Winter 2021 Class Schedule

• Winter 2021 Class Schedule
• Winter 2021 Course Descriptions

Winter 2021 Class Schedule

Winter 2020 course descriptions 

GER 101-1,2,3 : Beginning German 

The Beginning German sequence offers students a systematic introduction to German language and culture emphasizing the four modalities: speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing. The first quarter (101-1) offers a systematic review of basic German words, phrases with a cultural focus on Germany, an introduction of simple grammar items, and short interview practice at the end of the quarter. The second quarter (101-2) includes a variety of writing assignments, cultural presentations, reading poems by Goethe, the visit of a Mystery Guest, as well as intensive work with the strong and irregular verbs. In the third quarter (101-3), students will read and discuss short stories and plays by Grimm, Brecht and Kafka! The highlight will be an in-class skit performance which culminates in the almost famous *Evening O' Skits* featuring the best student selected skits from first and second-year German.
Prerequisite in German for 101-1: None or one year of high-school German.
Prerequisite in German for 101-2: 101-1 or placement exam results.
Prerequisite in German for 101-3: 101-2 or placement exam results.

GER 102- 1,2,3 : Intermediate German

The Intermediate German sequence offers students a systematic review of German language and culture to increase linguistic proficiency and cultural literacy. The pedagogy used fosters learning in the four modalities: speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing. Each quarter has a specific focus: In the Fall Quarter (102-1) students concentrate on speaking and communication and on the history of the GDR and the 20th anniversary of Germanyʼs reunification, in the Winter Quarter (102-2) on writing and on contemporary German culture, and in the Spring Quarter (102-3) on reading, theatre, and performance and on 20th -century literature by German-speaking authors.
Prerequisite in German for 102-1: 101-3 or placement exam results
Prerequisite in German for 102-2: 102-1 or placement exam results.
Prerequisite in German for 102-3: 102-2 or placement exam results.

German 201-0 – Focus Reading - Art in the Modern Age

This course examines the explosion of art and industry at the turn of the century that for the first time included substantial opportunities for women. The class will provide an introduction to the period of the German Empire or Kaiserreich 1871 – 1918. This epoch in German history is emblematic for modernism. Through short historical texts, biographies, letters and journals, students will learn about social issues, art movements and the German politics of the period that included Bismarck, artistic colonies and war. Students will become acquainted with the artworks of Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter and more. Virtual visits to the Art Institut, the Block Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum are planned. Students will complete a project-based presentation in lieu of a final exam.
Prerequisite in German: German 102-2. (This course will not count for the language requirement but may be taken concurrently with 102-3.)

German 221-3 – Introduction to Literature: 1945-today

This course, designed for majors and non-majors, introduces students to representative short stories by major This course, designed for majors and non-majors, introduces students to representative short stories by significant postwar German-speaking authors (1945 through to the present). This literature emerges from a period of enormous political, moral, and economical flux in Germany, and highlights important social, political, and intellectual dynamics present in postwar, and then post wall German society. Themes addressed in the literature include the recent German past, the representation of history, individual versus collective guilt, gender and sexuality, exile and alienation, the relationship of the individual to a modern technological society, immigration, and new challenges faced by Germany after unification. In addition, the course examines the genre of the short story, with attention to different modes and styles of writing.

Prerequisite in German: One 200-level course in German or permission of the DUS.

This course counts for Distribution Area VI. 

German 228-0 – The German Film - Cinema in the City/The City in Cinema

This course draws on German film from the Weimar period until today to analyze how space and social relations are organized and imagined in the German city of the global era. How does urban space influence how we conceive of national, gendered, ethnic, sexual and class identity? How does the perception of social relations in urban spaces and in cinematic form organize our understanding of the political and social networks we inhabit? German 228 may be repeated for credit with different topics.
Prerequisites: None.
This course counts for Distribution Area VI.

German 234-2 – Jews and Germans: An Intercultural History II 

The aim of the class is to examine a variety of ways in which the anxieties and uncertainties of the period between 1870 and 1933—which range from its political to its scientific contexts—are reflected and transformed in the work of certain exemplary German Jewish writers, thinkers, and scientists. The course is divided into four sections: paying particular attention to Else Lasker-Schüller’s Hebrew Ballads, the first section examines writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who developed new forms of writing in response to a political, social, and religious environment in which the traditional locus of Jewish authority had declined in favor of secular counterparts, while a newly racialized movement declaring itself “anti-Semitic” began to form political parties in the newly united Germany and the old Austrian Empire; the second section concerns the renewal of the Jewish messianic tradition in the thought of Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig; the third section concentrates on the work of Franz Kafka, where the German Jewish predicament gains a particularly powerful and vastly influential voice that has stamped the imagery of the modern world; finally, the class turns its attention to two revolutionary scientists, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.

Prerequisites: None.
This course counts for Distribution Area IV, Area V, and Area VI. 

German 307-0 – German Media

This course is concerned with how current political, socioeconomic, and cultural events in Germany and Europe are portrayed in German media (this includes print, TV, news broadcasts and social media). Current topics will be discussed such as for example how the presence of a far-right populist party in the parliament will alter the form of politic discourse in ways that are yet to be seen. The class will also include a discussion of journalistic differences among media sources. There will be ample room for students’ suggestions as well as for current events that are not yet foreseeable. The class aims to give students an overview of the German media landscape in general and answer the question which newspapers and TV channels are suited to fulfill the students’ information needs and what they can do to follow current developments in Germany.

Prerequisite in German: Three 200-level courses in German or permission of the DUS.

German 309-1 – Advanced Business German: the German Economy

This advanced business-German course will give students an overview of the German economy (Volkswirtschaft), its underlying structures, its current trends, and some of the problems the German economy faces. Students will become well versed in German economic topics, will learn about the differences between the German and American economic system, will gain familiarity with relevant German media that report on the German economy. Although this course is content-driven, student will also develop their language proficiency in the field of German business and commerce through study of business-specific vocabulary and through specific reading and writing tasks. This course is a companion course to German 309-2; both courses together will prepare students to work in international work environments.

Prerequisite in German: Three 200-level courses in German or permission of the DUS.

German 327-0 – Expressionism - Expressionism: Modernity, Madness, Revolution

This class will look at the rise and fall of German Expressionism in literature, visual art, and film from the late nineteenth century to the ascent of the Third Reich. We will discuss how the artistic and technical innovations of Expressionism reflected distinctive political, philosophical, and social ideas and conditions of Germany in the years just before and in the wake of the first World War, looking closely at the aesthetics of this short-lived but influential movement and its political and social repercussions. We will also consider certain themes and issues that Expressionist art particularly addressed, including: urbanization and cosmopolitanization; capitalism and inequality; war and trauma; portrayals of extreme states such as violence, ecstasy, and mental illness; sexuality, desire, and the representation of women; horror and the occult; the role of ethnic and cultural minorities; the appeal of the exotic; and the exploration of new or marginal psychological realities.

Prerequisite in German: Three 200-level courses in German (at least one in literature) or permission of the DUS.

This course counts for Distribution Area VI.

German 334-0 – Writers and their Critics - Franz Kafka

Almost a hundred years after his untimely death in 1924 Kafka’s literary, cultural, and even political importance has only increased, as his strange imaginary—often populated by animals—speaks with ever greater urgency to readers across the globe. This seminar will be divided into three parts. In the first, we will be reading a variety of Kafka’s shorter prose writings, especially those involving animals—a salesman who turns into a bug, an ape who writes a letter to university administrators, and a mouse who becomes the singer of her “people.” In the second we will read two readers of Kafka who are similarly visionary writers: Jorge Luis Borges and J. M. Coetzee. And for the third section, the class will collectively decide which readers of Kafka they would like to examine, as we widen the focus of “reading,” so that it may include visual arts, film, and contemporary media

Please consult Caesar for current topic. German 334 may be repeated for credit with different topics.
Prerequisites: None.
This course counts for Distribution Area VI.

German 335-0 – Minority Voices in Germany

Starting out from the question: “What is German?”, this course explores the changing understandings of national identity in postwar Germany. In this context, the course examines fiction, autobiography, poetry, and political and theoretical writings by and about “minority voices” in Germany in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Questions the course will explore include: What is the relationship between autobiographical writing and identity? What is a “minority” and how might we conceive of “minority voices” in terms of ethnicity, religious belief, gender, class, and community? What can our readings teach us about the role of “minority literature” in Germany?

Prerequisite in German: Three 200-level courses in German (at least one in literature) or permission of the DUS.

This course counts for Distribution Area VI.

German 346-0 – Topics in German Literature and Culture -Theory as Theater: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

Courses under this heading examine at an advanced level selected topics in German literature and/or pivotal periods in German culture. Topics may include: Theory as Theater: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Please consult Caesar for current topic. German 346 may be repeated for credit with different topics.

Prerequisites: None.
This course counts for Distribution Area VI.

GERMAN 402 – German Literature and Critical Thought, 1832-1900 - Theories of Realism

This course looks at the notion of realism as both historical literary movement and epistemological/aesthetic problem. We will read classic theories of realism by Hegel, Auerbach, Barthes, Lukács, Blumenberg, and others, as well as significant new work by contemporary critics and theorists, together with exemplary texts of nineteenth-century European realist prose fiction. The temporal focus of the class will be mid- to late-nineteenth-century Europe and the particular literary form that dominated at this time; however, we will also go beyond this to look at the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of the notion of “realism” itself. Special attention will be devoted to the following questions: the purpose of genre, the place of the human, the relationship between realism and reality (or the real), the elevation of the ordinary, and the possibilities and limits of representation.

Cross listed with Comp-Lit 414

GERMAN 408-0 – Critical Theory and Religion

This course explores the central place the concept of “religion” has occupied in the development of critical theory and, in turn, the role critical theory has played in reframing “religion” in modernity and in the contemporary geopolitical moment. We take up the question, “Is critique secular,” as we consider the contributions, potential and actual, of “religion” to social transformation.

Cross listed with Religious Studies 468

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