The German Immersion program will be offered in the Spring 2010 semester, therefore Basic German (101-102) will not be offered in the fall of 2009. Students interested in the Immersion course should contact Professor Kempf early in the fall semester.

German Immersion: Intensive study (12 credits) of a foreign language helps to create a highly effective and exciting learning environment for those who wish to achieve a high degree of proficiency in the shortest possible time. German immersion is designed to enable students with little or no previous experience in German to complete two years of college German within five months (spring semester at Bard, plus June in Germany for 4 additional credits). To achieve this goal, students take fifteen class hours per week during the semester at Bard, and twenty hours per week during June at Collegium Palatinum, the German language institute of Schiller International University in Heidelberg. Each participant will be able to enroll concurrently in one other course at Bard. This will allow the student to pursue a more balanced study program or to fulfill certain requirements (e.g., First Year Seminar).

99009

GER / LIT 199 Kafka: Prague, Politics and the Fin-de Siecle

Franz Kempf

. T . Th .

10:30 - 11:50 am

OLINLC 118

FLLC

Kafka can be read as the chronicler of modern despair, of human suffering in an unidentifiable, timeless landscape. Yet he can also be read as a representative of his era, his “existential anguish” springing from the very real cultural and historical conflicts that agitated Prague at the turn of the century (e.g. anti-Semitism, contemporary theories of sexuality). The course will cover Kafka’s shorter fiction ranging from fragments, parables and sketches to longer, complete tales (e.g. The Judgment, The Metamorphosis), as well as the novels The Trial and The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) and excerpts from his diaries and letters. Together they reveal the breath of Kafka’s literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought. Taught in English. Students with an advanced proficiency in German can read selections in the original for extra credit.

99834

GER / LIT 213 German Operas & Ideas

Franz Kempf Screening:

. T . . . . . . . F . . . . F

2:30 - 3:50 pm 10:30 - 11:50 am 1:00 – 4:00 pm

OLINLC 118 OLINLC 120 Weis Cinema

FLLC

Opera is not just about a tenor and a soprano who want to make love, and a baritone who won’t let them, but also about liberty, redemption, tyranny, injustice, humanity, decadence. Far from dismissing love as a primal force in human affairs - nor, for that matter, the sensuality and immediacy of music - this course attempts to trace German intellectual history from the Enlightenment to Modernism and beyond through the study of major operas and the literary works that spawned some of them. Operas: Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791), Beethoven’s Fidelio (1805/1814), Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821), Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (1843), Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905), Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (1925), Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera (1928), Hans Werner Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg (1960), and Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten (1965). Literary works: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz’s Die Soldaten (1776); Heinrich von Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (1821); Heinrich Heine’s Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski (1834); Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (1836). Musical expertise neither expected nor provided. Students with an advanced proficiency in German can read selections in the original for extra credit. Course taught in English. Eight obligatory Friday afternoon screenings. Extra time commitment  will be compensated for throughout the semester.

99113

GER 201 Intermediate German I

Florian Becker

M T W . .

12:00 -1:00 pm

OLINLC 118

FLLC

For students who have completed a year of college German (or equivalent). The course is designed to deepen the proficiency gained in GER 101 and 102 by increasing students’ fluency in speaking, reading, and writing, and adding significantly to their working vocabulary. Students improve their ability to express their own ideas and hone their strategies for understanding spoken and written communication. Selected 20^th-century literary texts and audivisual materials, including an unabridged comedy by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

99115

GER 201 Intermediate German I

Stephanie Kufner

. T W Th .

12:00 -1:00 pm

OLINLC 120

FLLC

See above.

99114

GER 456 Neo-Avantgarde and Student Movement in 1960s Germany

Florian Becker

M . . . . . . W . .

3:00 -4:20 pm 3:00 -4:20 pm

OLINLC 120 OLINLC 206

FLLC

An interdisciplinary examination of the aesthetic and intellectual shifts that transformed West German cultural and political life in the years leading up to the student rebellion of 1968. The aesthetic production on which we will focus creatively re-appropriated many of the strategies of the historical avant-garde (especially those of Dadaism), often in the hope to subvert the “spectacle” of consumer capitalism and to transform everyday life. We will engage closely with a variety of texts and projecs, seeking to attain a theoretically informed understanding of these now historical ambitions, and of their relation to wider processes of societal change. Topics will include: experimental poetry (“Wiener Gruppe,” Heißenbüttel, Enzensberger); theatre and anti-theatre (Handke, Weiss); “New German Cinema” (Fassbinder, Kluge); visual art (Beuys, Fluxus, Pop and Capitalist Realism); pronouncements and manifestoes of the student movement (Dutschke, Baumann, Gruppe SPUR). Theoretical essays by Adorno, Bürger, Schneider, Enzensberger, Mayer, Habermas. All readings and classroom discussion will be in German. Short seminar presentations and sustained work on writing skills.

99551

HIST 184 Inventing Modernity: Peasant Commune, Renaissance and Reformation in the German and Italian Worlds, 1291-1806

Gregory Moynahan

M . W . .

3:00 -4:20 pm

OLINLC 208

HIST

Cross-listed: German Studies, Italian Studies, STS Using as its starting point Jacob Burckhardt's classic account The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, this course will examine the role of the drastic upheavals of the early modern period in defining the origins of such modern institutions as capitalism, political individuality, religious freedom, democracy, and the modern military. The geographic focus will be the towns, cities, and peasant communes of the Italian and German speaking regions of Europe, particularly the Italian peninsula, Holy Roman Empire, and Switzerland.  Two apparently opposed developments will be at the center of our approach: first, the role of the autonomous peasant commune, particularly in Switzerland, as a model and spur for political forms such as democracy and anarchism; second, the development of modern capitalism and technology as they came to impinge on the traditional feudal and communal orders. The course will also address the historiography and politics -surrounding the "invention" of the Renaissance in the late nineteenth century, looking particularly at Burckhardt's relation with Ranke, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

99470

PS 225 West European Politics and Society

Elaine Thomas

. T . Th .

2:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 301

SSCI

Cross-listed: French Studies, German Studies, GIS, Human Rights, Social Policy This course will be of especially great interest not only for those concerned about contemporary Europe, but also for those concerned about globalization, democratic political reform, acceptance of cultural diversity, developments in social policy, or the viability of socialism. Western Europe has been a key arena for some of the most remarkable late-20^th and early-21^st-century ventures and experiments in each of these areas. We will look at what brought these experiments into being, their relative historical success, and how they have fared in the face of new global and international challenges. Focusing on Britain, France and Germany, the course examines the often dramatic transformation of Western European political life from the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and World War II in the 1930s and 1940s to our contemporary period, including the present day conflicts and challenges facing the region.  We will be especially concerned with the future prospects of European welfare states which, in contrast to the United States, provide most or all citizens benefits like free health care, childcare, and even free university education. We will also trace the influence of the Greens and other radical or unconventional parties; political leaders’ often troubled efforts to develop a ‘European Union’ conducive to peace, prosperity and human rights; and changing responses to immigration, particularly from the Muslim world.  The course will draw on both a range of readings and selected European films. This course addresses issues of social class, globalization, nationalism, and social justice and therefore fulfills the Rethinking Difference requirement.