Comparative Literature
CLGR G4110x. Literature and Psychoanalysis: Freud [In English]. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Freud and Jung, perhaps the two most important psychoanalysts of the last
century, represent opposite poles of modern thought. Whereas Freud, at least
on the official view, was a partisan of the enlightenment values of
rationalism, secularism and science, Jung advocated a return to myth as a way
of curing the ills of the modern soul. In this course we will not only
examine the debate between the two men in its own right, but also in terms of
the larger cultural questions that it encompasses. As befits the study of two
psychoanalysts, we will look at the interaction between their personal
relationship and their thinking. Readings will include major works of Freud
and Jung, their correspondence and selected secondary sources.
CLGR W4123. Faust: German Myth In European Context. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Readings in English or original language. The literary and historical
transformations of the myth from the Chapbook and Marlowe (Faust as
Renaissance man) via Lessing and Goethe (Faust as paradigm of modernity) to
Valéry, Klaus Mann, and Thomas Mann (Faust as modernist artist).
CLYD W4150y. The Horror Story: Between Jews and Others (in English).
3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Through an analysis of far-flung examples of horror literature written by
both Jews and non-Jews, this course will attempt to answer the following
questions: is there such a thing as specifically Jewish horror, and, if so,
what is it? How do Jewish conceptions of the supernatural develop, and how do
they influence - or are they influenced by - other developments in non-Jewish
history and literature? How do Jews function as horrific others in non-Jewish
literature - and vice-versa? And finally, how does history (particularly
Jewish history) function in shaping the contours of horrific literature?
Works and authors read include selections from Genesis and Samuel, Jewish
Apocrypha, midrashic collections, medieval Yiddish demon stories, Hasidic
tales, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sholem Aleichem, Edgar Allan Poe, I.B. Singer,
Franz Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, Nathan Englander, and
Stephen King.
CLYD W4200. American Jewish literature: a survey (in English). 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
In examining the work of some of the greatest Jewish writers to live in
America - writers in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish, some well known, some less
so - this course hopes to answer several related questions. How are the
changing fortunes of American Jews reflected in their literary creativity?
How does Jewish multilingualism - not only seen in different works, but
within the same work - affect modes and styles of Jewish writing? And,
perhaps most importantly, how does one define American Jewish writing in an
age of increasingly complex affiliations and identifications among American
Jews? Novelists, short story writers, poets, and playwrights read include
Sholem Aleichem, Anzia Yezierska, Henry Roth, Sholem Asch, Bernard Malamud,
Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Jacob Glatstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace
Paley, and Tony Kushner.
CLGR W4202. Theories of Modern Culture. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Major critical texts that define the parameters of early modernity from the
mid-19th century to WW I. Marx, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Freud, and the young
Lukács.
CLGR W4212. The Discourse of Postmodernism. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Lectures in English. Readings in original language or English. Major
critical and theoretical texts by authors who have attempted to theorize
contemporary culture as distinct from high modernism and the historical
avant-garde. Developments in France, Germany and the United States since the
late 1950s. Barthes, Lyotard, Foucault, Baudrillard, Habermas, Bürger,
Sontag, Fiedler, Venturi, McLuhan, deLauretis, Jameson.
CLGR W4215x. Spirits and Ghosts From Kant To Marx (In English). 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
This class will explore interrelations of German idealism, the gothic novel
and the magic lantern's phantasmagoria. Specific attention will be paid to
how the philosophical theories of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Marx draw
upon a lively debate about ghostly apparitions while simultaneiously
commenting upon contemporary visual media. Readings include texts by Kant,
Walpole, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Marx.
CLGR G4220x. Formalism and History. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
This course will reconstruct and discuss Russian Formalism (Eichenbaum,
Tynyanov), Structuralism (Mukaøovský, Jacobson, Barthes),
Reception Theory (Jauss), Poststructuralism (Foucault), Deconstruction (de
Man, Derrida), New Historicism (Greenblatt), Postcolonial Theory (Said,
Bhabha), Critical Theory (Benjamin, Adorno, Habermas), Systems Theory
(Luhmann).
CLGR W4237. The Culture of Memory [In English]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Focus on the postmodernism debate since the 1980s. Analysis of phenomena
from film, literature, and painting to architecture, monuments, and museums
that mark the contemporary obsessions with memory and amnesia in Germany,
France, and the U.S.
CLSW G4240x. Sex and gender in 19th Century Scandinavian literature.
3 pts.
Textual investigation of Scandinavia's literary golden age in terms of the
sexual and gender controversies of the day. Emphasis on key texts of the
Modern Breakthrough, with its Double Standard Debate, a fascinating chapter
of Scandinavian literary and social history.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
|
Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Autumn 2009 :: CLSW G4240
|
|
CLSW
4240
|
62747
001
|
F 12:00p - 2:30p
1 Deutsches Haus
F 9:00a - 12:00p
1 Deutsches Haus
|
V. Moberg
|
2
|
|
GERM G4250y. Aesthetics and the Philosophy of History (in English). 3
pts.
This course offers an introduction to key texts of 18th and 19th century
philosophy with a particular emphasis on the competition between a philosophy
of art or aesthetics in a broader sense, on the one hand, and a philosophy of
history, on the other. What is the social function of art, are there
a-historical standards for the beautiful and the sublime?, what do we mean
by taste?, on what basis do we compare different civilizations?, different
historical periods?, how do we talk about progress? What constitutes human
freedom?
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
|
Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Spring 2010 :: GERM G4250
|
|
GERM
4250
|
85280
001
|
Tu 4:10p - 6:00p
TBA
|
D. Von Muecke
|
6
|
|
CLGR W4267y. The Holocaust In German and American Culture (In
English). 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
A comparative introduction to the place of the Holocaust in American and
German culture since the end of World War II. Drawing on literary texts,
films, and museum exhibitions, the course will examine the very different
ways in which Germany-the nation of perpetrators-and the United States-the
nation of liberators--have responded to the Holocaust as part of their own
efforts at self-definition. All readings, screenings and discussion in
English.
CLSW W4270y. Scandinavian Folklore and Folklife (in English). 3
pts.
The course offers an introduction to Scandinavian folklore and folklife. The
emphasis is on oral narratives, supernatural beliefs, and material culture in
the 19th and early 20th centuries, but we will also consider contemporary
legends and the folklore of Scandinavian immigrants to America and of
immigrants to Scandinavia.
CLSW W4300x. Ibsen and Strindberg. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Introduction to the works of Scandinavia's two key 19th century writers,
tracing their progression through realism and naturalism to expressionism in
terms of the sociohistorical setting. Students competent in Norwegian and/or
Swedish are encouraged to read texts in the original.
CLGR W4315. The Myth of the Machine In Modern Literature. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
Analysis of representations of the machine and the man/machine constellation
in 20th century German, Russian, and English texts. H.G. Wells, Kafka,
Kaiser, Fritz Lang, Gladkov, Ehrenburg, Frisch, Christa Wolf, Heiner
Müller, Ursula LeGuin and Pynchon. The myth of the machine explored
historically and theoretically as one of the central myths of the age of
modernity.
CLGR W4320. The Semiotics of Fashion From Sentimentalism To
Romanticism. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
The relationship between European fashion and literature in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Analysis of paintings, early fashion journals, travelogues, lyric
poetry and prose fiction. An introduction to French, English and German
fashion history; contemporary semiotic and sociological theories on fashion
and consumer culture.
CLGR W4360. Faust and Media [In English]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
The relationship between Faust and media, in particular, visual media.
Authors include Marlowe, Goethe, Robert Browning, Gounod, Murnau, and Thomas
Mann, and related critical theory.
CLGR W4395. Opera and the Idea of Nation. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
No technical knowledge of music or German required. Screening and discussion
of four operas- Mozart's Magic Flute, Weber's Freischutz, Meyerbeer's Les
Huguenots, and Wagner's Meistersinger-with regard to debates on national
identity; examples from French and Italian opera.
CLGR W4404. Women and Fiction. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Lectures in English. Readings in original language or English. Theory of
culture, theory of society, the ensemble of symbolic systems-art, religion,
family, language-and women's (and man's) presence in these systems. Plato,
Saint Augustine, Rousseau, Engels, Nietzsche, and Freud as well as Virginia
Woolf, de Beauvoir, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Christa Wolf.
CLGR G4410x. Freud (in English). 3 pts.
CLGR W4455y. Lyric Poetry and Theories of Translation [In English]. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
This course will look at lyric poetry in relation to theories of translation.
CLGR G4470y. What Went Wrong? - The Critique of Religion
Reconsidered. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Until recently, "the secularization thesis" seemed to be so self-evident to
most modern philosophers and social scientists that it was rarely questioned
or empirically test. History itself, however, seems to have delivered its
own dramatic refutation of the secularization process, leading to a
widespread reevaluation of the original thesis. In this class, we will
consider some of the classical secularists texts (Feuerbach, Marx and Freud)
as well as some contemporary authors (Casanova, Derrida and Habermas) to try
and understand the "re-secularization of the world."
CLGR W4500. Introduction To Cultural Studies [In English]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010. An introductory survey of
theoretical texts that define cultural studies as an academic discipline.
Considers alternatives to the base/superstructure model for explaining the
operation of power within culture.
CLGR W4550. Material Culture [In English]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
CLGR W4575y. Philosophy and Religious Discourse After Hegel (In
English). 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
One of the aims of Hegel's project was to provide a philosophical
"translation" of religious - and in particular: Christian - insights, so that
the ethical and motivational resources of the religious tradition could be
preserved in a society which tends to privatize faith and cast doubt on
specific sources of revelation. However, since Hegel's death, a long line of
thinkers have challenged the success of Hegel's translation programme,
raising anew the question of how a philosophically-oriented diagnosis of
modernity should relate to, and possibly draw on, the resources of religious
discourse, without surrendering its own autonomy as a mode of reflection.
This course will trace the discussion of this issue through a sequence of
19th and 20th century thinkers, from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, to
Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Heidegger, Ricoeur and Levinas.
CLSW W4735y. Social Change In Scandinavian Literature (In English). 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Readings and discussions in English. (Students competent in Scandinavian
languages are encouraged to read in the original). An exploration of
Scandinavia's twentieth-century transformations reflected in writing.
Readings (in English) include Hamsun, Södergran, Nexø, Boye,
Ditlevsen, Ekelöf, Lagerkvist, Martinsson, Jersild, Enquist, Tikkanen,
Brantenberg, and Ekman.
CLGR G4740y. Enlightenment and Religion (in English). 3 pts.
Recent research in the area of eighteenth-century studies has come to the
conclusion that the historical period known as the Enlightenment cannot be
adequately understood merely in its opposition to religion as a form of
irrationality and superstition. Quite to the contrary, the discussion of
religion constitutes an important aspect of an Enlightenment philosophy of
culture. In this course we shall read prominent texts by Enlightenment
philosophers addressing religion. We shall analyze how philosophers and
critics committed to the Enlightenment viewed religion critically, but also
how they pursued models for religious tolerance, how they dealt with religion
as an integral part of any historical culture, and how they viewed the
tensions between different belief systems, between professed creed and
ethical systems, between dogma and practice, between institutional religion
and privately held beliefs.
CLSW W4740. Sex and Gender In 19th Century Scandinavian Literature. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Readings in original language or in English. Scandinavia's literary golden
age in terms of the sexual and gender controversies of the day. Emphasis on
key texts of the modern breakthrough, including writings by Strindberg,
Ibsen, Brandes, Benedictsson, Skram, Leffler, Kieler, and others.
CLGR G6012. History of the Theory of Rhetoric. 3 pts. Not offered
in 2009-2010.
Exploration of the relationship between rhetoric and hermeneutics (Gadamer),
rhetoric and semiotics (Barthes), rhetoric and deconstruction (de Man),
rhetoric and argumentation theory (Perelman), rhetoric and law (Fish), and
rhetoric and theories of probability (Meyer). Comparison of different
approaches and outline of rhetorical dimensions within literary criticism
itself.
CLGR G6120. Cultural Programs and Practices In Rousseau and Goethe. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Central texts of Goethe and Rousseau in view of how these two writers
participated in the crucial transformations of subjectivity postulated in
Emile and Lettre à M. d'Alembert and set into practice in the new
epistolary novel (Julie, Werther) or the Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meister.
CLGR G6230y. Phenomenology, Literature and Ethics [In English]. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
CLGR G6408. 18th Century Semiotics and Aesthetics. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
The 18th century texts concerned with language, representation and the
function of art and of aesthetic theories as programs for the formation of
subjectivity in language especially where the thresholds of representation
are at stake, (the body, violence, or in terms of the ugly, disgusting,
horrible and sublime). Readings in original or translation, includes texts
by Condillac, Diderot, Rousseau, Burke, Lessing, Kant, Schiller.
CLGR G6510. Theories of Enlightenment. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Rigorous introduction to the pragmatics of Enlightenment theory and practice.
Readings include: Bacon, Spinoza, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Kant, Marx, Freud,
Horkheimer and Adorno, Habermas, Foucault, Derrida. Readings in original or
translation.
CLGR G6530. The Romantic Fantastic. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Analysis of 19th century fantastic prose (Cazotte, Tieck, Hoffman, Shelley,
Hagg, Nodier, Balzac, Gotthelf, Poe). Focus on madness, criminality,
sexuality, perversion, and freedom. Genre poetics and the role of
psychoanalytic and narratological concepts.
CLGR G6740x. Enlightenment and Religion [In English]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
CLGR G6750. The Politics of Dramatic Form. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Three canonical figures of 20th-century European drama: Brecht, Beckett, and
Müller. The politics of dramatic form explored in terms of a
text/performance dialectic as well as in close consideration of historical
context. Other plays, 20th century European.
CLGR G6820y. Theory and History of Media (in English). 3
pts.
This course will examine the theory and history of media.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
|
Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Spring 2010 :: CLGR G6820
|
|
CLGR
6820
|
75779
001
|
W 4:10p - 6:00p
401 Hamilton Hall
|
S. Andriopoulos
|
0
|
|
Finnish
FINN W4100y. Lexicon: Meaning and Society [In English]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
Knowledge of Finnish is not required. Investigating the lexicon in its
cultural and societal context. Analysis of word formation processes,
affective vocabulary, derivation, neologisms. Languages in contact; lexical
reflections of new phenomena. Exploring cultural idiomaticity in selected
semantic domains; role of lexical choice in social interaction. Contrastive
data drawn from Finnish (a Uralic, non-Indo-European language surrounded by
Indo-European languages), and from English, German, Swedish, and other
languages. Students are encouraged to work on lexical data from their
strongest languages.
FINN W4116. Advanced Reading In Finnish. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Prerequisite: three years of Finnish or the equivalent, and instructor's
permission. Extensive reading of selected works by 19th-century and
20th-century writers and poets: Aleksis Kivi, Eino Leino, Maria Jotuni, F.E.
Sillanpää, Juha Mannerkorpi, Väinö Linna, Veijo Meri,
Paavo Haavikko, Eeva-Liisa Manner, and Pentti Saarikoski.
FINN W4206x. Introduction To Finnish Culture and Society. 3
pts.
Knowledge of Finnish not required; lectures and discussions in English,
readings in English or in Finnish. Explorations of Finnish cultural and
social issues through literature in translation and film, documentary footage
and feature films, as well as lectures. Focus on the role of women: women in
Finland received the right to vote in 1906, the first country in Europe.
Currently, the President of the Republic, many cabinet members and
parliamentarians, as well as leaders in the arts are women. Contemporary
Finland in the world, the EU and the Nordic context. Roots and structure of
the Finnish language; reflections of contacts with adjacent cultures and
languages.
FINN W4212y. The Kalevala, the Kanteletar and Finnish Folklore [in
English]. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Knowledge of Finnish is not required. Discussions in English, readings in
English or Finnish. Ancient Finnish mythology and oral tradition in the light
of the 19th century texts of the Kalevala and the Kanteletar, as well as
primary texts of Finnish folklore. Shamanism, origin charms, epic and lyric
poetry; women's and men's oral tradition. Reflections in subsequent Finnish
culture.
FINN W4445. Advanced Readings In Finnish. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Close reading of selected works in contemporary Finnish literature.
FINN G6311x. The Structure of Finnish. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
In English, knowledge of Finnish is not a prerequisite. Recommended for
students of linguistics and students of Finnish. Exploration of Finnish
phonology, morphology, derivational processes, lexicon and syntax. Analysis
of morphologic and semantic structure in the lexicon. Lectures and
discussion in English, readings in English or Finnish.Phonology, morphology,
derivation, syntax.
FINN G6412. History of the Finnish Language. 3 pts. Not offered
in 2009-2010.
Comparison and internal reconstruction. Sounds, shapes, loanwords, meanings.
FINN G9101-G9102. Seminar In Finnish Language and Culture. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
May be repeated for credit.
German
GERM G4000x. Foreign Language Pedagogy. 3 pts.
Registration is by permission of foreign language departments only. Designed
to offer training in foreign language pedagogy to teaching assistants (TAs)
in the foreign language departments.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
|
Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Autumn 2009 :: GERM G4000
|
|
GERM
4000
|
48097
001
|
Th 4:10p - 6:00p
313 Hamilton Hall
|
R. Korb
|
5
|
|
GERM W4090y. German for International and Public Affairs [In German].
3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Prerequisite: GERM V1202 or the equivalent, or placement by the
departmental representative. In-depth readings and discussions of
contemporary German events in three broad areas: domestic German politics,
European Union, and international/public affairs. Working mostly with
newspapers, magazines and journals, the course follows and interprets
contemporary German political life as it happens.
GERM W4092. Business German [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Prerequisites: GERM F1202 or the equivalent, or placement by departmental
representative. Preparation for the business-minded student who plans to
engage in German business dealings professionally. Introduces students to the
German language of everyday business and gives an insight into Germany's
place in the European and World Market.
GERM W4125. Drama of the French Revolution [In German]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
The course will examine drama of the French Revolution.
GERM W4138. Novels of the German Romantics [In English]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
Prerequisite: reading knowledge of German. A number of the most important
German Romantic novels written in the first two decades of the 19th century,
concentrating on their place in the changing literary institution of the
period, their relation to broader trends in the development of the European
novel, and contemporary theoretical debates.
GERM W4200. Modern German Intellectual History [in English]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
A critical introduction to the main themes and strategies of modern German
intellectual history from the 18th century to the present. Kant, Lessing,
Mendelssohn, Hegel, Feuerbach, Heine, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud,
Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Adorno.
GERM W4201. German Literature In the Classical Period [In English]. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
The progress of literary movements and tendencies during the second half of
the 18th century. Interpretations of the great writers from Klopstock to
Schiller in their relation to the development of humanistic ideals in
Germany.
GERM G4214. German Romanticism [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
The Romantic period from its philosophical beginnings through the early and
late stages and concluding with Heine as a theoretical figure. Selections
from Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, Brentano, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Eichendorff.
GERM G4230. Realism In German Literature (1830-1900) [In German]. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
A survey of a number of literary movements, including Biedermeier, Junges
Deutschland, Vormárz, and poetic bourgeois Realism. Selections from
Heine, Herwegh, Grillparzer, Stifter, Mörike, Keller, Storm, Meyer,
Raabe, and Fontane.
GERM G4235. German Literature At the Turn of the Century. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
A study of the representative works of Naturalism, Impressionism,
Neo-Romanticism, Fin-de-síecle Vienna, and Expressionism in relation
to their historical and cultural background. Works by G. Hauptmann, H.V.
Hofmannsthal, A. Schnitzler, F. Wedekind, R.M. Rilke, H. Mann, G. Kaiser, W.
Hasenclever.
GERM W4242. Fascism and After: German Literature and Culture After
1945 [In English]. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Readings in German or English. Analysis of representative works and trends
in German literature from 1945 to the present. Focus on Böll, Grass,
Frisch, Handke, Peter Weiss, Christa Wolf, Anselm Kiefer, and the
Historikerstreit.
GERM W4260. Current Literary and Cultural Trends In Germany [In
German]. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Major literary and cultural trends since the late 1960s, including the novel
of the student movement, the new subjectivity, women's literature, ecological
poetry, and Gastarbeiterliteratur. Alexander Kluge, Peter Handke, Peter
Schneider, Botho Strauss, Elfriede Jelinek, Ingeborg Bachmann, Günter
Wallraff, Heiner Müller, and Christa Wolf.
GERM W4265x. Divided Selves: Jews In Modern German Culture (In
English). 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
This course will examine the contested notion of a 'German-Jewish symbiosis'
in German literature and culture from the Enlightenment to the Holocaust.
Works by Salomon Maimon, Fichte, Chamisso, Meyerbeer, Heine, Auerbach, Kafka,
Benjamin and Scholem.
GERM G4310. German Poetry: Celan [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered
in 2009-2010.
GERM G4430. Goethe and Myth [in English]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
This course is designed to introduce graduate and advanced undergraduate
students to central writings from Goethe's early through late oeuvre that
engage myth and mythographic traditions.
GERM G4432. Hölderlin [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Hölderlin's elegies and hymns and his novel Hyperion, with special
attention to his theoretical writings and philosphical background (Hegel).
GERM W4435y. The Beginning of Modern Drama: Kleist, Grabbe,
Büchner [In German]. 3 pts.
The dramas of Kleist, Grabbe, and Büchner, with their anti-universalist
emphasis on the moment and discontinuity, as paradigms of modern dramatic
practices.
GERM W4437. Thomas Mann: Art and Politics In the 20th Century [In
English]. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
A study of Thomas Mann's major novellas and essays on art, philosophy, and
politics and an examination of the relationships between them. Emphasis is
on the author's literary development from the apolitical aestheticism of fin
de siècle decadence to the advocacy of Weimar democracy to the
cultural, critical analysis of fascism.
GERM W4440. The Legacy of Nietzsche [In English]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Literary and epistemological strategies Nietzsche employs to mount his
critique of society. Specific problems of 19th century culture that
resurface in Nietzsche's attempt at radicalizing culture criticism and that
reveal hidden key assumptions of 19th-century German culture.
GERM W4445. Brecht [In English]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Study of Brecht as poet and songwriter, playwright, filmmaker, and theorist
of the historical avant-garde of the interwar years. The emergence of the
epic theatre in the context of Weimar culture, fascism, and exile.
GERM W4515. Women In German Literature [In German]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Women authors (Caroline and Dorothea Schlegel, Günderrode, Arnim, et
al.) within their historical contexts in German classicism and romanticism
shall be contrasted with male notions of femininity (Goethe, Schiller, Kant,
Schlegel). The course will explore how women's writing can present a
challenge to literary history and aesthetics.
GERM W4520. Contemporary Women Authors [In English]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Introduction to women's literature in Germany from the 1970s to the present.
Focus on gender identity, female experience, narrative strategies, and female
pathologies. Literary readings include Reinig, Beig, Wolf, Drewitz,
Bachmann, Jelinek, Kirsch, Stefan, Morgner. Theoretical texts by Butler,
Irigaray, Kristeva, Elshtain, Makward, Bovenschen.
GERM G4630x. Theories of Modernity [In German]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
General theories of modernity in the social sciences (Marx, Weber, Habermas,
Luhmann) in their relationship to aesthetic theories of modernism
(Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Adorno, Bürger, Bohrer).
GERM G4650. Nietzsche (in English). 3 pts.
GERM W4655. German Film and Nation [In English]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Study of paradigmatic German films as historical narratives that shape and
construct collective memory, gendered mythologies, and national identity.
Includes Weimar film, Nazi film and the New German Cinema from Fassbinder to
Helke Sander's recent film about rape in WW II.
GERM W4750x. Contemporary German literature [in German]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
Focusing on German literature since 1989, this course will address such
topics as: literature and politics; German reunification and nostalgia;
multiculturalism and migrant literature; 'Germans and Jews'. Authors
discussed will include Christa Wolf, Durs Grünbein, Judith Hermann,
Karin Duve, Zafer Senocak, Wladimir Kaminer, Raphael Seligman, and W. G.
Sebald.
GERM G6104. Lessing, Enlightenment and Sturm and Drang [In German]. 3
pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Literature and literary theory in Germany in the mid- to late-18th century.
Analysis of works by Lessing, Klopstock, Herder, Lenz, Klinger, and early
works of Goethe and Schiller.
GERM G6105x. The Discourse of Crisis, I: Schiller To Nietzsche. 3
pts.
This course reconstructs discourses of crisis. The reading includes
theoretical and poetical texts (Schiller, Fr. Schegel, Fichte, Kleist,
Büchner, Marx/Engels, Nietzsche).
GERM G6106. The Discourse of Crisis, II: 1930-1933. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
This course ties to analyze the discourse of crisis at the end of the Weimar
Republic. The reading list includes Brecht, Döblin, Jaspers, Spengler,
H. Mann, Schmitt, Hitler, Benn, Jünger, Johst, Heidegger, Benjamin.
GERM G6109. Realist Fictions [In German]. 3 pts.
Narrative texts, examined with regard to theories of realism since 1848.
Readings include: Keller, Fontane, Raabe, Storm, Brecht, Kluge, Weiss.
GERM G6130. Heinrich Von Kleist [In English]. 3 pts. Not offered
in 2009-2010.
Reading of major novellas, plays and essays by Kleist in original or
translation. Main focus on order, transgression and chance: the intersections
of poetics and history.
GERM G6142. Literature and Empire [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered
in 2009-2010.
Transformation of literary life in the Wilhelmine period with a focus on the
interrelation between aesthetic programs (naturalism, symbolism, bohemian
counter-culture, expressionism) and sociopolitical change since the
establishment of the German Empire in 1871. Fontane, Hauptmann, Nietzsche,
Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Stefan George, Wedekind, and others.
GERM G6146. Kafka and Fin De Siècle Culture. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Good knowledge of Kafka's writings required. Beginning with the major
allegorical and existential readings of Kafka (Benjamin, Camus, Arendt), the
seminar explores Kafka's relationship to key figures of the German
Jahrhundertwende: Freud, Kraus, Weininger, Mann, Buber, Walser.
GERM G6150y. Modernist Novel [In German]. 3 pts.
Study of selected novels, novellas, and experimental prose texts from the
late-19th century to the 1950s. Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Rilke, Musil,
Broch, Jahnn, Th. Mann, Benn, Döblin, Einstein, Koeppen, Weiss.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
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Days & Times/
Location
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Instructor
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Enrollment
|
|
|
Autumn 2009 :: GERM G6150
|
|
GERM
6150
|
53755
001
|
M 4:10p - 6:00p
TBA
|
Instructor To Be Announced
|
0
|
|
|
Spring 2010 :: GERM G6150
|
|
GERM
6150
|
63037
001
|
M 4:10p - 6:30p
408 Hamilton Hall
|
A. Huyssen
|
0
|
|
GERM G6170. Adorno's Ethics. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
This seminar will take the form of a comparative reading of Adorno's Negative
Dialectics, and his recently published lecture course, Problems of Moral
Philosophy. The aim will be to explore how Adorno reformulates the task of
ethical reflection, or what stance, in general, he takes towards normative
thinking, in response to the moral catastrophes of the twentieth century.
GERM G6180. Pleasure Principles and Death Drives In Austrian
Literature [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.
Beginning with Freud's discussion of the death drive and pleasure principle
in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the course explores the literary figuration
and theory of death and pleasure in the work of four major contemporary
Austrian novelists: Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek and
Gert Jonke.
GERM G6185. The Discourse of Literary Theory [In German]. 3
pts.
Close reading of central texts in modern literary theory. Relationships
among the dominant concepts in modern literary theory (psychoanalysis,
Marxism, Russian formalism, structuralism, feminism, poststructuralism) and
to situate those concepts within the broader context of modern intellectual
history. Saussure, Lukács, Benjamin, Jauss, Shklovsky, Jakobson,
Bakhtin, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva,
and Spivak.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
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Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Autumn 2009 :: GERM G6185
|
|
GERM
6185
|
76348
001
|
Tu 4:10p - 6:00p
406 Hamilton Hall
|
H. Mueller
|
11
|
|
GERM G6550. Postwar Austrian Literature [In German]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
Major contemporary Austrian authors and their representations of fascism.
Bachmann, Bernhard, Jelinek and others.
GERM G6560x. Postwar German Culture: '45, '68, '89.
The course will focus on selected literary and critical texts to be read in
the context of significant dates of German cultural developments: 1945, 1959,
1968, 1989 and after. A final selection from the following authors will be
made later this summer: Andersch, Koeppen, Johnson, Bachmann, Kluge,
Hildesheimer, Weiss, Wolff, Bernhard, Handke, Ransmayr, Beyer, Senocak,
Özdamar, Tawada. The literary texts will be supplemented by some key
essays by Heidegger, Benn, Adorno, Enzensberger, Bohrer, Sloterdijk, et al.
Course
Number
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Call Number/
Section
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Days & Times/
Location
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Instructor
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Enrollment
|
|
|
Autumn 2009 :: GERM G6560
|
|
GERM
6560
|
27297
001
|
W 4:10p - 6:00p
1 Deutsches Haus
|
A. Huyssen
|
15
|
|
GERM G8121x. Proseminar: Aufkl. Literatur und
Öffentlichkeitsmodelle [in German]. 3 pts.
GERM G8122y. Proseminar: Modernist Prose [in German]. 3 pts.
GERM G8130. Conceptions of Poetic Languages [In German]. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
Conceptions of poetic language from the 18th century to Adorno, using both
systematic and historical approaches. Hamann, Herder, Humboldt, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Benjamin and Adorno.
GERM G8140. Nietzsche [In German]. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
GERM G8501x-G8502y. Guided Reading and Research. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
GERM G9001. Seminar. 3 pts. Not offered in
2009-2010.
Swedish
CLSW W4260. Scandinavian Drama and Film [In English]. 3 pts. Not
offered in 2009-2010.
A review and analysis of outstanding Scandinavian contributions to the genres
of drama and film, from the beginnings of the Danish theatre in the 1700s
through Ibsen and Strindberg in the 19th century up to recent cinematic
works. (Students competent in Scandinavian languages are encouraged to read
literature in the original.)
Yiddish Studies
YIDD W4101. Introduction To Yiddish Studies. 3 pts. Not offered
in 2009-2010.
The study of Ashkenazic Jewish culture from its beginnings to the present
day. Research tools; written and oral sources; trends in scholarship; scope
of the field.
YIDD W4310. The Ethnography of Contemporary Jewish Life. 3 pts.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
The ethnographic study of the social and religious activities of
Yiddish-speaking Jews and their descendants. From the major writings and
films of anthropologists and sociologists, as well as from the students' own
fieldwork, the class will attempt to understand the meaning that Jewish
people derive from their beliefs, rituals and institutions.
YIDD G4550y. The Theater of Yiddish [In English]. 3 pts.
This course addresses Yiddish theater on stage and in everyday life. Students
will read Yiddish comedies, drawing-room dramas and operettas from the early
days of the modern Yiddish theater in Eastern Europe to New York's Second
Avenue of the 1910s and 20s. Alongside the plays we will read memoirs and
fiction that depict theater or invoke performance. To frame our discussion we
will investigate notions of "theater" and "performance" as they have gained
currency in the fields of literature, theater, linguistics and anthropology.
How are these concepts particularly (and not particularly) relevant to
Yiddish culture? Is Yiddish, for example, a "dramatic" language? Were its
speakers inclined to the theatrical? Students will become acquainted with
many of the great pieces of the modern Yiddish theater, and its basic
history. We will also consider examples of performance in daily Eastern
European Jewish life and how these are reflected in the texts (dramatic and
otherwise) under consideration.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
|
Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Spring 2010 :: YIDD G4550
|
|
YIDD
4550
|
12038
001
|
Th 4:10p - 6:00p
TBA
|
A. Quint
|
0
|
|
YIDD G8310. Topics In the Social History of Yiddish Culture. 3
pts. Trends in literature, theater, music, the press and religious
study and observance. Emphasis on the politics and social differentiation of
the use of and access to various cultural elements. May be repeated for
credit.
YIDD G8565. Colloquium On the Popular Religion of Ashkenazic Jewry,
1600-1800. 3 pts. Addresses the problem of how the popular religion
of Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period can be studied. Surveys and
analyzes the theoretical literature on popular religion, the major genres and
works of Jewish popular religion between 1600 and 1800 will be analyzed in
detail.
YIDD G9501. Guided Research. 3 pts.
YIDD G9502. Seminar In Yiddish: Early Modern. 3 pts.
Course
Number
|
Call Number/
Section
|
Days & Times/
Location
|
Instructor
|
Enrollment
|
|
|
Autumn 2009 :: YIDD G9502
|
|
YIDD
9502
|
64692
001
|
Th 4:10p - 6:00p
406 Hamilton Hall
|
J. Dauber
|
3
|
|
There are currently no cross-listed courses for your department.