German authors in a variety of genres and media (primarily literature, but also film, feuilleton articles) As a level V course, the course seeks to enhance students’ abilities in terms of Reading: class discussions will incorporate the close readings of the texts written in German, in order to develop a more fluent and nuanced reading knowledge. Writing: the course will refine your academic German, and practice academic writing in three shorter papers. They range from a paper about migration history, a précis of critical positions, to textual analysis/interpretation (literature or film). Graduate students may arrange for a paper format tailored to their individual interests/need. Speaking: The course will enhance your ability to use rhetorical tropes of argumentation and to participate in intellectual discussion.

In this course, we will engage with texts and films that focus on Black German experiences in Germany in the 20th and 21st century. Germany still often considers itself as a homogenous and predominantly white country, even though diverse cultures have always been part of the German nation as well – and not only since the first migrant workers moved to former West Germany in the decades after WWII. Black people, for instance, have been part of the German population long before Germany acquired colonies in Africa and in the Pacific in the late 19th century. For instance, in the first half of the 18th century, Anton Wilhelm Amo was an African philosopher who completed dissertations at the Universities of Halle and Wittenberg where he eventually also became an instructor. While German colonial practices shaped the encounters with Black people in the latter half of the 19th century, in first half of the 20th century, it would be the major historical and political shifts in Germany that would impact Black lives in multiple ways: While Black people, such as Josephine Baker, would come to work and live in Germany after WWI, the rise of right-wing nationalism and racism also wanted to remove these Black lives. This double movement of embracing and rejecting Black people would continue also after WWII, when African American GIs were seen as heroes, liberating concentration camps and helping to rebuild German towns, while their partners and children experienced social shaming. In the former GDR, the situation was not that different: Sharing communist ideals, East Germany pursued connections with African states, including Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Yet, racial equality within the borders of the GDR was not a given. Only in the 1980s, the descendants of the generation of “occupation babies” founded an Afro-German movement that still exists today. After looking more in-depth into the history of Black Germans, we will primarily focus on the representation of Black German experiences in various textual and visual media in the 20th and 21st century. We will read and watch works by Black German, white German, and African American authors, including poems, short stories, autobiographies, and a graphic novel. In engaging with these works, the goal of this course is not just to simply acknowledge the presence of Black Germans, but to question the construction of race, its intersections with gender and class, and how the idea of Blackness in Germany shifted during the past 150 years due to social, historical and political changes. Through close readings of different literary genres and films, students will be able to hone their interpretative skills. Via structured classroom discussions and oral presentations students will have the opportunity to further advance their spoken German. Three short papers and a final paper will help students to develop their writing skills, using an advanced academic-level style.

German-speaking Europe continues to exhibit a fascinating array of diverse national and regional cultures with distinct historical and literary traditions, language variations, religious customs, music, and food. This Level V course explores select aspects of these traditions with an emphasis on tracing the origins and observing their changes in practice, meaning, and reception into the 21st century. Course materials include films, literary texts, historical texts, biographies, visual materials, and journalistic articles, and secondary literature. The course content is closely linked with the acquisition and refinement of genres and language features prevalent in academic settings. The course explores “Tradition und Moderne” along two main axes: HISTORICAL/MYTHICAL/LITERARY FIGURES: Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) of Austria-Hungary Photographs, paintings, monuments, biographies “Sissi”, feature film (1955 – Part I of Trilogy) “Sissi – The Musical” Wilhelm Tell - Swiss national hero F. Schiller, drama, Wilhelm Tell (1804); comic book version Paintings, monuments Heidi – Girl of the Alps Johanna Spyri, novel “Heidi. Lehr- und Wanderjahre” (1880) „Heidi“, feature film (2015) NATURE AND SOCIETY The Vienna Forest (Wiener Wald) and the Prater amusement park v. Horvath, „Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald“ (1931) Ulrike Ottinger, “Prater”, film (2008) The Swiss Alps - legends, myths, and superstitions Tim Krohn, „Der Geist am Berg“ (2011), novella Jonathan Huston, sagas from the principality of Liechtenstein Assessment: Participation/homework 25% Essays 30% Presentation (group and/or individual) 15% Final paper with research component 30%

Since the founding of the modern German state, theater and theater artists were at the forefront of raising issues of public concern, challenging state authorities, and rehearsing solutions to social and political conflicts. The problems playwrights dramatized provide us with a compact history of Germany on stage. How did they represent the drastic political changes, rifts, and turns, from the German Empire during the Industrial Revolution, the economic upheavals and political experimentations of the Weimar Republic, the menacing rise of Nazism, and the German division during the Cold War, to the current period of Europeanization? In many instances we will regard the theatrical ensemble as representative of the nation, but we will also pay attention to the evolving theatrical techniques that roused and empowered the audience as democratic, self-determined citizens. Readings, class discussion, and written assignments will be in German. There will be three papers of about 3-5 pages each (on plot summary, character analysis, performance analysis). In addition, there will be a collaborative creative assignment culminating in a performance at the end.

Linguists, language educators and researchers of literature and culture conduct discourse analysis for a variety of purposes: to capture writing and literacy development, to characterize teacher-student classroom interaction, to describe social practices at various institutions, or to reveal aspects of an author’s style.

This course introduces students to the socioculturally-oriented analysis of language using Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as an approach that enables discourse analysts to systematically account for the connections between grammar, discourse, and social activity no matter what their research data are: learner written texts, spoken conversations, institutional documents, or literary discourse. The course will cover the fundamental conceptual and methodological tools the SFL approach makes available for such an analysis.

The course will start with the overarching assumptions about the SFL model of language as social semiotic and then explore its specific theoretical constructs, such as genre, register, metafunctions, and the grammatical systems that are used to encode them. Three fundamental questions will underlie our exploration: How is language structured for use? What choices do language users make? How do these choices function in various contexts of use?

Throughout the course, participants will be discussing studies that demonstrate how the analytical constructs and tools can be applied to the analysis of language data in various contexts. We will examine studies of oral and written texts in diverse registers and genres, aspects of second language acquisition at various educational and performance levels, second/foreign language pedagogy, curriculum development, teacher education, and assessment. Those interested in literary texts will discover how the approach can shed new light on the study of literature as a phenomenon of languaging in a particular way.

In the course, participants will: • use a textbook to learn about the major tenets and analytical categories of the SFL model • complete workbook exercises to identify and label text structures • engage in the analysis of texts (in English, German or other languages of interest) to reveal patterns of language use • discuss additional readings and applications of the theory to expand their understanding of how the model contributes to discourse description and interpretation in various contexts or languages (particularly those of interest to the course participants) • develop a project (a final paper) where they apply the framework to an area of research interest

In this Level V undergraduate course students will gain insights into some of the underlying historical and cultural dimensions of the world of business in today’s Germany and simultaneously refine their language use within an academic business context. The course explicitly emphasizes cross-cultural awareness and encourages students to draw on their background knowledge in related fields. The content focus of the course is closely coupled with language acquisition at an advanced level and as such goes beyond the mere acquisition of business terminology. The course follows a theme and genre approach where each thematic unit emphasizes a particular genre. Theme 1: Wirtschaftsgeschichte: 19th Century to Today Genre Focus: Book and Film Reviews Documentary films and written texts on German industrial dynasties such as the Krupp and Oetker families provide insights into the intersections of history, economics, and politics in the 19th and 20th century. Theme 2: Labor Relations Genre Focus: Public Speech Labor relations differ greatly in the U.S. and Germany. Initially, we will compare the historical and cultural contexts for these differences. In a second step, we will turn to the current situation of labor unions in Germany and explore challenges to their relevance in an increasingly post-industrial society. Theme 3: Business Ethics Genre Focus: Interview In the last few years, large German companies such as Siemens and VW have had their share of corruption, management and accounting scandals. Based on a few case studies, we will investigate the conditions that led to these scandals and the companies’ responses.

As one of the oldest cities in Germany, Trier enjoys a special relationship to antiquity and embraces its role as a historical locality with eight UNESCO cultural heritage sites. This rich historical tradition is due in no small part to the unique geographic location of the city, which for thousands of years has afforded trade and cultural exchange with neighboring regions. Against this backdrop, the overarching goal of the course is for students to come to a deeper understanding of the history and cultural geography of Trier and the surrounding region, while also developing their language abilities in spoken, written and hybrid modalities. In addition to reading, viewing, and listening to a range of longer and shorter texts, students will visit museums (e.g., Landesmuseum, Stadtmuseum Simeonstift) and other locations of interest to enrich their understanding of the focal topics in the course.

This Level V course focuses on autobiographical writings in the three distinct genres of diaries, letters, and reflective essays, both through readings and through creative writing in these three genres. All three genres have a particularly rich tradition in German culture in the 19th and 20th century. By selecting topics representative of a particular period, by including writers who pursued diverse intellectual and professional pursuits, and by providing multiple perspectives on a range of social, ethical, and artistic issues, the course aims to provide a richly textured understanding of a person and his or her time. (Authors include the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the writer Franz Kafka, and the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among others.) At the same time, students will gain a refined awareness of the dialogic nature of autobiographical writings. The course fosters this insight through careful textual analysis and through engaging students in their own creative writing in these genres, -- with the goal of helping them to develop a voice of their own in German.

Ever since the Grimm brothers published their famous collection of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812, images of childhood have been a crucial part of the literature and culture of the German-speaking world. Drawing on this tradition, German and Austrian writers, artists, and filmmakers have used children to represent innocence and morality as well as brutality and horror. For writers such as Frank Wedekind and Walter Benjamin, childhood offers an outsider’s perspective from which to examine and critique society. Similarly, coming-of-age narratives about children and adolescents form the basis of much literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Meanwhile, youth culture, in part imported from America, has played an enormous role in shaping postwar German and Austrian culture. Objectives: In this course, we will explore images of childhood and adolescence in German and Austrian culture and literature from the eighteenth century to the present. We will look at a variety of texts and media, including children’s books, reminiscences, novels, visual images, films and plays. Our class discussions will address the following questions: How can we assess the cultural impact of children’s literature and popular images of childhood? How and why do images of childhood change from one time period to another? What can images of childhood and adolescence tell us about larger conceptions of education, family, gender, and nation? Selected Texts: • Children’s literature from the 18th and 19th centuries including Lessing’s fables, Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter and Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz • Ludwig Tieck, Die Elfen (Märchen) • Adalbert Stifter, Bergkristall (Novella) • Frank Wedekind, Frühlings Erwachen (Drama) • Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit (Kurzprosa) • Alina Bronsky, Scherbenpark (Jugendroman) • Das weiße Band (Film) Requirements: Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on acquiring specialized content knowledge in combination with refining and improving students’ advanced language abilities with the goal of producing academic-level work in both speaking and writing. To this end, learners will engage in a variety of written and oral tasks, including persuasive, analytical, and imaginative essays; a short oral presentation; dramatic readings of texts; and a final synthetic paper.

Honors Thesis: German

Course Description: The course investigates the particular contribution of the German literary tradition to the exploration of the self. In contrast to other European traditions, German literature can be viewed as focusing more pointedly on the experience of the individual rather than on depicting society at large. It is this perspective embedded in Germany’s cultural tradition that will guide the readings in this course which are drawn exclusively from canonical works of modern German literature. Goals: The course develops students’ sensibility towards the German literary and cultural traditions. The goal is to hone interpretive skills within a historical and systematic context and to have students develop the necessary written and spoken German to communicate such interpretation and their contexts in a convincing and appropriately complex style. Approach: This is a seminar-style, reading intensive course that will focus its classroom activities on structured discussions of the texts while developing a broader historical/aesthetic framework for such readings. Frequent presentations by students on particular issues — such as comparisons between aspects of two works, introduction of additional works with reference to the ones read in class etc. — will provide additional starting points for student engagement. Language-learning Focus: Receptive skills in reading will be honed — and made explicit in occasional presentations by teacher how the literary individual is constructed through language in the texts. Writing skills will be another focus as students will continue to develop their ability to summarize complex events within a larger framework through three 2-3-page summaries of longer fictional texts (prose and drama) in a process-writing mode. A final paper that will present the additional text read by the student within the context of the class-discussions and with references to secondary sources is the culminating writing assignment for the course. Presentational oral skills will be developed through two formal presentations by students. The first presentation will be introducing a text to the class (including a handout). The second will present the additional work the student has read to the class. Presentations are modeled by the teacher and supporting language materials are provided as the students are guided through the process. In addition, every student is required to read one additional work and report on it to the class. Examples for such works are other dramas or stories by Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, any of the Romantics, as well as stories by the likes of Storm, Keller, Stifter. The main issue is that the piece be interesting to the student and presented within the historical and systematic framework developed in the course. Assessment: 1. Class participation 30% 2. Presentations (2) 10% 3. Short summaries (3) 30% 4. Final paper, incl. Handout 30% Materials: 1. Immanuel Kant, “Was ist Aufklärung?” (supplied) 2. G. E. Lessing, "Nathan der Weise" 3. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" 4. Friedrich Schiller, "Wilhelm Tell" 5. Ludwig Tieck, "Der gestiefelte Kater" 6. Georg Büchner, "Woyzeck" 7. G. Keller, "Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe" 8. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, "Maslans Frau" (supplied) 9. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinn" 10. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief” (supplied) 11. Arthur Schnitzler, “Leutnant Gustl” (supplied) 12.Alfred Döblin, “Die Ermordung der Butterblume” (supplied) 13. poetry reader (supplied)

Museums have become prime venues for promoting a newly self-reflective colonial memory culture, and raising questions about the obligations former imperial powers have for the places and people they colonized. The course will survey the transformation of museums into institutions supportive of indigenous people and ethnic minorities as authors of their own, long-suppressed stories. Both in settler colonial nations such as the United and States and Canada, and former European colonial powers, museums have begun to respond to demands of repatriating parts of their collections, to serve more demographically diverse constituencies, and perform new civic functions. This class will examine the agents of decolonizing the institution, the politics of repatriation, apology, and reparations, and the role of museums for instigating larger processes of economic and social justice and repair. The course is divided into three parts: the first will introduce students to the role of museums in the colonial era; the second will examine their transformation into engines of diversity; and the third will explore recent exhibitions as case studies for decolonizing museology. Here we pay special attention to the work of artists. Students will investigate representations of violent colonial pasts at museums in the region in their own research projects.

Austrian Literature after the Great War

Much of the attention that Austrian literature and culture has received has been focused on the grand fin-de-siècle burst of creative output from writers, architects, painters, scientist, and philosophers. Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal, Wagner, Klimt, Freud, and Wittgenstein are some of the illustrious names that time evokes. What is often forgotten in nostalgic views of that Viennese culture is the fact that many of these creative minds produced many of their works not before, but after the First World War which devastated the Habsburg Empire much more than the German Reich. While practically no warfare had occurred on German soil, the Habsburg Empire was sliced apart and reduced to an economically gutted and politically miniaturized version of its previous self.

In this course, students will read texts of some of the great writers of the time against the backdrop of this devastation. Schnitzler, Kraus, Broch, Kafka, Veza Canetti, Hofmannsthal, Roth, Bettauer, Horvarth, Werfel, Zweig, and Musil all published significant parts of their works during this time. Reading these authors should be freed from always referencing the fin-de-siécle. Especially in the US, there is a tendency to think of Viennese culture in a sentimentalized way, promoted in part by such books as Carl E. Schorske’s Fin-de Siècle Vienna (1979). Focusing on the post-war context, this seminar will highlight the conflictual nature of much of the literary works and how they try to address the ruptures of the First World War experiences and its aftermath.

There will be occasions to hone language skills by writing descriptive and interpretive essays (in a process-writing, multi-draft manner) and formal spoken German through structured oral presentations. We will also be able to specifically address vocabulary building through different levels of work with semantic fields.

This seminar-style course explores the incredible artistic and intellectual vitality of the Weimar Republic, the time between the end of World War I and the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Many of the works of architecture, art, literature, film, and philosophical thought that were created back then remain a standard for us today. We will read literature and essays, view films and consider artistic developments within the context of three interlocking spheres of experiences that characterize the Weimar Republic. First, we will look at the immediate post-war and revolutionary period with its often messianic understanding of future possibilities and pragmatic approaches to building a republic. Then we will look at the experience of socio-economic upheaval and instability caused by both hyper-inflation and mass unemployment. Finally, we will focus on political radicalization and increasingly violent conflicts within the political system.

Level V course. The course will take a look at the German cinematic tradition focusing on three areas: films of the 1920's and 1930's, post-war films as reflections on the state of Germany, and films that deal with the relationship between Germany and the United States (or the dominance of Hollywood in film-making.) Parallel with the exploration of films, we will develop an appropriate level of understanding of film history, film theory, and various approaches to interpreting film.

In German novellas of the 18th through the 20th centuries, authors have found a space to explore and dramatize what Goethe once termed "unheard-of events" (unerhörte Begebenheiten), from war stories to murder mysteries to Gothic and fantastic narratives. Eschewing the lengthy psychological studies and extended dialogues typical of its close cousin, the German Roman, the German novella delights and confounds its readers with condensed accounts of mysterious and scandalous events. In fact, the word "novella" (German Novelle) is etymologically related to the word for "news" in many Romance languages. So, in a sense, novellas are the original "fake news!" In this course for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, we will analyze and compare novellas by German, Swiss, and Austrian authors from the 18th through the 20th centuries. Our discussions will focus on formal and experimental as well as thematic aspects of the novella: what sets it apart from other prose genres, such as the generally much lengthier novel (Roman), the less specific Erzählung and the more idiosyncratic Märchen? Particular emphasis will be placed on how novellas approach the question of difference, as figured for example in depictions of outsiders, "exotic" settings, women, and the uncanny. We will also discuss how these texts depict disruptions to the social order and their resolution, and how they advance concepts of "world literature" and the cosmopolitan.

This seminar-style course is designed to familiarize students with various aspects of German literature since 1945, focusing on the relationship between literary form and social/historical context. In addition to the pleasure of reading some outstanding examples of post-war German-language literature, the course provides an introduction to the literary tradition as it is part of the educated discourse in German-speaking societies today. The topical foci of the course are supported by the development and honing of writing and presentational skills through regular short papers on the readings and presentations on additional books.

This seminar explores aspects of Franz Kafka’s work in the context of ‘world literature’. In US academia in particular, the concept of ‘world literature’ marks a field that has experienced a great upswing in recent years. The seminar introduces central approaches from this academic field in order to apply them to selected texts by Franz Kafka as well as to central aspects of his work in general. Among other topics, constructions of authorship in a trans/national context, (re-)readings of Kafka’s work worldwide, Kafka’s situatedness in the context of German-Jewish literature, Kafka’s view of questions of ‘national literature’ and ‘minor literature’, the worldwide struggle for legitimate ownership of Kafka's literature and legacy will be examined.

With the rapid development of digital technologies as well as the increasing importance of the ability to process and produce digital information in the modern world, digital storytelling (DS) has been investigated and implemented as an effective tool for developing visual literacies. Research on DS reports benefits for fostering learner engagement, identity construction, and deep reflection. But how exactly does DS function within the L2 learning and teaching context? What evidence is there to demonstrate the effectiveness of DS for developing capabilities crucial specifically for the goals of L2 instruction, such as oral and written literacies and cultural and intercultural learning? How can DS be defined for the purposes of L2 classroom? What analytical tools can be employed for the analysis of DS genres? How can DS be implemented in the L2 classroom? Participants of this undergraduate/graduate course will examine how DS genres have been used in the context of L2 teaching and learning. Students will learn how to define and analyze DS genres using particular frameworks for linguistic and multimodal analysis. The course offers students an opportunity to become creative digital storytellers themselves, as they learn about various technological platforms for DS and produce a story across a variety of relevant DS genres (e.g., digital narratives, digital life stories, and digital literary texts) and languages (English, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and French). Finally, students use the tools for DS analysis, principles of DS task design, as well as their experience of creating a digital story to develop an instructional unit that demonstrates how their DS can be applied to a particular L2 learning context.

As computer-based technologies have taken on an increasingly central role in foreign language instruction, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is no longer a specialty area. Accordingly, this course serves as an introduction to the broader field of CALL and various techno-pedagogical applications that fall under this umbrella. Students will understand the growth of CALL in foreign language (L2) instruction, examine the pedagogical rationale for utilizing CALL, and evaluate various applications for L2 instruction. In addition to critical examination of learning technologies, students will develop their own abilities to utilize and apply technologies relevant to L2 instruction. There will be three major course assignments, and they will be showcased on a jointly-constructed class website: 1) Research brief: Students will select, read and summarize one article/chapter from a scholarly publication (i.e., journal or edited volume). These text-based summaries should also address the articles’ contributions to the growth of CALL as a field of scholarship. 2) Technology review: Students will select and evaluate one particular technology or application that can be used to foster language development. The technology reviews will be delivered using a non-text-based multimedia platform (e.g., video, podcast, etc.). 3) Teaching unit: In the context of a particular L2 curriculum, students will design a teaching unit that incorporates CALL in an integral way. In all cases, the course will emphasize the primacy of sound pedagogy when using CALL for L2 instruction.

“Deutsche Sprache – schwere Sprache” is a proverb often used to encourage migrants in German-speaking countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland) to keep going and not give up on the German language. More and more, authors who were born outside the German-speaking area and who were primarily socialized in another language than German publish their work in German – in order to do so, some of them resort to the help of translators and editors, others no longer require this kind of assistance.

In this upper/under course we will read the works of some authors who have a “migration background” (“Migrationshintergrund”) and deal with various aspects of migration in their writing. We will also (critically) look at initiatives designed to help migrant writers gain more visibility in the world of literature, such as the Albert Chamisso Prize in Germany, the literary award “Writing between Cultures” (edition exil) and the “Hohenems Literature Prize for German-speaking authors of non-German native language” in Austria. We will discuss to what extent such initiatives are supporting and encouraging migrant writers, but also raise the question whether the label “Migrationsliteratur” could bring about some sort of stigmatization and pigeonholing of authors who enrich the German literature with their specific perspectives and experiences.

The 19th century is often overshadowed by the outsized attention focused on other periods of German-language cultural production. It is framed by German Enlightenment, Classicism, and the early Romantics which dominated the second half of the 18th century, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the creative outpouring after the turn of the century in Vienna/Habsburg and, later, the Weimar Republic when modernists were at their prime. This graduate-level reading course familiarizes students with major aspects of the fascinating literary production of the nineteenth century. While being cognizant of the overlapping presence of many of the key figures – Goethe published Faust II as late as 1832! – we will concentrate on major literary periods such as late Romanticism, Young Germany, Biedermeier, Realism, Naturalism, and Symbolism. The surprising breadth of literary genres and media – for example, the beginnings of cartoon and graphic narratives – will be showcased as well as the full reach of authors from different areas of the German-speaking world. Students will read short prose, dramas, and poetry and write brief analyses of characteristic aesthetic features of the works. Rather than move strictly chronologically, we will group the readings into the cultural contexts in which they participate, i.e., Swiss, Austrian, and (northern) German. Authors studied will include Eichendorff (Das Schloss Dürande), Hebel (Kalendergeschichten), Hoffmann (Rat Krespel), Heine (Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen), Büchner (Leonce und Lena), Droste-Hülshoff (Die Judenbuche), Raabe (Else von der Tanne), Fontane (Stine), Storm (Immensee, Viola Tricolor), Hauptmann (Rose Bernd), Hebbel (Agnes Bernauer), Nestroy (Lumpazivagabundus), Ebner-Eschenbach (Komtesse Muschi, Komtesse Paula, Die Hand lasst er küssen), Stifter (Granit), von Saar (Die Steinklopfer), Gotthelf (Uli), Keller (Das Fähnlein der sieben Aufrechten), Meyer (Der Schuss von der Kanzel), and a generous selection of poetry. (List of authors and selected texts may change somewhat.) In addition, we will read a small selection of literary/aesthetic essays by authors that will help us establish a context for our discussions. Students will also need to read one longer novel of their choice.

Discussions of space and spatiality are no longer confined to cultural geography and urban studies but have entered a range of other disciplines, including cultural and literary studies. This seminar asks what is behind this fascination with space, how scholars conceptualize the relationship of space to time/history/memory, and how recent discourses on space pertain to the analysis of literature and film. Students will be introduced to two distinct areas of research: first to discourses on space and spatiality (often termed “Spatial Turn”) and second to narrative theories that examine the representation of space in (literary) texts. The seminar also considers the potential of literature (and film) to contribute to -- rather than just benefit from -- these ongoing debates on space. To this end, selected literary texts and films will be discussed in class. Throughout the course, students will be introduced to pertinent academic discourse and academic genres, all of which are building blocks for the concluding project. The course will enable students to make connections between a range of (trans-) disciplinary discourses on space and spatiality while keeping their main object of study (literary and cultural texts) in mind. Students will work on an independent research project and will present preliminary results to the class.

GERM 510 is designed to introduce students to the major concepts, thinkers, and debates concerning European cultural identity formation. We will examine the historical emergence of national identity in the context of modern mass-produced print culture; trace the construction of a post-national, multicultural democracy in contradistinction to the colonial, fascist, and communist past through a consideration of museums and memorials; and explore the appeals to a cosmopolitan Europe in relation to visual media. Each module comprises theoretical readings and an application of the theories to cultural texts and objects. It is designed to make you more astute interpreters of cultural objects, and encourage you to set your knowledge of German culture in the context of European and transatlantic relations. In addition, the course will introduce you to certain genres of academic writing and oral presentation, enabling you to become more skilled at textual analysis, strengthen your abilities to conduct independent and collaborative research, and communicate succinctly and effectively. The class is organized as a seminar. Most weeks, I will begin the class with an introductory lecture, followed by a discussion of the assigned texts and an application of theoretical concepts to cultural texts, artifacts, and sites. Course Objectives: In this course, students will • approach the major concepts, problems, and questions concerning European cultural identity formation from a transatlantic perspective • practice the analysis and interpretation of cultural texts, artifacts, and sites that are relevant to European identities • adopt a self-reflective stance on transatlantic cultural differences and commonalities • improve abilities in oral presentations and collaborative work

The course investigates knowledge construction in different disciplinary areas and across languages and cultures. It examines the issue through the major epistemological assumptions of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities and specifically addresses current reconsideration of these assumptions and their consequences in light of changing socio-political, intellectual, and discursive practices and interests. A focal area will be the contribution of language to human being, knowing, and learning.

Linguists, language educators and researchers of literature and culture conduct discourse analysis for a variety of purposes: to capture writing and literacy development, to characterize teacher-student classroom interaction, to describe social practices at various institutions, or to reveal aspects of an author’s style. This course introduces students to the socioculturally-oriented analysis of language using Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as an approach that enables discourse analysts to systematically account for the connections between grammar, discourse, and social activity no matter what their research data are: learner written texts, spoken conversations, institutional documents, or literary discourse. The course will cover the fundamental conceptual and methodological tools the SFL approach makes available for such an analysis. The course will start with the overarching assumptions about the SFL model of language as social semiotic and then explore its specific theoretical constructs, such as genre, register, metafunctions, and the grammatical systems that are used to encode them. Three fundamental questions will underlie our exploration: How is language structured for use? What choices do language users make? How do these choices function in various contexts of use? Throughout the course, participants will be discussing studies that demonstrate how the analytical constructs and tools can be applied to the analysis of language data in various contexts. We will examine studies of oral and written texts in diverse registers and genres, aspects of second language acquisition at various educational and performance levels, second/foreign language pedagogy, curriculum development, teacher education, and assessment. Those interested in literary texts will discover how the approach can shed new light on the study of literature as a phenomenon of languaging in a particular way. In the course, participants will: • use a textbook to learn about the major tenets and analytical categories of the SFL model • complete workbook exercises to identify and label text structures • engage in the analysis of texts (in English, German or other languages of interest) to reveal patterns of language use • discuss additional readings and applications of the theory to expand their understanding of how the model contributes to discourse description and interpretation in various contexts or languages (particularly those of interest to the course participants) • develop a project (a final paper) where they apply the framework to an area of research interest Topics - Introduction to the SFL model of language: historical developments and major assumptions - Register and genre - Experiential meanings: Transitivity - Logical meanings: Clause complex - Interpersonal meanings: Mood and Modality - Interpersonal meanings: Appraisal - Textual meanings: Theme Course requirements Regular attendance and class participation—30% Workbook and other textual analyses—20% Discussion Board—10% Article presentation—10% Final project—30%

Methodical pluralism in literary studies includes analytical approaches in gender studies and postcolonial studies that focus on the perception and construction of different forms of otherness and processes of 'othering'. New interpretations of gender relations and cultural contacts in canonical texts such as Goethe's "Iphigenie auf Tauris", Kleist's "Die Verlobung in St. Domingo" or Fontane's "Effie Briest" show in particular how productive both areas are, and also how they work together in an intersectional perspective. In the seminar we will read selected theoretical texts, e.g., from Judith Butler and Edward W. Said, and ask: How can these theories be turned into useful tools for the analysis of aesthetic phenomena? How can we make sense of specific themes and aesthetic phenomena with the help of these theories?

For German literary writers and philosophers of the eighteenth century, theater and drama were especially attractive as they offered opportunities to reflect on social questions, to educate the public, and to experiment creatively with literary form. In particular, the genre of the bürgerliches Trauerspiel allowed authors, performers, and audience members to reflect on the changing relationship of individuals to the family and society. These works foregrounded female sexuality and its role in upholding new regimes of gender and sentimentality/sensibility. The long eighteenth century also saw innovations in historical drama and verse drama as well as significant contributions by women as authors, actors, and theater entrepreneurs. In the absence of political unity, the theater and theatrical genres provided space to imagine what a German “nation” might look like, with far-reaching consequences.

This graduate seminar will engage in a threefold examination of drama in the long eighteenth century: as a site of theoretical inquiry, as a field of literary praxis and as a mode of theatrical performance. Through analyses of texts from the early Enlightenment to the so-called Classical period, the seminar will address the following questions: Why does drama hold such pride of place in eighteenth-century German aesthetics (and in accounts of eighteenth-century German literary history)? How do eighteenth-century intellectuals think through the relationship between dramatic form and the social world? How do ideas about ‘nation’ and ‘Germanness’ figure into this discussion? Finally, how do eighteenth-century dramas generate, critique, and transform notions of gender, sexuality, marriage, family, class, and race?

This graduate-level seminar focuses on developing requisite foundational knowledge and critical awareness of various practical approaches to foreign language instruction in the American educational context, particularly at the college level (e.g., communicative, task-based, ecological-semiotic, etc.). Students become informed about (1) cognitive, socio-cultural, linguistic, and affective factors influencing the principles and processes of learning, particularly instructed second language learning; (2) the historical, educational, institutional, and curricular context within which instruction takes place; (3) pedagogical approaches to developing adult learners’ second language ability; and (4) the roles they could and should take on as teachers in order to enhance student learning. Special emphasis in the course is on the integration of language and content instruction in a college environment that lies at the heart of the curricular reform called for by the FL professionals today (e.g., MLA 2007 report). Students explore ways of transcending the language/content divide and developing curricula and courses where it becomes possible to address various thematic areas and at the same time explicitly attend to advanced language development. To that end, students analyze discourses of textual and media genres (e.g., personal and public narratives, appeal, speech, exposition, recipe, catastrophe film, political poster, etc.), and genre-based tasks as materials that facilitate adult second language acquisition. All of the activities in the course recognize various backgrounds in SLA theory and teaching practice and draw on them to socialize students into becoming self-directed and reflective teachers, a life-long process. (Qualified undergraduate students interested in teaching foreign languages may be allowed to enroll.)

Telecollaboration involves Internet-mediated exchange between geographically distant parties of different national/cultural backgrounds for the purposes of language and cultural learning. An additional distinguishing feature of telecollaboration is the opportunity for learners to develop “online literacies” that emphasize cooperation, participation, and reciprocity. The rise of telecollaboration thus marks a shift towards new approaches and contexts for language and intercultural learning, requiring a critical examination of its place in the foreign language curriculum. In this graduate-level seminar, we will investigate the theoretical underpinnings of telecollaboration, considering ways in which telecollaborative praxis is based on and emerges from an understanding of second language acquisition processes. We will examine various models of telecollaboration and how they differentially facilitate languacultural development. At the same time, and in recognition of the challenges common to telecollaboration, we will evaluate strategies for mitigating potential problem areas. The ultimate goal is to prepare course participants to plan and conduct telecollaborative exchanges that are linked to a specific curricular context and that result in measurable learning outcomes.

What Does Germany Look Like? Photographic Imagi/Nations in the Long 19th Century

Photography precedes a united German state (the “Kaiserreich”) by over three dec-ades. Before and after 1871, the medium played a decisive role in shaping and imag-ining “Germanness” in general and the political process of nation-building in partic-ular. Taking Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” literally, it can form a springboard for an overview of photographic discourses that address a nation in the making. The course aims to observe how literary texts deal with visual media and photographic sources, especially those published in illustrated magazines and books, trying to answer what Germany looks like.

COURSE GOALS & APPROACH In this course for graduate students, we will start with reading four works of prose from Handke’s golden age of fiction (1970-1981), based on which we will attempt to understand the specific genius of Handke as a fiction writer. Then we will read the five main works in his Serbian nonfiction cosmos, and follow him on his trajectory into what Reinhard Mohr, writing in Der Spiegel, called "intellectual, artistic and moral bankruptcy.“ We will ask ourselves: Fiction vs. nonfiction – how clear is this distinction in Handke’s work? Are there certain specifics of his approach to fiction writing that stand in the way of his writing nonfiction? We will ask the age-old question, as pertaining to Hamsun or Caravaggio: Does the personal moral turpitude of great artists stain the greatness of their art? And in Handke’s case: Do not just the moral, but the literary deficiencies of his literary non-fiction stain his prose masterpieces? But our central focus will lie on Handke as a pioneer in the war on facts and the new age of political propaganda we are living in. While studying his decade-long radical Serbian intervention, we will concentrate on establishing parallels to and gaining new insight into our contemporary political situation, and under-standing Peter Handke’s role in the genesis of a new reality. The course will take a student-centered approach. Each student will create a medium-length, informative presentation (Referat) on one book from the syllabus during the semester, which we will use as a starting point for lively discussions. The times and topics will be decided during the first week of classes. Students will receive guidelines and feedback for these speaking events. During the semester, they will write two shorter interpretive and / or creative essays and a longer final paper offering analysis and hopefully original insight into the main questions outlined at the top of this section. We will spend one course session in a Zoom discussion with Peter Schneider, a previous Writer-in-residence at Georgetown, who is actually mentioned – in a derogatory fashion – in „Gerechtigkeit für Serbien“ and wrote one of the first critical responses to the book in Der Spiegel.

In recent years, Heinrich von Kleist's oeuvre has attracted renewed attention among scholars for its philosophically and aesthetically sophisticated engagement with questions of politics, war, terror and revolution. In view of the 200th anniversary of Kleist's death, this course will interrogate the links between aesthetics and politics in the literature, philosophy and culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Germany through an exploration of works by Kleist and his contemporaries. We will read novellas, plays, letters and journalistic writings by Kleist in tandem with theoretical and literary texts by eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors such as Schiller, Kant, Hegel and Büchner. In addition, we will explore the implications for Kleist’s work of more recent interventions in aesthetic and political theory (Schmitt, Rancière, Buck-Morss). Following an introductory unit on late-eighteenth-century aesthetics, the course will be divided into three units. The first will focus on the relationship between power and aesthetic representation in the plays of Kleist and Schiller, with special emphasis on theories of the political and legitimation. In the second unit, we will concentrate on the depiction of war, terrorism and social upheaval in Kleist's novellas and plays, with emphasis on Kleist's own political activities. The third unit will explore questions of colonialism and historical change through readings of Kleist's novellas Das Erdbeben in Chili and Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. For a more detailed description of the course’s thematic and lexico-grammatical goals, please see the course syllabus (in Explore).

This graduate course will be taught in German. The seminar Literary Gender Studies introduces students to central questions, theoretical approaches, and methodological tools of Gender Studies, with a clear focus on their relevance and application within German Studies scholarship and literary scholarship more generally. The foundational insight is that the binary gender roles of “male” and “female” are not biologically predetermined categories, but rather socially and culturally constructed. This critical perspective forms the basis for an in-depth exploration of gender as a dynamic, historically contingent, and discursively shaped phenomenon. At the heart of the seminar lies the literary-critical question of how gender is constructed, staged, negotiated, and challenged within texts. We examine how works in the German literary canon– from the Enlightenment through Romanticism and Modernism to the present – engage with gender identities, relations, and dynamics, either reproducing, questioning, or subverting dominant norms. The focus extends beyond the mere representation of male and female characters to an analysis of the linguistic, narrative, structural, and aesthetic mechanisms through which gender is produced in literature. What roles do narrative perspectives, first-person positions, stylistic choices, genre conventions, or temporal structures play? How are embodiment, sexuality, emotion, and social roles shaped within literary texts? Students engage with key theoretical texts in gender studies – from Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler to contemporary perspectives in postcolonial and trans* gender theory – and apply these models to a carefully selected range of German-language literary texts spanning different historical periods and genres: novels and short stories, dramatic works, and poetry. Special attention is paid to the interplay between literary form and gender construction: How does genre (e.g., the love novel, the Bildungsroman, drama) shape the representation of gender? How have gender representations evolved over time, and in what ways do literary depictions reflect broader social and cultural transformations? Particular attention is paid, for example, to the Bildungsroman (such as Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre or Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben) as a genre that emerges in the late eighteenth century and becomes central to German bourgeois narratives of identity. By placing the bourgeois subject at the center, the Bildungsroman often produces predominantly male identity formations deeply embedded in the bourgeois gender order. Gender and cultural alterity play a crucial role in these processes. How do literary texts situate gender and the family within larger narratives about nationhood and Germanness? Beyond intensive close reading, the seminar emphasizes critical engagement with literary and cultural-historical contexts: How have gender roles been institutionalized in specific historical periods from the Enlightenment to the present, and how do literary texts reflect, reinforce, or resist these societal norms? What roles did literary canon formation, publishing practices, reviews, and audience expectations play in the production and reception of gendered representations? (cf. Schößler/Wille: Einführung in die Gender Studies) Additional focus is placed on questions of genre tradition, literary form, and reception history, in order to grasp the full complexity and diversity of literature’s engagement with gender. A central aim of the seminar is to highlight the significance, relevance, and urgency of Gender Studies for literary scholarship. Students learn to critically reflect on how theoretical concepts such as “performativity,” “heteronormativity,” or “intersectionality” can be applied to concrete texts and how they open up new interpretive possibilities for both canonical and contemporary literary works. The goal is not only to develop a solid theoretical understanding but also to cultivate the ability to enrich and deepen literary analysis through a gender-theoretical lens. Through the integration of theoretical reflection, historical contextualization, close textual analysis, and methodological diversity, the seminar aims to provide a solid foundation for independent, critical, and interdisciplinary research in literary gender studies.

Traditionally, literature/arts and economics were thought to be separate, even conflicting areas of human thought and social organization. While some sort of representation of economic activities has been a facet of art since the very beginning, coherent and sustained scholarly exploration of the “economy of literature,” to use the famous title of Marc Shell’s groundbreaking 1978 study, ensued only in the latter part of the 20th century. In many ways, only at the end of the century did some of the research really come to fruition as Jochen Hörisch’s Kopf oder Zahl (1996) firmly established the field in Germany, and Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osten published their wide-ranging collection of essays, The New Economic Criticism (1999). Since then, partially inspired by financial crises, economic upheaval, and rapidly changing contexts for and meanings of work, there has been a steady stream of significant contributions by thinkers like Richard T. Gray, Joseph Vogl, Franziska Schößler, Birger P. Priddat, Fritz Breithaupt, and Christine Künzel, to name just a few. Following Iuditha Balint’s characterization, one can identify five dimensions of literary economics. First, it is an analysis of literary representations of economic activities as social sphere. Second, it is the interpretation of economics as metaphor. Third, it is the exploration of how literature contributes to our knowledge of economic theories and models. Fourth, it engages the literary dimension of economic and quasi-economic texts. And, finally, it looks at how economic theories and models can be expanded with the help of literary theories and models. The proposed graduate course is situated in this research context, focusing on the first two dimensions of economic criticism identified by Balint. Expanding on much of previous research, the course takes a decidedly diachronic perspective, focusing on the (generously defined) 19th century. (Most previous research is situated around 1800 and then again around 1900, with scant references to the intervening years. This is surprising because the 19th century saw the most fundamental changes, reconfigurations, and disruptive economic turmoil.) As a seminar-style course, “Literarische Ökonomik” combines extensive readings in primary sources with a selection of contemporary theoretical treatise and some seminal research articles. It combines two foci – money as semiotic/semantic system and work as productive practice – the first well-researched in economic criticism, the latter less well attended to.

This reading-intensive graduate seminar explores a pervasive trend in contemporary literature: the blurring of the distinction between fictional and autobiographical texts. The course explores how, in the narration of individual life stories or of family histories, authors rely on memory, the imagination, and literary devices – and how they reference and play with genre conventions. To provide an introduction to the history of the genre, the course will begin with excerpts from the most prominent autobiography in German literary history – Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit -- and with an example of an early parody of this seminal text (Jean Paul Richter’s Selbsterlebensbeschreibung). Students will also be introduced to contemporary literary criticism and literary theory pertinent to the discussion of autobiographical fiction. Issues that we will address include: authorship & the subject, gender & genre, history & memory, and, of course, fact & fiction. Finally, we will consider the changing approaches to autobiographical writings in the context of dominant trends in literary theory and in literary studies.

Scholars have long focused on the ‘long eighteenth century’ in Europe as a time of radical social transformation and reconfiguration of both public and private life. The notion of the public sphere articulated in Kant’s Was ist Aufklärung? helped to facilitate a new understanding of Öffentlichkeit that was distinct from older models of representative public space associated with aristocracy and the court. As Reinhart Koselleck has argued in his groundbreaking Kritik und Krise, in the eighteenth century, seemingly ‘private’ institutions such as the coffeehouse, the Masonic lodge, and the salon became the basis of bourgeois public life and the forerunners of middle-class public institutions. Meanwhile, in popular literary works of the era, ideals of domestic life and private virtue from England and France quickly gained currency and helped to define the self-image of the culturally and socially ambitious German Bürgertum. The Europe-wide cult of sensibility and the homegrown religious strains of Pietism also colluded to produce new ways of conceiving of the individual’s place in the family and society. Through an examination of literary and philosophical texts together with historiography, works of critical theory, and cultural documents, this course seeks to frame and implement new ways of thinking about the public/private distinction and the relationship between cultural norms and individual experience in the eighteenth century and beyond. In line with the goals of the MLA-sponsored “Connected Academics/Reinvent the PhD” project, the course readings and discussions of the public/private distinction will also serve as a critical framework for an extended reflection on the role of the humanities in the public sphere in America and Europe today. In conversation with the instructor and with partners in local public-humanities institutions, students will identify and implement strategies for effective public communication in the humanities, aimed at a variety of audiences. This will allow students to reflect on their own long-term goals and (re)define what it means to be a humanities academic in the twenty-first century. Course Goals and Requirements: The course will help students identify and implement effective strategies for argumentation, analysis, and communication of complex ideas for a variety of audiences, both in academic and non-academic settings. Throughout the semester, students will perform a variety of scaffolded tasks that will help them develop communicative skills relevant to public-humanities work with an eighteenth-century focus. In addition to participating in regular class discussions, students will be asked to write several one-page response papers, an article summary, and a brief (2-3 page) analysis of a local institution (museum, theater, library, cultural mission, etc.) whose work engages the themes of the course. During the first half of the semester, students will also give a short presentation (Kurzeferat), focusing on one of the historical texts or topics listed on the syllabus. The last five weeks of the course will be dedicated to the final research project, which will culminate in the writing of an 8-10 page research paper. Students will present their research as part of a symposium, which will be held at the end of the semester and will be open to the public.

Course Description and Goals This course aims to help graduate students become conversant in recent “cultural turns” in the humanities and social sciences, with special emphasis on their impact on German studies in the U.S. The interdisciplinary analytical concepts developed in each of these “turns“ have been fruitful for a wide variety of disciplines. We will explore four of the most significant “turns” since the 1960s: the linguistic and interpretative turns, the performative turn, the postcolonial turn, and the iconic turn. Students will examine these key “turns” in light of their respective historical contexts and theoretical and methodological impacts, focusing on the following questions: What constitutes a cultural “turn?” How can these “turns” be made productive for the interpretation of literary texts as well as performances, films, visual materials, and works in other modes/genres? How can students profit from these “turns” in their own research projects? Course Organization The course consists of four units of about 3-4 weeks each. In addition to the theoretical readings, each unit includes an overarching question, a writing assignment, and an analysis of case studies; each will end with the relevant chapter from Doris Bachmann-Medick’s book Cultural Turns (2016). Readings will be in English and German, in-class discussions in German. I. The linguistic and interpretative turns (4 weeks) The first unit starts out with an introduction to the Linguistic Turn (and its impact on critical theory), since all of the subsequent turns are informed by this initial turn. The remainder of the unit focuses on the Interpretative Turn, starting out with Gadamer’s foundational work on hermeneutics, continuing with reader response theory, and concluding with readings in cultural anthropology. The unit ends with articles from the spring 1989 GQ issue on “Germanistik as German Studies: Interdisciplinary Theories and Methods,” several of which draw on the “interpretative turn” and discuss issues of inter/disciplinarity. Together with recent reports on the state of the field, they will help us to “locate” the discipline of German studies in the professional and academic context of the U.S. Readings include: C. Belsey, F. de Saussure, H. Gadamer, W. Iser, P. Schweickart, C. Geertz, GQ Spring 1989 special issue (H. Seeba, J. Peck, A. Teraoka), GQ Fall 2018 special issue (H. Baer, M. Shafi, et al.) Case studies: • Ingeborg Bachmann, “Ihr glücklichen Augen,” “Gebell” from Simultan. Erzählungen (1971) OR • Gottfried Keller, “Berlocken,” in Sinngedicht (1850/1881). II. The performative turn (3 weeks) This unit will explore the various iterations of the “performative turn” in the humanities and social sciences through readings of foundational theoretical texts in three key areas: (1) the anthropological analysis of ritual and social drama (Victor Turner), (2) action-based speech act theory (J.L. Austin, John Searle), and (3) theater and performance studies (E. Fischer-Lichte). In addition to the abovementioned areas, the unit will foster reflection on the critical and activist legacies of queer performativity theory since the 1990s (E. Sedgwick, J. Butler). In what ways does the performative “turn” allow us to discern processes of struggle, conflict, and resistance to hegemonic conventions at work in literature and art? How can it help us to understand what art and literature ”do” in the world? Readings include: J.L. Austin, J. Searle, W. Iser, J. Culler, J. Butler, E. Sedgwick, V. Turner, E. Fischer-Lichte, E. Landgraf Case study: • M. Abramovic, Lips of Thomas (1975) and The Artist is Present (2010) OR • Heinrich von Kleist, „Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden“ (1805/6) and „Allerneuester Erziehungsplan“ (1810) III. The postcolonial turn This unit looks at key texts in postcolonial studies written by literary scholars (Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Zantop, Berman) and historians (Young, Stoler), as well as the anti-colonial theorist and poet Aimé Cesaire. Central questions discussed in class include whether we still need postcolonial studies, and to what extent our current condition qualifies as imperial or neo-imperial. The unit also traces the arrival of postcolonial studies in German studies (Zantop, Berman, et al) in the 1990s, when scholars first began to chart a long history of colonial fantasies and fictions that far preceded the German state’s acquisition of colonies. Readings include: A. Cesaire, E. Said, M. Rothberg, H. Bhabha, G. Spivak, R. Young, A.L. Stoler, F. Verges, S. Zantop, R. Berman Case study: • H. Fichte, San Pedro Claver (1976) (radio play) and/or M. Götting, Contrapunctus (2015) IV. The iconic turn This unit seeks to introduce scholarly debates surrounding issues of “visuality” that took place in German as well as Anglo-American academia since at least the early 1990s. Rather than chronologically reconstructing the history of scholarship on these topics the aim is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and terms that defined this “turn”, such as image vs. text, description vs. narration, surveillance, the observer or spectator, the (othering/fetishizing) gaze, the visual subject etc. The readings comprise not only the most essential essays that represent the wave of research starting in the 1990s known as the Iconic Turn, but also key texts and academic “classics” from earlier periods of scholarship that have been “rediscovered” and reinterpreted during the turn (e.g., Lessing, Benjamin, Foucault). Readings include: W.J.T. Mitchell, N. Sousanis, G.E. Lessing, S. Poppe, R. Köhnen, M. Foucault, W. Benjamin, J. Crary, N. Mirzoeff, M.A. Doane Case studies: • E.T.A. Hoffmann, “Des Vetters Eckfenster“ (1822) • Simon Spruyt, Junker (graphic novel) (2014) OR Quentin Tarantino, Death Proof (film) (2007) Materials: - Weekly readings and films will be made available via Canvas. - Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. Requirements: - Intensive reading and active participation in class discussions - Three short papers and a final essay (10-12 pages)

In eighteenth-century Germany, the novel emerged as a key site of both generic innovation and the negotiation of cultural and social norms. As literacy rates rose and the book trade flourished, the German middle classes sought out literature, and the novel in particular, as a means of asserting their cultural and social identity. The international success of sentimental epistolary novels from England and France, such as Richardson's Pamela and Rousseau's The New Heloise, inspired numerous translations as well as Goethe’s runaway hit, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774). The popularity of such novels among young female readers in particular led to fears about “Lesewut” and the capacity of literature to corrupt young minds. This course will explore the history of the novel in the long eighteenth century through background readings and close analyses of canonical works in four important subgenres: the sentimental novel of letters (Sophie von la Roche, Geschichte des Fräulein von Sternheim, 1771); the psychological novel (Karl Philipp Moritz, Anton Reiser, 1785/86); the Bildungsroman (Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 1795/96); and the Künstlerroman or Romantic novel (Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1800). We will also explore Goethe’s enigmatic 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften, which draws on the language of the natural sciences to account for shifting “affinities” in the social realm. Readings and class discussions will be concentrated on key issues in the scholarship on the eighteenth-century novel, including but not limited to: narrative structure and genre; the novel’s relationship to autobiography; identity and subjectivity; communication and media history; gender and sexuality; class and social mobility; religion and secularization; visuality and aesthetics; and embodiment and disability. Course Goals and Tasks On a thematic level, the course aims to help students acquire a nuanced understanding of the transformation of the novel in the eighteenth century and its significance for German and European literary modernity. Through readings and discussions of scholarly and theoretical literature, students will learn to identify and implement different theoretical and critical approaches to the novel. After the first week, secondary readings will be limited so that we will have more time to focus on close readings of the novels. In the process of reading and commenting on eighteenth-century novels, students will develop their own critical perspectives and integrate them into broader reflections on literary history, genre, and culture since the 1700s. On a lexico-grammatical level, the course seeks to help students become competent and confident users of high-level German-language academic discourse. Special emphasis will be placed on enhancing academic vocabulary and developing awareness of the stylistic and rhetorical complexity of academic and literary texts through repeated exposures. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions using academic vocabulary and complex grammatical structures in German, and will be encouraged to reflect on their own academic development at the meta-level. Writing tasks include a short article summary, occasional one-page response papers, and a final analytical paper on a text of the student’s choosing. In addition, each student will be asked to do a ten-minute oral presentation on one of the texts discussed in the class. Occasionally, students will be asked to take notes or prepare discussion questions for individual sessions; this will count as part of your class participation grade.

Modernism can be defined temporally, spanning as little as a few decades or up to 100 years, and spatially, as an international phenomenon. Most of all, however, modernism can be understood as a search for adequate forms that support the interpretative task that an intense period of unprecedented experiences and radical changes imposed on art. The response of literature and visual arts to such experiences was not a mimetic one anymore. Rather, the task of art was to make this new and changing world accessible and understandable by creating literary and visual forms that were able to grasp the new experiences caused by increased industrialization, urbanization and new technologies: new forms of poetry (Trakl, Benn), a new form of the novel (Rilke, Kafka, Döblin), or new forms in filmmaking (Ruttmann, Lang, Pabst). This graduate course focuses on literature and films in German modernism of the early 20th century. After an introduction to modernism and its relationship to the classical avant-garde, including covering the various “isms” at the beginning of the 20th century, we will follow a loose chronological order from 1900 to the 1930s, when we explore modernism via various themes: Sprachkrise, Kunstkrise, Identitätskrise, Bilder des Krieges, Metropolis und Montage, Technologie und Sexualität, Die Neue Frau At the end of the course, we will reflect on the coordinates of modernism by discussing its international traces and by looking both at its starting point in the late-19th century and examining its afterlife in post-war Germany.

Remembering 'Heimat' in Contemporary Germany The multi-faceted notion of ‘Heimat’ is considered to be central to German social and cultural history since the early 19th century. Harking back to Herder’s notion of Germanness the term was traditionally linked to a specific geographical place or region and tied to collective identities rooted in a shared language, culture, history, ethnicity and race. The appropriation of ‘Heimat’ for the Blut and Boden ideology during National Socialism has illustrated the highly problematic, exclusionary dimension of the concept. Postwar and contemporary uses of the term vary greatly, ranging from recent conservative and far-right appropriations of ‘Heimat’ to alternative, inclusive reformulations of the concept – or rejections of the concept altogether. The arts, especially literature and film, play a crucial role in these developments. This graduate course explores how notions of ‘Heimat’ evolved over the course of the second half of the 20th century (in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust) and into the new millennium. Special attention will be given to changing representations of ‘Heimat’ in literature, film, and culture in the pre- and post-unification periods (1980s to the present).

Every day, when we read magazines, newspapers, or posts on social media, and even when we just briefly look at advertisements, we do neither just read nor just look – we always do both, as those forms of media have become inherently intermedial. We also find in literary texts and films intermedial forms of expression, ranging from the integration of photos, paintings, maps etc. to the development of a story primarily with visual elements, as in albums, photobooks, or graphic novels. Moreover, intermediality is not only about the inclusion of visual elements; authors may also transpose elements of visual culture or music via literary strategies into their texts.

In this course, we will examine intermediality and how it influences the relationships between texts, images, and reality, particularly regarding the representation of German history. German history and visual culture became more and more connected in the 20th and 21st century, when not only texts and paintings could depict historical events, but also photographs and films. Intermediality allows us to examine this relationship of history and visual culture. Texts and films that combine various media are able to represent historical events and express memory and trauma in ways that make both history and (personal) stories visible in unique and innovative ways that other forms of expression may not achieve.

In the first half of this course, we will first read theoretical texts and define the terms relevant for analyzing intermedial works. The second half of the course will first focus on film adaptations and documentary films, before we turn to the intermedial representation of German history in novels, photobooks, and graphic novels. This course is taught in German.

This graduate seminar explores the meanings of music and sound in German literary, cultural, and media history since the eighteenth century through close readings of primary texts, supplemented by secondary and theoretical readings. While Romanticism has traditionally been most closely associated with music and the acoustic, we will also look at texts from other periods such as the Enlightenment, Realism, and the contemporary era.

“Work” is one of the defining aspects of modern life, at the same time highly regarded and despised as either the most important way for humans to be in and interact with the world or to be alienated from their true selves. Given the centrality of work for the modern self, the relative lack of representations in literature seems surprising. In part, this can be explained by the strong tradition of idealist aesthetics (Kant, Schiller) where Spiel is contrasted with a negatively connoted notion of labor/work. The course will give an overview of the uses and abuses of work and how it is variously conceptualized in theories and literature. The focus will be on the aesthetics of representations in the German tradition from around 1800 to the 21st century. Literary readings will be embedded in broader discussions of economic and political discourses. Theoretical anchors will be relevant excerpts from Friedrich Schiller’s Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, Karl Marx’ Das Kapital, Max Weber’s Die protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus, and Hannah Arendt’s Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben.

When the fall of socialism in 1989 erased the GDR from the geopolitical map, the field of East German studies was thrown into crisis. Seen as an aberration of history, and proven to have been “behind” the West, the socialist East appeared no longer relevant to Western paradigms of modernity that had seemingly triumphed. Western scholars of GDR literature and culture, who had valorized GDR artists’ increasing distance from official socialist cultural policy and artistic doctrines such as socialist realism in the 1970s and 80s, were shocked by prominent authors’ public calls for a renewed, democratic socialism in the Fall of 1989. In the 1990s, this shock prompted a rewriting of GDR literary/cultural histories that dismissed the accomplishments of East German artists and declared them aesthetically and ideologically “immature”; academic discourses thus echoed the denigration of socialist society in the economic and political realms. In very recent years, however, new approaches have tended to stress not the Otherness (and “behindness”) of GDR culture, but have emphasized instead commonalities between socialist people’s republics and the democratic cultures that flourished in western nation-states, both of which appear to (have) become similarly obsolete. Such an approach opens a new perspective on GDR culture and the way in which it conceptualized individual agency and collective sovereignty. The theoretical tension between the two approaches I have sketched here is the starting point for our exploration of GDR culture and its afterlife. We will sort through some of the GDR cultural texts and debates in order to assess whether they can productively contribute to a more complex understanding of modernity—but also to see where “things went wrong.” We will ground more general concerns with socialist historiography, the role of the artist and intellectual elites in the construction of the new society, and modernist aesthetics to the study of one cultural institution, the cinema. The cinema in the GDR was produced by one central agency, the Deutsche Film Agentur (DEFA), which was subject to state control and censorship. Readings will address both the history and structure of this institution, and the changing paradigms of film criticism. We will seek to hone our own interpretive skills through close readings of selected cinematic texts and of the analytical literature about them. Discussions are organized in the following clusters: (1) Artists in the socialist State; GDR culture features a particularly rich set of debates about the role of artists and intellectuals, and about the issues of power, resistance, and complicity—they make an important contribution to any discussion of the ethics of social elites. (2) Antifascism as State Ideology; how did the GDR remember Nazism and the Holocaust, and what lessons did it draw from it? (3) Socialist genders; The GDR organized gender relations in significantly different ways than West Germany—perhaps surprisingly, some of the East German state’s policies and ideological premises are now reappearing at the EU level. (4) The GDR’s cinematic afterlife; we will look at some oft the most important films signaling post-socialist reorientations, and ask how East and West German filmmakers remember the GDR and how these memories are mobilized vis-à-vis present predicaments.

In this course, we will study major novels of the second part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. This was a time when rapid changes in the social and economic make-up of the German lands, sciences, technology, administrative practices, and ideological outlook (nationalism; historicism) forced people to cope in new ways with their changing environments. These challenges are woven into the texts of the realist novels of the time, among them some of the most famous in German literature. We will read and analyze these novels (some of them in excerpted form) as aesthetic responses to and against the backdrop of contemporary theoretical discussions and developments, fostering an understanding of some of the major intellectual debates of the time and how the novels participated in those debates. The goals of the course are varied: students will become familiar with canonical realist novels; they will become aware of major aspects of the development of the novel as genre; students will gain experience in interpreting long narrative texts and on how to interpret theoretically text that are seemingly non-reflexive. Semester readings and topics: 1. Theoretisch-programmatische Aufsütze von Theodor Fontane, Julian Schmidt, Emil Homberger, Rudolf Gottschall, Gustav Freytag und Friedrich Theodor Vischer. 2. Adalbert Stifter, Der Nachsommer: Naturwissenschaft, Ästhetik, Bildung: Zur Wörtlichkeit des Realismus 3. Gottfried Keller, Der grüne Heinrich: Bildung als soziale Verantwortung: Kunst als Selbstverwandlung 4. Wilhelm Raabe, Pfisters Mühle: Umweltbewusstsein, Industrie und Idylle 5. Wilhelm Raabe, Das Odfeld: Zur Konstruktion von Geschichte und Geschichtlichkeit 6. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Das Gemeindekind: Zivilisierung, gesellschaftliche Gewalt und Geschlecht 7. Theodor Fontane, Schach von Wuthenow: Historischer Roman, Realismus und nationale, vaterländische Geschichte. 8. Theodor Fontane, Die Poggenpuhls: Vermessungen des Realen und des Realismus Requirements include a research paper (15-20 pages) due at the end of the semester, and a bibliography. One report on a significant approach to German realism (by such authors as Auerbach, Lukacs, Brinkmann, Eisele, or one of the more recent books by Holub or Downing). All students are required to present their research projects to the class in two stages: review of previous research and presentation of their own project.

Discussions of space and spatiality are no longer confined to cultural geography and urban studies but have entered a range of other disciplines, including cultural and literary studies in recent years. This graduate seminar asks what is behind this fascination with space, how scholars conceptualize the relationship of space to time/history/power relations, and how recent discourses on space pertain to the analysis of literary texts. Students will thus be introduced to two distinct areas of research: first to discourses on space and spatiality (often termed “Spatial Turn”) and second to narrative theories that examine the representation of space in (literary) texts. Ultimately, we will explore the impact of the “Spatial Turn” on literary studies in general and on narrative analysis in particular. The seminar focuses on the theoretical discourses mentioned above, but will also consider the potential of literary texts to contribute -- rather than just benefit from -- these ongoing debates on space. To this end, selected literary texts will be discussed in class. (For instance, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Heimsuchung narrates the history of a particular location and can thus serve as a model for a dynamic notion of place.) Throughout the course, students will be introduced to pertinent academic discourse and academic genres, all of which are building blocks for the concluding project. The course will enable students to make connections between a range of (trans-) disciplinary discourses on space and spatiality while keeping their main object of study (literary and cultural texts) in mind. To this end, students will work on an independent research project and will present preliminary results to the class in the last part of the semester.

This new iteration of “Fluchtgeschichten” focuses on literary responses to three distinct historical situations in the 20th and 21st centuries that resulted in large-scale exile, flight, and/or forced migration: ● the persecution and exile of Jewish and/or politically progressive intellectuals and artists (among many others) during National Socialism and World War II; ● the expulsion at the end of World War II of approximately 12 million ethnic Germans from territories in the East and their flight towards the West (i.e., the countries that would become East and West Germany); ● the recent flight of large numbers of people from civil war in Syria and from other human rights crises on the African continent, and their attempts to enter Europe The genre of the novel, in particular, lends itself for multi-voiced approaches to these historical events and their effects on individuals. The seminar will examine how literature presents us with changing counter-discourses to at times politicized or one-dimensional public discourses. Some of these texts begin to address the legacies of exile, flight and migration in transnational European contexts. In the last part of the course, we look at recent creative texts that address the situation of refugees in contemporary Europe, sometimes by relating them to earlier instances of exile and forced migration. The figure of the refugee, as captured in Hannah Arendt’s 1943 autobiographical essay, will provide important points of reference for the discussion of some of the literary texts. Related sections of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism will be the focus of a workshop by Prof. David Kim (UCLA) in late October. Beyond the work of Arendt, this seminar draws on memory studies (especially M. Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory and M. Hirsch’s notion of postmemory) and competing notions of home/Heimat.

Some of the most intriguing German novels are written in an epoch which we have come to call ‘modernism’. Modernist literature has been understood as a response to a social and cultural crisis. As most accounts of literary history state: The rapid urbanization of Germany, the advent of new media, and the repercussions of World War I were echoed by often fragmented and distorted texts which experimented with new literary forms. Rather than following this widespread narrative, the course investigates the discourses from which modernist cultural criticism drew. Most importantly, we ask how modernism understood modernity itself: How did literary texts in the first decades of the 20th century represent modern culture and society? The seminar surveys some of the most important modernist literary texts. Apart from Bertolt Brecht’s Mann ist Mann and short prose by Siegfried Kracauer and Franz Kafka, the seminar focuses on the following novels: Hermann Broch: Die Schlafwandler. Eine Romantrilogie (Suhrkamp; ISBN-13: 9783518388631) [We only read the first novel] Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf (Fischer Taschenbuch; ISBN-13: 9783596904587) Irmgard Keun: Das kunstseidene Mädchen (List Taschenbuch Verlag; ISBN-13: 9783548600857) Thomas Mann: Der Tod in Venedig (Fischer Taschenbuch; ISBN-13: 9783596112661)

Course Highlights  Designed for advanced PhD students in German, Linguistics, Spanish/Portuguese  Focuses on producing an article-length publication based on an existing research paper  Introduces scholarship on academic writing and academic genres; analyzes model articles in a range of fields  Includes extensive feedback from peers and from both professors, with disciplinary expertise in Applied Linguistics (Ryshina-Pankova) and Literary Studies (Eigler)  Features a Roundtable with Journal Editors (with colleagues from FL departments) Course Description and Aims This course is a writing intensive, works-in-progress seminar for graduate students seeking to prepare an article for publication. It will explore the everyday challenges of writing and introduce students to the professional practices and protocols of journal publication. During the semester, participants will analyze the genres of an academic research article and article abstract and their most salient features, explore potential publication venues, read and comment on the work of their peers, learn how to interpret and generate feedback in the form of ‘reader’s reports,’ and revise and present their own essay. The final task of the course entails submitting your essay for publication in the journal of your choice (graduate student journal or a regular professional journal). By offering the course to PhD students from several programs and areas of specialization, the course provides a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship, to expand your understanding of key debates in a range of fields, and to consider current transformations in the practices of knowledge production in higher education more widely. This dimension of the course will be further enhanced by the instructors’ disciplinary expertise in Applied Linguistics (Ryshina-Pankova) and Literary Studies (Eigler). By engaging with a range of research projects, students will explore how objects of study are constituted by specific methodological practices and reading protocols, including those organized by frameworks of (cultural) theory, literature, visual culture, discourse analysis, language pedagogy, and applied linguistics. The course is designed for graduate students who already have a substantive research paper (of 12-20 pages in length) and who want to focus on the process of producing a ‘stand alone,’ article-length publication based on the existing paper. [We ask that all students interested in the course submit title and abstract of their research paper by Monday, December 10 to Profs. Eigler and Ryshina-Pankova; by January 2nd, 2019 we request the complete paper, accompanied by a brief assessment of the respective professor and/or advisor.] Class format The majority of class time will be devoted to the writing of participants. There will be roughly three stages: the initial workshop, two team workshops, and the final submission of the essay at the end of the term. During the initial workshop (weeks 3-6), each author will offer a five-minute introduction to her/his essay, briefly review the critical context of the work in question and the disciplinary debates that inform it (this information should also be in the author’s letter to the class that accompanies the distribution of the essay.) The author’s presentation will be followed by two ‘reader’s reports’ from class participants who have been assigned to review the essay. Team workshops will take place in weeks 7, 8, 9 for Draft 2, and 11, 12 for Draft 3. The class session will entail one-on-one discussion of team member essays. Authors will write a response to the readers’ reports from the initial workshop to accompany the distribution of the second draft. Responders will pay attention to whether or not earlier suggestions have been adequately addressed and offer cogent, substantive comments for the additional revision. Team composition will be rearranged for the second team workshop to ensure the widest readership possible. The final task is your submission of the completed essay, complete with cover letter to journal of your choice. In addition to these workshops, we will examine outstanding published articles in a range of fields and devote one class session to discussing specific journals that are appropriate venues for essay submission. This session will be organized around journals reports. Each participant will write two 1-2 pg. reports. These reports are intended to teach us how to read journals as potential contributors, such that we hone our ability to gauge the appropriateness of our work to the mission of specific publication venues. Throughout the course we will discuss the psychic life of writing, which involves both the pleasure and the terror of the blank screen. Our goal is to convert the academic demand for publication into a generative process of learning, which entails exploring the relationship between thinking and writing, and sharing the challenges this entails in a collaborative workshop setting. The discussion space of each week’s meeting is also intended as an open forum to address the issues that arise for you as we proceed.