German Studies exposes students to the language, literature, and culture of the German speaking areas of Central Europe. Concentrators combine intensive study of the German language with interdisciplinary studies by complementing courses from the German Studies core program with courses from other departments that deal with topics from the German cultural tradition. The quest for national identity that dominated German history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been augmented by contemporary Germany's efforts to come to terms with its past and create new ways of dealing with diversity. Our curriculum therefore looks back at the German literary, cultural, and historical tradition, examining figures from Goethe or Christa Wolf to Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, alongside the “texts” of contemporary German media, including television, film, and music. Most concentrators study abroad for one or two semesters.
*In spring 2017, Professor Jane Sokolosky will serve as concentration advisor. Professor Kristina Mendicino will return as concentration advisor in fall 2017.
Standard program for the A.B. degree
Many students elect to complete a double concentration, combining German Studies with one of the above areas, or with fields such as International Relations or Economics, Comparative Literature or History of Art and Architecture.
Knowledge of the German language is not required for declaring a concentration in German Studies. However, since language fluency is the basis for sophisticated understanding of German culture, students must meet a language requirement by the time they graduate.
Concentration Requirements
- Nine courses beyond GRMN 0400 or GRMN 0450;
- At least six of the nine courses must be at the 1000-level (or higher);
- Two of the 1000-level courses must involve writing assignments in German, and students must obtain at least a grade of B in these courses;
- At least five of the nine courses must be taken in the Department of German Studies (or four if a student spends a whole year in Germany on Study Abroad);
- Completion of a Senior Seminar (i.e. a course from the German Studies 1900 series) as part of the five courses within the Department of German Studies; and
- If a student studies abroad for one semester, as many as four courses, in the case of two semesters, as many as five courses, from study abroad may count toward the concentration.
| Twentieth-Century German Culture | ||
| From Faust to Freud: Germany’s Long 19th Century | ||
| Tales of Vampirism and the Uncanny | ||
| The Poetics of Murder: Crime Fiction from Poe to the Present | ||
| Historical Crime Fiction | ||
| Nietzsche - The Good European | ||
| Repetition: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Freud | ||
| German Aesthetics from Lessing to Heidegger | ||
| Goethe | ||
| Classical German Literature: Goethe und die Klassik | ||
| Eighteenth-Century German Aesthetics | ||
| Drama and Religion | ||
| What is an Image? German Aesthetics and Art from Lessing to Heidegger | ||
| Freudian Inspirations: Psychoanalysis and the Arts | ||
| Reading Friedrich Hölderlin; An Introduction | ||
| The Individual in the Age of Industry | ||
| Crime and Punishment- Introduction to German Mystery Texts and Films | ||
| Guilt Management: Postwar German Culture | ||
| Jahrhundertwende 1900 | ||
| Modern German Prose, 1978-1998 | ||
| Turn of the Century | ||
| The Works of Franz Kafka | ||
| Unmittelbar nach 1945: Literatur und Film in Deutschland | ||
| The Modern Period | ||
| Kafka's Writing | ||
| Vergangenheitsbewältigung: German Literature of Memory | ||
| Dada-Performance and Digital-Interactivity | ||
| Poetry and the Sublime | ||
| Modernity and Its Discontents: The German Novella | ||
| Märchen | ||
| Lyric Poetry From the Middle Ages to the Present | ||
| Projections of America | ||
| German Lyric Poetry: From Goethe to Heine | ||
| Kunstmaerchen: the Literary Fairytale in the Nineteenth Century | ||
| Modern German Drama | ||
| Heroes, Failures and Other Peculiar Characters-The German Novel from Goethe to Kafka | ||
| Grimms' Fairy Tales | ||
| "Stranger Things: The German Novella" | ||
| Return to Sender: Love, Letters, and Literature | ||
| Introduction to German Romantic Poetry | ||
| German-Jewish Literature | ||
| Die Berliner Republik und die Vergangenheit | ||
| National Socialism and the Shoah in Recent German Prose | ||
| 20 Years After: The End of GDR and German Reunification | ||
| Love and Death | ||
| Images of America in German Literature | ||
| German National Cinema from 1917 to 1989, and Cold War Germanys in Film | ||
| Berlin: A City Strives to Reinvent Itself | ||
| German Culture in the Nazi Era | ||
| After Hitler: German Culture and Politics, 1945 to Present | ||
| Kafka | ||
| Literary Discourse of Minority Cultures in Germany | ||
| Literature and Other Media | ||
| Thinking After Philosophy | ||
| German Jews and Capitalist Markets in the Long Nineteenth Century | ||
| Having Beethoven Over in 1970 | ||
| Film and the Third Reich | ||
| Freud | ||
| Mord und Medien. Krimis im intermedialen Vergleich | ||
| Germans/Jews, Deutsche (und) Juden | ||
| What was Socialism? From Marx to "Goodbye Lenin" | ||
| Nietzsche | ||
| Early German Film and Film Theory | ||
| Race and Classical German Thought | ||
| Germany, Alcohol, and the Global Nineteenth Century | ||
| The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) | ||
| Sites of Memory | ||
| Cultural Industry and the Aesthetics of the Spectacle | ||
| Fleeing the Nazis: German Culture in Exile, 1933-1945 | ||
| Made in Germany - A Cultural History of Science, Technology, and Engineering | ||
| The Works of Heinrich Kleist | ||
| Enlightened Laughter | ||
| Kafka in English | ||
| Political Romanticism | ||
| Vision and Narration in the 19th Century | ||
| German Literature 1968-1989 | ||
| Poetik der AutorInnen | ||
| German Modernism | ||
| German Literature 1945-1967 | ||
| Literature of the German Democratic Republic | ||
| Thomas Mann: Die Romane | ||
| On the Sublime | ||
| Socialism and the Intellectuals | ||
| Reading (in) German Literature | ||
| Historicism, Photography, Film | ||
| Torture in European Literature and Aesthetic Theory | ||
| From Hegel to Nietzsche: Literature as/and Philosophy | ||
| The Essay: Theory and Praxis | ||
| “Other Worlds” | ||
| Textual Border Crossings: Translational Literature | ||
| Art, Philosophy, and Truth: A Close Reading of Benjamin's Essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities | ||
| Goethe’s Faust | ||
| Theories of Poetry and the Poetic |
Honors
Candidates for honors will be expected to have a superior record in departmental courses and will have to be approved by the Department of German Studies. Honors candidates must take one additional course at the 1000-level from the German studies offerings and present an acceptable Senior Honors Thesis. The additional course may be used for preparation of the honors thesis. Students are encouraged to discuss their thesis topics with the concentration advisor no later than the third week of classes in Fall of their Senior year.