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Graduate Seminars

Use the to search by Core, GEN ED, specific subjects, keywords, instructors, etc. Search for "GRMN" to get a listing of German courses for a specific semester.

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A&S Policy on Enrollment in Undergraduate Language Courses

Special Topics Courses for Fall 2023:

GRMN 2141-3. Topics in Modern German Culture and Society: Populist Symbols
Explores representations of, struggles with and challenges to power, as presented in literature from the early 19th century through the present. The class will engage with philosophical queries that invite individuals to question and challenge institutions and the status quo, and literary representations of the power struggles that ensue.

Right-Wing Populist movements communicate their messages and reach their audiences in several ways. Some communications are direct, like the overt rhetoric that is written in programs or delivered in speeches. Other ways of communicating, however, are covert. For instance, employing suggestive imagery creates visual representations of ideals, and this is one way of communicating ideologies. Even in spoken or written rhetoric, dog whistling is frequently used in place of directly inflammatory language, to appeal to a target audience without provoking controversy. Be it aesthetic choices on websites or symbols the invoke fascist aesthetics, or the use of coded language, strategic branding techniques are used to alienate, invite, or excite specific demographics and convey specific messages toward political aims. This course will focus on identifying the symbols that are associated with international right-wing populist movements, with particular focus on Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This is essential to being able to evaluate media messages critically and analytically. Students will engage with websites, speeches, and party platforms, and learn to decipher the messages encoded therein.

GRMN 3150-3.  Issues in Politics and Literature:  Protest Art

In Germany, art has long been a mode of resistance to oppression, or even to the status quo. In Germany, Dada art was used to protest World War I and the rise of Nazi fascism. Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) resists gender normativity, class, and power dynamics. The installations of Philip Kojo Metz (2009-present) protest German colonialism. These are a few examples of art used for protest or resistance, and a few of the artworks/artists with which students will engage in the course. In this class, students will view various artistic media, read scholarship that pertains to the history of resistance through art and on the art assigned, and they will perform their own oral and written analyses of the assigned media. TAUGHT IN GERMAN.

Special Topics Courses for Spring 2023:

GRMN 3141-3. Topics in Modern German Culture and Society: Power in German Literature
Explores representations of, struggles with and challenges to power, as presented in literature from the early 19th century through the present. The class will engage with philosophical queries that invite individuals to question and challenge institutions and the status quo, and literary representations of the power struggles that ensue.

GRMN 3150-3.  Issues in Politics and Literature: Advanced German Through Poetry

GRMN 5520-3. Current Issues in German Literature Media: Refuge/Refugees
Introduces the diversity of refugee migration in German culture from the mid-20th century to the present through cultural "texts," including those created by or in collaboration with refugees. These include film, comic journalism, essays, literature, blogs, hashtag campaigns, music, etc.These texts are discussed in relationship to several relevant bodies of theory: the ethics of hospitality and cohabitation, critical race theory, memory studies, biopolitics and precarity .

Special Topics Courses for Fall 2022:

GRMN 3141-3. Topics in Modern German Culture and Society: The Culture of Sports
The Culture of Sports Looks at the role athletic competition, sports, and games have played in German history from 1813 to the present. Focuses on the history of Olympic Games, on the relations of sports and political movements, on the game of “Fussball” and its difference to American football, and on recent German exploits in professional cycling.

GRMN 3520-3. Open Topics in Cultural Context German Graphic Novels and Memoirs
German Graphic Novels and Memoirs canvases graphic novels and comics from the past decade to examine multimodal storytelling, personal narrative, and reflection upon or engagement with historical narratives. Our main focus is the intersection of history, memory, and the visual image, and how comics and graphic novels connect with identity performance and creation. TAUGHT IN GERMAN.

GRMN 5420-3. Open Topics in Cultural Context: Black German Poetics
Black German Poetics highlights the cultural production of the Black diaspora living in Germany from spoken word to poetry and hip hop. This seminar engages with a variety of genres to explore motivations and development of Black German poetic styles and modalities, as well as fundamental theories in Global Black studies, German poetics, and personal narrative and storytelling. Graduate course, TAUGHT IN GERMAN.

Special Topics Courses for Spring 2022:

GRMN 3141-3. Topics in Modern German Culture and Society: German Colonial Legacies
German Colonial Legacies Explores and discusses the “long reach” of the German colonial imagination and its fantasies as seen through the lens of Black and Afro-German cultural production, as well as the developing field of German colonial history, contemporary debates about museum holdings, and its connection to the broader fields of Black German and Diasporic studies.

GRMN 3141-3. Issues in German Politics and Literature: Contemporary Political Lit
Examines political fiction by contemporary German female authors and film makers who engage critically with political issues from Germany’s violent past to contemporary issues such as climate change and immigration. Topics include: migration and ethnonationalism, the rise of the alt-right/neo-Nazi movement, climate change and Querdenker, as well as the politics of disease and vaccination. We will read texts by Merle Kröger, Sybille Berg, and Helene Bukowski, among others.

GRMN 5410-3. Graduate Seminar: Topics in Early 20th Century German Society: Utopia and Queer Poetics
Utopia and Queer Poetics What is a queer utopia and how might poetry and literature be uniquely equipped to imagine it? Is it a radical attachment to enjoyment in the here and now? Is it a fleeting, yet hope-filled, moment of desire? Is it a form of resistance aimed toward the future? To approach these questions, we will ground our discussion in readings by queer theorists such as Ahmed, Edelman, Halberstam, Lorde, and Muñoz. We will then inquire into the futurity, ephemerality, potentiality of a queer poetics (and a poetics of the queer) in German, Austrian, and Swiss prose and poetry in the early 20th century.

Special Topics Courses for Fall 2021:

GRMN 3141-3. Topics in Modern German Culture and Society: The Culture of Sports
The Culture of Sports Looks at the role athletic competition, sports, and games have played in German history from 1813 to the present. Focuses on the history of Olympic Games, on the relations of sports and political movements, on the game of “Fussball” and its difference to American football, and on recent German exploits in professional cycling.

Special Topics Courses for Spring 2021:

GRMN 5510-3. Current Issues in German Literature: States of Emergency 
Investigates manifestations of power and authority by focusing on the concept of the state of emergency from Carl Schmitt's famous definition of sovereignty, Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence, and Hannah Arendt's study of totalitarianism, to Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, and Naomi Klein's "disaster capitalism". We will look into the history of crises and how crises have influenced perceptions of historical progress. From natural catastrophe and war, to terrorism and the global Covid-19 pandemic, we will discuss how crises have driven the demand for sovereign forms of authority. (Approved as elective for the Critical Theory Certificate)

Special Topics Courses for Fall 2020:

GRMN 5420-3. Later 20th Century German Society: Contemporary German Film
Introduces students to contemporary German cinema and moving image culture, as well as to theoretical approaches to visual studies, emphasizing works that engage in major cultural, social, and political debates of the last decade. Contemporary political and social movements, insecurity and precarity, intimacy and social life, surveillance, work lives in neoliberal economies, migration, and more may be addressed in the selected films.

Special Topics Courses for Spring 2020:

GRMN 3150-3.  Issues in Politics and Literature: Trajectories in Contemporary Political Literature
An introduction to the fast-shifting terrain of contemporary political literature. Topics will include: minority ethnic literature (Nurkan Erpulat, Sharon Dodua Otoo) and pop-feminist writing (Sibylle Berg). New realisms versus alternative history writing (Christian Kracht) and post-apocalyptic fiction (Kathrin Röggla). Postdramatic theater and the political (Christoph Schlingensief, Rimini Protokoll). Political poetry now (kookbooks authors). Authors' texts about what it means to write political literature today. If desired, we may include opportunities for creative writing. Readings and discussion in German. Department enforced prereq., GRMN 2020 or GRMN 2030 (minimum grade C-). Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours. Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities.

GRMN 5520-3. Current Issues in German Literature Media: Refuge/Refugees
Introduces the diversity of refugee migration in German culture from the mid-20th century to the present through cultural "texts," including those created by or in collaboration with refugees. These include film, comic journalism, essays, literature, blogs, hashtag campaigns, music, etc.These texts are discussed in relationship to several relevant bodies of theory: the ethics of hospitality and cohabitation, critical race theory, memory studies, biopolitics and precarity .

Special Topics Courses for Fall 2019:

GRMN 3140-3. Current Issues in German Literature: Writing in Crisis - Now!

Examines issues pervading contemporary German literature, such as concerns of youth, gender, stereotyping as it affects women and men in their relations with one another, loneliness and sexual frustration, work experiences, and other issues. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours when topic varies. Department enforced restriction: ability to read unedited German and to speak German.

Special Topics Courses for Spring 2019:

GRMN 3520-3. Open Topics in the Cultural Context: On the Threshold: Culture between Analog and Digital
How has culture changed in the postdigital age? How can we think critically about the differences between analog and digital culture? To answer these and other questions, this course will focus on literature, art, and culture from the 1950s to present. The class will explore canonical digital works in their original environment and context.Taught in German. Department enforced prereq.,  (minimum grade C-). Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities

Special Topics Courses for Spring 2018:

GRMN 3504-3. Topics in German Film: The Essay and the Essay Film
Introduces the essay film, a hybrid genre situated at the crossroads of literary and cinematic "writing". Students will learn about the history and development of the essay film and become familiar with the essayistic works of a number of filmmakers. They will write informal essays and learn to make essay films on their own, as well as in a group. 

GRMN 4340-3. Seminar in German Literature
Introduces students to contemporary German literature. The course will focus on literature from East and West Germany of the years immediately preceding unification, as well as literature from Germany after unification.

GRMN 5510-3. Topic: Josef Roth
Explores the novels, short stories, and journalistic work of Josef Roth, including an examination of their context in the Weimar Republic.