Undergraduate Courses (Offered in English)
GERST 2567: HOLOCAUST IN HISTORY AND MEMORY (combined with HIST 2567, JWST 2467)
3 credits.
MW 2:55-4:10, J. Burzlaff
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.
GERST 2700: INTRODUCTION TO GERMAN CULTURE AND THOUGHT
3 credits. Student option grading. Enrollment limited to18 first-semester first-year students. Readings and discussions in English. All interested students are invited to apply online or in writing to the instructor, 183 Goldwin Smith Hall. Taught in English.
TR 10:10-11:25, A. Schwarz
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.
GERST 3513: INTRODUCTION TO TRAUMA STUDIES (combined with COML 3050, ENGL 3051)
3 credits. Student option grading. Taught in English.
MW 1:25-2:40, C. Caruth
This course provides an introduction to the theory of trauma, along with literary, artistic and clinical works that engage with traumatic experience. We will explore the enigmatic notion of an experience of catastrophe that is both deferred and repeated, that escapes immediate comprehension but insists on testimonial recognition. How does trauma require us to rethink our notions of history, memory, subjectivity, and language? Who speaks from the site of trauma, and how can we learn to listen its new forms of address? We begin with Freud's foundational studies and their reception across the 20th and 21st centuries, then examine a range of global responses reformulating individual and collective trauma in its social, historical and political contexts. Materials include theoretical, artistic, testimonial expression in various media.
GERST 3545: IMAGINING THE MIDDLE AGES: FILMS, GAMES, AND MEDIA (combined with COML 3113, MEDVL 3545, PMA 3545, VISST 3545)
3 credits. Student option grading. Taught in English.
MW 10:10-11:25, E. Born
Today, the legacy of the Middle Ages can be found everywhere, from the game of chess to Game of Thrones, the parliament to the university, the Crusades to the Vikings, the nostalgia for tradition to the very concept of modernity. This course explores the function of the medieval past through the lens of modern visual culture, as part of an emerging field known as “Medievalism.” Along with readings of classic theories of Medievalism (Huizinga, Balázs, Panofsky, Bazin, McLuhan, Eco), screenings will put auteur films (Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc, Bergman’s Seventh Seal, Kurosawa’s Ran) in dialogue with popular culture (from Monthy Python to A Knight’s Tale) in order to raise the question of a Global Middle Ages.
GERST 3555: COMICS AS A MEDIUM (combined with FGSS 3555, LGBT 3555, PMA 3555, SHUM 3555, VISST 3555)
3 credits. Letter Grades only. Taught in English.
TR 10:10-11:25, L. Schoppelrei
What is a comic? How might comics attend to complex historical, social, and political topics? How do comics facilitate a coming to terms with the past or function as an activist medium—spurring on political and cultural shifts?
Given this great variety of comics from Germanophone locales this course engages with comics as a key literary form and one that provides a deep engagement with histories, cultures, activisms, and representations thereof. Our readings will include queer/trans comics and zines, early text/image works preceding the comic form, and webcomics on decolonization projects and fantastical places. We will also read comics scholarship and historical texts that will provide a solid foundation from which to approach these literary works. As a way of immersing ourselves into the world of comics, each student will create their own comic over the course of our class—building upon the formal components we locate in class texts. (Drawing skills are not required! Come as you are.) As comics have their own medium-specific vocabulary for visual and textual analysis, we will also spend time building the skills and vocabulary necessary for analyzing the comics we read.
GERST 3580: NINETEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY (combined with PHIL 3250)
3 credits.
W 2:00-4:30, K. Hubner
Survey of nineteenth century philosophy.
GERST 3620: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORY (combined with COML3541, ENGL 3920, GOVT 3636, SHUM 3636)
3 credits. Student option grading. Taught in English.
TR 1:25-2:40, P. Fleming
Shortly after the 2016 election, The New Yorker published an article entitled “The Frankfurt School Knew Trump was Coming.” This course examines what the Frankfurt School knew by introducing students to Critical Theory, juxtaposing its roots in the 19th century (i.e., Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud) with its most prominent manifestation in the 20th century, the Frankfurt School (e.g., Kracauer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse) alongside disparate voices (Arendt) and radical continuations (Davis, Zuboff, Weeks) as they engage with politics, society, culture, and literature (e.g. Brecht and Kafka). Established in 1920s and continued in exile in the US during WWII, the interdisciplinary circle of scholars comprising the Frankfurt School played a pivotal role in the intellectual developments of post-war American and European social, political, and aesthetic theory: from analyses of authoritarianism and democracy to critiques of capitalism, the entertainment industry, commodity fetishism, and mass society. This introduction to Critical Theory explores both the prescience of these diverse thinkers for today’s world (“what they knew”) as well as what they perhaps could not anticipate in the 21st century (e.g., developments in technology, economy, political orders), and thus how to critically address these changes today.
GERST 4210: EXISTENTIALISM (combined with COML 4251, GOVT 4015, ROMS 4210)
3 credits. Student option grading. Taught in English.
MW 10:10-11:25, G. Waite
The most intense public encounter between Existentialism and Marxism occurred in immediate post-WWII Europe, its structure remaining alive internationally. Existentialist questions have been traced from pre-Socratic thinkers through Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes onward; just as roots of modern materialism extend to Epicurus and Lucretius, or Leopardi. This course will focus on differing theories and concomitant practices concerned with “alienation,” “anxiety,” “crisis,” “death of God,” “nihilism,” “rebellion or revolution.” Crucial are possible relations between fiction and non-fiction; also among philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and political theory. Other authors may include: Althusser, de Beauvoir, Beckett, Büchner, Camus, Che, Dostoevsky, Fanon, Genet, Gide, Gramsci, O. Gross, Hamsun, Heidegger, Husserl, Jaspers, C.L.R. James, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Lagerkvist, Lacan, Lenin, Marx, Merleau-Ponty, Mishima, G. Novack, Nietzsche, Ortega, Pirandello, W. Reich, Sartre, Shestov, Tillich, Unamuno. There is also cinema.
GERST 4224: WRITING FOR THE PUBLIC: ADAPTING ACADEMIC WORK FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE (combined with COML 4224, ROMS 4324, COML 6224, GERST 6224, ROMS 6324)
3 credits. Student option grading. Taught in English.
T 2:00-4:30, S. Pinkham
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.
GERST 4510: INDEPENDENT STUDY
(CU-UGR) 1-4 credits each term. Permission of instructor required. To apply for independent study, please complete the on-line form at https://data.arts.cornell.edu/as-stus/indep_study_intro.cfm.
Hours to be arranged. Staff.
Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.
GERST 4530: HONORS RESEARCH
(CU-UGR) 4 credits. Permission of department required. Multi-semester course. Multi-term course: R grade only (in progress).
Hours to be arranged. Staff.
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.
GERST 4540: HONORS THESIS
(CU-UGR) 4 credits. Letter grades only. Prerequisite: GERST 4530. Permission of department required.
Hours to be arranged. Staff.
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.