Global Arc

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.

The course will introduce students to recent theories of second language acquisition (SLA) by way of critical reading and discussion; it will show how SLA theories manifest themselves in various teaching approaches by influencing instructional syllabi and classroom methodology; and it will provide an opportunity for course participants to apply the insights gained to a real pedagogical context. Each student in the class will be paired with a community member for weekly tutoring in ESL, so that the experience of teaching will inform (and be informed by) our discussions of SLA theory.

Works central to the tradition of modern European literature, including Goethe's Faust, Byron's Don Juan, Flaubert's Sentimental Education, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and Mann's Doctor Faustus. Each work treats the quest for greatness; each will be examined as to its form and place in the history of ideas. Two 90-minute seminars.

Exploration of German medieval literature. Topics may include medieval German Arthurian literature and the relationship between gender and power in the medieval epics.

What do fairy tales do? More than children's entertainment, they instruct, amuse, warn, initiate, and enlighten. Throughout history, they have functioned to humanize and conquer the bestial and barbaric forces that terrorize us. They have also disguised social anxieties about gender and sex. The history and social function of fairy tales will be explored in the context of Germany in the 18th-20th centuries. Texts include selections from the Grimms' Fairy Tales, as well as from the literature of the Romantic, Weimar, and postwar periods. Two 80-minute seminars. Taught in English.

Critical investigation of German language literature from 800 to present. Topics may include medieval German Arthurian literature, the Austrian literary avant-garde, love stories, as well as focused studies of selected authors. Two 90-minute Seminars.

The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as an important progenitor of the European modernist culture that arose in the period of urban capitalist modernity, roughly 1870-1930. Particular emphasis will be placed on a series of textual encounters between Nietzsche and such authors as Gide, Mann, Lawrence, Rilke, Yeats, Musil, and Malraux; their readings and rewritings of Nietzsche lent decisive impulses to the formal and thematic concerns of modernism. Two 90-minute seminars.