GER 440/540 – 1968-1978: The Rebellious Decade (Spring 2009)

2008 marked the 40th anniversary of 1968, a year that made history not only in Germany but also in Western Europe and the United States. The student rebellions were more than just revolts over educational reforms. They were expression of a generational conflict over an entire host of traditional values and accepted institutions in postwar Western society, such as patriarchy, the role of women, social inequity in capitalism, the suppression of the Nazi past, the Vietnam War and Germany’s alliance with NATO. The protest of the young generation also manifested itself in literature, music, and visual art forms. We will discuss fictional and scholarly accounts about the period as well as films, prose works, poems, and protest songs of the rebellious decade 1968-1978. One of the central questions is whether 1968 is still relevant for current views on family, war, history, society, education, politics, literature, and art.

GER 259 - Culture of the Weimar Republic (Fall 2008)

The course will focus on the rich cultural life of Germany during the so-called Weimar Republic (1918-1933). This was a time of experiments and innovations in the arts, music, literature, and politics that have helped shape European and American culture today. The course will introduce students to the impact of radical cultural changes that redefined virtually every aspect of life, such as the advent of new media (film, radio), the influence of American culture, mass consumption, fashion, new ideas about sexuality and gender roles. Students will learn about the legacy of World War I, and the political, social and economic upheavals of the period, such as the rise of Nazism, the struggles against Fascism, the emergence of the new middle class. We will discuss the sexual experiments of the time, the changing gender relations, explore the role of influential thinkers (such as political activist Rosa Luxemburg, writer Thomas Mann), analyze examples of modern art and architecture (Expressionism, New Objectivity, Bauhaus), film, literature, theatre and cabaret.

GER 360 - Rebellion und Anpassung (Fall 2008)

The course introduces you to German texts from different periods and genres (poetry, drama, and narrative) that deal with the topic of rebellion and assimilation or conformance. In addition to getting you acquainted with some cultural and generational conflicts in German history, the goal is to sharpen your sensibilities as readers by calling attention to formal aspects of literature, such as narrative perspective, imagery, and language. We will read poems, plays and novels by Goethe, Wedekind, Hermann Hesse, and others. Discussions and readings will be in German.

HC 434 H - Culture of the Weimar Republic (Spring 2008)

This multimedia course will focus on the rich cultural life of Germany during the so-called "Weimar Republic" (1918-1933). This was a time of experiment and innovation in the arts, music, literature, and politics that have helped shape European and American culture today. You will learn about the impact of radical cultural changes that redefined virtually every aspect of life, such as the advent of new media (film, radio), the influence of American culture, mass consumption, fashion, new ideas about sexuality and gender roles. The course also focuses on the legacy of World War I and the political, social and economic upheavals of the period, such as the rise of Nazism, the struggles against Fascism, and the emergence of the new middle class. We will discuss the role of influential thinkers (such as political activist Rosa Luxemburg, writer Thomas Mann, social theorist Max Horkheimer, philosopher Ernst Bloch), analyze examples of modern art and architecture (Expressionism, New Objectivity, Bauhaus), film, literature, theatre and cabaret. There will be group and individual writing projects. The course will address such questions as what is the role of the intellectual in the Weimar Republic? How did ideas about American life shape German culture in the 1920’s? How is the clash between anachronistic and modern values (sexual, ethical, social) represented in German film, literature, art etc.?

GER 622 - Drama (Winter 2008)

The course focuses on the dramatic works of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Lenz, Kleist, and others. The period from the early 1770s to the 1820s is still considered a highpoint in German drama. One reason for this unprecedented flourishing of the genre was the emancipation of the middle class, and the birth of modern individuality. For Schiller and his generation drama became an institution for providing moral guidance and for enacting the dilemmas and challenges that the newly gained freedom posed for the individual. Schiller and others regarded humans as a mixture between “Vieh und Engel.” The questions of what is human and how a human being should act in a secular world, one that could no longer rely on a God-given order and where science moved faster than human understanding, were of great concern to the dramatists of this period. By reading dramas by Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Lenz, and Kleist in the context of the anthropological ideas of their time we will investigate how the dramatists attempted to address, overcome, reconcile, or conceal, the tensions between the ascending sciences and idealist concepts of human life.

GER 257 - German Culture & Thought (Fall 2007)

The course focuses on well-known figures, key ideas, social trends and intellectual debates from Germany's rich cultural tradition of the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It will introduce you to representative works of German music, fine arts, literature, and philosophy. We will discuss works by Luther, Kant, Mozart, Goethe, and Marx. The readings will teach you about major cultural developments and address questions that are still of interest today, such as: What does faith have to do with freedom? In which ways are these concepts related to political and historical developments? How did German philosophers and writers influence contemporary ideas of freedom and individuality?

GER 366 - Themes in German Literature (Fall 2007)

The course is about generational conflicts in three short novels by Bernhard Schlink, Thomas Mann and Heinrich Böll. These conflicts are connected to questions of sexuality and art (Mann) and on how Germans cope with the past in the immediate postwar years (Böll) and in the 1980s (Schlink). Students will learn techniques and strategies for textual interpretation. You will practice and expand your passive and active vocabulary by discussing and writing about literary texts.