GER 101 | BASIC GERMAN I | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
GER 101 is the first quarter of the first-year college German sequence. It introduces the students to the study of language and culture of German speaking countries. The course focuses on the development of all four critical language skills--listening, reading, writing and speaking--while also introducing aspects of German-speaking societies that differ from American society. In-class work will be devoted primarily to communication activities, so that students will be able to utilize the structures and vocabulary you learn to express themself meaningfully and to function in a German-speaking setting. To maximize each student's engagement with the language, students will be talking and listening to each other as much as to the instructor. At the end of the three-course sequence, students will be in command of the basic elements of German language and culture, and should be able to function with relative ease in German-speaking countries. Students will be able to comprehend and engage in basic conversations, write clearly and effectively in German, and read simple but genuine texts.
GER 101S | BASIC GERMAN I FOR SUMMER | 6 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
(Covers the equivalent of the GER 101 and the first half of GER 102.) The first half of beginning German. The basic elements of the German language, spoken as well as written, with due regard to the cultural context of German expression.
GER 102 | BASIC GERMAN II | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
GER 102 is the second quarter of the first-year college German sequence. It continues to introduce the students to the study of language and culture of German speaking countries. The course focuses on the development of all four critical language skills--listening, reading, writing and speaking--while also introducing aspects of German-speaking societies that differ from American society. In-class work will be devoted primarily to communication activities, so that students will be able to utilize the structures and vocabulary to express themselves meaningfully and to function in a German-speaking setting. To maximize each student's engagement with the language, students will be talking and listening to each other as much as to the instructor. At the end of the three-course sequence, students will be in command of the basic elements of German language and culture, and should be able to function with relative ease in German-speaking countries. Students will be able to comprehend and engage in basic conversations, write clearly and effectively in German, and read simple but genuine texts.
GER 103 | BASIC GERMAN III | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
GER 103 is the third quarter of the first-year college German sequence. It continues to introduce the students to the study of language and culture of German speaking countries. The course focuses on the development of all four critical language skills--listening, reading, writing and speaking--while also introducing aspects of German-speaking societies that differ from American society. In-class work will be devoted primarily to communication activities, so that students will be able to utilize the structures and vocabulary to express themselves meaningfully and to function in a German-speaking setting. To maximize each student's engagement with the language, students will be talking and listening to each other as much as to the instructor. At the end of the three-course sequence, students will be in command of the basic elements of German language and culture, and should be able to function with relative ease in German-speaking countries. Students will be able to comprehend and engage in basic conversations, write clearly and effectively in German, and read simple but genuine texts.
GER 103S | BASIC GERMAN II FOR SUMMER | 6 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
(Covers the equivalent of the second half of GER 102 and all of GER 103.) The second half of beginning German. Further work on the basic elements of the German language, spoken as well as written, with due regard to the cultural context of German expression.
GER 104 | INTERMEDIATE GERMAN I | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is the first quarter of second-year college German, and emphasizes language as communication in real-life situations and as a means to immerse ourselves in the cultures of German-speaking countries. Though students will review and perfect their knowledge of German grammar throughout the year, they will focus on the perfection of the four language skills reading, writing, listening and speaking. Students will have ample opportunities to express themselves in German, acquire basic discussion strategies, and gain insight into many aspects of the contemporary cultures and societies of German-speaking countries. GER 103 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 105 | INTERMEDIATE GERMAN II | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is the second quarter of second-year college German, and emphasizes language as communication in real-life situations and as a means to immerse ourselves in the cultures of German-speaking countries. Though students will review and perfect their knowledge of German grammar throughout the year, they will focus on the perfection of the four language skills reading, writing, listening and speaking. Students will have ample opportunities to express themselves in German, acquire basic discussion strategies, and gain insight into many aspects of the contemporary cultures and societies of German-speaking countries. GER 104 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 106 | INTERMEDIATE GERMAN III | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This video-based course is designed to develop and expand skills in German and explore ideas, cultural topics and themes from the German-speaking world. Course activities will include: learning from authentic video clips and films; visiting (in textbook and video) various cities and regions in the German-speaking world, exploring the variety and the similarities; practicing skills in German by discussing cultural issues and authentic readings; interpreting graphics and charts on topics of German culture; structured listening and writing practice; reading literary and nonliterary texts of increasing difficulty; summarizing verbally and in writing what is read, heard, and learned; writing compositions and short texts of various types; researching a topic; preparing and presenting results to the class (oral and written). GER 105 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 130 | MOLILSAP STUDY ABROAD | 2 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is specially designed to complement the Modern Language Introductory Languages Study Abroad programs, linked to the third quarter of the first year language program. The course will be taught abroad.
GER 197 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
See schedule for current offerings.
GER 198 | STUDY ABROAD | 1-8 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Variable credit.
GER 199 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | 0.5-4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Variable credit.
GER 201 | ADVANCED GERMAN I: COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PAST | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The third year of German focuses on four primary linguistic skills: comprehension, reading, writing and speaking. Development in each of these areas is achieved through the introduction, consideration, and analysis of longer German stories, increasingly complex discussions of said texts, and the review, and hopefully ultimate mastery, of various vocabularies and advanced-level grammar. Ample time will be devoted to speaking and developing oral proficiency in class as well. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 202 | ADVANCED GERMAN II: READING THE FOREIGN/FOREIGN READING | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The third year of German continues strengthening four primary linguistic skills: comprehension, reading, writing and speaking. The main goal is to achieve oral proficiency. Ample time will be devoted to speaking and developing oral proficiency in class as well. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 203 | ADVANCED GERMAN III: THE UNCANNY AND THE SELF | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The third year of German continues strengthening four primary linguistic skills: comprehension, reading, writing and speaking. The main goal is oral proficiency. Ample time will be devoted to speaking and developing oral proficiency in class as well. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 272E | WORKING THROUGH THE PAST: MEMORY AND MEMORIAL IN GERMANY AND THE U.S. | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. How does a shattered nation come to terms with its past? Recent events in the U.S. have revealed the depth of our societal divides, especially in the debate over memory and memorials. But these are not uniquely American questions: other places have navigated a reckoning with their own traumatic pasts. Philosopher Susan Neiman, author of "Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil," calls Germany's relationship to its history "grown up." The German project of "coming to terms with the past": that is, the decades-long process of confronting its record of Nazism and working through the trauma of the Holocaust reflects this "grown up" relationship to history, one that integrates the question of guilt and responsibility into the national story. This process, while always unfinished, has helped Germany reshape its identity to become what it is today: a harbor for refugees, a global leader in green energy, and a model social welfare and educational system. In this course, we'll learn about Germany's process of coming to terms with the past: what it consists of, how it was initiated, and how it informs Germans' self-understanding today and ask, how can a country acknowledge its guilt while also building its future? How do individual Germans incorporate the idea of collective guilt into their understanding of themselves? What kinds of people and events has Germany chosen to remember in monuments and memorials? And what kind of work remains to be done in Germany in relation to its history? In short: what can we learn from the Germans about coming to terms with the American past? Note to German students: this course is taught in English and does not replicate the content of GER 201.
GER 274E | REVOLUTION ON THE STAGE: BERLIN, EPIC THEATER, AND THE 20TH CENTURY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, the revolutionary Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht was witness to the crises that defined his age: the First and Second World Wars, the postwar division of Germany into East and West, and more personally, his own exile in the U.S. during the Nazi regime. Brecht criticized the changing face of Europe and the world in his writing, and his ideas about war and pacifism, capitalism, religion, fascism, inequality, and exile feel remarkably relevant today. In this course, we'll think about those ideas as we learn about Brecht's radical transformation of the stage, manifested in the theory of Epic Theater and the "Alienation/Estrangement Effect:" two concepts that promoted critical distance and political awareness in the theater instead of the traditional focus on identification and catharsis. Berlin was highly progressive and experimental in the "Golden Twenties," and we'll also discuss the artistic, political, and social milieu there that informed Brecht's activist art: his work is characterized by collaborations with artists and musicians, and many of his plays feature musical pieces informed by jazz and the cabaret. We'll consider Brecht in exile, too, and think about the ways that his experiences as a displaced person shaped his writing and relate to current discussions about borders and belonging. Finally, we'll explore the question of Brecht's continued relevance and why his ideas still resonate with contemporary audiences. To that end, this course will include viewings and excursions, including visits to theaters and concert venues for live performances when possible.
GER 275 | EXORCISM, MESMERISM, PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE GERMAN UNCONSCIOUS MIND | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is taught in English. Using the wrong word while speaking or writing, jokes, free association, dreams, listening to regressed patients 'on the couch,' all of which are deeply rooted in specific cultural times and places: these are the traditional means for exposing and learning about the workings of the unconscious mind, considered by Freudian psychoanalysis to be the repository of instinctually driven thoughts, fantasies, and inclinations that put individual people in conflict with societal expectations. This course examines closely those means and the conclusions drawn from them by Sigmund Freud and his followers. The course also gives consideration to the work of two important early but unwitting experimentations with the unconscious: demonic exorcism as practiced by German priest Johann Joseph Gassner and 'magnetic sleep' (now seen as a precursor to hypnosis) as practiced by Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer. This appraisal will allow us to debate the thesis of whether an engagement with the unconscious mind results in new or re-conceptualizations of the individual by societal institutions such as the church and mainstream medicine, so that the formerly chronically ill are by turns seen to be possessed, in need of redistribution of 'magnetic fluid,' neurotic, hysteric, or simply understood to be children within adults. We conclude by reviewing the psychoanalytic tool and human faculty of Einfuhlung, or empathy, which, rather than just meaning feeling sorry for another person, is used clinically to perceive through feeling and sensation what another person feels without necessarily having had even remotely similar experiences. Freud borrowed this idea from Romantic-era theories and methods for translating literature.
GER 276E | GREEN GERMANY: NATURE AND THE GERMAN MIND | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. For decades, Germany has been considered an environmental trailblazer: it's a leader in developing sustainable and renewable energies; politically, its Green Party is ascendant, with real representation in the German parliament; and as of 2019, half of Germany's energy came from renewable sources. In many ways, green technologies are affordable options for individual consumers around the world because of the investments made by Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s. How has Germany managed to create an energy policy that other countries, including the U.S., have failed to attain? This course attempts to answer this question by first considering the German relationship to nature and how it changed over time: from the earliest Germanic tribes and their ancient nature worship; to the German Romantics and their conception of nature as something overpowering and sublime; to Nazi Germany, where nature became associated with ideas of race and belonging; and finally, to today's German brand of environmentalism, which perceives nature as an endangered thing to be conserved and protected. We'll look at these phases through the perspective of thinkers and scientists who influenced the place of science in the world, including Alexander von Humboldt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Albert Einstein. This will give us an idea of the cultural context from which Germany approaches nature and the environment today, so that we can understand why it has been compelled to move toward a more sustainable future. Finally, we'll connect these ideas to real-life experiences: we'll speak and meet with representatives from "green" German companies here in Chicago in order to better understand the science and technology behind "Green Germany" now.
GER 277E | COFFEEHOUSES AND CULTURE IN TURN OF THE CENTURY VIENNA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. Vienna around 1900 was the setting for major innovations in the arts, literature, sciences, and philosophy, and the developments that emerged from this time and place shaped 20th century thought and culture. Central to the rich intellectual life in turn of the century Vienna was the Viennese coffeehouse, a place that encouraged the exchange of ideas and served as a spatial extension of the private sphere. Using the coffeehouse as a kind of experiential environment, this course will look at the ideas that emerged from the cafe interiors of Vienna 1900: Freud's theories of the unconscious, dreams, and (female) hysteria; the artworks of Gustav Klimt and the Viennese Secessionists; the "Young Vienna" literary circle; the new musical language of Arnold Schoenberg; and the radicalism of modernist architecture. Further, we'll discuss spatial and sociological theories of coffeehouse culture and consider the function that coffeehouses serve today in Vienna and in Chicago, too. This course includes several excursions which may vary from quarter to quarter depending on public health measures (to the Metropolis coffeehouse for a coffee tasting and roasterie tour, the Art Institute, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Lyric Opera).
GER 278E | MAKING GRIMMS' FAIRY TALES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. Fairy tales spark our imaginations and inspire great artists in a variety of mediums from around the world, whether in commercial format like Disney or in illustrations that speak to sides of human nature that can make us uncomfortable. Of these tales, Grimms' Children's and Household Tales (known to us today as "Grimms' Fairy Tales") are some of the most powerful for how they use predictable narrative outcomes to give space to conflicts of power, gender, generational difference, and class. This course takes on all these issues while reading in English translation all 156 tales in the original edition of the fairytale collection. People who think they know these stories are in for a wild ride (for starters, they were originally never intended for children) as we peel back the layers of meaning in the tales and consider how and why the Grimm Brothers turned the stories they collected into now-familiar fairy tales: a process which may have originated in dedication to German nature and nation, but has been seen by some as a harbinger of Nazi fascism.
GER 279E | KAFKA AND THE KAFKAESQUE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. In this course, we'll start by considering Franz Kafka's identity as an outsider many times over - starting with his Jewish, German-speaking background in turn of the century Prague - and how this fundamental "otherness" intruded upon his life and writing alike. We'll also discuss Kafka's influences both small and large: his relentless, tortured relationship with his father; his inability to commit to a romantic partner; illness and his conception of his body; and finally, his work as a lawyer at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute of the Kingdom of Bohemia, a 14-year position that shaped his understanding of opaque bureaucratic systems and the impotence of the individual to penetrate them. Further, we'll consider what's meant by the word "Kafkaesque," a concept that describes both the hopelessness of existence in the modern world of bureaucracy, but also calls to mind the absurd, the dreamlike, and the hilariously funny. We won't just focus on writings by Kafka, either: we'll also look at how his alien condition influenced writers and filmmakers from all parts of the world, such as the German writer Daniel Kehlmann and the filmmakers David Lynch and Martin Scorsese, among others.
GER 297 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
See schedule for current offerings.
GER 298 | STUDY ABROAD | 1-8 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Variable credit.
GER 299 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | 0.5-8 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Variable credit.
GER 301 | ORIGINS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE TO 1600 | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The modern understanding of the German nation has its origins in a number of tribes that emerged from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany before the Common Era. This course will trace the development of "Germany" ( a term that was not commonly used until the 1500s) in the Medieval period and into the 16th century, when Martin Luther and his 95 Theses initiated the movement that would later be known as the Protestant Reformation. In the exploration of this history, and of the evolution of the German language, students will read representative works of literature which will question the category of literature altogether. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 302 | PLAY, PERSONALITY, AND POLITICS IN SCHILLER'S LETTERS ON ART | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Dramatist, playwright, and critic Friedrich Schiller used publicly published letters to experiment with and articulate his understanding of the value and function of art in the ordinary lives of human beings. His minute examination led him to grand claims that range widely beyond art in the narrow sense. This course traces three of them while reading the entirety of the letters and considering the impact of the medium he used in his thinking--letters ostensibly written to one person but made available to a wider public. In so doing we'll investigate the claim that play, personality, and politics result in and extend from a type of coherence that has its origin in early life. Schiller writes that human beings only play when being human "in the fullest sense of the word," a statement which points us toward the role of art as a process of amplification, or something that "makes full." GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 304 | WORD-SCRIPT-STAGE-WORLD: DAS THEATER | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the outstanding dramas written in German speaking countries during the last half century. Students will explore dramas that ignited hot public debates on account of their weighty topics, science and ethics, or science as power, more precisely, political power: "What do scientific discoverers do when they feel responsibility towards the world?" Towards the end of the 20th century, and with the rise of critical feminist thought, the fierce satirical drama of the Nobel Prize winning Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek on science, and the power games of gender garners attention. Her work and those of other artists will be explored. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 305 | COMPOSING REALITY: WRITING IN GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Topics include: prose from 1600 to Goethe; from the Romantic to the Realistic periods; prose of the 20th century. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 306 | THE NOVELLE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
From Goethe to Grass. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 307 | FROM SOUND TO STRUCTURE: GERMAN POETRY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Instead of treating poems as potentially boring puzzles that can only be solved with some piece of arcane knowledge not available to average people, this course approaches the history of poems written in German by focusing on the various tools available to poets. What if sound (the sound of individual words but also the cumulative sound, including tone, which words make when put in a certain order) were more important than meaning or expression? What if lines, rather than sentences, made for a more reliable unit of composition? What if metaphor and simile actually created relationships between different things rather that those relationships existing prior to the poem? Students will be expected to experiment with these techniques themselves, and we will use our focus on those techniques as a constant that takes us through the periods comprising literary history in German-speaking countries. The variety of these periods, taken together, should serve to keep the subject matter lively. Even if the materials sacrifice depth for breadth, the course will reserve time for such luminaries as the Minnesingers, Holderlin, Goethe & Schiller, Trakl, Rilke, Brecht, Bachmann, and others, while touching on occasional oddballs like Heinz Herbeck and contemporaries such as Monika Rinck and Nora Gomringer. The aims of this course are to be better able to experience poems rather than decode them, and to situate them in their literary classification.
GER 308 | GOETHE AND HIS ERA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course explores one of the great, canonical works of German literature, Goethe's peculiar and provocative interpretation of the legendary figure of Dr. Faustus. By spending an entire quarter with this one text, students have time to gain a thorough appreciation for its depth, complexity, and poetic excellence. Classroom discussions will focus in part on a close reading of the text in its various dimensions: characterization, motivation, plot-structure and plot-development, poetic form (meter and rhyme), and poetic imagery (metaphors, similes, etc.). Students will also examine the philosophical questions raised by Faust and Mephisto's rich and probing dialogues and also consider the larger cultural and historical significance of Goethe's Faust. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 311 | BREAKING NEWS IN THE GERMAN-SPEAKING WORLD | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course examines the many facets of contemporary Germany and Austria via five focused two week units: Politics; Business and the Environment; Film and Culture; Literature; and Communication/Social Media. We'll engage with several German-language media (internet, television, film, print) to understand the happenings of the German-speaking world in the present day. Moreover, the course includes several outings and/or events that will expose us to German-related happenings in Chicago. These will generate further, comparative discussions about representations of contemporary Germany and Austria in the U.S. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 312 | GERMAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is designed to introduce the student to some of the most powerful and influential German thinkers in Western civilization of the 19th and 20th century, whose names are synonymous with revolutionary thinking, and whose philosophies have deeply shaped the Weltanschauung of 20th century man. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 313 | TURN OF THE CENTURY VIENNA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
A world center of modern art and thought: Freud, Wittgenstein, Klimt, Kokoschka, Kafka, Shoenberg. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 314 | BERLIN AND THE GOLDEN TWENTIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Berlin in the 1920s was a dynamic, modern city marked by contrasts: the trauma of soldiers returning from the First World War and the decadence of the future-forward metropolis; an ever-growing tension between liberalism and an increasingly radical political right; and the emergence of the progressive Weimar Republic, which was characterized by (often violent) political turmoil and dramatic economic instability. These "Golden Twenties" also gave rise to innovations in the arts, film, theater, literature, music, philosophy, architecture, social sciences, and technology throughout Germany and Europe...and Berlin was at the center of it all. In this course, we'll learn about some of the major social movements, filmmakers, writers, artists, and musicians in this great metropolis of the early twentieth century as we consider the conflicts that plagued Germany's young democracy. We'll also discuss what led to the end of these "Golden Twenties" and the collapse of the Weimar Republic: a fragmented political left unable to overcome a conservative coalition that ultimately rallied around Adolf Hitler, thanks to the tragic miscalculation that, once in power, he could be controlled. Throughout the course, we'll also think about the meaning of 1920s Berlin for us today, as we reflect on the parallels between current events and this turbulent period of German history.
GER 315 | LITERATURE AFTER 1945 (EAST AND WEST) | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Reconstruction of German literature and coming to terms with the past: "Gruppe 47"', Grass, Boell, Enzensberger. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 317 | WOMEN WRITERS OF GERMAN EXPRESSION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Studies in literature and social issues from all periods of German, Austrian and Swiss history. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 318 | THE CONTEMPORARY GERMAN FILM | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
In this course, we'll take a look at ten German-language films released since 2010, which are diverse in both genre and theme: German comedies; indie and art house films; popular movies; period films; and dramatic films that speak to Germany's multicultural identity and the current European refugee crisis. We'll also discuss some of the most influential filmmakers working in German-language cinema today, which run the gamut from relative newcomers to established auteurs: Margarethe von Trotta, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christian Petzold, Fatih Akin, Markus Schleinzer, and Maren Ade, among others. Above all else, we'll consider the ways these works speak to German and Austrian identities, and how they reflect contemporary discussions and debates in the German-speaking world. Completion of GER 106 or equivalent is recommended.
GER 319 | MULTICULTURAL GERMANY: LITERATURE, FILM, FOOD, CULTURE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course asks students to consider how a variety of cultural products: film, literature, theater, food, etc., communicate and interpret experiences relevant to migrants in Germany, particularly in Berlin. We'll consider the migrant and refugee experience in Germany over the past several centuries, focusing on postwar-era "guest workers" and, most immediately, the influx of refugees to Germany from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq that spiked in 2015/16. By engaging with texts, films, and other cultural products created by members of these groups, students will be encouraged to think critically about representations of refugees and immigrants in media and discourse, to consider, for example, how even the contemporary labeling of refugees in Europe as a "crisis" generates a certain kind of response. The course will end with a look toward the future of multiculturalism in Germany and consider the possibility of a pan-European multicultural literature and film.
GER 320 | ADVANCED COMMERCIAL GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will approach the concept of Geschaftsdeutsch on two levels: first with an examination of Germany, Austria, the European Union, and the German industry and economy, and second, with an exploration of the German professional world (i.e. the processes involved in searching, applying, and interviewing for an internship or employment in a German speaking country). Students will practice in class through role playing, skits, writing example letters, resumes, and CVs, etc. A number of guest speakers from the German business community in Chicago are possible. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 321 | TRANSLATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The primary objective of this course is to immerse the student in the process of translation from German into English (and to a lesser extent from English into German) to successfully complete a variety of translation projects for professional, academic, artistic, or personal purposes, thus equipping the students with proficiency in translating at an advanced level. Through various translation assignments, students will be able to review German grammar, work within different registers and learn appropriate vocabulary, expand their reading and writing in German while developing a sense of responsibility for the text translated. This course will present a survey of translation theory, particularly as it relates to Germany, and probe the usefulness of technology. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 324 | ELFRIEDE JELINEK: WRITING ANGER, WRITING RESISTANCE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, has been labeled by critics as a "Nestbeschmutzerin" in her native Austria: one who befouls their own nest. Jelinek's works deal with themes as varied as feminism, capitalism, violence, the patriarchy, the environment, Austrian and American politics, the media, and above all else, power. Though Jelinek has gradually retreated into a kind of "innere Emigration" over the past three decades due to several social phobias and her targeting by Austria's political right wing in the 1990s, she remains a dominant voice on the world stage thanks to her outspokenness, the often brutal violence and vulgarity of her works, and her remarkable use of language. In his celebration of Jelinek's Nobel Prize, Dr. Sture Packalen describes her writing as a kind of action: "To employ language is for [Jelinek] a form of resistance to life and society." In this course, we'll consider several works from various points in Jelinek's career, starting in the 1970s with her feminist text "Women as Lovers," and ending with her 2017 Muppet-inspired play "On the Royal Road: the Burgher King," which satirized American politics and the election of Donald Trump. We'll also consider some of Jelinek's Austrian literary predecessors and learn about the political backdrop against which these texts were created. Throughout the quarter, we'll think about the ways that Jelinek both channels and expresses anger in her writing, and how her body of work can be seen as a form of resistance in Austria.
GER 325 | KAFKA AND THE KAFKAESQUE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
In this course, we'll start by considering Franz Kafka's identity as an outsider many times over from a Jewish, German-speaking family in turn of the century Prague and how Kafka's fundamental otherness intruded upon his life and writing alike. We'll take a look at Kafka's influences both small and large: the domestic world of the family home and the oversized role that his father occupied in it, and the larger sociocultural milieu of Prague and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Kafka lived, wrote, and carried on several long-term relationships. We'll also consider what's meant by the word kafkaesque, a concept that describes both the hopelessness of existence in the modern world of bureaucracy, but also calls to mind the absurd, the dreamlike, and the hilariously funny. Our readings will include a number of stories by Kafka, some written correspondence between Kafka and his friends, family, and romantic partners, and finally, his unfinished novel "Amerika" (also known as "The Man who Disappeared" or "The Missing Person"). But this course will not only focus on writings by Kafka we'll also look at how his alien condition influenced writers and filmmakers from all parts of the world, such as the German-language writers Jan Peter Bremer and Daniel Kehlmann, English-language writers like Philip Roth, and the filmmakers David Lynch and Woody Allen, among others. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 328 | GERMAN FILM SINCE 2010 | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
In this course, we'll take a look at ten German-language films released since 2010, which are diverse in both genre and theme: German comedies; indie and art house films; popular movies; period films; and dramatic films that speak to Germany's multicultural identity and the current European refugee crisis. We'll also discuss some of the most influential filmmakers working in German-language cinema today, which run the gamut from relative newcomers to established auteurs: Margarethe von Trotta, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christian Petzold, Fatih Akin, Markus Schleinzer, and Maren Ade, among others. Above all else, we'll consider the ways these works speak to German and Austrian identities, and how they reflect contemporary discussions and debates in the German-speaking world. Each class meeting will include a weekly film screening and associated discussion. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 329 | MEISTERWERKE OF GERMAN CINEMA | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The "German National Cinema" has changed nearly as much as the face of the German nation itself over the course of the twentieth century. Films made in the various "Germanies" in the past hundred years are a reflection of, and reaction to, the political, social, and artistic climates confronting German-speaking filmmakers. Students will investigate the motivations surrounding the production of certain historically significant films, as well as the messages that were conveyed to the contemporary audience through the cinema of the period. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 330 | COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PAST | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The theme of this course, and the subject we will engage with through our readings, discussions, films, and assignments, is one central to Germany and German-speaking countries: Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, or confronting the past or coming to terms with it (the German word implies "having overcome" the past). Our work will focus on the various ways that human beings can come to terms with the past and the potential consequences of doing and not doing so. The vocabulary that students will be expected to learn represents vocabulary used in seminars - that is, the words students will need to convert their understanding of what they have read outside of class into things they can say in a university-level classroom. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 331 | READING THE FOREIGN/FOREIGN READING | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course furthers the linguistic independence of the student by thematizing the foreign or foreignness through an encounter with specific texts, all originally written in German but whose existence is in some way indebted to something conventionally outside the German language or German culture; thus, what unites the majority of our German texts is that they have in some way been influenced by something un-German. Moreover, the student shall be charged with consciously considering, or experiencing more fully, her or his position to the language. The arena of this experiencing will primarily, but not exclusively, be the human activity of reading. Thus, students will be asked not only to consider abstractly concepts of the foreign, but also document and better understand their experience of being a foreign reader, whatever that may come to mean from one person to another. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 332 | THE UNCANNY AND THE SELF | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course will explore the themes of das Unheimliche ("The Uncanny") and how it relates to ideas of the Self. Described as "the opposite of what is familiar," das Unheimliche existed in literature long before the twentieth century, but was famously examined at length in Sigmund Freud's 1919 essay, "Das Unheimliche," and has been popularized in the modern moment via the notion of the "Uncanny Valley." Our course will consider iterations and examples of das Unheimliche in seminal Germanic literary and filmic works ranging from the late 18th to the 21st centuries and will also reflect on how such uncanny distortions of reality affect ideas and experiences of the Self. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 351 | GERMAN PHONOLOGY AND PHONETICS | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
An in-depth study of the language's sound system and intensive pronunciation practice. GER 106 or equivalent, including placement test or permission of instructor, is recommended.
GER 395 | FOREIGN LANGUAGES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM | 2 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The two credit FLAC course allows students to enrich their experience in the co-required course through added reading, writing, listening and speaking activities in German. Students must have the equivalent of 106 or higher ability in German to take this two credit component. Please contact the Department of Modern Languages if you have questions about this course or about language placement.
GER 397 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
See schedule for current offerings.
GER 398 | STUDY ABROAD | 1-8 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Variable credit.
GER 399 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | 0.5-8 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Variable credit.
GER 401 | INTRODUCTION TO GERMAN LITERATURE I: FROM ORIGINS TO 1600 | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
The modern understanding of the German nation has its origins in a number of tribes that emerged from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany before the Common Era. It was not until the reign of Charlemagne in the eighth and early ninth centuries that the process of uniting most of the Germanic provinces was completed under the Carolingian Empire, which was later to be absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire. The course will trace these developments, as well as that of "Germany" (indeed a term that was not commonly used until the 1500s) in the Medieval period and into the 16th century, when Martin Luther and his 95 Theses initiated the movement that would later be known as the Protestant Reformation. Students will read representative works of literature that explore the traditions, attitudes, and mindsets of Germanic peoples in their respective eras.
GER 402 | PLAY, PERSONALITY, AND POLITICS IN SCHILLER'S LETTERS ON ART | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Dramatist, playwright, and critic Friedrich Schiller used publicly published letters to experiment with and articulate his understanding of the value and function of art in the ordinary lives of human beings. His minute examination led him to grand claims that range widely beyond art in the narrow sense. This course traces three of them while reading the entirety of the letters and considering the impact of the medium he used in his thinking--letters ostensibly written to one person but made available to a wider public. In so doing we'll investigate the claim that play, personality, and politics result in and extend from a type of coherence that has its origin in early life. Schiller writes that human beings only play when being human "in the fullest sense of the word," a statement which points us toward the role of art as a process of amplification, or something that "makes full.
GER 404 | WORD-SCRIPT-STAGE-WORLD: DAS THEATER | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the outstanding dramas written in German speaking countries during the last half century. Students will explore dramas that ignited hot public debates on account of their weighty topics, science and ethics, or science as power, more precisely, political power: "What do scientific discoverers do when they feel responsibility towards the world?" Towards the end of the 20th century, and with the rise of critical feminist thought, the fierce satirical drama of the Nobel Prize winning Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek on science, and the power games of gender garners attention. Her works and those of other artists will be explored.
GER 405 | COMPOSING REALITY: WRITING IN GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Topics include: prose from 1600 to Goethe; from the Romantic to the Realistic periods; prose of the 20th century.
GER 406 | THE NOVELLE | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
From Goethe to Grass.
GER 407 | FROM SOUND TO STRUCTURE: GERMAN POETRY | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Topics include: from the Baroque to Holderlin; from Romanticism to the present.
GER 408 | GOETHE AND HIS ERA | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
This course explores one of the great, canonical works of German literature, Goethe's peculiar and provocative interpretation of the legendary figure of Dr. Faustus. By spending an entire quarter with this one text, students have time to gain a thorough appreciation for its depth, complexity, and poetic excellence. Classroom discussions will focus in part on a close reading of the text in its various dimensions: characterization, motivation, plot-structure and plot-development, poetic form (meter and rhyme), and poetic imagery (metaphors, similes, etc.). Students will also examine the philosophical questions raised by Faust and Mephisto's rich and probing dialogues and also consider the larger cultural and historical significance of Goethe's Faust.
GER 410 | GERMAN CIVILZATION II | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Social, intellectual and artistic developments in Germany from unification in 1871 to reunification in 1990.
GER 411 | BREAKING NEWS IN THE GERMAN-SPEAKING WORLD | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
This course examines the many facets of contemporary Germany and Austria via five focused two week units: Politics; Business and the Environment; Film and Culture; Literature; and Communication/Social Media. We'll engage with several German-language media (internet, television, film, print) to understand the happenings of the German-speaking world in the present day. Moreover, the course includes several outings and/or events that will expose us to German-related happenings in Chicago. These will generate further, comparative discussions about representations of contemporary Germany and Austria in the U.S.
GER 412 | GERMAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
This course is designed to introduce the student to some of the most powerful and influential German thinkers in Western civilization of the 19th and 20th century, whose names are synonymous with revolutionary thinking, and whose philosophies have deeply shaped the Weltanschauung of 20th century man.
GER 413 | TURN OF THE CENTURY VIENNA | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
A world center of modern art and thought: Freud, Wittgenstein, Klimt, Kokoschka, Kafka, Shoenberg.
GER 414 | BERLIN AND THE GOLDEN TWENTIES | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Berlin in the 1920s was a dynamic, modern city marked by contrasts: the trauma of soldiers returning from the First World War and the decadence of the future-forward metropolis; an ever-growing tension between liberalism and an increasingly radical political right; and the emergence of the progressive Weimar Republic, which was characterized by (often violent) political turmoil and dramatic economic instability. These "Golden Twenties" also gave rise to innovations in the arts, film, theater, literature, music, philosophy, architecture, social sciences, and technology throughout Germany and Europe...and Berlin was at the center of it all. In this course, we'll learn about some of the major social movements, filmmakers, writers, artists, and musicians in this great metropolis of the early twentieth century as we consider the conflicts that plagued Germany's young democracy. We'll also discuss what led to the end of these "Golden Twenties" and the collapse of the Weimar Republic: a fragmented political left unable to overcome a conservative coalition that ultimately rallied around Adolf Hitler, thanks to the tragic miscalculation that, once in power, he could be controlled. Throughout the course, we'll also think about the meaning of 1920s Berlin for us today, as we reflect on the parallels between current events and this turbulent period of German history.
GER 415 | LITERATURE AFTER 1945 (EAST AND WEST) | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Reconstruction of German literature and coming to terms with the past: "Gruppe 47"', Grass, Boell, Enzensberger.
GER 416 | LITERATURE OF THE WEIMAR YEARS | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Mann, Hesse, Kafka, Brecht.
GER 417 | WOMEN WRITERS OF GERMAN EXPRESSION | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Studies in literature and social issues from all periods of German, Austrian and Swiss history.
GER 419 | MULTICULTURAL GERMANY: LITERATURE, FILM AND ART | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
This course asks students to consider various literary/artistic media as ways of communicating and interpreting experiences relevant to migrants in Germany. The groups we'll explore include the Turkish and Italian guest workers ("Gastarbeiter") of the the 1950s and '60s that made West German (re-)construction possible; Afro-Germans, a long-understudied population that emerged largely from two main sources: descendants of Africans who migrated to Germany in relation to its African colonies, and to a much larger extent, the offspring born to German mothers and U.S. military fathers in centers of American occupation; and the most recent wave of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. By engaging with writings, artwork, films, and music created by members of these populations, students will be encouraged to think critically about representations of refugees and immigrants in media and discourse --to consider, for example, how even the labeling of refugees in Europe as a "crisis" generates a certain kind of response. The course will end with a look toward the future of multiculturalism in Germany and consider the possibility of a pan-European multicultural literature and film.
GER 420 | ADVANCED COMMERCIAL GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
This course will approach the concept of Geschaftsdeutsch on two levels: first with an examination of Germany, Austria, the European Union, and the German industry and economy, and second, with an exploration of the German professional world (i.e. the processes involved in searching, applying, and interviewing for an internship or employment in a German speaking country). Students will practice through role playing, skits, writing example letters, resumes, and CVs, etc. A number of guest speakers from the German business community in Chicago are possible.
GER 421 | TRANSLATION | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
The primary objective of this course is to immerse the student in the process of translation from German into English (and to a lesser extent from English into German) to successfully complete a variety of translation projects for professional, academic, artistic, or personal purposes, thus equipping the students with proficiency in translating at an advanced level. Through various translation assignments, students will be able to review German grammar, work within different registers and learn appropriate vocabulary, expand their reading and writing in German while developing a sense of responsibility for the text translated. This course will present a survey of translation theory, particularly as it relates to Germany, and probe the usefulness of technology.
GER 424 | ELFRIEDE JELINEK: WRITING ANGER, WRITING RESISTANCE | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, has been labeled by critics as a "Nestbeschmutzerin" in her native Austria: one who befouls their own nest. Jelinek's works deal with themes as varied as feminism, capitalism, violence, the patriarchy, the environment, Austrian and American politics, the media, and above all else, power. Though Jelinek has gradually retreated into a kind of "innere Emigration" over the past three decades due to several social phobias and her targeting by Austria's political right wing in the 1990s, she remains a dominant voice on the world stage thanks to her outspokenness, the often brutal violence and vulgarity of her works, and her remarkable use of language. In his celebration of Jelinek's Nobel Prize, Dr. Sture Packalen describes her writing as a kind of action: "To employ language is for [Jelinek] a form of resistance to life and society." In this course, we'll consider several works from various points in Jelinek's career, starting in the 1970s with her feminist text "Women as Lovers," and ending with her 2017 Muppet-inspired play "On the Royal Road: the Burgher King," which satirized American politics and the election of Donald Trump. We'll also consider some of Jelinek's Austrian literary predecessors and learn about the political backdrop against which these texts were created. Throughout the quarter, we'll think about the ways that Jelinek both channels and expresses anger in her writing, and how her body of work can be seen as a form of resistance in Austria.
GER 425 | KAFKA AND THE KAFKAESQUE | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
In this course, we'll start by considering Franz Kafka's identity as an outsider many times over from a Jewish, German-speaking background in turn of the century Prague and how Kafka's fundamental "otherness" intruded upon his life and writing alike. We'll also take a look at Kafka's influences both small and large: the domestic world of the family home and the oversized role that his father occupied in it, and the larger sociocultural milieu of Prague and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Kafka lived, wrote, and carried on several long-term relationships with women, none of whom he could ever bring himself to marry. We'll also consider what's meant by the word "kafkaesque," a concept that describes both the hopelessness of existence in the modern world of bureaucracy, but also calls to mind the absurd, the dreamlike, and the hilariously funny. We won't just focus on writings by Kafka, either - we'll also look at how his alien condition influenced writers and filmmakers from all parts of the world, such as the German-language writer Daniel Kehlmann, English-language writers like Philip Roth, and the filmmakers David Lynch and Woody Allen, among others. This course is taught in German.
GER 429 | MEISTERWERKE OF GERMAN CINEMA | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
The "German National Cinema" has changed nearly as much as the face of the German nation itself over the course of the twentieth century. Films made in the various "Germanies" in the past hundred years are a reflection of, and reaction to, the political, social, and artistic climates confronting German-speaking filmmakers. Students will investigate the motivations surrounding the production of certain historically significant films, as well as the messages that were conveyed to the contemporary audience through the cinema of the period.
GER 451 | GERMAN PHONOLOGY AND PHONETICS | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
An in-depth study of the language's sound system and intensive pronunciation practice. Cross listed with GER 351.
GER 496 | PRACTICUM IN GERMAN INSTRUCTION | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Supervised practice in language instruction, paired with a mentor instructor in a beginning or intermediate language course. Students observe a class, teach a lesson or lessons, assist in assessment and lesson planning, and complete individualized assignments to develop their skills as classroom language instructors. Repeatable.
GER 497 | SPECIAL TOPICS IN GERMAN | 4 quarter hours
(Graduate)
See schedule for current offerings.
GER 498 | STUDY ABROAD | 1-8 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Variable credit.
GER 499 | INDEPENDENT STUDY | 1-8 quarter hours
(Graduate)
Variable credit.