Course:

GER 201  Intermediate German I

Professor:

Franz Kempf 

CRN:

15990

Schedule/Location:

Mon Tue  Thurs  10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Olin Languages Center 120

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 18

For students who have completed one year of college German (or the equivalent). The course is designed to increase students’ fluency in speaking, reading, and writing, and to add 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 texts from the German literary and cultural tradition, including the film script of the cinematic classic Der blaue Engel. Review and expansion of grammar. Please consult with the instructor if you are unsure about your proficiency level.

 

Course:

GER 214  What Makes Us Think? Hannah Arendt, Critical Judgment and Moments of Crisis

Professor:

Thomas Bartscherer

CRN:

15957

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed    6:40 PM – 8:00 PM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value    

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 20

Crosslists: Human Rights; Literature

What makes us think? And why does that question matter? Our starting point, in exploring these questions, will be Hannah Arendt’s last book project, The Life of the Mind, in which she asks whether it’s possible that the activity of thinking may condition human beings to abstain from evil-doing. She cites the case of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, whose great moral fault, she argues, was thoughtlessness. We’ll read her book on the Eichmann trial (Eichmann in Jerusalem) and follow how in The Life of the Mind and related texts she tries to discern what makes us think, and what thinking has to do with ethical, political and aesthetic judgments. We will also read some of Arendt’s predecessors and interlocutors, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Kafka, Brecht, and Heidegger, and we will look at some recent scholarship on thinking. All readings will be in English. Throughout the semester, we’ll also be considering our contemporary moment, looking for and analyzing specific phenomenon—arising in politics, the arts, and everyday life—that make us think. Arendt argues that the activity of thinking may prevent catastrophes in moments of crisis. We shall see what we think about that.  Taught in English.

 

Course:

GER 325  German Theater between Moral Institution and Post Pandemic Performances

Professor:

Stephanie Kufner  

CRN:

15530

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Olin Languages Center 118

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 15

This course examines German theater with a focus on the 20th and 21st century from Expressionism to contemporary, post-dramatic forms of performances to a post-pandemic world of innovative theater productions. After an overview of pivotal moments in the history and poetics of German theater (Lessing, Schiller, Hauptmann), students will engage in analyzing specific developments in modern and contemporary theater. Among others, we will explore the new aesthetics of expressionist theater, Bertolt Brecht’s development of the Epic Theater before and during World War II, post-war efforts to stage Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past” of the Third Reich and the Holocaust), and the voicing of contemporary and multicultural experiences in re-unified, pre- and post-pandemic Germany – particularly the latter calling into question the traditional role of the institution theater in Germany today. Readings include full texts or excerpts from: Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening (1895/1906); Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children (1939); Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside (1947); Peter Weiss, The Investigation (1965); Nurkan Erpulat/Jens Hillje, Verrücktes Blut (2010/2015); Oliver Frljić, Alles unter Kontrolle (2021); Sibylle Berg, Und sicher ist mir die Welt entschwunden (2021). (A Reader with a collection of traditional as well as contemporary poetics of theater and theater reviews will be provided). Viewing and analysis of videotaped productions on 4 M of the semester will be a mandatory part of the class. Conducted in German.

 

Course:

GER 467  Correspondences: Figures of Writing

Professor:

Thomas Wild  

CRN:

15531

Schedule/Location:

Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Hegeman 300

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 15

“One alone is always wrong; but with two involved, the truth begins,” reads an aphorism by Friedrich Nietzsche. His criticism of the isolated genius thinker also proposes an alternative mode of thinking and writing: creative collaboration. The seminar will explore several instances of such creative collaborations, e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche and Lou Andreas Salome, the latter and Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt and several poet friends of different languages, Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann, Oskar Pastior and Nobel Prize Winner Herta Müller. These intellectual relationships are also documented in letter exchanges, so that our seminar will unfold the word “correspondence” in a literal and in a figurative way. In this sense, “Correspondence” exceeds the limits of a single literary text or a letter; its dynamics translates into poems, novels, essays, or theoretical writings. As a consequence, fundamental categories such as authorship, work, intertextuality, or addressing are called into question. Our seminar will continuously reflect upon those terms based on canonical writings of modern literary criticism, including Benjamin, and (to be read in English) Genette, Barthes, Lévinas, Derrida.

 

 

Course:

HIST 184  Inventing Modernity: Commune, Renaissance, and Reformation in Western Europe, 1291-1806

Professor:

Gregory Moynahan  

CRN:

15603

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM – 9:50 AM Olin 205

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: French Studies; German  Studies; Italian Studies

 

Course:

LIT 2381  Translating Tact

Professor:

Thomas Wild  

CRN:

15935

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    5:10 PM – 6:30 PM Olin 204

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English  D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: German Studies; Human Rights; Written Arts

 

Course:

LIT 287  The Ring of the Nibelung

Professor:

Franz Kempf  

CRN:

15716

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM – 9:50 AM Olin 204

Wed     12:00 PM – 4:30 PM Campus Center Weis

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap 16

Crosslists: German Studies

 

Course:

PHIL 238  Philosophy and Literature

Professor:

Ruth Zisman  

CRN:

15628

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin 304

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

Credits: 4

Crosslists: German Studies

 

Class cap: 18