Courses

Course ID	Title	Offered
GERST 1121	FWS: Writing Berlin Berlin is a city that reinvents itself by rewriting itself. In this writing seminar, we'll study a variety of literary, visual, and sonic texts to create a mythical map of the city from its emergence as modern metropolis in the 1920s, reduction to rubble in World War II, refuge for the disaffected in the 1980s, and rebirth in the 21st century. As we make our way through the linguistic, visual, and aural landscape of its ever-changing topography, we'll create our own stories of a mythical Berlin in dialogue with texts written by the displaced persons who breached its walls and navigated its illicit economies. We'll also become more critical readers and viewers, as well as better writers. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for GERST 1121 - FWS: Writing Berlin	Fall, Spring.
GERST 1122	FWS: Love and Death in Vienna Singing boys. Dancing horses. Waltzing debutantes. Those fortunate enough to live in a city where each day begins with a pastry and ends with a two-liter bottle of wine must live a charmed existence! Not according to Freud. After decades of treating the morbid Viennese, he concluded that human nature must be torn between two warring forces: a love instinct and a death drive. In this FWS we'll explore both sides of Vienna's enigmatic character, its life-affirming hedonism and its self-destructive nihilism, through the lens of narrative fiction on page and on screen. Along the way, we'll learn to read and view more critically by writing our way through the best literature and cinema of the multi-ethnic metropolis on the Danube. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for GERST 1122 - FWS: Love and Death in Vienna	Fall, Spring.
GERST 1170	FWS: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud A basic understanding of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud is a prerequisite for participating in critical debates in the humanities and social sciences. Our seminar will explore key terms in the revolutionary models of critical analysis these thinkers pioneered: historical materialism, post-metaphysical philosophy, and psychoanalysis. This will mean articulating points of contrast as well as convergence. Discussions and writing exercises will focus on texts that created the discursive framework for critiquing society and culture today. Our method will proceed from the premise that critical reading, thinking, and writing are inseparable moments in the same operation of critique. The question that guides that method will be: Do alternative ways of thinking exist in opposition to the ones we view as natural, inevitable, or universal? Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) Full details for GERST 1170 - FWS: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud	Fall, Spring.
GERST 1210	Exploring German Contexts I Students develop basic abilities in listening, reading, writing, and speaking German in meaningful contexts through interaction in small group activities. Course materials including videos, short articles, and songs provide students with varied perspectives on German language, culture, and society. Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG) Full details for GERST 1210 - Exploring German Contexts I	Fall, Spring.
GERST 1220	Exploring German Contexts II Students build on their basic knowledge of German by engaging in intense and more sustained interaction in the language. Students learn more advanced language structures allowing them to express more complex ideas in German. Discussions, videos, and group activities address topics of relevance to the contemporary German-speaking world. Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG) Full details for GERST 1220 - Exploring German Contexts II	Fall, Spring.
GERST 1230	Expanding the German Dossier Students continue to develop their language skills by discussing a variety of cultural topics and themes in the German-speaking world. The focus of the course is on expanding vocabulary, reviewing major grammar topics, developing effective reading strategies, improving listening comprehension, and working on writing skills. Work in small groups increases each student's opportunity to speak in German and provides for greater feedback and individual help. Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG) Full details for GERST 1230 - Expanding the German Dossier	Fall, Spring.
GERST 2000	Germany: Intercultural Context Students examine important aspects of present-day German culture while expanding and strengthening their reading, writing, and speaking skills in German. Materials for each topic are selected from a variety of sources (fiction, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet). Units address a variety of topics including studying at a German university, modern literature, Germany online, and Germany at the turn of the century. Oral and written work and individual and group presentations emphasize accurate and idiomatic expression in German. Successful completion of the course enables students to continue with more advanced courses in language, literature, and culture. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 2000 - Germany: Intercultural Context	Fall, Spring.
GERST 2005	Intermediate Yiddish Intended for intermediate students, this is the third in a three-course sequence, designed to enable students to meet the College of Arts & Sciences language requirement. Students will increase their understanding of the language in cultural context and will further develop their capacity to produce both spoken and written Yiddish. Full details for GERST 2005 - Intermediate Yiddish	Fall.
GERST 2040	Perspectives on German Culture This course aims at sharpening your awareness of personal and cultural subjectivity by examining texts in a variety of media against the backdrop of cultural, political, and historical contexts. We will focus on improving your oral and written expression of idiomatic German by giving attention to more sophisticated aspects of using enriched vocabulary in a variety of conversational contexts and written genres. Materials will include readings in contemporary prose, newscasts, research at the Johnson Art Museum, and interviews with native speakers on a topic of contemporary cultural relevance. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 2040 - Perspectives on German Culture	Fall, Spring.
GERST 2567	Holocaust in History and Memory This course explores the history of the Holocaust during which the Nazis murdered six million Jews. Topics covered in this class include the history of antisemitism in Europe and twentieth-century Germany, the origins and rule of the Nazis, the politics of World War II, the Final Solution and extermination camps, Jewish literary responses to the Holocaust, among other topics. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 2567 - Holocaust in History and Memory	Fall.
GERST 2700	Introduction to German Culture and Thought Big names, Big ideas, and Big events are associated with German culture and thought: Luther, Faust, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Mozart, Beethoven, Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Einstein, Kafka and Thomas Mann; Enlightenment; World Wars and Reunification; European Union, and Migration and Refugees: In this course, we shall cover the broad spectrum of both the long tradition of German culture and thought, and examine the wide range of political, literary, sociological, and artistic topics, themes, and questions that are of urgent contemporary concern for Germany, Europe, and beyond. Guest lecturers will introduce you to the wide and exciting field of German Studies. Topics include: the age of enlightenment; literatures of migration and minorities; avant-garde art; philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory; Weimar and War; Holocaust and its Aftermath; film and media; genres of literature: novel, novella, short story, lyric poetry, anecdote, autobiography; literature and politics; literature and the environment; digital humanities and literatures/fictions of cyber space. In addition, this course will introduce you to the techniques of critical analysis and writing. Authors include among many others: Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Freud, Kafka, Kluge, Marx, Thomas Mann, Kracauer, Benjamin. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 2700 - Introduction to German Culture and Thought	Fall.
GERST 3070	Challenge of Literary Language Why do literary texts insist on bending (and even breaking) the rules that govern everyday language? Could we improve our mastery of colloquial German by accepting literature's challenge and investigating how it manipulates language in unconventional ways? We'll take an inductive approach to answering these questions by engaging in close and sustained textual analysis of poetry, prose, and plays that fascinate as well as frustrate. The course is designed to help you transition to advanced study in German, so we will also learn the terminology of poetics, rhetoric, and genre as we practice creating the oral and written texts (Referate und Seminararbeiten) that form the core of any seminar in Germanistik. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 3070 - Challenge of Literary Language	Fall.
GERST 3555	Comics as a Medium What are comics? While it's easy to identify a cartoon, graphic novel, or comic book, it's hard to understand the wide world of comics. As a medium, comics are part of a global tradition of visual storytelling and sequential art, including premodern tapestries, early modern pamphlets, and modern children's books, political cartoons, and animated films. With a focus on the German-speaking world, we will examine a wide range of comics genres (e.g., fiction, history, autobiography, journalism, comix) and formats (e.g., books, strips, pamphlets, zines). Our discussions will address questions of taste, aesthetics, materiality, censorship, representation, and word-image relations. While we will primarily be reading and writing about comics and comics studies, students will also gain some exposure to making comics. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 3555 - Comics as a Medium	Fall.
GERST 3561	Freud and Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis considers the human being not as an object of treatment, but as a subject who is called upon to elaborate an unconscious knowledge about what is disrupting her life, through analysis of dreams, symptoms, bungled actions, slips of the tongue, and repetitive behaviors. Freud finds that these apparently irrational acts and behavior are ordered by the logic of the fantasy, which provides a mental representation of a traumatic childhood experience and the effects it unleashes in the mind and body-effects he called drives. As "unbound" energies, the drives give rise to symptoms, repetitive acts, and fantasmatic stagings that menace our health and sometimes threaten social coexistence, but that also rise to the desires, creative acts, and social projects we identify as the essence of human life. Readings will include fundamental texts on the unconscious, repression, fantasy, and the death drive, as well as case studies and speculative essays on mythology, art, religion, and group psychology. Students will be asked to keep a dream journal and to work on their unconscious formations, and will have the chance to produce creative projects as well as analytic essays. Catalog Distribution: (ETM-AS, SSC-AS) (KCM-AG, SBA-AG) Full details for GERST 3561 - Freud and Psychoanalysis	Fall.
GERST 3612	Remembering Socialism: Literature and Film After the End of History More than thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union, we have the distance needed to view the twentieth-century state socialist project from a historical perspective–even as Cold War tropes are revived amid another major confrontation with Russia. In this course, we will analyze memoirs, oral histories, historical fiction, films, and TV shows that look back at this period. How do the makers of these works use genre as a political as well as artistic tool? What are the political implications of comedy, cosplay, or melodrama when applied to communism? How does the portrayal of this period change as state socialism recedes into the distance? Texts from Russia, Ukraine, Germany, the Balkans, the UK, and the United States. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 3612 - Remembering Socialism: Literature and Film After the End of History	Fall.
GERST 4100	The Seminar Topics vary by instructor. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 4100 - The Seminar	Fall.
GERST 4382	Paul de Man This course studies major works from the great 20th century literary theorist Paul de Man, one of the founders of deconstruction. We will read carefully works from across his career, including broader theoretical statements and texts more closely focused on literary and philosophical texts. "The Rhetoric of Temporality, "Semiology and Rhetoric," "The Resistance to Theory," "Autobiography as De-Facement," "Shelley Disfigured," "Aesthetic Formalization in Kleist," "Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant," and works on Rousseau, Hegel, and others. We will include poetry and relevant sections of philosophical and theoretical material as appropriate. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for GERST 4382 - Paul de Man	Fall.
GERST 4510	Independent Study Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours. Full details for GERST 4510 - Independent Study	Fall.
GERST 4530	Honors Research The Reading Course is administered by the director of the honors thesis. It carries 4 hours credit, and may be counted towards the work required for the German Major. The reading concentrates on a pre-determined topic or area. Students meet with their honors advisor about every two weeks throughout the term. Substantial reading assignments are given, and occasional short essays are written. Full details for GERST 4530 - Honors Research	Multi-semester course: Fall, Spring.
GERST 4540	Honors Thesis The thesis is to be written on a subject related to the work done in GERST 4530. A suggested length for the thesis is 50-60 pages. Full details for GERST 4540 - Honors Thesis	Fall, Spring.
GERST 5070	Teaching German as a Foreign Language: Principles and Practices Designed to familiarize students with current thought and approaches in the field of applied linguistics and language pedagogy. Introduces different models of foreign language approaches and discusses various practices for the foreign language classroom. Special consideration is given to topics such as language acquisition progression, planning syllabi, creating tasks and projects, designing classroom tests, and evaluating students' performance. Participants conduct an action research project. Full details for GERST 5070 - Teaching German as a Foreign Language: Principles and Practices	Fall.
GERST 6224	Writing for the Public: Adapting Academic Work for a General Audience This workshop-style course will address the question of how to draw on academic research and expertise to write for a non-specialist audience. We will discuss the benefits of public-facing writing; how to select a publication to pitch; how to pitch an article; and how to draft and revise an article once a pitch has been accepted. These skills will be developed through practice. Students will develop real pitch ideas to use as a basis for articles that will be drafted and revised over the course of the semester. We will discuss questions such as selecting appropriate venues, adapting to a new writing style, sourcing, citation practices, and communicating with editors. Full details for GERST 6224 - Writing for the Public: Adapting Academic Work for a General Audience	Fall.
GERST 6310	Reading Academic German I This course emphasizes the acquisition of reading skills in German, using a variety of prepared and authentic texts. The follow-up course, GERST 6320 , Reading Academic German II, is offered in the spring. Full details for GERST 6310 - Reading Academic German I	Fall.
GERST 6382	Paul de Man This course studies major works from the great 20th century literary theorist Paul de Man, one of the founders of deconstruction. We will read carefully works from across his career, including broader theoretical statements and texts more closely focused on literary and philosophical texts. "The Rhetoric of Temporality, "Semiology and Rhetoric," "The Resistance to Theory," "Autobiography as De-Facement," "Shelley Disfigured," "Aesthetic Formalization in Kleist," "Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant," and works on Rousseau, Hegel, and others. We will include poetry and relevant sections of philosophical and theoretical material as appropriate. Full details for GERST 6382 - Paul de Man	Fall.
GERST 6445	German Media Theories This seminar examines German media theories from the Frankfurt School to the Kittler Network and beyond. We will discuss influential concepts associated with this work (e.g., the culture industry, the public sphere, discourse networks), along with related concepts in media and cultural studies (e.g., space and time, analog and digital, old and new media). Theoretical readings address questions about media aesthetics, intermediality, and media change; automation, mechanization, and standardization; and communication, command, and control. Engaging with scholarly debates about interdisciplinarity and theory transfer, we will also revisit and revise reductive stereotypes about media critique, technological determinism, and the "Germanness" of German media theories. Full details for GERST 6445 - German Media Theories	Fall.
GERST 7530	Independent Study Graduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours. Full details for GERST 7530 - Independent Study	Fall.
GERST 7531	Colloquium The course consists of a bi-weekly workshop series focusing on a range of interdisciplinary topics and sponsored by the Institute for German Cultural Studies (IGCS). Speakers include prominent scholars in the field of German Studies (understood in a wide, interdisciplinary sense) and advanced graduate students, who discuss their work-in-progress based on pre-circulated papers. Besides attending the workshops, course participants meet with the instructor for two additional sessions devoted to pursuing the ties between the topics and disciplinary fields showcased by the speakers and the students' own work. The course is thus intended both as a survey of disciplinary approaches in German and Humanities Studies and as a framework that allows graduate students to hone professional skills (presenter and panel respondent, newsletter contributor, etc). Full details for GERST 7531 - Colloquium	Fall.

GERST 1121

FWS: Writing Berlin

Berlin is a city that reinvents itself by rewriting itself. In this writing seminar, we'll study a variety of literary, visual, and sonic texts to create a mythical map of the city from its emergence as modern metropolis in the 1920s, reduction to rubble in World War II, refuge for the disaffected in the 1980s, and rebirth in the 21st century. As we make our way through the linguistic, visual, and aural landscape of its ever-changing topography, we'll create our own stories of a mythical Berlin in dialogue with texts written by the displaced persons who breached its walls and navigated its illicit economies. We'll also become more critical readers and viewers, as well as better writers.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for GERST 1121 - FWS: Writing Berlin

Fall, Spring.

GERST 1122

FWS: Love and Death in Vienna

Singing boys. Dancing horses. Waltzing debutantes. Those fortunate enough to live in a city where each day begins with a pastry and ends with a two-liter bottle of wine must live a charmed existence! Not according to Freud. After decades of treating the morbid Viennese, he concluded that human nature must be torn between two warring forces: a love instinct and a death drive. In this FWS we'll explore both sides of Vienna's enigmatic character, its life-affirming hedonism and its self-destructive nihilism, through the lens of narrative fiction on page and on screen. Along the way, we'll learn to read and view more critically by writing our way through the best literature and cinema of the multi-ethnic metropolis on the Danube.

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for GERST 1122 - FWS: Love and Death in Vienna

Fall, Spring.

GERST 1170

FWS: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

A basic understanding of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud is a prerequisite for participating in critical debates in the humanities and social sciences. Our seminar will explore key terms in the revolutionary models of critical analysis these thinkers pioneered: historical materialism, post-metaphysical philosophy, and psychoanalysis. This will mean articulating points of contrast as well as convergence. Discussions and writing exercises will focus on texts that created the discursive framework for critiquing society and culture today. Our method will proceed from the premise that critical reading, thinking, and writing are inseparable moments in the same operation of critique. The question that guides that method will be: Do alternative ways of thinking exist in opposition to the ones we view as natural, inevitable, or universal?

Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG)

Full details for GERST 1170 - FWS: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

Fall, Spring.

GERST 1210

Exploring German Contexts I

Students develop basic abilities in listening, reading, writing, and speaking German in meaningful contexts through interaction in small group activities. Course materials including videos, short articles, and songs provide students with varied perspectives on German language, culture, and society.

Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG)

Full details for GERST 1210 - Exploring German Contexts I

Fall, Spring.

GERST 1220

Exploring German Contexts II

Students build on their basic knowledge of German by engaging in intense and more sustained interaction in the language. Students learn more advanced language structures allowing them to express more complex ideas in German. Discussions, videos, and group activities address topics of relevance to the contemporary German-speaking world.

Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG)

Full details for GERST 1220 - Exploring German Contexts II

Fall, Spring.

GERST 1230

Expanding the German Dossier

Students continue to develop their language skills by discussing a variety of cultural topics and themes in the German-speaking world. The focus of the course is on expanding vocabulary, reviewing major grammar topics, developing effective reading strategies, improving listening comprehension, and working on writing skills. Work in small groups increases each student's opportunity to speak in German and provides for greater feedback and individual help.

Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG)

Full details for GERST 1230 - Expanding the German Dossier

Fall, Spring.

GERST 2000

Germany: Intercultural Context

Students examine important aspects of present-day German culture while expanding and strengthening their reading, writing, and speaking skills in German. Materials for each topic are selected from a variety of sources (fiction, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet). Units address a variety of topics including studying at a German university, modern literature, Germany online, and Germany at the turn of the century. Oral and written work and individual and group presentations emphasize accurate and idiomatic expression in German. Successful completion of the course enables students to continue with more advanced courses in language, literature, and culture.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 2000 - Germany: Intercultural Context

Fall, Spring.

GERST 2005

Intermediate Yiddish

Intended for intermediate students, this is the third in a three-course sequence, designed to enable students to meet the College of Arts & Sciences language requirement. Students will increase their understanding of the language in cultural context and will further develop their capacity to produce both spoken and written Yiddish.

Full details for GERST 2005 - Intermediate Yiddish

Fall.

GERST 2040

Perspectives on German Culture

This course aims at sharpening your awareness of personal and cultural subjectivity by examining texts in a variety of media against the backdrop of cultural, political, and historical contexts. We will focus on improving your oral and written expression of idiomatic German by giving attention to more sophisticated aspects of using enriched vocabulary in a variety of conversational contexts and written genres. Materials will include readings in contemporary prose, newscasts, research at the Johnson Art Museum, and interviews with native speakers on a topic of contemporary cultural relevance.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 2040 - Perspectives on German Culture

Fall, Spring.

GERST 2567

Holocaust in History and Memory

This course explores the history of the Holocaust during which the Nazis murdered six million Jews. Topics covered in this class include the history of antisemitism in Europe and twentieth-century Germany, the origins and rule of the Nazis, the politics of World War II, the Final Solution and extermination camps, Jewish literary responses to the Holocaust, among other topics.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 2567 - Holocaust in History and Memory

Fall.

GERST 2700

Introduction to German Culture and Thought

Big names, Big ideas, and Big events are associated with German culture and thought: Luther, Faust, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Mozart, Beethoven, Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Einstein, Kafka and Thomas Mann; Enlightenment; World Wars and Reunification; European Union, and Migration and Refugees: In this course, we shall cover the broad spectrum of both the long tradition of German culture and thought, and examine the wide range of political, literary, sociological, and artistic topics, themes, and questions that are of urgent contemporary concern for Germany, Europe, and beyond. Guest lecturers will introduce you to the wide and exciting field of German Studies. Topics include: the age of enlightenment; literatures of migration and minorities; avant-garde art; philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory; Weimar and War; Holocaust and its Aftermath; film and media; genres of literature: novel, novella, short story, lyric poetry, anecdote, autobiography; literature and politics; literature and the environment; digital humanities and literatures/fictions of cyber space. In addition, this course will introduce you to the techniques of critical analysis and writing. Authors include among many others: Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Freud, Kafka, Kluge, Marx, Thomas Mann, Kracauer, Benjamin.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 2700 - Introduction to German Culture and Thought

Fall.

GERST 3070

Challenge of Literary Language

Why do literary texts insist on bending (and even breaking) the rules that govern everyday language? Could we improve our mastery of colloquial German by accepting literature's challenge and investigating how it manipulates language in unconventional ways? We'll take an inductive approach to answering these questions by engaging in close and sustained textual analysis of poetry, prose, and plays that fascinate as well as frustrate. The course is designed to help you transition to advanced study in German, so we will also learn the terminology of poetics, rhetoric, and genre as we practice creating the oral and written texts (Referate und Seminararbeiten) that form the core of any seminar in Germanistik.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 3070 - Challenge of Literary Language

Fall.

GERST 3555

Comics as a Medium

What are comics? While it's easy to identify a cartoon, graphic novel, or comic book, it's hard to understand the wide world of comics. As a medium, comics are part of a global tradition of visual storytelling and sequential art, including premodern tapestries, early modern pamphlets, and modern children's books, political cartoons, and animated films. With a focus on the German-speaking world, we will examine a wide range of comics genres (e.g., fiction, history, autobiography, journalism, comix) and formats (e.g., books, strips, pamphlets, zines). Our discussions will address questions of taste, aesthetics, materiality, censorship, representation, and word-image relations. While we will primarily be reading and writing about comics and comics studies, students will also gain some exposure to making comics.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 3555 - Comics as a Medium

Fall.

GERST 3561

Freud and Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis considers the human being not as an object of treatment, but as a subject who is called upon to elaborate an unconscious knowledge about what is disrupting her life, through analysis of dreams, symptoms, bungled actions, slips of the tongue, and repetitive behaviors. Freud finds that these apparently irrational acts and behavior are ordered by the logic of the fantasy, which provides a mental representation of a traumatic childhood experience and the effects it unleashes in the mind and body-effects he called drives. As "unbound" energies, the drives give rise to symptoms, repetitive acts, and fantasmatic stagings that menace our health and sometimes threaten social coexistence, but that also rise to the desires, creative acts, and social projects we identify as the essence of human life. Readings will include fundamental texts on the unconscious, repression, fantasy, and the death drive, as well as case studies and speculative essays on mythology, art, religion, and group psychology. Students will be asked to keep a dream journal and to work on their unconscious formations, and will have the chance to produce creative projects as well as analytic essays.

Catalog Distribution: (ETM-AS, SSC-AS) (KCM-AG, SBA-AG)

Full details for GERST 3561 - Freud and Psychoanalysis

Fall.

GERST 3612

Remembering Socialism: Literature and Film After the End of History

More than thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union, we have the distance needed to view the twentieth-century state socialist project from a historical perspective–even as Cold War tropes are revived amid another major confrontation with Russia. In this course, we will analyze memoirs, oral histories, historical fiction, films, and TV shows that look back at this period. How do the makers of these works use genre as a political as well as artistic tool? What are the political implications of comedy, cosplay, or melodrama when applied to communism? How does the portrayal of this period change as state socialism recedes into the distance? Texts from Russia, Ukraine, Germany, the Balkans, the UK, and the United States.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 3612 - Remembering Socialism: Literature and Film After the End of History

Fall.

GERST 4100

The Seminar

Topics vary by instructor.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 4100 - The Seminar

Fall.

GERST 4382

Paul de Man

This course studies major works from the great 20th century literary theorist Paul de Man, one of the founders of deconstruction. We will read carefully works from across his career, including broader theoretical statements and texts more closely focused on literary and philosophical texts. "The Rhetoric of Temporality, "Semiology and Rhetoric," "The Resistance to Theory," "Autobiography as De-Facement," "Shelley Disfigured," "Aesthetic Formalization in Kleist," "Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant," and works on Rousseau, Hegel, and others. We will include poetry and relevant sections of philosophical and theoretical material as appropriate.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for GERST 4382 - Paul de Man

Fall.

GERST 4510

Independent Study

Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.

Full details for GERST 4510 - Independent Study

Fall.

GERST 4530

Honors Research

The Reading Course is administered by the director of the honors thesis. It carries 4 hours credit, and may be counted towards the work required for the German Major. The reading concentrates on a pre-determined topic or area. Students meet with their honors advisor about every two weeks throughout the term. Substantial reading assignments are given, and occasional short essays are written.

Full details for GERST 4530 - Honors Research

Multi-semester course: Fall, Spring.

GERST 4540

Honors Thesis

The thesis is to be written on a subject related to the work done in GERST 4530. A suggested length for the thesis is 50-60 pages.

Full details for GERST 4540 - Honors Thesis

Fall, Spring.

GERST 5070

Teaching German as a Foreign Language: Principles and Practices

Designed to familiarize students with current thought and approaches in the field of applied linguistics and language pedagogy. Introduces different models of foreign language approaches and discusses various practices for the foreign language classroom. Special consideration is given to topics such as language acquisition progression, planning syllabi, creating tasks and projects, designing classroom tests, and evaluating students' performance. Participants conduct an action research project.

Full details for GERST 5070 - Teaching German as a Foreign Language: Principles and Practices

Fall.

GERST 6224

Writing for the Public: Adapting Academic Work for a General Audience

This workshop-style course will address the question of how to draw on academic research and expertise to write for a non-specialist audience. We will discuss the benefits of public-facing writing; how to select a publication to pitch; how to pitch an article; and how to draft and revise an article once a pitch has been accepted. These skills will be developed through practice. Students will develop real pitch ideas to use as a basis for articles that will be drafted and revised over the course of the semester. We will discuss questions such as selecting appropriate venues, adapting to a new writing style, sourcing, citation practices, and communicating with editors.

Full details for GERST 6224 - Writing for the Public: Adapting Academic Work for a General Audience

Fall.

GERST 6310

Reading Academic German I

This course emphasizes the acquisition of reading skills in German, using a variety of prepared and authentic texts. The follow-up course, GERST 6320 , Reading Academic German II, is offered in the spring.

Full details for GERST 6310 - Reading Academic German I

Fall.

GERST 6382

Paul de Man

This course studies major works from the great 20th century literary theorist Paul de Man, one of the founders of deconstruction. We will read carefully works from across his career, including broader theoretical statements and texts more closely focused on literary and philosophical texts. "The Rhetoric of Temporality, "Semiology and Rhetoric," "The Resistance to Theory," "Autobiography as De-Facement," "Shelley Disfigured," "Aesthetic Formalization in Kleist," "Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant," and works on Rousseau, Hegel, and others. We will include poetry and relevant sections of philosophical and theoretical material as appropriate.

Full details for GERST 6382 - Paul de Man

Fall.

GERST 6445

German Media Theories

This seminar examines German media theories from the Frankfurt School to the Kittler Network and beyond. We will discuss influential concepts associated with this work (e.g., the culture industry, the public sphere, discourse networks), along with related concepts in media and cultural studies (e.g., space and time, analog and digital, old and new media). Theoretical readings address questions about media aesthetics, intermediality, and media change; automation, mechanization, and standardization; and communication, command, and control. Engaging with scholarly debates about interdisciplinarity and theory transfer, we will also revisit and revise reductive stereotypes about media critique, technological determinism, and the "Germanness" of German media theories.

Full details for GERST 6445 - German Media Theories

Fall.

GERST 7530

Independent Study

Graduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.

Full details for GERST 7530 - Independent Study

Fall.

GERST 7531

Colloquium

The course consists of a bi-weekly workshop series focusing on a range of interdisciplinary topics and sponsored by the Institute for German Cultural Studies (IGCS). Speakers include prominent scholars in the field of German Studies (understood in a wide, interdisciplinary sense) and advanced graduate students, who discuss their work-in-progress based on pre-circulated papers. Besides attending the workshops, course participants meet with the instructor for two additional sessions devoted to pursuing the ties between the topics and disciplinary fields showcased by the speakers and the students' own work. The course is thus intended both as a survey of disciplinary approaches in German and Humanities Studies and as a framework that allows graduate students to hone professional skills (presenter and panel respondent, newsletter contributor, etc).

Full details for GERST 7531 - Colloquium

Fall.

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