German Studies

This course sequence introduces students to the German language and German-speaking cultures through interactive instruction in speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Students explore cultural topics through history, literature, film, and comparisons to students’ home cultures while being introduced to the foundations of German grammar and various modes of communication. The primary language of instruction is German, although no prior experience is assumed. This course is not appropriate for students with previous knowledge of German. Students with any previous coursework in German are required to take the German placement exam before registering.  Open only to first-year, sophomores and juniors students; other students by consent of instructor.

A course meeting once per week, designed to provide students with supplementary language practice. May be offered in conjunction with an English-language course on a German cultural topic or as a stand-alone course. One-two credits, depending on course requirements. See course schedule for any current offerings.

Intermediate German is a discussion-based course that deepens students’ knowledge of German-speaking cultures through authentic materials in various media, including text, film, pop culture, and cross-cultural comparisons. This course provides a comprehensive review of German grammar with a special emphasis on developing students’ writing skills while increasing their communicative and cultural competency through reading, speaking, and listening practice. The primary language of instruction is German. Students who have not taken German at Whitman are required to take the German placement exam before registering.

This course studies major philosophers from the European continent during the long nineteenth century, from Immanuel Kant at the end of the eighteenth century through Martin Heidegger and Edith Stein in the early twentieth.  The course provides a general overview of philosophical perspectives of the period with a particular focus on the nature of human freedom. Course is taught in English; students who enroll in the German section of the course complete some reading, writing, and discussion in German. May be elected as Philosophy 203.

This course explores the fundamental concepts and ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche including the eternal return of the same, the will to power, the death of God, the Übermensch, the transvaluation of values, among others. We will read a selection of writings spanning Nietzsche’s oeuvre and discuss how he navigates the politics of aesthetics, morality, genealogy, and beyond. Knowledge of German is not required.

This course examines the moral challenge of what it means to be ethical after Auschwitz. Using Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the concentration camp as a touchstone, it includes texts by Primo Levi, Victor Klemperer, Kant, Giorgio Agamben, Karl Jaspers, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as poems by Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan, and the film Son of Saul. The course is appropriate for language students at the 200-level, who will read a subsection of texts in the original German. Course taught in English. Students electing to take the German Studies section will complete some reading in the original German and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German. May be elected as Philosophy 215.  Open to Seniors by consent of instructor only.

This course surveys the ways Jews and Jewish thought have navigated the intellectual, political, and spiritual challenges of modernity. From the Alhambra Decree of 1492 which expelled Jews from Christian Spain, to Jewish emancipation in the 19th-century Europe, to the Holocaust in the 20th-century, and finally to the 1948 formation of the state of Israel, modern Jewish experiences constitute an alternative modernity, one that draws from and profoundly challenges European enlightenment universalism. This story of clash and confluence will begin with the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, the so-called “first modern Jew,” and our investigations will move through pathways of Jewish enlightenment (Moses Mendelssohn) and existentialism, Zionism and the Jewish Question, theological feminisms, and ending with Levinas and Derrida. This course will survey the diverse landscapes of Jewish modernity, with special attention to dynamics between secularism and traditionalism, individualism and nationalism, exile and homeland, and Judaism and Christianity.  Course taught in English. Students electing to take the German Studies section will complete some reading in the original German and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German. May be elected as Religion 219.

This course adopts a genealogical approach to the project of conceiving and re-conceiving race, focusing on the history of German thought and a range of contemporary responses to it. The course is divided into four units: an overview of the Enlightenment invention of the concept of race and racial classification (Kant, Blumenbach, Herder and others); a specific examination of current debates surrounding Kant's status in the canon; and an exploration of the Nazi invention of scientific racism and its debt to the US eugenics movement. The final unit considers current discussions about race in Germany, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise of anti-Semitism. The course is particularly concerned to show the historical construction of the European, or "Aryan," in its positioning against Blackness and the non-phenotypical categorization of Jews as a "race," and incorporates recent critical work by Black and Jewish authors. Course taught in English. Students electing to take the German Studies section will complete some reading in the original German equivalent or consent of instructor and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German. May be taken for credit toward the Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies major or minor.

See course schedule for any current offerings.

What drives a person to murder? How does society assign guilt and (hopefully) achieve justice? How do historical circumstances and changes in society influence our thinking about crime and punishment? This course explores these and other questions through a study of the rich tradition of crime literature in the German speaking world from the nineteenth century to today. Students will read prose and drama texts as well as view film and theatrical productions that deal with crime, detection, and punishment, both by official and unofficial means. Students continue their linguistic and communicative development in this course with instruction in speaking, listening, and cultural competency with a focus on the development of advanced reading and writing skills. Language skills will be developed through regular readings, writing assignments, grammar exercises, student presentations, and discussion. Course taught in German. Offered every three years.

What can the stage do that the page cannot? What are the fundamental flaws of a tragic hero? What are the differences between a tragedy and a comedy? What is an epic drama? This course introduces students to German drama from the nineteenth century to today, including bourgeois tragedy and expressionist drama. Students will read plays and theoretical essays by playwrights such as Johann Wilhelm von Goethe, Bertolt Brecht, and Elfriede Jelinek, and continue their linguistic and communicative development with a focus on advanced reading and analytical writing skills. The language skills will be obtained through regular readings, writing assignments, grammar exercises, student presentations, and discussion. Course taught in German. Offered every three years. 

Fairy tales are not just for children. They show us how daily life becomes magical, how national changes effect fantastical ones, and they allow us to observe literature’s transformations through the ages. This course explores German folk and fairy tales from the Grimms through the art fairy tales of the Romantics and up to modern day interpretations. We study the fairy tales in the historical context of the long nineteenth century as well as from a variety of academic perspectives. Students continue their linguistic and communicative development in this course with instruction in speaking, listening, and cultural competency with a focus on the development of advanced reading and writing skills. The language skills will be developed through regular readings, writing assignments, grammar exercises, student presentations, and discussion. Course taught in German. Offered every three years.

What can short texts—both fictional and non—tell us about the society and culture from which they emerge? How do they negotiate controversial timely matters, introduce us to psychologically complex characters, or break new ground in the ways we tell stories? In this course, we read novellas, essays, speeches, blog posts and other short prose texts from across German cultural history, with special attention paid to writers who are marginalized and often left out of this history. Small Print will provide the students with an overview of literary history in the German-speaking world. We will review and practice key concepts of German grammar, as well as improve reading, speaking, and writing skills in German. Course taught in German.

The question of whether Germany is an “Einwanderungsland” or not is one defining political questions of the twenty-first century. The arrival of large numbers of refugees in Germany and other central European countries since the early 2000s has made this debate more urgent. This course asks what it means to be German in the globalizing world through the in-depth study of German-language texts primarily by authors with an immigration background. Authors studied may include Yoko Tawada, Abbas Khider, Zafer Senocak, Emine Özdamar, and others. In this course, literary inquiry is accompanied by the further development of high-level language skills with a focus on discussion skills, presentational language, advanced grammar, and regular writing assignments. Students will gain additional conversation practice through required weekly conversation groups with the language assistant.  Course taught in German.

Heimat is perhaps the most politically and historically loaded term in the German language: it was appropriated by National-Socialism, to help reclaim German culture after World War II, and is being used by resurgent right wing movements in Germany today, only to name a few. This course traces Heimat’s roots in German culture, art, and literature since the nineteenth century and examines the way that it excludes people on the basis of their (perceived) gender, sexuality, race, religion, etc. We will criticize the concept of Heimat, reading texts by authors who are skeptical about the value or even existence of Heimat, asking where its baggage comes from, how it shapes and is shaped by German aesthetic contexts, and whether this term is useful or could be reimagined or reclaimed in contemporary German society. This course is an advanced interdisciplinary German Studies course that encourages students to challenge dominant narratives in German Culture by studying a cultural problem from a variety of perspectives. Students will also continue developing high-level German language with a focus on discussion skills, presentational language, advanced grammar, and regular writing assignments. Students will gain additional conversation practice through required weekly conversation groups with the language assistant. Course taught in German.

“I kept looking at the fetishes. I understood: I too am against everything. I too think that everything is unknown, is the enemy! Everything!” Pablo Picasso’s astounding utterance, made at the Trocadero Museum of Ethnography, is but one testament to Europe’s renewed interest in primitivism in the early 20th century. This interdisciplinary literature and culture course examines the ways in which authors, artists, and musicians responded to global tribal artifacts looted from German and other European colonies, spiritualism, animism, and the unconscious. Through close encounters with literary works by Theodor Storm and Franz Kafka, films by Werner Herzog and F.W. Murnau, the music of Wagner and Schoenberg, and paintings by Adolf Menzel and Franz Marc, we will ask what happens when we discover that the otherness frequently projected outward is found within. Students will also continue developing high-level German language with a focus on discussion skills, presentational language, advanced grammar, and regular writing assignments. Course taught in German.

Hannah Arendt disavowed the title of philosopher, instead describing herself as a “political thinker.” This seminar will investigate what Arendt means by this description, focusing in particular on the notions of “world,” “natality,” and what she terms the vita activa. Texts will include selections form Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem as well as essays from Arendt’s work on cultural theory. Course taught in English. Students will complete some reading in the original German and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German. May be elected as Philosophy 318.

This course introduces Frankfurt School Critical Theory through the writings of Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. Proceeding from Marx, it poses such questions as, What is ideology? How can one distinguish between ideological and non-ideological forms of consciousness? What is the Frankfurt School's notion of "critique"? The course seeks to engage the diverse answers Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers have given to these questions, considering what remains at stake in questions of ideology today. Course requirements include regular short papers, presentations, and a longer seminar paper. Students enrolled in the German Studies section of the course will be expected to complete some reading and assignments in German. May be elected as Philosophy 319.

Why does nature inspire us? Where did our understanding of nature come from? We have inherited our interactions with nature from a variety of sources: The Enlightenment was marked by political, intellectual, and scientific revolution and attempted to explain the world through science. The Romantics, on the other hand, reacted by trying to restore some mystery to Nature and to acknowledge its sublime power. This Nature ideal spread throughout Europe and then on to America, where European Romanticism inspired writers like Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and their contemporaries’ nature writing, which continues to exert influence on the American understanding of the natural world. This course will look at where American Transcendentalists and Romantics found inspiration. Students will read key literary and philosophical texts of the Romantic period, focusing on Germany, England, and America and explore echoes of these movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: How do the Romantics continue to influence the discourse of environmentalism in America and around the world? Is the Romantic impulse at work in the establishment of the national parks system? Can we see echoes of the Romantic Nature ideal in narratives of toxic, post-industrial landscapes? Course taught in English. Students electing to take the German Studies section will complete some reading in the original German and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German. May be elected as Environmental Studies 335.

From natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, storms) to man-made ecological catastrophe (nuclear accidents, oil spills, the thinning ozone layer), environmental disaster inspires fear, rage, and action. This course will focus on fiction and non-fiction that meditates on these events and our reactions to them. We will examine the ways in which literature and the other arts depict disaster, how natural disaster descriptions differ from those of man-made environmental crisis, whether humans can coexist peacefully with nature or are continually pitted against it, and how literature’s depiction of nature changes with the advent of the toxic, post-industrial environment. Authors discussed may include Kleist, Goethe, Atwood, Ozeki, Carson, Sebald, and others. Course taught in English. Students electing to take the German Studies section will complete some reading in the original German and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German. May be elected as Environmental Studies 339

Academic research projects require planning and specialized skills. This senior seminar introduces advanced German Studies students to the research and writing process including instruction on how to design interesting research projects, find and use a variety of materials from the library and relevant databases both in English and German, organize their research, cite properly, and plan for writing. Students will design and execute an independent research project. This course is required for German Studies majors.

What makes a work of art a work of art? How are artworks distinguished from everyday things like tools and use objects? Where does technology fit in this schema? This upper level seminar explores these questions through some seminal writings by 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Readings will include selections from Being and Time, "The Origin of the Work of Art," "The Thing," and "The Question Concerning Technology." The selections from Heidegger will be supplemented by Plato and Aristotle, Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Derrida's The Truth in Painting, and Giorgio Agamben's "The Apparatus." Students will be asked to explore works of art by German, Austrian, and Swiss artists as well as works of their own choosing. The course is taught in English, and culminates in a Final Portfolio that includes a Final Seminar Paper. Applies toward the German Studies major requirement for a course taught at the 350 level or above. May be elected as Philosophy 353.

How does culture cope with modernity? Do old narrative forms still work in the twentieth century? What are the limits of text and the abilities of film? What does a new medium tell us about a new time? This course grapples with these and other questions in its study of the development of cinema in Germany from early German expressionist films to present day films that grapple with contemporary cultural issues, including immigration and ongoing attempts to process German history. In studying these films, students will discuss propaganda, identity politics, film adaptation, and mass culture in context. Students will be develop film and text analysis, advanced research, and writing skills through sophisticated discussion, presentation, and writing assignments. The course is conducted in English, and readings will be available in both German and English. Students with advanced German language skills will complete reading, some writing, and discussion in German. This class will require a screening. May be taken for credit toward the Film & Media Studies major or minor. Formerly German 405; may not be taken for credit if completed 405.

What happens when what is being looked at looks back? What is the relationship between framing devices and fantasies of domination or experiences of vulnerability? How does the male gaze shape society’s perception of women? What is the role of the gaze in film theory? Frames attempt to set the parameters of perception and meaning. Whether they appear in literary works as windows or as the formal device of the frame story, whether they appear as the literal frame of a painting or as the shot in a film, frames focus attention and delimit contexts. This course examines both how frames function in literature, painting and film from the Enlightenment to World War II and beyond, as well as how diverse methodologies frame cultural material. Through close readings we will fix a critical eye on the political and epistemological stakes of attempts to fix the gaze. The course is conducted in English, and readings will be available in both German and English. Students with advanced German language skills will complete reading, some writing, and discussion in German. May be taken for credit toward the Film & Media Studies major or minor.

This course introduces unconventional thinkers and political activists of the German-speaking world in the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century. From the suffragist movement and communist and anarchist theories in the Weimar Republic to dissent in the GDR and anti-imperialist critique in Western Postwar Germany via antifascist activism in Nazi Germany, students will study German history and culture through the lens of political essays, poetry and short stories. Students will read works by well-known thinkers and activists such as anarchist Rosa Luxemburg, Jewish writer Anne Frank, and RAF activist Ulrike Meinhoff, and explore texts by writers who are now mostly ignored by the literary canon, for example, the early feminist writer Elsa Asenijeff. The course is conducted in English, and readings will be available in both German and English. Students with advanced German language skills will complete reading, some writing, and discussion in German. Formerly German 409; may not be taken for credit if previously completed 409.

Designed to permit close study of one or more authors, a movement, or a genre in German literature. Conducted in German or English, at the discretion of the instructor. See course schedule for any current offerings.

Designed to permit close study of one or more authors, a movement, or a genre in German literature. Conducted in German or English, at the discretion of the instructor. See course schedule for any current offerings.

Directed reading and preparation of a critical paper or papers on a topic suggested by the student. The project must be approved by the staff. The number of students accepted for the course will depend on the availability of the staff.

Designed to permit close study of one or more authors, a movement, or a genre in German literature. Conducted in German. See course schedule for any current offerings.

Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) is arguably one of the most groundbreaking works of philosophy published in the 20th century. This seminar is an intensive exploration of Heidegger’s most important conceptual innovations in that work. These innovations include the relationship between Dasein, care, and world; the analysis of being-toward-death, anxiety, and the call of conscience; and the “destructuring” of the Western philosophical tradition. The seminar will be focused on the close reading of Being and Time supplemented by other primary and secondary sources intended to facilitate the understanding of basic terms and concepts. Course taught in English. Students will complete some reading in the original German and may complete some writing, and discussion assignments in German.  May be elected as Philosophy 422.

In-depth research concluding in the preparation of an undergraduate senior thesis on a specific topic in German studies. Required of German Studies majors.

Designed to further independent research or project leading to the preparation of an undergraduate thesis or a project report. Required of and limited to senior honors candidates in German.