Undergraduate & Graduate Courses

German language, civilization, and culture for beginning students. Work on all language skills with emphasis on speaking.

Offered: Fall of every year, Spring of every year
Credits: 3

Further study of German language, civilization, and culture for beginning students. Continued work on all language skills with emphasis on speaking.

Offered: Fall of every year, Spring of every year
Credits: 3

Intermediate-level development of all language skills. Reading, viewing, and discussion of a broad range of cultural materials from the German-speaking world.

Offered: Fall of every year, Spring of every year
Credits: 3

Selected representative texts or themes in the cultures of German-speaking countries.

Offered: Infrequently
Credits: 3

Focus on the creation of German identity through migration, immigration, and exile. Intensive work with authentic texts on contemporary issues in the German-speaking world.

Advanced speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing skills. Intensive work with authentic texts dealing with contemporary issues in the German-speaking world. Selected review of grammar and syntax.

Offered: In rotation with 302, 303, and 304
Credits: 3

The natural world and our unnatural technologies which interfere with our ecological order. Intensive work with texts and films dealing with forests, gardens, plants, natural explorers, pollution and atomic disaster.

Advanced speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing skills. Intensive work with authentic texts dealing with contemporary issues in the German-speaking world. Selected review of grammar and syntax. 

Offered: In rotation with 301, 303, and 304
Credits: 3

Wide-ranging exploration of gender in German culture, from linguistic forms to social roles, including fairy tales, Weimar cinema, and a memoir about growing up trans in the Third Reich.

Advanced speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing skills. Intensive work with authentic texts dealing with contemporary issues in the German-speaking world. Selected review of grammar and syntax. 

Offered: In rotation with 301, 302, and 304
Credits: 3

Focus on German media throughout history. Intensive work with films, images, written texts, advertising, news, social media, video games, and other forms of expression.

Advanced speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing skills. Intensive work with authentic texts dealing with contemporary issues in the German-speaking world. Selected review of grammar and syntax. 

Offered: In rotation with 301, 302, and 303
Credits: 3

German for the professions: Development of proficiency through readings, discussions, and assignments based on materials dealing with professional office communication, the German economic system, and Germany in world trade.

Offered: Fall of every year
Credits: 3

Development of listening comprehension and oral communication in German beyond the intermediate level. Expansion of vocabulary, use of idiomatic expressions and review of grammatical structures relevant for speaking.

Offered: Spring of every year, Summer of every year (Mayen)
Credits: 3

Historical, social, and cultural developments in 19th-century Germany as revealed in textual material in German, including literature, essays, philosophy, and cultural criticism. Focus on the formation of the German middle class and questions of German identity.

Offered: Spring of every year
Credits: 3

Historical, social, and cultural developments in the German-speaking world since 1918 as revealed in cultural materials, including literature, essays, and film.

Offered: Fall of every year
Credits: 3

Students will maximize their language learning by examining the components of language, language use, language learning and strategies for developing language proficiency and intercultural competence. Advanced structures of German will be addressed.

Advanced language skills using a variety of media. Review of grammar and syntax with attention to idiomatic usage and stylistic variation. Major writing project.

Offered: Fall of every year, Summer of every year (Mayen)
Credits: 3

Literary and cultural texts from a given period before 1919 such as the Enlightenment, Romanticism. Representations of cultural identity, social issues and intellectual debates through literature and other texts. Major writing project.

Offered: In rotation with 445 and 455
Credits: 3

Literary and cultural texts from a given period since 1919. Representations of cultural identity, social issues and intellectual debates through literature, film and other texts. Major writing project.

Offered: In rotation with 435 and 455
Credits: 3

Evolution of key cultural issues. Use of cultural artifacts in tracing developments across time. Topics such as nationalism, minorities in Germany, literary genres, literacy and popular cultures. Major writing project.

Fall 2020 – German Cultural History: German Comics
It is a well-worn cliché that Germans do not have a sense of humor. Another oversimplification is that comics are always funny. This course challenges both of these ideas. We will explore the history of comics, which has its roots in the German-speaking world, and we will examine comics as a medium – a unique text-image combination in sequential arrangement – rather than just the ‘funnies’ that may first come to mind. We will work with the MSU Comic Art Collection – the world’s largest publicly available collection of international comics and graphic novels – and focus on contemporary German-language comics and graphic novels, which offer important ways to grapple with history, identity, and politics.

Offered: In rotation with 435 and 445
Credits: 3

Analysis of grammatical, lexical, phonological and cultural aspects of German and comparison with English. Course taught in German.

Offered: Spring of every year
Credits: 3

Overview of applied linguistic topics relevant for both students of German and future teachers of German. Issues of contemporary language use, the connection between culture and language. Overview of second language acquisition principles. Introduction to effective audiodidactic or pedagogical techniques for language and culture learning.

Offered: Fall of even year, Spring of even year
Credits: 3

Special topics supplementing regular course offerings proposed by faculty on a group study basis.

Offered: Varies
Credits: 3, variable from 1 to 4.

Preparation of a paper or project that synthesizes the student’s academic experiences in the major(s). Integration of linguistic, cultural and literary studies in German.

Offered: Fall of every year, Spring of every year
Credits: 1