Intermediate German II

 

Professor:

Thomas Wild

 

Course Number:

GER 202

CRN Number:

10139

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue Wed Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 307

 

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

For students who have completed three semesters of college German (or the equivalent). The course is designed to deepen the proficiency gained in the German Intensive and the January program in Berlin 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. We will read a contemporary novel supplemented by audiovisual materials. Please consult with the instructor if you are unsure about your proficiency level.

 

Literature Between Languages

 

Professor:

Thomas Wild

 

Course Number:

GER 326

CRN Number:

10140

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin 308

 

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit D+J Difference and Justice

Is it possible to become a published poet in a language that is not your mother tongue? It absolutely is! Prominent examples for this phenomenon from a global literature written in English include Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad, and Nuruddin Farah. Some of the finest literary writings in German too over the past decades are by authors whose first language is not German. Migration and exile are the most common but not the only reasons why an author may begin to work in another language. Their multilingual practices create a poetically as well as politically fascinating tension to the so-called “monolingual paradigm” which forms the core of the powerful concept of “national literature”.  In this course, we will explore poems, prose, and essays of contemporary writers who live and work between German and other languages. Among them will be Japanese-born Yoko Tawada, Turkish-born Emine Oezdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu, Israeli-born Tomer Gardi, and Ukrainian-born Katja Petrowskaja. Related to their practice of challenging the monolingual paradigm of traditional ‘Nationalliteratur’ are works by writers who programmatically destabilized their German by opening it up to other languages – a tradition we will discuss through writings, e.g., by Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, and Ilse Aichinger. Critical writings on transnational and multilingual literature, such as Yasemin Yildiz’ pivotal book “Beyond the Mother Tongue”, will accompany our reflections.

 

Dreaming the 20th Century

 

Professor:

Jana Schmidt

 

Course Number:

GER 409

CRN Number:

10141

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 302

 

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Dreams contain the utopian possibilities of the future, says the German philosopher of hope Ernst Bloch. But what is a dream? And if dreams harbor something like a reservoir of the “otherwise possible” then what does it mean to pull them from the recesses of sleep into the bright light of representation? In this course we will look at different forms of dream narratives—protocol, diary, fragment, short story—to think about the connection between dreams and utopias, historical truth and fiction, prophecy and nightmare. A vital component of the course will be an experiment in dream collecting as a mode of historical-imaginative writing. Starting with Sigmund Freud’s Traumdeutung (1900) and his notion of the unconscious, we will explore dream narratives in fictions around the beginning of the century and in the art movement known as Dada. Our reading will then take us to the experience of totalitarianism with Charlotte Beradt’s collection of anxiety dreams in the 1930s. Moving toward mid-century, we will discuss practices of dream sharing, the possibilities of using dreams as historical documents, and the dream’s import for mid-century political thought. Readings may include Wieland Herzfelde, Paula Ludwig, Walter Benjamin, Barbara Hahn, and Otto Dov Kulka. This course is taught in German.

 

Cross-listed Courses:

 

The Courage to Be: Courage in the Universities

 

Professor:

Maxim Botstein

 

Course Number:

CC 108 C

CRN Number:

10120

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 303

 

Distributional Area:

HA MBV Historical Analysis Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: German Studies; Philosophy

 

A Haunted Union: Germany and the Unifications of Europe

 

Professor:

Gregory Moynahan

 

Course Number:

HIST 141

CRN Number:

10206

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 201

 

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: German Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

 

Axe Novels: Intro to German Modernism

 

Professor:

Jana Schmidt

 

Course Number:

LIT 266

CRN Number:

10336

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Henderson Comp. Center 106

 

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English  

 

Crosslists: German Studies

 

Nietzsche on Art and Music

 

Professor:

Thomas Bartscherer

 

Course Number:

LIT 290

CRN Number:

10337

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin Languages Center 115

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: German Studies; Music

 

Literature and Language of Music: Medieval and Renaissance

 

Professor:

Renee Louprette

 

Course Number:

MUS 264

CRN Number:

10484

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 104

 

Distributional Area:

AA Analysis of Art

 

Crosslists: German Studies

 

Life and Death in Mahler and Freud's Vienna

 

Professor:

Christopher Gibbs

 

Course Number:

MUS 324

CRN Number:

10475

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon       3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Blum Music Center N210

 

Distributional Area:

AA Analysis of Art  

 

Crosslists: German Studies