Course Schedule: Fall 2008
(For list of elementary and intermediate classes, please check University Schedule of Classes)
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GER-201-1 Introduction German Studies
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Dr. Christoph Zeller
TR 9:35 - 10:50
308 Buttrick Hall
Introduction to German Studies: Visions and Revisions
This introductory course centers around the sharp contrasts that existed in 20th century German culture: flourishing arts, achievements in science and engineering, concepts for a better, democratic society as well as ideological propaganda, disastrous wars, and crimes of humanity. Politics and intellectual life after World War II were dominated until the present by the need to come to terms with Germany’s problematic past. Students can expect to gain insight into 20th century German history while learning to interpret a variety of different genres and socio-political forces based on theories of ‘culture’ and ‘media’. We will discuss paintings, poems, literary texts, architecture, economic developments, ideologies, and movies.
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GER-213-1 Intermediate Conversation & Composition
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Kathrin Seidl
This course further develops intermediate proficiency in reading, speaking and writing. Topics will focus on contemporary socio-political issues as well as cultural trends in Germany today. Grammar review and vocabulary building, discussion of literary texts, newspaper and electronic media.
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| GER-221-1 German Culture & Literature |
Dr. Margaret E. Setje-Eilers
MWF 11:10 - 12:00
2200 Stevenson Center
This course explores ideas and materials from the earliest records of German culture through the beginning of the 19th century. It combines close readings of texts with broader discussions of social and political history. By the end of the semester, students will be able to identify characteristics of German culture and literature from different periods and discuss why a work might be (or might not be) representative of a given period. The course incorporates an online environment for creative writing (a MOO: Multi-User Domain, Object-Oriented). Course readings, presentations, and discussions are primarily in German. The Classpak is available at the Vanderbilt Copy Shop at Rand.
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GER-265-1 Revolutionizing 20thC Theatre
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Dr. Christoph Zeller
TR 1:10 - 2:25
204 Buttrick Hall
This course will provide an overview of important, renowned, and controversial plays of twentieth century German drama. We will read and interpret plays by Brecht, Weiss, Hochhuth, and others, while illuminating the historical circumstances of their production and staging. Major terms of the theory of theatre (stage, body, voice, dialogue, etc.) will help us understand the nature of theatre as well as its development. Additionally we will search for the means and methods with which German writers came to terms with history and attempted to transform the past into current–touching or disturbing–events.
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GER-273-1 Nazi Cinema
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Dr. Sara Eigen Figal
MWF 1:10 - 2:00
112 Wilson Hall
This course probes the relationship between fascist politics and mass culture through an examination of Nazi Germany’s film culture. During the semester, we will analyze numerous films—dramas, comedies, westerns—produced between 1933 and 1945; we will consider the high value placed upon film production by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda; and we
will compare Nazi propaganda and entertainment films with American products of the same period, approaching the material from aesthetic, technical, and historical perspectives. Finally, we will address the persistent presence of Nazi references in contemporary American mass culture, questioning our own appropriation of a “fascist aesthetic.”
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GER-310-1 Foreign Language Learning Teaching
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Dr. Virginia Scott
T 3:10 - 5:30
212 Buttrick Hall
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| GER-385A-1 Perpetual War/Perpetual Peace |
Dr. Sara Eigen Figal
M 3:30 - 6:00
123 Furman
We will begin with an idea often espoused during the Enlightenment: namely, that sufficient education, reason, and good will should create a condition of humanity that might exist without war. The European eighteenth century, which experienced nearly constant warfare, also produced plenty of writing that offered a counter-vision, one in which war was a permanent component of human existence. As we read texts espousing both positions, we shall attend to the conditions for amity and enmity, and to the differences between brothers and enemies. Over the course of our seminar, we shall read novels, dramas, philosophical essays, and military treatises from the long eighteenth century, complicated by current theoretical writing on the nature of war and the idea of peace.
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GER-389-1 Sem: 18th C Ger Lit
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Dr. John A. McCarthy
R 3:00-5:45
243 Buttrick
In 1755, Johann Jakob Winckelmann, classical art historian and recent convert to Catholicism, relocated to Italy, where he devoted himself to research in Rome, Florence, and Naples. His vastly influential Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, which ushered in a neo-classical period, appeared in 1764. In 1786 Sir William Jones, a British judge serving in Calcutta, made the epoch-making discovery that the main languages of Europe are closely related to the principal languages of India. This discovery led to dramatic realignment of lines of identification between Europe and Asia and gave rise to a (renewed) fascination with the Orient. On 14 July 1789 the storming of the Bastille by the people of Paris symbolizes the start of the French Revolution that had repercussions throughout Europe. On 14 October 1806, the Prussian army suffered a decisive defeat in the battles of Jena and Auerstedt that led to the loss of half of Prussia’s former territory and the further reconfiguration of Europe.
These three events mark the points of orientation for the (re)examination of Weimar Classicism as a period of ferment that owes much to the dynamics of the much wider parameters of its own geographical concentration in Weimar, Germany. Authors used to illustrate efforts at the aesthetic education of humankind and of the political uses of literary works (essay, epic, drama, ballad, elegy, philosophical treatise) include Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. The focus of our discussions will be on literary and theoretical works that illustrate the clash of competing political models, ideas, customs, laws, and cultures and that led to the projection of a transnational and transcultural ideal of classical proportions that bear little resemblance to the received notion of Weimarer Klassik. Readings and Discussions in German.
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| GER-390-1 Sem:19th C. Literature |
Dr. Dieter Sevin
W 4:10 - 6:30
Furman 123
From Romanticism to Realism:Heinrich Kleist
The focus of the seminar will be on Heinrich von Kleist, one of the most fascinating authors of the 19th century, whose works encompass drama, fiction and essays, but whose extraordinary oeuvre cannot easily be categorized. While still deeply rooted in the philosophical, historical, and political developments of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, Kleist’s works stand at the beginning of modernity. Existentialist, feminist, psychoanalytical, socio-critical as well as moral aspects, even the role of race and natural phenomena are among the topics that Heinrich von Kleist addresses in most creative works. Seminar participants will engage in the lively scholarly debate, which continues unabated concerning this author, his era, and his significance in our times. The seminar will be conducted in German. |
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