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.