Katja Garloff
Modernism, postwar and contemporary German literature, German Jewish culture, literature and history, film.
Jan Mieszkowski
Romanticism; idealist philosophy; literary and cultural theory; classical political economy; military spectatorship and the aesthetics of war. On sabbatical 2016–17.
Michael Thomas Taylor
The Enlightenment; intellectual history; literature, theater, and the visual arts; gender and sexuality.
Johannes Wankhammer
Eighteenth-century German literature and philosophy; history of aesthetics; attention, observation, and experiment in science and literature; critical theory; environmental and posthuman humanities.
The German department’s curriculum provides a critical engagement with Germany’s intellectual and artistic legacy. All language courses are taught in German and include work in the language lab and conversation sessions with the language scholar. From the outset, we encourage students to explore cultural and historical materials in the original. The first year focuses on the full range of active and passive skills. In the second year, we pursue a comprehensive approach to reading, writing, and speaking through the study of selected literary and sociopolitical themes. Advanced classes in composition and conversation complete the language track in the third year.
Upper-level courses in the department are organized thematically and historically, often emphasizing interdisciplinary study. A flexible two-track program for majors offers a variety of perspectives on the analysis of texts. Students who select the concentration in literature may focus their thesis work on a particular author, period, or paradigm. They are also encouraged to consider broader questions about the nature of interpretation and criticism. The culture studies concentration gives students the opportunity to explore the German intellectual tradition through the methodological perspectives of a variety of fields, including philosophy, history, anthropology, and sociology. Students who pursue this track can take two of their required courses in other departments. In their thesis they may combine literary and nonliterary analyses or write on exclusively nonliterary problems. With both concentrations, it may be possible for students to work on particular areas of interest in an independent study. Details of the requirements for each track are listed below.
German House
The German House on campus functions as both a residence hall and a center for extracurricular activities, including film screenings, poetry readings, lectures, and informal discussions.
Language Scholar
The language scholar from the University of Munich, a yearly appointment, provides students contact with a native speaker and assists the department with academic and cultural events.
Study Abroad
The department strongly recommends that students who wish to major in German spend a year or semester of study in Germany. Faculty-approved programs listed on the Reed web (www.reed.edu/ipo/International-Programs) at the University of Munich, Freie University of Berlin, and the University of Tübingen allow students to remain registered and enrolled at Reed, have their work approved in advance, and use financial aid if eligible. Students might also consider intensive language study during the summer offered at many German universities. Members of the department as well as the study abroad adviser can provide guidance.
Prerequisites
Students with a background in German may take a placement test to determine if they are prepared for second- or third-year classes. Placement tests are offered during orientation week and (online) over the summer.
Requirements for the Major
Concentration in Literature
- First- and second-year German (German 110, German 220) or the equivalent.
- German 311 or the equivalent.
- Six German literature courses in German at the 300 or 400 level. German 311 will not be accepted as one of the six courses. At least four of the six courses must be taken at Reed.
- Thesis (470).
- At least one semester or summer institute in Germany.
Recommended but not required:
- German or modern European history.
- German philosophy.
- Humanities 220.
Concentration in Culture Studies
- First- and second-year German (German 110, German 220) or the equivalent.
- German 311 or the equivalent.
- Six upper-division courses in the German department and related disciplines. German 311 will not be accepted as one of these six courses. Four of these courses must be upper-division offerings in the German department. Two of the selected courses must be taken in German. The remaining two courses can be selected from departments related to the German culture studies program, such as history, art history, and philosophy.
- One course in German or modern European history.
- Humanities 220.
- Thesis (470).
- One year of study abroad at the University of Munich program or another approved institution is strongly advised.
German 110 - First-Year German: A Foundation
Full course for one year. This class is an introduction to reading, writing, and speaking German. Grammar instruction is supplemented with cultural materials from German-speaking countries. Classroom activities include poetry readings, film clips, and internet research. Use of the language laboratory is integral to the course. The class is reserved for students with no background in the language. Conference.
German 220 - Second-Year German: Cultural and Literary Perspectives
Full course for one year. This class is designed to enhance one's skills in reading, writing, and speaking German. Along with a systematic grammar review, we explore literary, historical, and cultural topics, drawing on a variety of texts, including films, artworks, advertisements, and newspaper articles. One hour per week is spent in small conversation workshops, and students regularly complete listening comprehension exercises online. Prerequisite: German 110 or placement by examination. Conference.
German 311 - Advanced German I: Twentieth-Century Art and Politics (Berlin)
Full course for one semester. This class is designed to help students develop advanced competence in written and spoken German. There will be regular essay assignments, oral presentations, and group projects. We will discuss twentieth-century German culture and history, primarily through literary and filmic representations of Berlin. We will explore the city as the center of emergent mass culture in the early twentieth century, the capital of National Socialism, the divided capital of the Cold War era, the symbol of the united Germany, and the multicultural core of contemporary German society. Prerequisite: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference.
German 312 - Advanced German II: Kafka and Modernism
Full course for one semester. This course is designed to further students’ advanced competence in written and spoken German. Students will participate in a literature course but will write short papers in German and complete weekly grammar assignments. Students who successfully complete the course will earn credit for Group D and will not be eligible for Group A credit. Prerequisite: German 311. Conference. Cross-listed with German 325 for 2016—17; see German 325 for description. Students will not be allowed to subsequently take German 325 for credit.
German 325 - Kafka and Modernism
Full course for one semester. This seminar considers the work of Franz Kafka in the context of cultural and political modernism. We will explore Kafka’s relationship to film, psychoanalysis, Judaism, imperialism, bureaucracy, and the modern city. Close attention will be paid to the stylistic features that make Kafka’s texts uniquely perplexing yet rewarding, including literalism, ambiguity, paradox, and self-reflexivity. Primary readings from Kafka’s letters, short fiction, and novels (Der Process, Der Verschollene) are supplemented by film screenings and readings from Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Derrida, and others. Conducted in German. Students who successfully complete the course will earn credit for Group A and will not be eligible for Group D credit. Prerequisite: German 311 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed with German 312 for 2016-17.
German 330 - Gender and Sexuality in German Literature
Full course for one semester. This course combines readings of canonical literary works from the German tradition with important scholarship in the history and theory of gender and sexuality in Western Europe and North America. Key areas of focus include patriarchy since the Reformation; the Enlightenment and the French Revolution; nineteenth-century norms and ideals of marriage and the family; bourgeois society and prostitution; the development of sexual science and psychoanalysis and new conceptions of sexual identity; gender and war; Nazi ideology; and postwar debates about sex and gender in society. Literary works will include texts by G.E. Lessing, J.W. von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, Theodor Fontane, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Arthur Schnitzler, N.O. Body, Ernst Jünger, Irmgard Keun, Bertolt Brecht, and Elfriede Jelinek. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 330.
German 332 - Classical and Avant-Garde Theatre in Postwar Germany
Full course for one semester. This course examines postwar productions of works by “canonical” German playwrights. These include the reopening of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in September 1945 with a production of Lessing’s plea for religious tolerance, Nathan the Wise (1779); Gustaf Gründgens’ lifelong portrayals of Mephistopheles and his 1957/60 production of Goethe’s Faust, Part One (1808); Peter Zadek’s 1966 pop-art interpretation of Schiller’s The Robbers (1781/82); productions of Büchner’s Woyzeck (1836/1879); and Heiner Müller’s engagement with Shakespeare in his postmodernist Hamletmachine (1989/1990). These productions serve as a framework to investigate postwar performance practice and theory (from Brecht to “postdramatic” theater); the complicated legacy of “classical” ideals of humanity and humanism after the Holocaust; hermeneutic paradigms of fidelity and (textual) deconstruction; the intersection of countercultures and theatrical practice (“Bremen Style” and the ’68 generation); as well as the remaking of German theatrical canons and theater as a mode of cultural politics in both East and West Germany until reunification. In addition to these works and productions, the course examines theatrical theory and criticism (Schiller, Goethe, Brecht, Artaud, Adorno, Hans-Thies Lehmann, and reviews from Theater heute), recorded stagings, and adaptations for film and television. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 332.
Not offered 2016—17.
German 334 - German Landscapes, New World Horizons
Full course for one semester. This course examines the perception, representation, and (re)construction of landscapes in the German-speaking world, as well as projections and displacements of this history onto the New World. Key moments in this German history include the eighteenth-century discovery of the Alps as both beautiful and sublime; romantic visions of nature; massive projects to transform topography (such as the draining of the Oder swamps or the straightening of the Rhine); and the significance of this history for twentieth-century movements such as Life Reform, New Objectivity, fascism, and postwar green politics. New World Horizons encompass German colonial explorers and naturalists, and the influence of German art on North American wilderness (in the Hudson Valley, the Rockies, and Oregon country) and on encounters with native Americans. These topics open up histories of aesthetics and science; German nationalism, (inner) colonialization, extermination, and emigration; industrialization, conquest, and reclamation; and the mainstream effects of countercultural movements that look to nature. In addition to recent historiography, this course examines literature, philosophy, painting, photography, and film. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 334.
German 335 - Contemporary German Literature
Full course for one semester. This seminar focuses on literature written after the unification of Germany in 1990. We will explore literary reactions to unification, the reconsideration of the German past, new forms of multiculturalism, and the national and global dimensions of contemporary literature. Special attention will be paid to experimental forms of writing such as the prose poem, pop literature, the deconstruction of narrative patterns, and “the new storytelling.” Authors include Thomas Brussig, Ingo Schulze, Christian Kracht, Zafer Senocak, Barbara Honigmann, Herta Müller, Elfriede Jelinek, and Daniel Kehlmann. Conference.
Not offered 2016—17.
German 345 - Literature and Love
Full course for one semester. The rise of the romantic love ideal around 1800 presented literary authors with a new question: Can love, one of the oldest and most familiar of literary themes, be written about at all? How can we communicate feelings that in their intensity and specificity seem necessarily to elude verbalization? In this course, we will read a range of poems and stories that confront this question. We will analyze a bourgeois Enlightenment discourse on individuality and sexual difference that still influences contemporary conceptions of love. Finally, we will examine the creation of a new semantics of love in literary modernism. Literary readings by Lessing, Goethe, Kleist, Schlegel, Eichendorff, Keller, Benn, Rilke, Lasker-Schüler, Th. Mann, Kafka, Bachmann. Theoretical readings by Plato, Freud, Foucault, Luhmann, and others. Conducted in German. Prerequisite: German 311 or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2016—17.
German 355 - Modern German Jewish Writers
Full course for one semester. This course examines the development of German Jewish literature from the late eighteenth century to the present. We will explore themes such as enlightenment and emancipation; romanticism and salon culture; the rise of racial anti-Semitism; and the dynamics of tradition and modernity. Our focus will be on the early twentieth century, a time when German Jewish writers faced new challenges but also produced a particularly vibrant version of what has been called an “ethnic,” “diaspora,” or “minority” literature. The course concludes with a consideration of the reemergence of German Jewish culture after the Holocaust, especially in postunification Germany. Readings from Lessing, Heine, Schnitzler, Kafka, Lasker-Schüler, Celan, Honigmann, Mendelssohn, Buber, Herzl, Scholem, Benjamin, and others. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 355. (Previously numbered German 325.)
Not offered 2016—17.
German 358 - The Holocaust in Film and Literature
Full course for one semester. Through a study of Holocaust film and literature, this course investigates the relations between history, trauma, and representation. How do authors and filmmakers describe events that shatter traditional forms of perception and comprehension? How do they portray human agency in an age of bureaucratically administered mass destruction? How do they relate history, memory, and imagination? We will study works from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds and explore a wide range of genres, including documentaries, memoirs, novels, poetry, drama, comics, and feature films. In the final weeks of the semester, we will discuss how memories of the Holocaust relate to other instances of historical trauma and violence, especially American slavery and its aftermath. Primary sources will include works by Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, Imre Kertész, Cynthia Ozick, Tadeusz Borowski, Joshua Sobol, Paul Celan, Art Spiegelman, Steven Spielberg, and Claude Lanzmann. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 358.
German 365 - City, Space, Memory
Full course for one semester. At the advent of the twentieth century, the metropolitan city emerged as a new network of signification generating a rethinking of the trajectories of time and space. We will explore the transcription of urban space as a new site of knowledge in experimental literary forms. The spatialization of memory and history will be a major focus. City narratives from German modernity include Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood and Arcades Project, and essays by Simmel and Krakauer. We will also explore contemporary readings representing space as the container of traumatic memory (Sebald, The Emigrants), nostalgia (Pamuk, Istanbul), and “subaltern counterpublics” (postcolonialism). Theories on memory are examined through Freud, Bergson, and Ricoeur. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 365.
Not offered 2016—17.
German 392 - German Theory II
Introduction to Critical Theory
Full course for one semester. This class explores post-Kantian conceptions of critique and their significance for the analysis of fascism, mass culture, and the politics of the artwork. We will focus on the notion of literature as a socially progressive force. We will also consider the intersections of psychoanalysis and Marxism. Authors include Kant, Schlegel, Hegel, Marx, Büchner, Freud, Benjamin, Adorno, Arendt, Celan, Müller, Derrida, and Kristeva. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 392. Not offered 2016–17.
Revolutions in Poetic Language
Full course for one semester. Between 1750 and 1850, virtually every assumption about poetry’s forms, powers, and goals underwent a series of radical transformations that would shape the modern understanding of art and literature. Reading lyric, dramatic, and prose works, as well as critical and philosophical essays, we will concentrate on developing skills in interpreting texts and formalizing the theoretical challenges they present. Authors will include Arnold, Büchner, Dickinson, Goethe, Hegel, Kleist, Lessing, Poe, Rousseau, and Schlegel. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite for students taking the course for German credit: German 220 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 392. Not offered 2016–17.
German 462 - Seminar
Goethe
Full course for one semester. This course offers an introduction to the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We will read a limited selection of works from different genres, including the novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, early and late poetry, drama, natural scientific theory, and cultural criticism. The course will focus on the twentieth-century reception of Goethe’s works and life as the emblem for an age of German history that encompasses radically different cultural crosscurrents. We will also employ this perspective to situate Goethe’s work within conceptions of Europe and world literature, and to examine major traditions in twentieth-century literary criticism. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or consent of the instructor; for students taking the course for German credit: German 311 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 462. Not offered 2016–17.
German 470 - Thesis
One-half or full course for one year.
German 481 - Independent Study
One-half or full course for one semester. Prerequisite: approval of instructor and division.