Spring 2025 Class Schedule

• Spring 2025 Class Schedule
• Spring 2025 Course Descriptions

Spring 2025 class Schedule 

Spring 2025 course descriptions

German 101-1,2,3 – Beginning German

In this third quarter of the Beginning German 101 course, we offer students a truly communicative approach that supports proficiency. Students will use German in a meaningful way in classes that will require active participation. By the end of the quarter, students will have been introduced to all four cases in German, the communicative and narrative past, and the subjunctive voice. Students will read short fairy tales and have achieved enough proficiency in German to advance to the intermediate level.
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.

German 102-1,2,3 – Intermediate German

In the third quarter of the German 102 sequence, we will continue to use Intermatik as our base for grammar. Students will continue to increase their proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing German. Students will also have the opportunity to continue conversing with native German speakers via TalkAbroad. This quarter we will read Nora Krug’s Heimat (2018), an award-winning graphic novel about the struggle of Germans to come to terms with their nation’s past.
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 203-0 - Focus Speaking 

Practical training in listening comprehension and speaking. Examines contemporary German culture. May be repeated for credit with change of topic. (This course will not count for the language requirement but may be taken concurrently with GERMAN 102-3).

Prerequisite: GERMAN 102-2 or placement test results.  

German 245-0 – Special Topics in German Literature and Culture : Bauhaus and Beyond: German Influences on the Chicago Skyline

This cultural studies course is taught in German and explores the unique history of Chicago in the context of German-American architectural connections. Particular emphasis will be placed on the German Bauhaus School and movement that influenced architectural development in Chicago and worldwide. We will discuss the lives, works, and theories of German-born architects, who played a significant role in shaping the Chicago skyline and also designed signature works in Germany, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Helmut Jahn and Dirk Lohan. Course materials are derived from a variety of sources and media, including articles on history and architecture, websites, photographs, paintings, videos, exhibits, and films. Highlights include exploring the campus from an architectural angle, interviews with German architects, the attendance of architectural tours, including a walking tour in Chicago or Evanston, a river cruise, and creative articles and videos to be shared on the collaborative course website. The course fulfillls an Area VI (Literature and Fine Arts) distribution requirement.

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

Advanced Expression

Literature Fine Arts Distro Area

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline

German 246-0 – Special Topics in German Literature and Culture : Berlin Calling: Dance Music and Club Culture 1990-2020

​​This course offers a study of Berlin, Germany’s world-famous role as a major center of contemporary dance music (techno, house, disco) and nightclub culture. Together, we will explore many aspects of this culture, from the unique genres of music and how DJs create music to the technology of sound, the experience of dancing and of clubs as spaces, and the politics of belonging, representation, and identity on the dance floor, in particular its complicated exchanges with Black communities and music in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, the birthplaces of this music.
Prerequisites: None.

Literature Fine Arts Distro Area

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline

German 250 – Cultural History of Beer and Brewing from Germany to Chicago

In this class you will read fictional, historical, and philosophical texts on beer and its cultural impact, explore the rich history of German beer making in Chicago from the 1850s to today, and learn about the science of brewing and different brewing techniques used by German brew-masters. Professor Ryder in the German department has been brewing for over 10 years, and will bring his equipment to show how to brew beer. A tasting of non-alcoholic malted beverages will be included, as well as a tour of a local Chicago brewery.
Prerequisites: None.

Literature Fine Arts Distro Area

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline 

German 305-0 – Advanced Creative Expression in German writing

This course focuses on reviewing and introducing grammar concepts on the B2/C1 levels as well as encouraging and facilitating the review and acquisition of intermediate- and advanced-level vocabulary in German through explicit vocabulary exercises. The aim is to engage students in actively thinking about word meanings, the relationships among words, and how we can use words in different situations. While we will be working through grammar explanations and grammar exercises quite frequently, we will read, discuss, and write about a series of German children’s books, selected not only for the quality of the language but for the themes and illustrations to engage students in class. As a capstone project, students will have a chance to write a unique children’s story using generative artificial intelligence tools. Interacting with ChatGPT in German, students will engage in informal and low-stakes writing-to-learn activities to help them think through ideas and key concepts for their stories, as well as to learn new vocabulary, expressions, and language patterns.

Prerequisite in German: Two courses in German on the 200-level or B2 (high-intermediate / advanced low skills) in reading, writing, and speaking.

Advanced Expression 

GERMAN 401 – German Literature and Critical Thought 1750-1832 

The seminar will examine Kant's Critique of Judgment as an encounter that is both singular and shared.

Undergraduates can register with consent of the instructor.

GERMAN 402 – History of Literature and Critical Thought 1832-1900 

 This class explores the development of the concept of the so-called Homo Economicus in 19th-century literature, philosophy, law, and political economy. We will examine how ideas related to property, exchange, debt, and credit play a central role in the growing interconnection between emerging economic knowledge and literary representation, from Goethe and German Romanticism to the post-revolutionary literature of restoration and realism. Literature will be understood as a practice of extensive exchange. Following Adam Smith's influential work, The Wealth of Nations, the desire to accumulate wealth is crucial to the processes of subjectivization, positioning the modern bourgeois subject in a precarious situation at the intersection of industrialization, financialization, and colonial exploitation. Our readings will primarily focus on German literature, including works by Goethe, Novalis, Tieck, Stifter, Keller, and Freytag, alongside contemporary critical reflections from thinkers such as Marx, Proudhon, Sohn-Rethel, Marcuse, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Agamben.

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