German Language and Culture Jump To: Jump To: Program Offerings Certificate Offering type Certificate The Department of German offers students an opportunity to do sustained work in German language, literature, philosophy, art and media while majoring in another department, leading to a certificate in German Language and Culture. Certificate students can choose from the broad range of course offerings taught in both English and German. Goals for Student Learning Classes extend from the Middle Ages to the contemporary moment, introduce diverse disciplinary perspectives including art history and philosophy, and engage with multiple critical paradigms such as gender and media studies. Through vibrant classroom discussions and close advising relationships, the certificate program engages students who wish to advance their command of the German language and deepen their understanding of German culture. Prerequisites Completion of GER 107 or equivalent. Admission to the Program The certificate program is open to undergraduates in all departments. Students are encouraged to consult with the director of undergraduate studies as early as their first or sophomore year to plan a program of study, but should not hesitate to reach out to the director of undergraduate studies about joining the certificate program at a later date.Students interested in completing the certificate are encouraged to contact the director of undergraduate studies at any point to discuss their plan of study. Students can express their intention to pursue a certificate by signing up on the German department website. Program of Study The certificate requires satisfactory completion of the following:Four courses at the 200 level or higher, at least two of which must be at the 300 level or higher. All courses must be taken for a grade (not pass/D/fail).Evidence of substantial upper-level coursework in German. This requirement will be satisfied if three of the four courses taken for the certificate were conducted in German, or if two were taught in German and one was conducted in English with a substantial German-language component. This option is available for all courses taught in the German department as well as courses in other departments cross-listed with German. Students should consult with the course instructor regarding the German-language component at the beginning of the semester and submit the agreed-upon plan to the director of undergraduate studies in German for approval by the end of the second week of classes.Independent work in German (see below). Independent Work There are three ways to fulfill the certificate independent work requirement:Complete a substantial paper (15–20 pages if in English, 10–15 pages if in German), which may be a revised version of a paper written for one of the four required courses.Write a chapter from the senior thesis principally devoted to a German-related topic.Complete an additional 300-level class taught in German. Certificate of Proficiency Students who have met all the requirements of the program will receive a certificate of proficiency in the German language and culture upon graduation. Faculty Chair Devin A. Fore Director of Undergraduate Studies Johannes Wankhammer Director of Graduate Studies Barbara N. Nagel Professor Devin A. Fore Associate Professor Brigid Doherty Joel B. Lande Thomas Y. Levin Barbara N. Nagel Sara S. Poor Johannes Wankhammer Assistant Professor Susan Morrow University Lecturer Jamie Rankin Senior Lecturer Adam Oberlin Lecturer Florian Fuchs Gabriella J. Karl-Johnson Ron Sadan Katya Soloveva Woodyard Visiting Professor Joseph W. Vogl Visiting Lecturer with Rank of Professor Gertrud Koch For a full list of faculty members and fellows please visit the department or program website. Courses GER 101 - Beginner's German I Fall/Spring This course lays the foundation for functional acquisition of German, with attention to interpretation (listening/reading), production (speaking/writing) and cultural understanding. Class time is devoted to interactive language tasks that foster comprehension, vocabulary acquisition and fluency. Five hours per week. Staff GER 102 - Beginner's German II Fall/Spring Continuation of 101, with added emphasis on reading, communicative writing strategies, listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and cultural analysis through film. Five hours per week. Staff GER 1025 - Intensive Intermediate German Spring Intensive training in German, building on 101 and covering the acquisitional goals of 102 and 105: communicative proficiency, mastery of discourse skills and reading strategies to interpret and discuss contemporary German short stories, film and drama. Successful completion of the course (B- or above) leads to automatic eligibility for GER 107G in the Princeton-in-Munich program. Limited to students with a grade of A/A- in 101. Nine hours per week. A. Oberlin GER 103 - Beginner's German in Review Not offered this year The course provides students who have some background in German a brief review of material covered in 101, and then works on speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills at the level of 102. Five hours. Prerequisite: scores from placement/proficiency test administered during fall orientation and consultation with instructor. Staff GER 105 - Intermediate German Fall The course aims to solidify previously acquired German, while expanding the range of usable vocabulary and syntax. Emphasis in class on task-based approaches to grammar, writing, listening comprehension and cultural understanding, using texts and film. Prerequisite: SAT Subject Test score of 570 and demonstrated oral competence, or successful completion of 102. To be followed by 107 to satisfy the A.B. language requirement. Four hours per week. X. Song, R. Sadan GER 107 - Advanced German Fall/Spring Further acquisition of proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing using online media, film, and texts as a basis for interaction and analysis. The fall course provides extensive review of basic structures and vocabulary for incoming students with high school German instruction; the spring course dovetails with 105 in terms of cultural and grammatical topics. Prerequisite: SAT Subject Test score of 650 and demonstrated oral competence, or successful completion of 105. Satisfies the A.B. language requirement. Three hours per week. Staff GER 207 - Studies in German Language and Style: Society, Politics, and Culture in Germany, 1890-1945 Fall HA Discussions of exemplary texts from modern German society and culture, including essays, speeches, autobiographies, works of literature, art, and film. The course offers an introduction to important issues in modern Germany: the Kaiserreich to the end of monarchy, Berlin as a modern metropolis, World War I, the democratic experiment of the Weimar Republic, and the rise and structures of National Socialism. Intensive practice in spoken and written German with emphasis on vocabulary acquisition and complex syntactical forms. Two 90-minute seminars. Prerequisite:107 or instructor's permission. S. Morrow GER 208 - Studies in German Language and Style: Contemporary Society, Politics, and Culture Spring HA Continuation of 207 (which is not, however, a prerequisite). Discussions of social, political, and cultural aspects of contemporary Germany. Basis of discussions are essays, literary texts, and films. Individual assignments to develop oral and written expression. Particularly recommended to students contemplating study or work in Germany. Two 90-minute seminars. Prerequisite: 107 or instructor's permission. Staff GER 209 - Introduction to German Literature after 1700 Fall LA The main periods of German literature from Lessing to the present studied through texts chosen to help the student acquire fluency in reading German and in the principles of literary interpretation. Two classes. J. Wankhammer GER 210 - Introduction to German Philosophy Spring ECEM Covers German intellectual history from the Enlightenment to the present by focusing on the theoretical texts of its major authors (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Heidegger, Arendt, Habermas). In addition to addressing the core discipline of philosophy, this course focuses on aesthetics, social, and political thought as well. All readings in English. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Staff GER 211 - Introduction to Media Theory Spring EC Traces the development of critical reflection on media through careful readings of a wide range of media theoretical texts from the late 19th to the early 21st century. Topics range from the birth of single-point perspective to photography, from gramophones to radio, from pre-cinematic optical devices to film and television, and from telephony and typewriters to cyberspace. Covers the relationship between representation and technology, the historicity of perception, the interplay of aesthetics, techniques, and politics, and transformations of reigning notions of imagination, literacy, communication, reality, and truth. Two 90-minute seminars. D. Fore, T. Levin GER 301 - Topics in German Drama and Theater Fall/Spring LA Exploration of specific problems in the history of German theater, drama, and dramatic theory. Topics may range from the baroque drama to the importance of Brechtian theater for modernism, and from the dramatic representation of political conflicts to contemporary theater and performance studies. Staff GER 303 - Topics in Prose Fiction Fall/Spring LA Critical investigations of particular problems in the development of German literary prose. Topics may include love as a mode of literary self-expression, the role of utopia in the rise of the modern novel, the history of the German novella, detective fiction, and the modern short story and experimental prose. Prerequisite: 107. S. Morrow GER 305 - Topics in German Poetry Not offered this year LA Studies of a particular question related to the development of German-language poetry and poetics. Topics may range from readings of major German poets (Goethe, Hölderlin, George, Rilke, Benn, Celan) to the paradigmatic status of the genre for 20th-century conceptions of the avant-garde. Prerequisite: 107. Staff GER 306 - German Intellectual History (also GSS 313) Fall/Spring LA A study of major German philosophers and religious and social thinkers from the Reformation to the present. Selected works of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, or German-Jewish thinkers will be read together with contemporary interpretations. Two 90-minute seminars. Staff GER 307 - Topics in German Culture and Society (also COM 347/ENG 323) Fall/Spring EMLA Exploration of key moments in German culture in light of its history and institutions. Topics may range from Marxist aesthetics to theories of fascism to German women writers. Readings and discussion in German. J. Rebentisch GER 308 - Topics in German Film History and Theory (also ART 383/ECS 308/VIS 317) Fall/Spring ECLA What is film? Is it a language? Can one speak of cinematic literacy? Does film transform perception? Is there filmic thinking? This seminar on the theory and poetics of cinema will examine the varieties of ways -- semiotic, psychoanalytic, narratological - that filmmakers, philosophers and critics have analyzed film form, the cinematic experience, the construction of cinematic subjectivity, questions of aesthetic politics and notions of medium specificity. Staff GER 309 - Literature, Philosophy, and Politics in the Weimar Republic Not offered this year LA An interdisciplinary examination of continuity and change in the culture and the cultural politics of Germany between 1919 and 1933. Topics include expressionism in the visual arts and literature; Berlin Dada; the Conservative Revolution; abstract versus representational art (Thomas Mann, Neue Sachlichkeit); the Bauhaus and mass housing; montage in film and literature (Sergei Eisenstein, Walter Benjamin); the political theater (Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator), and the optics of the modern metropolis (Walter Ruttmann, Alfred Döblin). Two 90-minute seminars. Staff GER 314 - Topics in the History and Theory of the Media Spring LA What defines life? And where do we locate the boundary between its proper and improper instances, between the natural and the monstrous? First emerging in the early 19th century, the prospects of artificial life continue to provoke both exhilaration and anxiety today. By examining works of philosophy, literature and film over a historical period ranging from early Romanticism to contemporary nanoculture, this seminar explores humanity's desire to become like the gods, fashioning species, companions, and slaves at will, even as these creations menace us through their intractability and threaten to take on an uncanny life of their own. N. Wegmann GER 320 - Masterworks of European Literature: The Romantic Quest (also COM 320) Not offered this year LA Works central to the tradition of modern European literature, including Goethe's Faust, Byron's Don Juan, Flaubert's Sentimental Education, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and Mann's Doctor Faustus. Each work treats the quest for greatness; each will be examined as to its form and place in the history of ideas. Two 90-minute seminars. Staff GER 321 - Topics in German Medieval Literature (also GSS 321/MED 321) Spring CDLA Exploration of German medieval literature. Topics may include medieval German Arthurian literature and the relationship between gender and power in the medieval epics. S. Poor GER 323 - Fairy Tales: The Brothers Grimm and Beyond Not offered this year LA What do fairy tales do? More than children's entertainment, they instruct, amuse, warn, initiate, and enlighten. Throughout history, they have functioned to humanize and conquer the bestial and barbaric forces that terrorize us. They have also disguised social anxieties about gender and sex. The history and social function of fairy tales will be explored in the context of Germany in the 18th-20th centuries. Texts include selections from the Grimms' Marchen, as well as from the literature of the Romantic, Weimar, and postwar periods. Prerequisite: 107. Two 90-minute seminars. S. Poor GER 324 - Topics in Germanic Literatures Fall/Spring LA Critical investigation of German language literature from 800 to present. Topics may include medieval German Arthurian literature, the Austrian literary avant-garde, love stories, as well as focused studies of selected authors. Two 90-minute Seminars. J. Vogl GER 325 - Nietzsche and Modern European Literature Not offered this year LA The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as an important progenitor of the European modernist culture that arose in the period of urban capitalist modernity, roughly 1870-1930. Particular emphasis will be placed on a series of textual encounters between Nietzsche and such authors as Gide, Mann, Lawrence, Rilke, Yeats, Musil, and Malraux; their readings and rewritings of Nietzsche lent decisive impulses to the formal and thematic concerns of modernism. Two 90-minute seminars. M. Jennings GER 332 - The Cultural Theory of the Frankfurt School Not offered this year EC An examination of the work of the Frankfurt School of critical social theory on questions of modern culture. The course will focus on the textual debates among Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, and Siegfried Kracauer on the complex relationship of aesthetics and politics. These often polemical socio-philosophical texts attempt to map a contemporary cultural landscape reconfigured by the "culture industry," transformations in perception, the emergence of the mass, and new technologies of reproduction such as radio, cinema, and television. One three-hour seminar. Staff GER 340 - German Literature in the Age of Revolution Not offered this year LA The major works of the classical period in German literature. Texts by Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, and Kleist in relation to European historical, social, and philosophical change. Two 90-minute seminars. N. Wegmann GER 362 - Contemporary German Literature Not offered this year LA An introduction to the poetry, drama, and prose of postwar Germany in the East and West. Emphasis on the political and social context of the major literary works from the '50s to the present. Two 90-minute seminars. Staff GER 370 - Weimar Germany: Painting, Photography, Film (also ART 331/ECS 370) Not offered this year LA The visual arts in Germany during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Works of art, cinema, and literature in historical context. Topics include: modernism and modernity; Expressionism, Dada, New Objectivity in painting, photography, cinema, and literature; historical conditions of bodily experience and visual perception; emergence of new artistic and technological media; expansion of mass culture; place of politics in art; experience and representation of metropolitan life; changes in the conceptualization and representation of individuality, collectivity, embodiment, race, class, gender, sexuality. Two 90-minute seminars, one film screening. B. Doherty GER 371 - Art in Germany Since 1960 (also ART 391) Not offered this year LA The production and reception of art in the Federal Republic of Germany from c. 1960 to now, situating episodes in the history of painting, sculpture, and photography in relation to developments in literature and cinema. Topics include the problem of coming to terms with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung); the West German economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) and the functions and meanings of art in consumer society; violence, politics, and representation; abstraction and figuration in painting, sculpture, and photography; history, memory, and artistic tradition; art as a vehicle of socio-political critique. Two 90-minute classes. B. Doherty GER 373 - Modernist Photography and Literature (also ART 377) Not offered this year LA Exemplary encounters between photography and literature in the 20th century. After providing students with a basis in the theory of photography, the course focuses on intersections between literary and photographic forms, producers, and movements. Topics will include modernism in New York (Williams, Strand, and Sheeler) and Mexico City (Lawrence, Bravo, Weston, Modotti), the New Photography and the photo essay in Germany (Benjamin, Moholy-Nagy, Renger-Patzsch, Sander), social criticism (Evans and Agee), surrealism (Breton), and the American road (Kerouac and Frank). Two 90-minute seminars. Staff ART 337 - Court, Cloister, and City: Art and Architecture in Central and Eastern Europe (also GER 337) Not offered this year LA Painting, sculpture, and architecture in Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, and Russia, ca. 1450-1800. Special emphasis is placed on the changing roles of court, city, cloister, and aristocracy and the relation of local styles to international trends, including art elsewhere in Europe. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. Offered in alternate years. One three-hour seminar. T. Kaufmann COM 349 - Texts and Images of the Holocaust (also ECS 349/GER 349/JDS 349) Not offered this year EM In an effort to encompass the variety of responses to what is arguably the most traumatic event of modern Western experience, the Holocaust is explored as transmitted through documents, testimony, memoirs, creative writing, historiography, and cinema. In this study of works, reflecting diverse languages, cultures, genres, and points of view, the course focuses on issues of bearing witness, collective vs. individual memory, and the nature of radical evil. One three-hour seminar, plus weekly film showings. Staff
