Graduate Courses

GRM 865 German Studies: Narration and Things

In this course, we explore theories and practices of narration with a particular focus on the visualization and function of things in texts as literature makes the “thingness” of objects visible. We combine approaches to material culture and literature that explore the dynamics between human subjects and inanimate objects in literary texts and essays from 18th-century culture. Things gain importance in the rising middle class with its burgeoning consumer culture. At the same time, early critics of elements of this new phenomenon bemoan the loss of aura of the artifact. We also look at collecting practices and the language of furniture and interior design in this context. (Wurst)

GRM 891 Special Topics in German Studies: The Representability of the Holocaust

This seminar will focus on the various ways the Holocaust has been represented and the different responses to these forms, including claims that the Holocaust is incomprehensible, unimaginable, or unrepresentable. Taking a diachronic approach, we will examine a variety of representational modes, from autobiographical accounts and historical documentation to theoretical reflections and fictional stories, as well as films, photographs, graphic novels, memorials, museums, and artworks. Keeping in mind that the representation of the Holocaust is both a complex issue and an international phenomenon, we will approach this topic via aesthetic, ethical, epistemological, and disciplinary questions, while concentrating on works within the German-language context. The course is open to students from all fields, and readings will be available in both English and German. (Wolff)

GRM 445 20th Century and Contemporary German Literature: Reading Images

This course will explore the central role that images and visual representations have played in German culture throughout the 20th century and up until the present moment. Materials include literature, film, collage, montage, photography, and comics. Major writing project. (Wolff) 

GRM 461 Applied Linguistics for German Learners and Teachers

Analysis of grammatical, lexical, and phonological aspects of German and comparison with English. (Goertler)

GRM 815 The Scholarship and Practice of Teaching German Culture

We explore different definitions of culture, cultural and intercultural competence and learn techniques to effectively teach about culture and facilitate the development of intercultural competence and cultural sensitivity. Students will engage with different theoretical and pedagogical approaches and review empirical research studies. Students will apply the new knowledge skills through developing materials and designing a small-scale research project. (Goertler)

GRM 864 German Studies: Cultural Norms and Values What is German?

Scholars, artists and other social commentators have posed this question for centuries. This course will examine the context of cultural norms within migration politics (1945-2020) by focusing extensively on the rhetoric and history of integration politics. (Schuster-Craig)

GRM 491 Special Topics in German Studies: Immigration History

This course will explore the history of 20th century immigration to Germany through comic books, film, interviews and archival source materials. Guest worker migration, socialist immigration to the former East German Democratic Republic, postwar expellees, and refugee migration from multiple countries of origin, including Ukraine, will all be investigated. Taught in German. (Schuster-Craig)

GRM 455 Digitales Deutschland

From the world’s first programmable computer to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, Germany has played a defining role in the digital world as well as had a complex relationship to it. This course explores the artistic, cultural, and political changes that the digital revolution has brought to the German-speaking world. From Leibniz’s universal language to Google Translate, automata to the Enigma machine, we will focus on questions of language, artificial intelligence, privacy, new forms of expression, and scientific ethics. Course materials will pay special attention to the potentials and pitfalls that the digital has symbolized—and continues to symbolize—in German culture, literature, and cinema. (Handelman)

GRM 862 Constructions of Identity: Autobiography

This seminar focuses on the myriad ways in which German-language writers, filmmakers, and other artists have adopted and transformed traditions of personal narrative and life-writing from 1945 to the present. Exploration of a wide range of forms of cultural expression, including autobiographical novel, memoir and essay, documentary and feature film, graphic narrative and emerging forms of digital autobiography. Theories of subjectivity, autobiography, memory, performance, and gender. (Mittman)

GRM 863 Constructions of Community

In this course, we will examine curricular innovations and radical, new approaches to teaching German. We will connect with experts and innovators in the United States and throughout the world, conduct interviews, and critically assess their novel approaches. We will further develop these approaches and create new learning activities, curricular designs, and course modules. Course language is German, with some readings, interviews, and content in English. (Kronenberg)

GRM 455 Major Themes in German Cultural History

In this advanced German culture course, we explore the concept of creativity in a variety of media. A central contemporary term in many fields, creativity is seen as an essential human capacity that is associated with problem-solving, discovery, invention, innovation, and the more conventional artistic capacity. Our textual examples include historical literary sources. (Wurst)

GRM 461 Applied Linguistics for German Learners and Teachers

This course is open to any student interested in the German language. The purpose of the course is to provide students with a deeper understanding of the principles of language, language change, language variation, language learning, and the connection between culture and language and the teaching thereof. The aim of the course is to provide learners and (prospective) teachers with the tools to facilitate others and their own development of intercultural (and) communicative competence. (Goertler)

GRM 820 The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Critical Theory 

Whatever theoretical school one may belong to, literary and cultural theory is practiced today under the banner of critical theory – a term that itself has become well known, for better and worse, beyond the academy. This course focuses on the origins and contemporary relevance of the version of cultural critique developed by the Frankfurt School and other German-Jewish intellectuals during the Weimar Republic. Initial readings explore the tradition of German philosophy and social thought from Hegel to Freud that paved the way for the Frankfurt School. The course then turns to major texts by Frankfurt School authors on topics such as mass culture, new media (cinema and radio), aesthetics, and authoritarianism. It concludes with an exploration of what the Frankfurt School tell us about culture in the digital age and its increasingly prevalent demonization by the far right. Taught in English. (Handelman)

GRM 891 Language Program Administration

Do you want to be a leader in language education? Whether you are an advanced TE student or a graduate student in languages or linguistics, all are welcome in this class on language program administration. Don’t let the official title deter you, the course will be taught in English. 2 hours will be taught synchronously in English, the 3rd hour will be tasks to complete using the language you intend to teach.  We will talk about the following topics: (1) The profession; (2) Curriculum and co-curriculum; (3) People; (4) Evidence-based decision making; (5) Money; and (6) Leadership. We will discuss theoretical and empirical readings and engage with practitioners. To apply the new knowledge, students will conduct research tasks as well as practical tasks intended to develop their professional portfolio. (Goertler)

GRM 491 Special Topics in German: German Drama

Collection of German plays. Each play will reflect a specific historical moment in 20th Century German history: the rapid urbanization of the 1900s, the Golden Twenties, the pockmarked landscape after World War II, socialist worker politics, and contemporary immigration debates. Variety of writing assignments culminating in a performance designed by students. (Schuster-Craig)

GRM 815   Creating Significant Learning Experiences in the Literature and Culture Classroom

An overview of the scholarship of teaching and learning to create meaningful learning experiences designed to develop advanced competencies in the integrated literature and culture classroom. Our assumption is that learning is a constructivist activity that builds on iterative refinement through challenging, meaningful, and effective activities. The course itself is designed as an active, student-centered learning environment, where we will also apply these principles to produce learning goals, determine desired outcomes, and learning activities. This will result in the creation of a syllabus, modules, learning activities, and assessments accompanied by critical reflection. (Wurst)

GRM 864   From Translation to Multilingualism

This course considers translation in its various forms – from ‘literal’ to metaphorical – and explores how the concept of translation can help us understand the relationship between language and experience that is at the heart of the literary discourse and any discussions of cultural transfer. We will work with theoretical and literary texts, and our guiding questions include: Which linguistic expressions, cultural concepts, or artistic forms defy or resist translation? What remains “untranslatable”? How do we define “correspondence,” “equivalence,”  and “fidelity”? What criteria make a translation good or bad? How have theories and practices of translation changed over the ages? Our discussions of translation will provide us with a foundation from which we can make connections to recent cultural debates around issues of multilingualism and “Heimat”. (Wolff)

GRM 862 The Politics of Identity

This course explores theoretical frameworks and case studies focusing on the construction of identities in German culture. We will explore gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, class, residency status, and political identities along the German spectrum. We will be reading a wide variety of texts in multiple genres and paying close attention to historical shifts and political rhetoric throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.

GRM 863 From Past Tense to Future Perfect: Rethinking GDR Cultural Studies Today

This seminar will explore past, present, and possible futures of East German cultural studies. We will study original texts and artefacts in the context of their various audiences, East and West, popular and scholarly, before and after 1989/90. Course materials will include literature and film, but also music, visual arts, popular culture and other countercultures. Working with a multi-modal, multi-temporal approach operates as a lever for understanding the power of symbolic formations in the creation of cultural identities, and reminds us that, far from being defunct, the GDR remains a richly relevant source of meaning for contemporary German culture

GRM 820 The Origins and Legacies of Critical Theory

This course introduces students to the critical project: the mode of cultural and literary analysis that the Frankfurt School first called critical theory in the 1930s. It covers critical theory’s origins in the works of thinkers like Kant, Marx, and Nietzsche, and Freud, charts its rise in the 1920s and 1930s with Lukács, Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno, and explores its contemporaries and continuations with Arendt, Foucault, Kristeva, and more current theoretical work that continues to unfold the critical project. (Handelman)

GRM 865 Reading Culture

The 18th century experienced a reading revolution that not only ushered in the new value system of the middle class contributing significantly to its social, cultural and economic rise. At the same time, concerns arose about the unregulated pleasures of reading leading to a split between reading for edification and “Bildung” on the one hand, and pleasurable reading on the other. (Wurst)

GRM 805 The German Language: Relationships, Development, and Varieties

Languages and language use changes with every interaction. What a typical German textbook says about the rules of German, is often not how people in German-speaking communities speak. In this course, we explore German dialects, contemporary developments in the German language, language contact (e.g., Denglish/Anglizismen), and language use in context, so that you do not sound like a textbook, when interacting with speakers of German. (Goertler)

GRM 864 The Representability of the Holocaust

This seminar will focus on the various ways the Holocaust has been represented and the different responses to these forms, including claims that the Holocaust is incomprehensible, unimaginable, or unrepresentable. Taking a diachronic approach, we will examine a variety of representational modes, from autobiographical accounts and historical documentation to theoretical reflections and fictional stories, as well as films, photographs, graphic novels, memorials, museums, and artworks. Keeping in mind that the representation of the Holocaust is both a complex issue and an international phenomenon, we will approach this topic via aesthetic, ethical, epistemological, and disciplinary questions, while concentrating on works within the German-language context. Open to students from all fields; readings was available in English and German. (Wolff)

GRM 815 Teaching German Culture: Theory & Practice

What is a compelling environment for learning? How do we design a syllabus, assess learning, create a teaching philosophy and understand the role of culture and literature courses within the curriculum? We look at best practices in college teaching and apply these principles in creating modules and learning activities for upper level courses. (Wurst)

GRM 862 German Studies: Construction of Identity: Autobiography

This seminar focuses on the myriad ways in which German-language writers, filmmakers, and other artists have adopted and transformed traditions of personal narrative and life-writing from 1945 to the present. Exploration of a wide range of forms of cultural expression, including autobiographical novel, memoir and essay, documentary and feature film, graphic narrative and emerging forms of digital autobiography. Theories of subjectivity, autobiography, memory, performance, and gender. (Mittman)

GRM 863 German Studies: Constructions of Community

This course explores theoretical frameworks and case studies focusing on the construction of various types of identity-based communities in German culture. This includes national, gender, ethnic, racial, class, and political communities along the German spectrum. Texts span a wide variety of genres: fiction, autobiography, grand theory, social theory, political journalism and social media/activism. Our goal is to understand not only the political motivations undergirding each text, but to be able to analyze both form and content within a culturally specific framework and to evaluate the effectiveness of both within community-based political debates and struggles. (Schuster-Craig)

GRM 891 German Second Language Acquisition

You learned German, but how did you get there and how can you help others achieve this goal? In this course we will explore the following questions: (1) How are languages structured and what are some key differences between English and German? (2) How do languages develop and how is textbook German different from the German currently used in Germany? (3) How are languages learned across contexts and what are some particular challenges and patterns for learners of German? (4) What are current best practices and approaches in German teaching in a variety of contexts? and (5) What are the standards and what is the current situation in the German teaching profession? (Goertler)

Descriptions to come soon.

GRM 864 The Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness

This course explores the central paradigm shift that the Enlightenment ushered in: the focus on the self-determination of the individual and happiness on this earth rather than in the afterlife. A new belief in a self-directed future gave rise to a sense of human perfectability and the overarching pedagogical impulse for self-improvement. Scientific interest raised awareness that the natural is not merely given but can be improved, which paved the way for the deliberate design of living conditions and the political environment. In literary texts and periodicals of the time, we will explore key concepts of the new middle class lifestyle: literacy, the reading culture, the new love paradigm, domesticity, sociability, and creativity. (Wurst)

GRM 891 Dialects and Sociolects of German: Development, Function and Dissemination

This course will examine the status and breadth of various German regional dialects based on distinguishing linguistic features as they relate to the standard language. Selected variants of German associated with specific groups in society will also be considered, e.g., Kiezdeutsch, Jugendsprache,  Frauensprache. (Lovik)

GRM 815 The Theory and Practice of Teaching German Culture

In this course we will explore pedagogical, empirical, and theoretical issues regarding the teaching of German culture. The course combines theory with hands-on activities. Students will participate in culture learning activities and create activities. Depending on the student’s interest, a course participant can focus in his or her major assignments on research, teaching, or service learning (community outreach). Regardless of focus all students will walk away from the course with a product. The tentative topics for the course are: (1) Who are we? (2) What are our cultures? (3) What are the theories and standards for culture learning? (4)  What are traditional and contemporary methods and techniques of teaching culture? (5) How is culture learning assessed? (Goertler)

GRM 863 Film and Media Studies

Against the broad sweep of a century of German history, we will screen a number of classic films, as well as television and digital moving images, in order to explore the relationship between politics and aesthetics, narratives of national and cultural identity, the complex dynamic between those powerful metanarratives and the more fragile fabric of private lives. Gender, sexuality, ethnic and religious identities become visible here, as do the social limits of their expression. We will discuss a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the moving image, setting those concerns against the broader backdrop of current debates about the state of German film and media studies in the 21^st century. (Mittman)

GRM 805 The German Language: Relationships, Developments and Varieties   

This course will examine the linguistic development of the German language from its earliest periods to its present day status. The development of the German language will be traced from Germanic through Old High German and Middle High German to Early New High German and into present day German.  Both changes within the linguistic system (phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon) as well as stylistic developments in the written language will be addressed. (Lovik)

GRM 862 German Studies: Construction of Identity

Identity, in all of its inflections and idioms, is an important category in the political struggles of German minorities, right-wing populist movements, and in debates about the future of the European Union. This course will focus on post-1989 Germany and its position in Europe up to today, exploring minority identity politics, national identity, and the effects of transnational EU structures on German political identities. This course will also focus on different venues for communicating research findings, e.g., journalism, social media, blogging and academic writing. (Schuster-Craig)

GRM 820 Hermeneutics and Critical Theory

This seminar will examine the two major theoretical approaches to literature and culture from Germany in the last two centuries: hermeneutics and critical theory. Students will explore the conceptual frameworks underpinning both traditions and will read texts that cover hermeneutics (Schleiermacher, Heidegger, Gadamer), the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Lukács, Kracauer, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno), as well as literature and film, including Goethe, Hölderlin, Kafka, and Charlie Chaplin. (Handelman)

GRM 865 From Past Tense to Future Perfect: Rethinking GDR Cultural Studies Today

This seminar will explore past, present, and possible futures of GDR cultural studies. During the Cold War, Western scholarship treated the GDR as a projection screen for its own (utopian or dystopian) fantasies, while Eastern reception struggled with the insistent need to model ideals for a “realexistierender Sozialismus”; in the wake of unification, Vergangenheitsbewältigung competed with ostalgic visions of a nation that had suddenly vanished from the map, both literally and figuratively.  We will study original texts and artefacts in the context of their various audiences, both popular and scholarly, before and after 1989/90. Moving beyond the more traditional confines of literature and film, we will also look at music, visual arts, popular culture and other countercultures. (Mittman)

GRM 864 Blurred Borders, Clear Visions: Intermediality in 20th-Century Literature in German

This seminar will address the complex phenomenon of intermediality by exploring the relationship between literature and other media, e.g., visual art forms. Questions of realism, authenticity, memory, documentation, and the writing of history will guide our discussions of works from the Austro-German cultural context. The history of photography and critical reflections on the concept of visuality will provide a foundation for our discussions of text-image relationships, and we will see how ‘intermedial’ texts respond to the challenges of representing subjectivity, World War II, the Holocaust, postwar reconstruction, and the German Democratic Republic. (Wolff)              

GRM 891 Tendenzen in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache

This course will examine a range of lexical, morphological, syntactical and semantic changes, including categorization of the German language (Umgangssprache), the spelling reform, the influence of English on German (Handy), contemporary sociolects (voll gut), and evolutionary changes (weil ich muss nach Hause, ich erinnere das, das macht Sinn). (Lovik)