GERMAN SCANDVN / SWEDISH YIDDISH
Please note that this webpage will be updated as information becomes available
For additional info about our GE course offerings, please check out our General Education Webpage.
German 3250 • Citizenship in the Age of Technology: Exploring Social Justice through Science Fiction in Germany
Richards | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse & Just World
Investigating the promises & pitfalls that technologies once confined to the pages of science fiction pose to our relationships, our communities, and our world, with a specific focus on the challenges they will bring to our concept of citizenship. Recent German science fiction will illuminate the debate on the future of democracy as it unfolds in Germany, the USA & in a broader global context.
Taught in English. DL course.
German 3252.02 • The Holocaust in Literature and Film
Richards | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse & Just World
Why, faced with a historical catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, would we devote a class to film and literature about it, rather than to “the facts”?
HOW YOU SAY THINGS MATTERS
Come find out why.
Taught in English. DL course.
Not open to students with credit for 3252.01 or Yiddish 3399.
German 3317H • Black Identity and Culture in German-Speaking Europe
Porter | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN Foundation: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Diversity
This honors course discusses the history of Afro-Germans in Europe and internationally (including, but not limited to, the US, France, Namibia, England, and South Africa). Conversations and questions thematized in this course pertain to identity formation and erasure; systemic racism; Westernization; xenophobia; and eugenics. The content discussed in this course is introductory for the study of race, ethnicity, and gender diversity through the adoption of a historical timeline that spans the 18th century to the present. By discussing a range of texts, including film, scholarly works, and poetry, students are guided through conversations that explore how constructs of race, gender, and ethnicity are established, modified, and negotiated through both official (read: bureaucratic) and unofficial (read: social) channels.
Further, the course provides students with the support to identify intersecting social influences and factors that inform (and often reinforce) the categories of race, gender, and ethnicity. This course discusses milestones in German history where we see significant and often detrimental interaction between the Black diaspora and German-speaking Europe.
Prerequisite: Honors, and Soph, Jr, or Sr standing, or permission of instructor.
German/Scandvn 3354 • From Viking Saga to Climate Fiction: Nature in Nordic and Germanic Literatures
Mergenthaler | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN Theme: Sustainability
This course explores how literature and culture––including, among others, traditional art forms, popular culture, folklore, lifestyle, social customs, and political culture––are deeply intertwined with our relationship toward nature and our natural and cultural environments, including forests, oceans, mountains, parks, and rural and urban spaces. It explores how environmental sustainability is conceived, represented, and reflected in the literatures of Nordic and German-speaking countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany), from the medieval period to the present. The rich and diverse literatures and cultures of these countries may help explain their intense engagement with current global environmental issues and strategies for sustainability, from climate change and biodiversity loss to ocean acidification and soil erosion.
Representations and concepts of nature and environmental sustainability will be studied in a variety of literary genres, with different thematic emphases, and from different methodological angles. Literary genres include medieval sagas; Gothic Romantic tales; 19th-century fairy tales (e.g., “Snow Queen” that inspired Disney’s Frozen); the modernist novel; graphic novel; poetry; essay; and science-fiction, both dystopian and utopian; and TV series. Thematic emphases encompass the cultivation of Iceland; the landscape of war; witchcraft and the magic of nature; urbanization and the destruction of nature; back-to-nature movements; the fascist instrumentalization of nature; nature and memory; the reality and imagination of nuclear disaster and pollution; the philosophy of Deep Ecology; dystopia and utopia in the age of climate change and fears of irreversible environmental damage. Finally, research methods that the instructor introduces in class and that students apply, in particular, in their final research essays include narratology, rhetorical analysis, and gender and postcolonial studies as well as Environmental Humanities and Ecocriticism.
All readings available in English; taught in English.
Yiddish 3399 • The Holocaust in Yiddish Writing and Film
tba | 4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
4 credit course; GE Theme – Citizenship for a Just and Diverse World; Integrative Practice: Research and Creative Inquiry
Meets 3x/week, 220 minutes total (two 80-minute in-person sessions, and one 60-minute DL session per week)
About six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II in a series of events that came to be known as the Holocaust or, in Yiddish, as the “khurbn” (“destruction”). Yiddish was the first language of millions of the victims, but the contributions of speakers of this language to the documentation and representation of the Holocaust have often been overlooked or effaced.
In this course, while we will learn about the systematic destruction of Yiddish culture and society, we will also consider how Yiddish-language writers, artists, intellectuals, and filmmakers documented and resisted that destruction. In class discussions and assignments, we will analyze texts, films, and other media produced during and after the Holocaust and consider how these materials, written in or incorporating a language that was itself victimized, open up different perspectives on a seemingly well-known history. We will also consider how these materials participate in ongoing debates about citizenship and minority rights, justice and restitution, the representation of violence, and cultural memory. In addition to providing an introduction to the academic study of the Holocaust and Yiddish culture, this course will familiarize students with cutting-edge research methods and techniques in the humanities and interpretive social sciences (e.g., close reading, archival research, oral history, etc.).
All readings and discussion in English. No knowledge of Yiddish is required.
German 1101.01 • German I
4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN World Languages
GEL Foreign Language course
Introduction to language and culture of the German-speaking world, with emphasis placed on the acquisition of basic communication skills in cultural context. CEFR Level A1.
Text: Impuls Deutsch 1
German 1102.01 • German II
4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN World Languages
GEL Foreign Language course
Text: Impuls Deutsch 1
Prereq: 1101.01, 1101.02 or 4 sem cr hrs of 1101.51
Continued development of German-language skills and cultural knowledge for effective communication. Emphasis on more advanced language structures, sustained interactions, reading and writing. CEFR Levels A1/A2
German 1103.01 • German III
4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN World Languages
GEL Foreign Language course
Development of skills for independent use of German. Discussions, presentations, writing, & listening/viewing activities that address topics of contemporary German-speaking world. CEFR Level A2.
Text: Impuls Deutsch 2
Prereq: 1102.01, 1102.02 or 4 sem cr hrs of 1102.51
German 1101.02 • 1102.02 • 1103.02
Distance Learning option
GEN World Languages
GEL Foreign Language course
4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
German 2101 • Texts and Contexts I: Contemporary German Language, Culture and Society
| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
Development of communication skills and knowledge about recent social, cultural, and political developments in German speaking countries through texts, media and film; CEFR level A2/B1. Closed to native speakers of this language.
Prereq: 1103.01, 1103.02, or 4 sem cr hrs of 1103.51, or equiv, or permission of instructor. No audit.
German 2102 • Texts and Contexts II: 20th-Century German Language, History and Culture
| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
Continued development of communication skills; gain an understanding of major social and cultural developments in 20th century German history through texts, media, film. CEFR level B1/B2. Closed to native speakers of this language.
Prereq: 2101 or equiv, or permission of instructor. FL Admis Cond course.
German 3101 • Texts and Contexts III: Historical Perspectives
| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
Development of intermediate/advanced communication skills; broadening of cultural and historical knowledge through interaction with literary and non-literary materials informed by historical perspective; CEFR level B2. Closed to to native speakers of this language.
Prereq: 2102 or equiv, or permission of instructor.
German 3200 • Topic tba! - Topics in German Literature, Art, and Film
Aupiais| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
Topic description forthcoming!
This course is taught in German.
Prereq: 2102 or equiv; or permission of instructor.
German 3300 • Topic tba! - Topics in German Culture Studies, Social and Intellectual History
tba | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
Topic description forthcoming!
Explore answers to these and other questions, while you improve your German language skills!
Taught in German.
Prereq: 2102 or equiv, or permission of instructor.
More course listings forthcoming!
Swedish 1102 • Swedish II
Risko | 4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN World Languages
Development of skills necessary for the independent use of Swedish. Discussions, presentations, writing and listening/viewing activities address topics of contemporary Sweden.
Prereq: Grade of C- or better in 1101. Not open to native speakers of this language through regular course enrollment or EM credit. GE for Lang Course.
Text: Althén, Anette. Mål 2 Lärobok (textbook with CD); Althén, Anette. Mål Övningsbok (workbook). Both Stockholm: Natur och Kultur (2007 edition).
Yiddish 1102 • Yiddish 2
tba | 4 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
GEN World Languages
GEL Foreign Language course
The course is designed to help you learn to communicate in culturally informed ways in Yiddish. It will help you develop balanced skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In addition to completing exercises in the textbook In eynem: A Communicative Approach to Yiddish, we will read short texts by writers such as Sholem Aleichem and Anna Margolin and excerpts from contemporary Hasidic publications and from the recent Yiddish translation of Harry Potter.
Prereq: 1101
German 6601 • Teaching Practicum
Uskokovic | 1 credit unit | ARR | Spring Semester 2025
This course is for GTAs who are teaching a 1000-level German language class. The course provides graduate students with instruction and practice in designing and implementing instructional materials for their undergraduate classes. It offers best practices in creating tests, developing speaking portfolios, designing culture components, and becoming reflective practitioners.
Prereq: Grad standing, and permission of instructor. Repeatable to a maximum of 10 cr hrs. This course is graded S/U.
8000-level seminars to be announced!
German 8500 • Doctoral Colloquium
Byram| 1 credit unit | ARR | Spring Semester 2025
Regular student-driven discussions of ongoing dissertations, current topics in the professional field, and new research approaches to Germanic Studies.
Prereq: Successful completion of Ph.D. candidacy exams or permission from Director of Graduate Studies and instructor. Repeatable to a maximum of 9 cr hrs. This course is graded S/U. Admis Cond course.