2009 Spring Courses

Lower Division Courses

German 1: Elementary German (5 Units)

STAFF, Sec. 1 (M-F, 8:00 - 8:50) CRN 76290

STAFF, Sec. 2 (M-F, 9:00 - 9:50) CRN 76291

Course Description: Introduction to German grammar and development of all language skills in a cultural context with special emphasis on communication. (Students who have successfully completed German 2 or 3 in the 10th or higher grade in high school may receive unit credit for this course on a P/NP grading basis only. Although a passing grade will be charged to the student’s P/NP option, no petition is required. All other students will receive a letter grade unless a P/NP petition is filed).

Course Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Prerequisite: None.

Textbook: Lovik, Vorsprung Workbook and Laboratory Manual and CD.

German 3: Elementary German (5 units)

STAFF, Sec.1 (M-F, 08:00 - 08:50) CRN 76292

STAFF, Sec 2 (M-F, 09:00 - 09:50) CRN 76293

STAFF, Sec 3 (M-F, 10:00 - 10:50) CRN 76294

Course Description: Completion of grammar sequence and continuing practice of all language skills in a cultural context.

Course Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Prerequisite: course 2.

Textbook: Lovik, Vorsprung Workbook and Laboratory Manual and CD.

German 20: Intermediate German (4 Units)

STAFF (MWF, 10:00 - 10:50) CRN 76295

Course Description: This is the first course of 2nd year German. Students will review grammar, and begin to read and discuss short, literary texts of cultural and historical interest. Conducted in German.

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Short papers.

Prerequisite: course 3.

Textbooks: Rosemarie Morewedge, Larry Wells (eds.), Mitlesen/Mitteilen; Jamie Rankin, Larry Wells (eds.), Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik.

German 22: Intermediate German (4 Units)

Gail Finney, Professor

Sec. 1 (MWF 10:00 - 10:50) CRN 76296

Course Description: This course continues along the lines of German 21 to provide further practice in the essential language skills, to expand command of vocabulary and idiomatic usage, and to provide techniques for the interpretation and greater understanding of literary texts. Readings include the script of one the most popular films from the Roaring Twenties, Der blaue Engel, as well as satirical stories about murderous fantasies by a contemporary woman writer. We will also view the film Der blaue Engel, starring Marlene Dietrich. Conducted in German.

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Short Papers.

Prerequisite: course 21 or consent of instructor.

Textbooks: Rankin and Wells, Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik; A Course Reader, consisting of Der blaue Engel, ed. Hart Wegner, and selected stories from Mörderische Erzählungen by Milena Moser.

German 22: Intermediate German (4 Units)

Christian Anderson, Lecturer

Sec. 2 (MWF 1:10 - 2:00)CRN 93867

Course Description: Students will deepen their engagement with the particular logic, beauty, and possibilities of the German language through close reading and active discussion of some of the most remarkable narratives ever penned in that language, the Grimm Brothers' Kinder und Hausmärchen. Conducted in German.

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Short Papers.

Prerequisite: course 21 or consent of instructor.

Textbooks: Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung: Dritter Tag aus dem Buhnenfestspiel "Der Ring des Nibelungen"; Richard Wagner, Die Walkure: Erster Tag aus dem Buhnenfestspiel "Der Ring des Nibelungen".

Upper Division Courses

German/Humanities 113: Goethe's Faust (in English Translation) (4 Units)

Clifford Bernd, Professor (MWF 12:10 - 1:00) CRN 93013

Course Description: A study of one of the chief cornerstones of western civilization. The monumental drama about a man, who flitted between God and the devil, who never tired searching for the meaning of life, whose thirst for knowledge was unquenchable, and whose passion knew no bounds. Conducted in English.

(Cross-listed with Humanities 113. The course also fulfills the requirement of an upper-division course counting towards the German major.) GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: None (Class is conducted in English).

Textbooks:Stuart Atkins (trans. and ed.) and Goethe, Faust I & II.

German 124: Major Movements in German Literature (4 Units)

Gerhard Richter, Professor (TR 10:30 - 11:50) CRN 93016

Course Description: We will be concerned with aesthetic and philosophical works from the period of German Romanticism, which emerged in the late 18th century, reached deeply into the world of the 19th century, and continues to shape the way we think about such concepts as art, music, critique, irony, progress, love, longing, imagination, experience, religion, the self, the psyche, the uncanny, and, above all, language. The course will require close readings of literary and theoretical texts by Fichte, Schelling, Novalis, Tieck, Schlegel, Arnim, Brentano, Hoffmann, and others. GE Credit: ArtHum.

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours.

Prerequisite: course 22 or consent of instructor.

Textbooks: Novalis, Gesammelte Werke; Ludwig Tieck, Der Blonde Eckbert/Der Runenberg; E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann; Dietrich Bode (ed.), Fünfzig Gedichte der Romantik; Hubert Uerlings (ed.), Theorie der Romantik.

German 131: German Lyric Poetry (4 Units)

Gerhard Richter, Professor (TR 12:10 - 1:30) CRN 93017

Course Description: This course introduces students to what many consider to be, next to music and philosophy, Germany's finest and most enduring contribution to world culture: its poetry. Emphasizing the conceptual distinctiveness and complex pleasure provided by aesthetic experience, we will focus on the relationship between poetry and German philosophy since the 18th century. Poets will include Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, Novalis, Mörike, Heine, George, Rilke, Trakl, Benn, Brecht, Bachmann, and Celan. GE credit: ArtHum.

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: course 22 or consent of instructor.

Textbooks: Karl Otto Conrady (ed.), Das Buch der Gedichte.

German 168: Multiculturalism in German Literature (4 units)

Jaimey Fisher, Associate Professor (TR 1:40 - 3:00) CRN 93014

Course Description:"What is German?" is a question that has perplexed German-speaking peoples for centuries, a question that has persisted from a time before there was a "Germany." Germany has always been a make-shift, sometimes/ ad hoc/ creation, a cauldron of different regions, ethnicities, religions. The closer one looks at the question, "What is German?" the more slippery and elusive the answer becomes.

This course will examine Germany as a multicultural constellation and consider the ways in which even a nominatively homogeneous culture and society is the product of multiplicity, diversity, and contestation. The course probes the mechanisms of ex/inclusion facing women and men from a variety of historical, political, linguistic, and aesthetic perspectives. We will cover such topics as historical and contemporary depictions of Jews; the representation of ethnic Turks and other "guest workers" in West Germany of the 1970s and 1980s; and recent explosive confrontations with the East German population, contemporary immigrants, and refugees. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach to multiculturalism in Germany, examining difference and representation in film and television, theater and prose, journalism and poetry. We shall consider the nature of minority/majority discourse, patterns of linguistic objectification, regimes of scopic oppression, and other mechanisms of marginalization as well as various attempts to break free of marginalization. The course should help provide a useful historical background for understanding many of the current and continuing conflicts in German society. GE credit: ArtHum, Div.

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: course 22 or consent of instructor.

Textbooks: Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, Mutterzunge; Oguntoye, Opitz, & Schultz, Farbe Bekennen.

Graduate Courses

German 202: Middle High German (4 Units)

Carlee Arnett, Associate Professor (TBA) CRN 93263

Course Description: TBA

Course Format: Seminar.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or consent of instructor.

Textbooks: TBA

German 211: Modernity, Afterness, Critique (4 Units)

Gerhard Richter, Professor (M 1:10-4:00) CRN 93018

Course Description: Few, if any, concepts have enjoyed as much authority and sustained engagement over the past two hundred years of Western modernity as the concept of "critique." Critique derives from the Greek word krinein, which means to separate, to distinguish, to choose, and it also is etymologically linked to crisis, which, in ancient medical terminology, was used to describe the critical turning point in the course of an illness. In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of the foundational texts for our modern concept of critique, Kant writes: "Unser Zeitalter ist das eigentliche Zeitalter der Kritik, der sich alles unterwerfen muß" ("Our age is the actual age of critique with respect to which all else must subordinate itself"). From Kant's foundational work on the concept of critique via Fichte's idea of critique as abstract negation, Schlegel's early romantic notion of critique, Hegel's developmental model of critique, Marx's project of philosophico-economic critique, and Benjamin's proto-messianic differentiation between commentary and critique, to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School: modern thought hardly would be thinkable without its relentless insistence on critique. But to the extent that concepts and acts of critique, as gestures of the krinein, imply separation and overcoming, they also always threaten to remain tacitly attached to that which is criticized. In this way, the concept of critique is inextricably linked to the notion of "afterness." After all, that which follows in the wake of critique not only marks a break with what preceded it but also tacitly perpetuates the very concepts and conditions it was believed to have left behind. The turn away and that which follows upon this turn necessarily reinforce and even retroactively construct that whose overcoming originally had enabled the movement of following. Foucault's question, posed in a 1978 lecture before the Société française de philosophie, reminds us of the political implications that such a thinking of critique entails: "How is it possible not to be governed in this way, in the name of these principles, for such ends and through such processes—not to be governed like this and not for that purpose and not by those people?" Writers to be studied include Kant, Schlegel, Marx, Heidegger, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Derrida, Foucault, de Man, Latour, and Luhmann.

[Note: Seminar taught in English; graduate students from a variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences are welcome. All texts are available in translation; German Department graduate students will be expected to read German texts in the original. Seminar can be counted as an elective toward the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.]

Course Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or consent of instructor.

Textbooks : A Course Reader.

German 293: The Classical Age of German Literature (4 Units)

Clifford Bernd, Professor (T 3:10-6:00) CRN 93015

Course Description: This course will deal with outstanding works of Germany’s greatest literary epoch: (1) a number of Goethe’s immortal lyrics, (2) Die Leiden des jungen Werther, (3) Iphigenie auf Tauris, (4) Egmont, (5) Faust I & II, (6) Maria Stuart, (7) Wilhelm Tell. Conducted in German.

Course Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or consent of instructor.

Textbooks : Reclam editions will be available in the bookstore.

German 396: Teaching Assistant Training Practicum (1-4 Units)

Carlee Arnett, Associate Professor

Course Description: Theoretical instruction in modern teaching methods and demonstration of their practical application. Required of new teaching assistants.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or consent of instructor.

Textbook: None.

Other Courses Taught by German Faculty

Comparative Literature 160A: Modern Novel (4 Units)

Gail Finney, Professor (MWF 11:00-11:50) CRN 93248

Course Description: Reading and discussion of three major 20th-Century novels as modernist texts: (1)Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, (2)Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and (3)James Joyce's Ulysses. GE credit: ArtHum.

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: None.

Textbooks: Marcel Proust, Swann’s way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1; Harry Blamires, The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses; Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain; James Joyce, Ulysses.

Film Studies 1: Introduction to Film Studies (4 Units)

Jaimey Fisher, Associate Professor

Lecture: TR 4:10-5:00
Film Viewing: M 6:10-9:00 P.M.

Discussion Sections:

Sec. 1 (W 05:10 – 06:00) CRN 75014

Sec. 2 (R 06:10 – 07:00) CRN 75015

Sec. 3 (F 09:00 – 09:50) CRN 75016

Sec. 4 (F 10:00 – 10:50) CRN 75017

Sec. 5 (M 04:10 – 05:00) CRN 75018

Sec. 6 (M 09:00 – 09:50) CRN 75019

Sec. 7 (M 05:10 – 06:00) CRN 75020

Sec. 8 (W 04:10 – 05:00) CRN 75021

Course Description: The course aims to introduce students to various aspects of film studies, including film analysis, film history, as well as film (especially genre and auteur) theory. The main focus of the course, however, is on film analysis, particularly on the technical and narrative analysis of feature films that will entail a close viewing of the films. The course introduces students to the technical aspects of film, including cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and sound; it also offers a survey to film history as well as important international movements, including early cinema, Soviet Montage, German Weimar Cinema, neo-realism around the world (incl. India), the U.S. film noir, and New Asian cinema. We shall be examining, among other topics, the social, cultural, and political contexts of film as a medium as well as of particular films. The main objective for the course is for students to be able to view films critically, to develop a systematic and convincing interpretation of the film out of this critical viewing, and to articulate this analysis in a well-constructed and persuasive essay. Not open to students who have completed Humanities 10. GE credit: ArtHum.

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion - 1 hour; Film Viewing - 3 hours.

Prerequisite: None.

Textbooks: Bordwell, Film Art (text only); Bordwell, Film Art (w/cd).

Humanities/German 113: Goethe's Faust (in English Translation) (4 Units)

Clifford Bernd, Professor (MWF 12:10 - 1:00) CRN 92893

Course Description: A study of one of the chief cornerstones of western civilization. The monumental drama about a man, who flitted between God and the devil, who never tired searching for the meaning of life, whose thirst for knowledge was unquenchable, and whose passion knew no bounds. Conducted in English.

(Cross-listed with German 113. The course also fulfills the requirement of an upper-division course counting towards the German major.) GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: None. Class is conducted in English.

Textbooks:Stuart Atkins (trans. and ed.) and Goethe, Faust I & II.