The
German Immersion program will be offered in the Spring
2014 semester, therefore Basic German (101-102) will not be offered in the fall
of 2013. Students interested in the Immersion course should contact Professor
Franz 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).
91490 |
GER 110 Transitional
German |
Stephanie Kufner |
. T W Th F |
10:30 - 11:30
am |
OLINLC 208 |
FLLC |
This
course is for students with varied backgrounds in German whose proficiency is
not yet on the level of Ger 201. While the emphasis will be on a complete
review of elementary grammar, all four language skills (speaking,
comprehension, reading, writing), as well as cultural proficiency, will be
honed. Extensive comprehension, speaking and vocabulary training exercises in
the Language Lab as well as at home will be combined with conversational
practice, reading, writing simple compositions, and the dramatization of modern
German texts. Successful completion of this accelerated course (covering 3
semesters’ worth of material) will allow students to continue with German 202
in the Spring of 2014.
Optional: additional tutorials. Class size: 20
91493 |
GER 187 The Ring of
the Nibelung |
Franz Kempf
Screenings: |
. . W . F . . . . F |
10:10 - 11:30
am 12:00 -6:00
pm |
OLINLC 118 WEIS CINEMA |
ELIT |
A study of Richard Wagner’s cycle of four immense
music dramas.
A story about “gods, dwarves (Nibelungs), giants and
humans, it has been read and performed as a manifesto for socialism, as a plea
for a Nazi-like racialism, as a study of the workings of the human psyche, as
forecast of the fate of the world and humankind, as a parable about the new industrial
society of Wagner’s time.” As we travel down the Rhine and across the rainbow
and on through the underworld, our tour-guides will be the Brothers Grimm,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, as well as the anonymous authors of the medieval epic,
the Nibelungenlied and of the Old Norse Poetic Edda. Musical expertise neither expected nor provided. Taught in English. Students with an advanced proficiency in
German are expected to read the libretti in the original. Class
size: 18 Since experiencing opera as performance is crucial, only students who commit
to the following screenings in Weis Cinema (starting at 12:30 PM) will be
permitted to enroll in this course:
F
9/13 and F 11/8 Rhinegold
(Met / Bayreuth versions): 163 / 143 minutes
F
9/20 and F 11/15 Valkyrie:
241 / 214 min
F
9/27 and F 11/22 Siegfried: 253 / 226
min
F
10/4 and F 12/6
Twilight of the Gods: 281 / 249 min
91491 |
GER 201 A Intermediate German I |
Thomas Wild |
M T . Th . |
10:30 - 11:30
am |
OLINLC 120 |
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 20th-century
literary texts and audivisual materials, including an
unabridged comedy by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Class
size: 18
91496 |
GER 220 German
Literature in Seven Dates |
Thomas Wild |
. T . Th . |
3:10 -4:30 pm |
OLINLC 120 |
FLLC |
This
course offers seven relevant access points to German literature and history
between the 18th and 21st centuries. The starting points
of these explorations will be dateable events, such as January 1774 when Goethe
establishes his literary fame after six somnambulant weeks of writing The Sorrows of Young Werther,
or November 1949 when Hannah Arendt first revisits Germany after the Second
World War. A date is the temporal center around which a singular work
crystallizes. The constellation of dates this course creates will also reflect
on pivotal (German) traditions of conceiving history itself (Nietzsche, Benjamin).
Readings further include Kant's What is
Enlightenment?, Kleist's Penthesilea, Büchner's Danton’s
Death, Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries, as well as Hungerangel by the
German Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller.
The "dated" A New History of
German Literature (2004) will furnish apposite background reading. Taught in English. Class size: 18
91928 |
GER 405 Exit
Metaphysics-Enter Sauerkraut: Nineteenth-Century German Literature |
Franz Kempf |
. T . Th . |
11:50 -1:10
pm |
OLIN 303 |
FLLC |
"Exit
Metaphysics, enter Sauerkraut" is the phrase frequently used to describe
the development of nineteenth-century German literature from
"Romanticism" to "Naturalism". The phrase also alludes to
the overwhelming experience shared by the majority of intellectuals and writers
at that time: the awareness of the loss of security that idealistic philosophy
had provided and the attempt to find new absolutes. We will investigate the
evolution and the various facets of this experience as it manifests itself in literature
through a close reading of selected works (novels, novellas, poems, and plays)
by Grillparzer, Nestroy, Grabbe,
Hebbel, Heine, Morike, Droste-Hulshoff,
Keller, Stifler, C.F. Meyer, Fontane,
Schnitzler, Wedekind, Hauptmann.
Conducted in German.
Class size: 15