German 230-0 – Berlin and the Culture of Democracy

This class aims to introduce students to the history and culture of Berlin from 1900 to the present. Drawing on a wide range of media, from maps through film to music, the class concentrates on a series of transformative moments in German cultural history seen through the prism of Berlin. Students will engage with the varied historical, socio-political, and artistic changes in German culture throughout the twentieth century, including the vibrant and provocative culture of the 1920s and early 1930s, with a focus on changing forms of gender identity (the “New Woman”) and sexual subcultures (as in the film Cabaret). Further, students will examine the everyday and extraordinary history of German-Jews in Germany around the devastating caesura of the Jewish genocide executed by the National Socialists. After examining the megalomaniacal plans that the Nazis made for Berlin, the class turns to the devastated city of 1945 and the divided city of the Cold War, where the conflict between “East” and “West” emerges in the “concrete” form of the Berlin Wall. Further topics include the events surrounding the collapse of the Wall and the creation of the Berlin Republic, the changing face of national culture in light of the migration of the so-called Turkish “guest workers” of the post-War years, particularly through the art of later generations of Turkish-German authors and filmmakers in Berlin.
Prerequisites: None.
This course counts for Distribution Area IV and Area VI.

GER 232-0 : The Theme of Faust Through the Ages

“To sell one’s soul,” “to strike a bargain with the devil,” or even “to beat the devil at his own game”—these expressions and similar ones continue to enjoy undiminished popularity. For more than five-hundred years the legend of Faust has served as means to express the daring and danger of pursuing an aspiration even if it comes at the cost of one’s “soul.” The specter of a “Faustian bargain” often appears when narratives identify individuals whose inordinate achievements are both destructive and self-destructive. The theme of Faust provides a perspective in which one must thus reflect on the highest and lowest values.

Dr. Faustus has undergone many mutations since he first appeared in central Europe around the early sixteenth century. This class will be begin with a question at the foundation of the Faust legend: what is our “soul” worth? While examining this and kindred questions about the nature of the moral self, the class will continually reflect on what we are doing when we evaluate a work of art in relation to the moral culture of its “time” or “period.” In addition to listening to some musical compositions and reading some shorter texts, we will examine the earliest versions of Faust, which derives from the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation and then proceed to read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s great drama of cosmic knowledge and sexual seduction, Faust I, followed by selections from its strange sequel Faust II, in which Faust invents paper money and then becomes a real-estate developer or social-engineer who wants to reorganize the very nature of our planet. We will ask what Goethe, near the end of his life, gave to “world literature” (a term of his own invention) when he presented his final version of Faust as a man committed to a total terrestrial transformation that inadvertently destroys innocent lives. As a conclusion to our analysis of Goethe’s Faust, we will read two very different kinds of poetic responses, Paul Celan’s “Death Fugue” and Carol Ann Duffy’s “Mrs. Faust.” And in the final two weeks of the class we will view three versions of the Faust legend for our times: Taylor Hackford’s The Devil’s Advocate from the 1990s, Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls from the 2000s, and Danny Boyle’s Yesterday from 2019."
Prerequisites: None.
This course counts for Distribution Area V and Area VI.

German 309-2 – Advanced Business German: Marketing and Management

This advanced Business German course focuses on management and marketing practices in Germany (Betriebswirtschaft). In addition to acquiring a rich Business German vocabulary, students will also develop nuanced cross-cultural knowledge by encouraging students to think critically about cultural differences and how they relate to business practices. Topics to be discussed, among others, are German corporate structures and business culture, intercultural competence, marketing and advertising, career and everyday life. Important vocabulary and relevant grammar structures will be practiced throughout the class. The course prepares students to work in international work environments. This course is a companion course to German 309-1; both courses together will prepare students to work in international work environments.
Prerequisite in German: Two 200-level courses in German or permission of the DUS.

German 327-0 – German Expressionism

This course 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 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 and poetics of this short-lived but influential movement. We will also consider certain themes and issues that Expressionist art particularly addressed, including: urbanization and cosmopolitanism; 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 and the appeal of the exotic.
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.

GER 441-20 : Studies in Communication and Culture - History of Aesthetics

This course provides an introduction to foundational texts in the history of modern western (primarily German) theoretical aesthetics. Starting from Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's emphatic appropriation the term "aesthetics" to designate the study of beauty and good taste, the course will move chronologically through major texts of aesthetic theory from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. The course will both examine the specific problems and questions raised by the various texts and consider the texts as history, looking at the ways in which these works both respond to one another and to the political and cultural tensions of their respective eras. We will also consider the ways in which these texts cross disciplinary boundaries or indeed are always already transdisciplinary, constantly moving from the comparatively narrow fields of artistic and literary criticism to fundamental issues of ethics, epistemology, politics, and psychology, and back and forth all over again, always asking ourselves the questions: What are the historical conditions of the ways in which we make and/or think about works of art, broadly conceived, and how does this, in turn, shape the world that art is said to reflect?