Course Schedule: Spring 2009
(For list of elementary and intermediate classes, please check University Schedule of Classes)
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GER-101 Elementary German 1
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Elizabeth Weber
MTWRF 11:10-12:00
BT 304
Ingo Kieslich
MTWRF 12:10-1:00
BT 304
Development of the four language skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing.
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GER-101G-01 German for Graduate Students
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Angela Lin
MWF 12:10 - 1:00
BT 205
Reading Knowledge of German for Graduate Students
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GER-102 Elementary German II
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Florian Schmid
MTWRF 9:10-10:00
BT 305
Bea Brockman
MTWRF 11:10-12:00
BT 301
Vivian Finch
MTWRF 12:10-1:00
BT 204
Continuation of 101. Prerequisite: 101.
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GER-103 - 01 Intermediate German I
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Wesley Lim
MWF 11:10-12:00
BT 312
Intensive review of German grammar as a basis for reading, conversation, and
composition. Texts and discussions address issues in contemporary German society.
Prerequisite: 102.
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GER-104-01 Intermediate German II
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Gesa Frömming
MWF 12:10-1:00
BT 205
Practice in reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Short stories, one longer
work, and discussions examine aspects of modern life from a German
perspective. Prerequisite: 103.
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GER-214-01 Conversation & Composition
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Dr. Dieter Sevin
MWF 11:10-12:00
BT 316
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GER-222-01 German Culture & Literature Part II: Realism to Postmodernism (1871-present)
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Dr. Peggy Setje-Eilers
MWF 12:10-1:00
BT 305
Overview of intellectual and literary traditions in German literature, art, and
politics from the founding of the Second Reich (1871) through the fall of the wall
and to the present. Course primarily in German.
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GER-244 German Fairy Tales (No German Required)
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Dr. Sara Figal
TR 1:10-2:25
Wilson Hall 113
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EUS-237 Air War & Aftermath (No German Required)
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Dr. Sara Figal
TR 11:00-12:15
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Dr. Angela Lin
MWF 10:10-11:00
BT 206
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GER-270 German Cinema: Vampires, Victims & Vamps (No German Required)
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Dr. Peggy Setje-Eilers
M 2:10-4:30
WF 2:10-3:00
BT 301
Introduction to German cinema in its historical context. Topics: Weimar Cinema,
Early Sound Cinema, Nazi and Rubble Cinema, New German Cinema, and Post-Wall Cinema.
Course in English. Films in German with English subtitles.
Projected List of Films
Weimar Cinema
The Cabinet of Caligari (Robert Wiene: 1919)
Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau: 1922)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang: 1926)
Early Sound Cinema
The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg: 1930)
The Threepenny Opera (G. W. Pabst: 1930)
M (Fritz Lang: 1931)
Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? (Slatan Dudow: 1932)
Nazi and Post-War Rubble Cinema
The Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl: 1934)
Jew Süss (Veit Harlan: 1940)
The Murderers Are among Us (Wolfgang Staudte: 1946)
The New German Cinema
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog: 1972)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 1979)
The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff: 1979) presented in International Lens series
East German Cinema
The Legend of Paul and Paula (Heiner Carow: 1973)
Jakob the Liar (Frank Beyer: 1977)
Post-Wall Cinema and Beyond
Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer: 1998)
In July (Fatih Akin: 2000)
Good Bye, Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker: 2003)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: 2005)
The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky: 2007)
Kirschblüten - Hanami (Doris Dorrie: 2008)
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GER-294A Selected Topics: Novellas of Uncetainty: Forms and Functions of the German Novella from
Wieland to Hartmut Lange
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Dr. Justus Fetscher
TR 11:00-12:15
BT 308
Plagued by Uncertainty. Forms and Functions of the German Novella
With Boccaccio’s Decamerone (written around 1350) the novella emerged as a form capable of dealing with situations and cases in which established discourses fail to work properly. Legal, scientific, political or (as with Boccaccio’s narrators taking refuge from the plague’s sway in Florence) medical common wisdome turns out to be unanble to cope with and normalise a setting where stories abound but rules to account for, or lessons to be learned from, them dwindle. German history with its many discontinuities and collapses seems to tie in with this genre. German literature, though, lacks an early classical model for novella writing. Based on novellas published between c. 1800 and 1990, the course aims at providing an exemplary overview on the inner-literary dynamics of storytelling and writing novellas and on the disruptions and divergences of (cultural) history in German speaking regions – and, finally, on the interplay between these literary and historical tendencies. To be read are novellas by J. W. Goethe, Christoph Martin Wieland, Annette v. Droste-Hülshoff, Gottfried Keller, Franz Grillparzer, Gottfried Keller, Hugo v. Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Martin Walser and Günter Grass.
Literature: Robert Browning and Thomas Kerth (Edd.): German Novellen from Goethe to Schnitzler. An Annotated Anthology. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press 1998.
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GER-391 Sem: 20th Century German Lit. Topics: Trotzdem Schreiben: Censorship and GDR-Fiction Writing
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Dr. Dieter Sevin
W 4:10-6:30
Furman 123
The focus of the seminar will be on how the existing and all all-encompassing censorship in the former East Germany (GDR) had a pervasive impact on fiction writing within the authoritarian state. While there were certainly the very negative consequences, such as discouraging authors, especially younger ones, censorship also lead to boring, superficial, and ideologically oriented texts. However, it is ironic that censorship also had a positive impact by stimulating the creativity of authors with the goal to circumvent the ideological expectations of the state, including those rules put forth by the theory of 'Socialist Realism'. Starting in the sixties until the end of the East German state in 1990, we can observe a progressive widening of intellectual freedoms in the GDR. The thesis underlying the seminar is that prominent authors of fictional texts were able to progressively expand the limits of intellectual discourse in spite of the existing state censorship. One reason is that in fictional texts - in contrast to expository texts - the author can project his or her ideas and concerns into the imagination of the reader: that, which is not expressed directly, is as important or even more important, than what is actually put into words. Of course western narrative texts also have, what Wolfgang Iser calls “gaps” or “blancs”, i.e. text-elements left unexplained and open to interpretation in order to create suspense for instance. In GDR-literature, these take on an additional function, as we shall examine in selected major GDR- prose works.
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GER-393 Sem: Intellectual Constellations. Topics Thomas Bernhard
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Dr. Justus Fetscher
R 3:30-6:00
Furman 123
Life Fiction. Autobiographical Invention in Thomas Bernhard, Ilse Aichinger and W. G. Sebald
The seminar shall focus on texts situated on the border between autobiography and history, with family history as a kind of go-between separating and bridging these two fields. Thomas Bernhard never got to know his father and grew up under the intimate tyranny of his grandfather, an unsuccessful (albeit adored) writer. Large parts of Bernhard’s oeuvre are a revison of this basic setting, with fictionalised attempts ranging from (if ludicrous) monumentalisation (Der Weltverbesserer) to drastic reversal, revoking and rebuff of his (genetic, historical and material) heritage (Auslöschung). Highly artistic techniques tinged by Austrian post-war avantgarde writing go hand in hand with an urgent drive for self-preservation that transforms bleak living conditions (Catholic dominance, Nazi past and Bernhard’s chronic lung disease) into literature. – Ilse Aichinger’s writing stands out for being a unique, arguably unequalled ‘poeticisation’ of her childhood overshadowed by anti-semtitism in Nazi-occupied Vienna, an experience underlying her novel Die größere Hoffnung (1948) as well as her autobiographical sketches Unglaubwüdige Reisen (2005). And Sebald is known for his achievements in reshaping semi-documentary fiction and semi-fictional (auto)biographical writing on 20th.century German history, especially in his masterpiece Austeriltz (2001).
Literature: Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler: Der Übertreibungskünstler: Studien zu Thomas Bernhard. Vienna: Sonderzahl, 3rd ed. 1997; Bianca Theisen: Silenced Facts: Media Montages in Contemporary Literature. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003.
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EUS-203 Idea of Europe
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Dr. John McCarthy
TR 9:30-11:00
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EUR 151 European Concetps of Self
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Dr. John McCarthy
TR 2:25-3:50 |
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