Undergraduate Courses
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time W 3:00–5:00pm Instructor Sütterlin How do we respond to a traumatic event? Denial, acceptance, blame, reconciliation… there are many stances we can take toward a harmful act we have experienced or committed in the past. When entire populations have suffered or...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2024
Instructor Stewart Date/Time 9:45am - 11:45am Who hasn’t felt burnout? Who hasn’t felt it more acutely in the years since the pandemic? And who hasn’t struggled to define just what exactly this feeling is or where it comes from? This first-year seminar takes a close look at...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM Instructor TBA Is the so-called American dream dead? The notion once essentialized the grand promise of a better, fuller, and richer life. At the present moment, however, it seems to have lost its evocative power as a collective myth. In a time...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time TBA Instructor Carranza A survey course on major works in German literature, philosophy, and critique from the mid-eighteenth century to the twentieth century. Close reading of representative texts opens onto broader ramifications in cultural and intellectual...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2025
Instructor Sütterlin Date/Time W 3:00 - 5:00 pm A survey course on major works in German literature, philosophy, and critique from the mid-eighteenth century to the twentieth century. Close reading of representative texts opens onto broader ramifications in cultural and...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Instructor Dymek Day/Time T 12:00 - 2:00 pm What defines the self? In this course, we take a close look at the intricate philosophical investigations regarding the self within German Idealism. We study pivotal works by key figures like Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM Instructor Lisa Parkes What provokes laughter in German culture? This course explores the genre of German-language comedy through major dramatists, satirists, stand-up comedians, and comedic film. Introduction to techniques and theories of comedy...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time TBA Instructor Sütterlin
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time T 12:00PM - 2:00PM Instructor Dymek Close reading of stories by Schiller, Tieck, Kleist, Hoffmann, Droste-Hülshoff, Stifter, Storm, Döblin, Kafka, Musil, Mann, Aichinger, and Bachmann. While the course focuses virtually entirely on the close reading of outstanding...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2025
Instructor Burgard Day/Time T 12:00–2:45pmMajor movements in German literature and thought from the mid-18th to early 19th century: Enlightenment, Sentimentalism, Storm and Stress, Classicism, Romanticism. Readings include Kant, Klopstock, Lessing, Goethe, Lenz, Schiller...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM Instructor Pirozhenko In this course, we will get to know Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and their methods to collect, edit, and publish fairy tales and we will reflect on their legacy. We will read and discuss fairy tales written by E.T.A. Hoffmann...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time MW 10:30AM - 11:45AM Instructor Gordon A philosophical and historical survey of major debates in modern German social theory over the span of a century, from Nietzsche's anti-foundationalist critique of morality and truth to Habermas's attempt to rebuild a pragmatic...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time MW 10:30AM - 11:45AM Instructor Burgard Explores the radical break with traditions of thinking, building, seeing, and representing that occurred at the end of the 19th-century in Germany and Austria, and the new forms of architecture, painting, and literature to...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time M 12:45PM - 2:45PM Instructor TBA With a camera positioned at the entrance to the director’s factory, Louis Lumière’s famous early film of 1895, La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon, captured workers as they left for the day. Today, surveillance practices have...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time T 12:45PM - 2:45PM Instructor TBA This seminar considers the Frankfurt School's deliberations on film, radio, television, and mass culture. We will devote the majority of the course to three seminal figures: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and T. W. Adorno...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2025
Instructor Dymek Date/Time W 12:00 - 2:45 pm German Queer cinema played a pivotal role in the emergence of LGBTQ+ representation on celluloid. We’ll delve into the groundbreaking contributions of German filmmakers, exemplified by productions like Richard Oswald’s seminal...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2024
Instructor Frank Johnson Date/Time T 12:45 - 2:45 pm This course uses Austrian literature to think through some of the most pressing questions of modern European (and, specifically, Austrian) history. We will read some of the greatest novels and novellas in modern German...
Year offered:
2024
Instructor Stewart Date/Time W 3:00 - 5:00 pm Although he is arguably one of the most influential Western thinkers of the 20th century, what does Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) have to teach the 21st century? A great deal, it turns out. For the questions about history, language...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2025
Instructor Hamilton Date/Time Th 12:45 - 2:45 pmSince antiquity, literary works have been drawn to music and the human voice: fascinated by their captivating force, seduced by their alluring charms, envious of their capacity to express the singularity of life and lived...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time W 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm Instructor Stewart This course examines three German-language writers whose works establish foundational critiques of modern Western society. Why do we all seem to feel so discontent? What explains the differences between our conscious and...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time M 12:45PM – 2:45 PM Instructor CarranzaThe brilliantly witty German physicist and satirical author Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once remarked that "The American who first discovered Columbus made a horrible discovery" ("Der Amerikaner, der den Kolumbus zuerst...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time M 3:00 pm - 5:45 pm Instructor Burgard Close readings of 24 poems representing the best of modern German poetry. Readings in German, discussions in English. All of the poems are short, allowing us to achieve both breadth and depth and allowing those students who can...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time TTh 12:00PM – 1:15 PM Instructor Dymek Advanced language instruction through systematic study of the rules of grammar, their nuances, and their exceptions. Application of this knowledge through the meticulous reading and parsing of selections from sophisticated...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time TTh 10:30AM – 11:45AM Instructor Pirozhenko This course is designed to further students' spoken and written German at the advanced level. Students will analyze and practice the stylistic and rhetorical features of various written and spoken genres. By focusing on...
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2024
Instructor Pirozhenko Date/Time T TH 9:00 am - 10:15 am We need food to live. Consisting of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and other nutrients, food provides energy for our bodies. We have our own food preferences, dietary restrictions, family dishes, tastes, table manners...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time TBA Instructor Dymek Individualized course of study developed by junior concentrators in German to explore a particular field of interest, and ordinarily directed by a member of the faculty. The tutorial culminates in a longer paper (of 15-20 pages, in English).
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2023
Day/Time TBA Instructor Parkes Open to concentrators writing an honors thesis under faculty supervision. Students are expected to enroll for the entire year. Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies is required. Part one of a two-part series.
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2024
Day/Time TBA Instructor Parkes Open to concentrators writing an honors thesis under faculty supervision. Students are expected to enroll for the entire year. Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies is required. Part two of a two-part series.
Semester:
Fall
Year offered:
2024
Instructor Frank Johnson Date/Time T Th 10:30 - 11:45 am German History loomed like a specter over the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, Americans have been debating the relevance and legitimacy of comparisons between German history and our contemporary world...
Semester:
Spring
Year offered:
2025
Instructor Gordon Date/Time W 9:45 - 11:45 pmThis conference course, for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, will examine the significance of fascism both past and present. We will explore its historical emergence, its variations across time and space, and the...