GE Theme: Citizenship for a Just and Diverse World

• German 3250  --  Citizenship in the Age of Technology: 
                                 Exploring Social Justice through Science Fiction in Germany
    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!
   
• German 3252.01 or 3252.02 -- The Holocaust in Literature and Film
    Reading, analysis, and discussion of representative works pertaining to the Holocaust from the perspective of German literature and film. 
  Taught in English! 
   
• German 3254H -- Representations and Memory of the Holocaust in Film 
    Students will view, discuss, and examine major filmic representations of the Holocaust from several countries from the 1940s through the 1990s. Students will learn how these films have contributed to our understanding of a complex phenomenon of WWII and how the directors have coped with the thorny issues of representing something that many people consider to be unrepresentable. 
  Taught in English!
   
• German 3351 --  Democracy, Fascism and German Culture 
    Culture of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany in literature, film, the other arts; the roots of fascism and its echoes in postwar Germany.
  Taught in English! 
   
• German 3456 -- Global Changemakers  
  [4 credits - High-Impact Practice - Interdisciplinary and Integrated Collaborative Teaching]
  This course explores what it means to be a global changemaker, emphasizing critical thinking, truth- telling, and advocacy for change. Students will study the qualities of changemakers through and examine global citizenship, cultural diversity, and social equity. Team-taught with faculty members in South Asian Studies and Slavic.   
  -- Taught in English! 
  note: Not open to students with credit for SASIA 3456 or Slavic 3456.
  - cross-listed with Slavic and SASIA 3456
   
• German 3798.02 - Global May Germany
  The Global City Berlin:  Cultures, Spaces, and Experiences
    Students will explore and experience the cosmopolitan and increasingly diverse Berlin by learning about some of the most influential or memorable persons who live or have lived in the city–from its establishment as a capital of the Prussian Kingdom in the 18th century to its present role as capital of a reunified, democratic Germany and a center of European and global politics and culture. GE education abroad and global studies (International Issues successors) course.
  * Open only to students who are admitted to participate in the "Global May Germany" Study Abroad Program. 
   
• Scandinavian 3270
  Revenge
    Revenge is the engine of the medieval Icelandic sagas, stories of a Viking Age society just beyond the reach of kings, where honor is the main currency, and a pithy verse or a legal stratagem may overmatch even a steel axe. Learn about the workings of blood feud, about a distant society’s concepts of citizenship and justice, and find unexpected parallels in our here and now.  
  -- Taught in English! 
   
• Yiddish 3399  
  The Holocaust in Yiddish Writing and Film
   [ 4-credit course; Integrative Practice: Research and Creative Inquiry] 
   Meets in-person 3x/week, 220 minutes total (two 80-minute sessions and one 55-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. 
   

GE Theme: Lived Environments 

• German 3352  
  The Development of Contemporary Dresden  (Summer 8-week Session Study Abroad )
    An introduction to German life and culture, past and present, through an exploration of the city of Dresden and surroundings (including the new federal states); taught within our summer study abroad program with students experiencing German culture first hand.
  * Open only to students who participate in the German Language in Dresden Summer Study Abroad Program.  Admitted students register for German 3352 and 5797 (3 credits), and also for either German 2101 (3 credits) OR German 2102 (3 credits) during the Summer session.
  All credits taken in Dresden can be used towards the German major or minor. For more information: Dresden Summer Language Program
   
• German 3689 -- Taught in English!
  Words Across the World
  cross-listed with NESA and Spanish
  Language, at the heart of our social life, drives much of what humans do: converse, convey beliefs & views, label, categorize, include & exclude people. We'll critically examine how we use language to interact with our lived environments (LE) & analyze & discover ways in which words are used & manipulated to impact our LE & how changes & developments in our LE can have a direct effect on language.
   

GE Theme: Sustainability

• Scandinavian/German 3354.02  --  From Viking Saga to Climate Fiction: Nature in Nordic and Germanic Literatures --  Taught in English! 
  [ 4 credits - Integrative Practice: Research and Creative Inquiry ]

This course explores how sustainable human-nature relationships are conceived, represented, and reflected in the literatures of Nordic and German-speaking countries, from the medieval period to the present—e.g., in Icelandic saga; Gothic Romantic narrative; modern fairy tale; graphic novel; poetry; song; philosophical essay; and climate science-fiction.

GE Theme: Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations

• German 3434  • Bad Science
  -- taught in English!  
  GE Theme: Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations
  Developments in science and technology raise key political questions and often reveal global fault lines ? recent debates around AI, climate change, pandemics and public health show this. This course delves into the sometimes-toxic cultural politics of science historically, surveying key case studies (in biology, linguistics, medicine and more) from German history between 1780 and 1940.

• Scandinavian 3350  • Norse Mythology and Medieval Culture
  -- taught in English! 
  GE Theme: Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations
  What do we know about Thor and Odin and how do we know it? What do the Norse Myths tell us about the worldview and beliefs of pagan Scandinavia? What did medieval Christians think about these same stories? Students will read the most important surviving textual sources on Scandinavia's pre-Christian mythology and learn to analyze them as vehicles for meaning.
   
• Yiddish 3241 • Yiddish Culture
  -- Taught in English! 
  GE Theme: Traditions, Cultures, and Transformations
    A bastardized German, a jargon, a woman’s vernacular, an old-world language, a dying tongue, a Hasidic language, a queer language, a radical language—these are just a few of the ways that Yiddish has been labeled over its one-thousand-year history. This course will trace the shifting images attached to the language of Eastern European Jewry, from its early modern beginnings as a tool for translating between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures to its contemporary status as a language of mourning and nostalgia, Jewish American humor, Hasidic isolation, and Jewish radicalism. Through poetry, fiction, essays, and film, we will discover what this language can tell us about modern Jewish culture and what we might learn along the way about diaspora and migrant cultures more generally. All texts will be read in translation.  Cross-listed in Jewish Studies.