Global Arc

How do the activities of research and interpretation differ when the object is a poem, a 17th century canvas, a radio broadcast or a film, an urban renewal plan, or the draft of a new state constitution? This introduction to the wide range of approaches and methods for the study of German literature, culture and media will hone the research and writing skills necessary to develop a substantial piece of independent scholarship. Through close readings of theoretical texts and primary sources the seminar will focus on issues of authorship and argument, the "gay sciences" of the archive, and the subtleties of producing clear and persuasive prose.

Exploration of specific problems in the history of German theater, drama, and dramatic theory. Topics may range from the baroque drama to the importance of Brechtian theater for modernism, and from the dramatic representation of political conflicts to contemporary theater and performance studies.

An upper-level seminar exploring in depth a wide range of issues in critical theoretical thinking. Previous topics have included: The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, What is Critique?, The Culture Industry: Paradoxes of Democratic Mass Culture, and Philosophy and the Irrational. Two 80-minute seminars. Taught in English.

Critical investigations of particular problems in the development of German literary prose. Topics may include love as a mode of literary self-expression, the role of utopia in the rise of the modern novel, the history of the German novella, detective fiction, and the modern short story and experimental prose. Prerequisite: 107.

Studies of a particular question related to the development of German-language poetry and poetics. Topics may range from readings of major German poets (Goethe, Hölderlin, George, Rilke, Benn, Celan) to the paradigmatic status of the genre for 20th-century conceptions of the avant-garde. Prerequisite: 107.

A study of major German philosophers and religious and social thinkers from the Reformation to the present. Selected works of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, or German-Jewish thinkers will be read together with contemporary interpretations. Two 90-minute seminars.

Exploration of key moments in German culture in light of its history and institutions. Topics may range from Marxist aesthetics to theories of fascism to German women writers. Readings and discussion in German.

What is film? Is it a language? Can one speak of cinematic literacy? Does film transform perception? Is there filmic thinking? This seminar on the theory and poetics of cinema will examine the varieties of ways -- semiotic, psychoanalytic, narratological - that filmmakers, philosophers and critics have analyzed film form, the cinematic experience, the construction of cinematic subjectivity, questions of aesthetic politics and notions of medium specificity. Taught in English.

An interdisciplinary examination of continuity and change in the culture and the cultural politics of Germany between 1919 and 1933. Topics include expressionism in the visual arts and literature; Berlin Dada; the Conservative Revolution; abstract versus representational art (Thomas Mann, Neue Sachlichkeit); the Bauhaus and mass housing; montage in film and literature (Sergei Eisenstein, Walter Benjamin); the political theater (Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator), and the optics of the modern metropolis (Walter Ruttmann, Alfred Döblin). Two 90-minute seminars.

An upper-level seminar focused on a wide range of historical and theoretical issues in the history and theory of media. Previous topics have included Artificial Life; Reading Faces - Methods of Deciphering in Literature, Sciences and Art; Gramophone, Radio, MP3; The Diary: Writing the Self Technologies of/and the Body - Mediated Visions; and, Attention as a Technology of the Self. Taught in English.