Courses - Spring 2025

German 2251 • Why Rocks Matter! Rocks, Mountains and the Lithic in German Literature and Popular Culture

Senuysal | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025 

 GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts

In this course, we will focus on that which is assumably most different from us humans — rocks and stone. 

Current ecological developments and humans’ impact on the planet urge us to look anew at the relationship between the human subject and its organic and inorganic environment. In this class, we will zoom in on the inorganic world and ponder some maybe seemingly obvious, yet fundamental questions, such as: (How) are rocks different from humans? (Why) do they belong to different ontological categories? And why is any of this important to us in the 21st century? 

We will think about these questions by exploring the rich history of rock(s), mountains, and the lithic in German literature from the Age of Enlightenment through today. Specific topics we will encounter include for example the connections between rock and literary texts, literature and deep time, metaphorical relations between rocks and humans, the representation of disturbed landscapes in literature, and how we might rethink the interrelatedness of humans with their nonliving world. 

Taught in English

German 2254.02 • Grimms' Fairy Tales and their Afterlives

Byram| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025

  GEN Foundation: Literary, Visual & Performing Arts
  GEL Literature

In the present DL course, we will be trying to understand the meaning and the enduring appeal of one of Germany’s greatest successes in the realm of cultural exportation—a book whose circulation figures are exceeded in Western culture only by those of the Bible: Grimms’ fairy tales.  This will mean asking a series of interlocking questions.  How did the fairy tales come about?  What were the aims of their compilers?  How do the tales play to those aims?  How do they exceed them?  How do the tales tend to work structurally?  What have their social and psychological effects been?  How have they helped shape—and been reshaped by—popular cultures outside Germany, like popular culture in the U.S.  In reckoning with these questions, we will be enlisting the help of a parade of great critics, including Vladimir Propp, Bruno Bettelheim, Erich Auerbach, and Jack Zipes.
Required Texts:
All readings and materials will be posted on Carmen.
All works in English translation; taught in English.

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 3253 • German Immigration in the US

Tentative! | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025

Germans who immigrated to the US between 1820 and 1930 sought to flee political upheaval, conflict, starvation, & economic suffering. Although the majority of these immigrants were classified as "German" in US Census data, their group was anything but homogeneous. This course examines immigrant communities and their assimilation to majority society with the advent of new technologies and urbanization. 
GE THEME traditions, cultures, and transformations course.

DL course - Taught in English! 

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; 19^th-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 2241 • Yiddish Culture

Hamel | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025

This course provides an introduction to modern Yiddish culture in its many forms of expression. We will explore the history of Yiddish language, literature, folklore, politics, and society, with a particular focus on how migration and gender have shaped Yiddish culture. Highlights of the course include women’s writing in Yiddish, Yiddish culture in Argentina and Ukraine, and Yiddish in contemporary television.

Throughout the course, we will investigate how Yiddish culture developed without state support and across borders. We will grapple with concepts like diaspora, identity, marginality, and postvernacularity and with the effects of acculturation, self-assertion, secularization, displacement, trauma, and changing paradigms of education and of gender and sexuality. We will also consider how Yiddish culture was—and continues to be—transformed through generative and often fraught encounters with other languages and cultures. While gaining familiarity with the diversity of Yiddish culture, students will develop a conceptual toolbox for the study of cultural history more generally.

Introductory survey of political, social, ideological, and religious trends as reflected in Yiddish culture, especially folklore and literature.
Prereq: Not open to students with credit for JewshSt 2241. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course. Cross-listed in JewshSt.

Yiddish 3399 • The Holocaust in Yiddish Writing and Film

Hamel | 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 2x/weekly, (two 80-minute in-person sessions, and one asynchronous 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

  Heck | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025
  Heck | 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

 Heck | 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

Grotans  | 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 • Migration in German Culture - Topics in German Literature, Art, and Film 

Aupiais| 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025

Today, Germany is home to the second-largest immigrant population in the world after the U.S. This marks a drastic shift from Germany’s history as an “Auswanderungsland”, a country with a large diaspora all over the world. Or does it? This course addresses the history of migration in German culture, probing how its representation reflects modern Germany’s self-perception and global imaginary. Topics to include: “Auslandsdeutsche” and 19th century German emigrants, Pan-Germanism, Settler Colonialism in Africa, Black German History,  postwar “Gastarbeiter/Vertragsarbeiter”, post-unification xenophobia and violence, the “refugee crisis” of 2015, and contemporary postmigrant discourse.

This course is taught in German.

Prereq: 2102 or equiv; or permission of instructor.

German 3300 • Amerika aus deutscher Sicht – America through German Eyes - Topics in German Culture Studies, Social and Intellectual History

Byram | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025

Often, the way we respond to others reveals a lot about ourselves.

So, what do German-speakers’ responses to American culture and politics tell us about the way they understand themselves, their culture, and the world? To explore this question, we will read letters and stories, watch films and newsreels, listen to popular music and propaganda, look at photographs and artwork, surf the web, and follow social media. We will cover German reactions to the American Revolution, the Wild West, Henry Ford’s assembly line, American occupation of Germany after WWII, and the American presidential race and election.

In the end—who knows what we might learn about U.S. culture and society looking through German eyes?

The class will be conducted in German. We will discuss and practice advanced topics in grammar and language, and the course will be structured to help students improve reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.

Prereq: 2102 or equiv, or permission of instructor.

German 4600 • History of the German Language - Senior Seminar in German: Linguistics/Language

Grotans | 3 credit units | Spring Semester 2025

In this course we will investigate the development of the German language over the past ca. 1500 years with a look both at structural changes as well as the cultural contexts in which they took place. Why is it gehen-ging, but machen-machte? Whence that pesky "dative-n"? Why are adjective endings so complicated? You'll also learn how to read older forms of German and practice your new skills in Thompson Library's Rare Books Room, where we'll spend a good deal of time looking at manuscripts and other forms of primary evidence including early printed books and handwritten letters.

Germanic and medieval beginnings
Printing and Other Revolutions
Forming a Standard Language
19th-Century Language and Nation
20th-Century Language in Crisis
21st-Century Globalization and Inclusion

-- Taught in German.
Prereq: 3101, 3600, or equiv, and Sr standing, or permission of instructor.

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

Hamel | 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.

German 8200 • Survey - Meta/Physik: Investigations and Negotiations of Biopolitics in the Long 20th Century - Seminar in Literature and Literary Culture

Porter and Reisener (Bonn) | 3 credit units | Fridays 9:10 - 11:55 am | Spring Semester 2025

This is a survey course of Body Studies under the discipline of German Studies (Long 20th Century, 1890-2020)

This graduate seminar focuses on the long-20th century, spanning the fin de siècle to the current metaphorical chokehold the Digital Era has placed on the West. Organized as a survey course, Porter and Reisener will discuss theoretical and cultural texts categorizable under the growing disciplinary designation of Body Cultural Studies as it intersects with German Studies. This course pairs some of the many foundational texts canonized in German Studies – including works by Sigmund Freud, Fatima El-Tayeb, Giorgio Agamben, and Franz Kafka – with a selection of more contemporary, resonant texts, like Charlotte Roche’s Feuchtgebiebe and Kim De L’Horizon’s Blutbuch. The course is organized chronologically, emphasizing moments strongly featuring shifting body politics, like the estrangement of individual vs. the national “body,” racialization, body mediation and fragmentation, and Glitch Feminism.

This course is facilitated in German.

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor.

German 8300 • Literature – Philosophy – Theory - Seminar in Intellectual History and Cultural Studies 

Mergenthaler | 3 credit units | Tuesdays 9:10-11:55 | Spring Semester 2025

This course will explore the close relationship between literature and philosophy that has emerged in the 18th century and how this relationship has evolved into what has been called Theory since the late 20th centuries. We will read both primary philosophical and theoretical text as well as applications of those texts to literature, film, other media, and culture, more generally.  Approaches to be discussed include, but are not limited to Early Romanticism, Idealism, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Marxism, Queer & Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Postcolonial Criticism.

Readings available in German and in English. Course conducted in English. 

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor.

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.

German 8600 • Video-Mediated Interactions in L2 Learning and Research - Seminar in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

Taleghani-Nikazm | 3 credit units | Wednesdays 2:20 -5:05 | Spring Semester 2025

This course will count towards the GIS in Second Language Studies.

Video-Mediated Interactions (VMI) provide dynamic and engaging environments for intercultural exchange, language learning and practice, and the development of interactional competence. In this seminar, we explore the growing body of research on VMI in the context of second language and multilingual settings, that has helped us understand their unique affordances and challenges, for example, managing turn-taking, resolving conversational overlaps, managing topics, the role of non-verbal conduct, and use of translation tools. 

The seminar is structured into two parts:

In the first part, we will explore the theoretical frameworks and methodologies underpinning VMI research, including conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, and other qualitative approaches. We will particularly examine empirical studies that focus on the relationship between linguistic development and interactional practices and cultural understanding, conversational dynamics, and meaningful interaction.  Additionally, we will discuss data collection and models for transcription.

The second part shifts focus to the practical implications and contributions of VMI L2 research. We will examine models of VMI used in L2 programs and discuss their pedagogical goals including supportive instructional materials and task design. 

Students in this seminar will have the option to write a research proposal/protocol or develop an instructional module that includes L2 learners VMI. 

For questions email me @ taleghani-nikazm.1@osu.edu

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor.