A. Language Acquisition Courses
All courses are conducted in German.

1. Elementary German. Ms. Burwick, Mr. Rindisbacher. Acquisition of basic oral communication, survey of German grammar, practice in reading and writing. Meets four days a week with instructor. Fifth hour with native speaker. Fall 2007.

2. Elementary German. Ms. Burwick, Mr. Rindisbacher. Acquisition of basic oral communication, survey of German grammar, practice in reading and writing. Meets four days a week with instructor. Fifth hour with native speaker. Spring 2008.

11. Intermediate Conversation: Contemporary German Language and Culture. German Language Resident. Open to all students except native speakers. Credit for satisfactory participation in Oldenborg Center activities and two conversation classes weekly. Prerequisite: one year of college-level language study or equivalent. Cumulative, one-quarter course credit; graded P/NC. Does not satisfy the foreign-language requirement. Limited to one enrollment per semester and a cumulative total of one course credit. Each semester.

13. Advanced Conversation: Contemporary German Language and Culture. German Language Resident. Open to all students except native speakers. Credit for satisfactory participation in Oldenborg Center activities and two conversation classes weekly. Prerequisite: one year of college-level language study or equivalent. Cumulative, one-quarter course credit; graded P/NC. Course limited to 15 students. Does not satisfy the foreign-language requirement. Limited to one enrollment per semester and a cumulative total of one course credit. Each semester.

33. Intermediate German. Mr. Katz, Ms. Schwerin-High. Emphasis on developing reading ability. Extensive review of grammar; continuing acquisition of new vocabulary and conversational skills. Meets four days a week. Small conversation groups with native speaker once a week. Prerequisite: German 2 or equivalent. Each fall.

44. Advanced German. Mr. Katz, Ms. Schwerin-High. Emphasis on correct, idiomatic writing. Essays every other week, oral work and grammar review. Meets two days a week. Small conversation groups with native speaker once a week. Prerequisite: German 33 or equivalent. Each semester.

B. Literature and Culture Courses
German Literature (GERM) courses numbered 100 and above satisfy Area 1 of the Breadth of Study Requirements.

101. Introduction to German Culture. Ms. Schwerin-High. This course will introduce students to some of the most compelling issues and debates in German culture through fiction, criticism and philosophy, as well as film, the visual arts, and music. The presentation of materials is exemplary rather than comprehensive and is based on thematic, historical, generic and other units. Spring 2008.

102. Introduction to German Literature: Portraits of the Artist. Ms. Burwick. In tracing the figure of the artist from Romanticism to the Postmodern, attention will be given to the ideal of creative genius, in both its heroic and decadent modes or forms. Readings will include theoretical texts (E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Beethovens Instrumentalmusik), reflections on art and the self (Caspar David Friedrich, Thomas Mann), and literary texts by Hoffmann, Grillparzer, Mann, Kafka, Wolf, and Jelinek. Fall 2007.

103. Introduction to German Media and Film. Mr. Kronenberg and Ms. Bashaw. This course will introduce students to some of the most compelling issues and debates in German culture through various forms of media, including films and television, music, advertising and the visual arts. The presentation of materials is exemplary rather than comprehensive; based on thematic, historical, generic and other units. Prerequisite: 44. Fall 2007.

104. Introduction to German Composition. Ms. Schwerin-High. This course will provide students with intensive practice in expository writing. Introduction to German stylistics and the varieties of essay construction. Wide range of texts analyzed, discussed, and written about. Frequent essays. Prerequisite: German 44 or equivalent. Spring 2008.

128. Multicultural Germany. Ms. von Schwerin-High. Explores the history and culture of Turkish-Germans and other minority communities residing in Germany with emphases on political, legal, social, cultural, and religious aspects of multicultural life. Course materials include historical accounts, newspaper and internet articles, autobiographical narratives, fiction, poems, and films. Prerequisite: 44. Offered in 2008-09.

146. Fairy Tales and the Female Story Teller. Ms. Burwick. In the oral tradition of fairy tales, women create a female discourse by re-gendering patriarchal myths, transforming domestic space into imaginary territories. Desires and constraints are represented in multifaceted characterizations of mother, stepmother, witch, orphaned daughters, and wicked stepsisters. Male scholars, e.g. the Brothers Grimm, re-appropriate the fairy tale and domesticate it into children’s stories. Cross-listed with Women’s Studies. Offered in 2008-09.

151. Modern German Poetry. Mr. Rindisbacher. More radically than any other literary and artistic tradition, 20th-century German lyric poetry has used formal and semantic experiments to explore the extreme limits of truth, beauty, meaning, and human experience. Fall 2007.

152. Drama as Experiment. Staff. German dramatists from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century struggled to create possibilities for human dignity in a hostile universe. Beginning with Naturalism, they also delved into new topics: class struggle, sexuality and the problematic nature of human communication. In the process, traditional forms were undermined and the very notions of character, plot, and dramatic performance were questioned. Offered in 2008-09.

154: Great German Fiction. Mr. Rindisbacher. Course introduces students to some of the greatest works of 19th- and 20th-century German literature. Close readings of literary works by such authors as Kleist, Keller, Mann, Rilke, Kafka, Hesse, Böll, Frisch, Grass, Wolf, and others is combined with key texts from the German intellectual tradition: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Adorno, and others. Offered in 2008-09.

SC 177: The Pact with the Devil. Ms. Burwick. No other figure in Western literature has embodied the intellectual and moral conditions of modern Europeans as Faust; nowhere else is the fascination — and ambivalence regarding evil more prevalent than in the artistic and literary incarnations of this legendary character. Course discusses works by Marlowe, Goethe and Bulgakov and visual arts, opera, and folk tales. Offered in 2009-10.

189. German Across the Curriculum (GAC). Staff. Integrates a German language component into German program courses taught in English. May also be taken without being enrolled in the main course. Prerequisite: German 44 or permission of the German instructor. Half-course credit. May be repeated for credit. Each semester.

191. Senior Thesis. Staff. Prerequisite: permission of the student’s adviser and the coordinator. Course or half-course. Each semester.

193. Comprehensive Examinations. Staff. Preparation for six-hour written and one-hour oral examinations for the major, testing the student’s general competence in the discipline. Half-course. Graded P/NC. Each spring.

99/199. Reading and Research. Staff. Open to students capable of independent study. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Course or half-course. May be repeated for credit. Each semester.

C. German Literature and Culture Courses in Translation

SC 114. Plotting Crime. Mr. Katz. This course covers various genres of criminality in modern European fiction and film, including murder, criminal vice, theft, sex crimes, white-collar corporate conspiracy crimes of passion and domestic violence. We explore two related (but distinct) topics: how crimes are planned and executed; and how they are turned into compelling literary and cinematic storylines. Fall 2007.

SC 116. The Decadents. Mr. Katz. The 19th-century “decadents” treated art as an intoxicant. Theirs was a cult of extremes: theatres of cruelty, art for art’s sake, celebrations of criminality, and deliberate derangement of the senses. The course begins with 19th-century fiction, visual arts and criticism, and then turns to their after-images among 20th–century avant-gardes. Spring 2008.

SC 117. Berlin in the 20s: An Experiment in Modernity. Mr. Katz. Expressionist painting, the glass architecture of the Bauhaus, the rise of photo journalism, the cult of the aerodynamic body (Dadaism, Cyborgs, and Cabaret). 1920s Berlin has helped define modernization for decades. Course examines the competing practices and principles of Weimar-era culture, drawing on fiction and film, journalism and the visual arts. Offered 2002008-09.

124. The German Twentieth Century Through Film. Mr. Rindisbacher. This film course investigates the dichotomy of individuals in their society at crucial moments in German history Uses film and criticism from the 1920s to the present. Offered in 2008-09.

134. Advertising the Other: Stereotypes in Popular and Consumer Culture. Mr. Kronenberg. Explores the cultural implications of stereotypes on American advertising and popular culture. Provides analysis, historical overview, and theoretical background. Focuses on the stereotypical representation of various groups. Emphasis on depiction of Germans and Germany. Spring 2008.

161. Building the Nation — and Then Again: The Case of Germany. Mr. Rindisbacher. An inquiry into nation building and nationalism. German unifications, then and now. Shifts and rifts between community and society, native and foreign. Germany’s transition to modernity and multiculturalism. Emphasis on the 20th century. Offered in 2008-09.

SC 167. Metropolis: Imagining the City. Mr. Katz. Whether pictured as labyrinth, stage set, above-ground grotto or gigantic living room, the urban landscape has played a crucial role in the attempts of 20th-century German writers and artists to come to terms with modernity. Representations of Berlin-Germany’s classic metropolis with comparative forays into 19th-century Paris and postmodern Los Angeles. Offered alternate years.

170. The Culture of Nature. Mr. Rindisbacher. The cultural constructions of nature , from romanticism to the present. Ambivalence about naturalness and artificiality, preservation and exploitation, and economy and ecology. Ecological-political movements and their roots in 18th-century romanticism, 19th-century nationalism, and 20th-century political correctness. Readings from history, politics, literature, and the social sciences. Offered in 2009-2010.

176. Moscow-Berlin/Berlin-Moscow: Europe in Transformation. Ms. Dwyer, Mr. Rindisbacher; team taught. People moving across borders — borders moving across peoples. The changing relationship between Germany (and the West), Russia (and the East ), and things caught in between. Historical, political, cultural issues addressed through literature, film, and criticism. Spring 2008. (See also Russian 176).

D. Associated Courses for German Studies
The list of associated courses is periodically updated. Current courses include:

Humanities
Art History159. History of Art History. Mr. Emerick.
SC Art History 180. Early 20th-Century European Avant-Gardes.
Linguistics 10. Introduction to the Study of Language. Staff.
Linguistics 115. Bilingualism. Staff.
Linguistics 179. Comparative Slavic/Germanic Linguistics. Ms. Harves.

Music 53. The Symphony and Related Forms. Mr. Lindholm.
Music 54. Nationalism and Music. Mr. Peterson.
Music 57. Western Music: A Historical Introduction. Staff.
Music 58, 158. Beethoven. Ms. Di Grazia.
Music 59, 159. Brahms, Berlioz, and Wagner. Ms. Di Grazia.
Music 75. Opera. Mr. Beeks.
Music 120A,B. History of Western Music. Mr. Peterson.

Philosophy 43. Continental Thought. Mr. Erickson.
CMC Philosophy 105. The Holocaust.
CMC Philosophy 115. History of Philosophy.
CMC 119. Philosophical Roots of European Fascism.
Philosophy 186E. Heidegger and the Tradition. Mr. Erickson.
Philosophy 186K. Kant. Mr. Thielke.

Social Sciences
Economics 118. Economic History of Europe. Mr. Palmer.
CMC Economics 140. The World Economy.
CMC Government 165. Political Philosophy and History.
PI History11. Modern Europe 1789-1989.
CMC History 139E. Culture and Society in Weimar and Nazi Germany.
CMC History 146. History of Germany 1740-Present.
SC 168. The Destruction of European Jewry and German Society.
SC IR 102. Cooperation and Rivalry in the European Union.
Politics 1B. Modern Political Theory.
Politics 8. Introduction to International Relations.
CPP Politics 322. Advanced Industrial Societies.
PI Political Studies113. Citizenship and Nationalism in the European Union.
Sociology 154. History and Development of Sociological Theory I: The Classical Tradition. Ms. Rapaport