20 courses with the subject GERM, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
GERM 111Beginning German I
Students begin to learn German through listening, speaking, reading, and writing about situations familiar to them including their personal biographies, families, daily life, studies, travels, and hobbies. Regular writing assignments help students learn vocabulary, check spelling, and form thoughts with German sentence structure. Regular speaking activities aid in acquiring accurate pronunciation and listening skills. Offered annually in the fall semester. Does not count toward German major or concentration.
Students continue to develop basic language skills with emphasis on expanding vocabulary and on writing assignments that aid in the practical application of grammatical concepts. Communicating in German about familiar personal topics, students acquire vocabulary about sports, food, holidays, school, the environment, and everyday life in German-speaking societies. Offered annually in the spring semester. Does not count toward German major or concentration. Prerequisite: GERM 111 or by placement test.
Students explore notions of identity and belonging through the lens of German-speaking societies. They interpret written texts, films, and images that deal with those themes and examine how their own experiences, perspectives, and interests influence how they understand the texts. Students deepen their vocabulary and writing skills through collaborative and iterative writing tasks, and gain confidence synthesizing information and expressing opinions orally through interactive speaking tasks, short presentations, and reflective speaking activities. Prerequisite: GERM 112 or by placement test.
Students advance their German language skills through engagement with texts concerning the effects of the past on the present. Topics include protest and resistance, environmental sustainability, and exile experiences, as captured in a graphic novel, short stories, essays, songs, and film. Close reading and integrated grammar and vocabulary-building tasks allow students to improve their German comprehension, speaking and writing. They develop critical literacy skills through written reflections and essays, and interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational speaking tasks. Taught in German. Offered annually in the spring semester. Prerequisite: GERM 231 or by placement test. OLE Core Requirement: World Languages and Cultures; Global Histories and Societies.
GERM 245Linguistic Landscapes of Northern Germany (study abroad)
In this course, students immerse themselves in Hamburg and Flensburg to explore the representations and concept of borders from a linguistic perspective. They inspect the intersecting roles of political, religious, socioeconomic, historical developments on past and current language systems and ideologies. They apply methods such as linguistic landscaping, linguistic historiography, and fieldwork journaling to develop their own research projects on socio-cultural border identities in Northern Germany. Knowledge of German is helpful, but not required. In the German Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) section, students speak in German about class readings and excursion observations and learn topic-specific terminology. Offered alternate years during January term. OLE Core Requirement: Social Science; OLE Experience in Practice.
This course provides an introduction to a spectrum of approaches to interpreting fairy tales and folklore. Students read and discuss writings stemming from oral traditions such as German Kinder- und Hausmärchen collected by the Brothers Grimm, and Nordic mythology and sagas, as well as written works by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen and French author Charles Perrault. Analytical tasks consider the literary aspects and historical contexts of the works and the effects of text and film adaptations of "classic" tales into the 21st century. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; Global Histories and Societies.
Through a survey of films from early 20th-century to present, students examine critical social issues through the lens of German-speaking cinema, including the framing of war trauma in silent film, the thematization of disability and queer identities at the turn of the twenty-first century, and an expanding tradition of filmic critiques of nationalist legacies in Germany and Austria. Students learn and apply historicizing and theoretical lenses to critically analyze the films as cultural products and as cinematic works of art. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
Students examine the National Socialist period (1933-1945), its embedding in cultural memory, and its implications for contemporary society. Students discuss and analyze literary and audio/visual texts that emerged from or reflect upon diverse experiences of oppression, violence, destruction and resistance under Nazism. The course is writing intensive and includes short weekly assignments as well as several longer, multi-step writing projects. Advanced grammar review supports analytical tasks. Taught in German. A one-hour weekly small group discussion section led by a native German speaker is required. Offered annually in fall semester. Prerequisite: GERM 232 or by placement test. OLE Core Requirement: World Languages and Cultures; Writing Across the Curriculum.
GERM 252German-speaking Societies in Global Context
Students examine current issues in German-speaking societies such as politics, sustainability, social welfare, diversity, and migration. They compare multiple perspectives on, and connections between the issues through sources including documentaries, podcasts, and news articles. Short writing assignments and oral presentations emphasize analysis of texts' strategic organization, argumentative structure, style, and layered voices. Advanced grammar review supports analytical tasks. Taught in German. A weekly small group discussion section led by a native German speaker is required. Offered annually in the spring semester. Prerequisite: GERM 232 or by placement test. OLE Core Requirement: World Languages and Cultures.
Students examine the artistic heritage of the German-speaking countries and develop the skill of interpreting and analyzing art works in their cultural context. The specific topic may vary and may be broadly or narrowly defined to include a specific art form, theme, period, artist, or the art of the German-speaking countries. Topics include: the arts in turn-of-the-century Vienna, the Bauhaus, Weimar cinema, and German Expressionism. Taught in English. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered periodically. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
Students examine a historical period or theme and its impact on the institutional, intellectual, and artistic heritage of German-speaking societies. The course requires close reading and critical analysis of primary sources, with a focus on history as an interpretive reconstruction of the past. Recent topics: the German Democratic Republic, German colonialism and decolonization, and migration. The course emphasizes strategies for writing papers in German. Taught in German. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered periodically in fall semester. Prerequisite: GERM 251 or GERM 252. OLE Core Requirement: Global Histories and Societies; Writing Across the Curriculum.
Students develop their media literacy through German-language sources with emphasis on ideological, aesthetic, and ethical perspectives on how media make meaning and shape culture. Students examine issues treated in print and electronic formats across the history of mass communication, from early printing to the internet. To hone their critical media literacy, students compare and contrast how issues are represented in different German- and English-speaking media. The course emphasizes strategies for academic writing. Taught in German. Offered periodically in fall semester. Prerequisite: GERM 251 or GERM 252. OLE Core Requirement: Social Science; Writing Across the Curriculum.
GERM 275Topics in Literary Analysis: Meaning and Form
Students advance their understanding of themes and methods in German literary analysis, with particular focus on formal analysis. Topics may include genre studies, translation, text-immanent critique, and other advanced practices of close reading, as well as periodization, theorization (e.g., feminist, postcolonial), and contextual and comparative analysis. Course texts may include novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry, as well as film, musical and visual art adaptations of literary texts. The course emphasizes strategies for academic writing. Taught in German. May be repeated if the topic is different. Offered periodically in fall semester. Prerequisite: At least one 250-level GERM course or with instructor permission. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; Writing Across the Curriculum.
Students examine Germany's successful sustainability initiatives and their roots in a long history of cultural values and scientific innovation. They study primary and secondary sources including interviews, journalistic articles, literary works, and films; these texts form the basis of students' written and oral analyses. Drawing on diverse disciplinary perspectives, students gain transferable knowledge and skills for addressing complex international environmental concerns. Offered periodically. Prerequisite: GERM 251, GERM 252, or permission of the instructor.
Students spend four weeks during January Term or summer in an individually selected German or Austrian workplace. Opportunities include work in health care, communications, and manufacturing as well as non-profit organizations, libraries, businesses, laboratories, offices, and churches. Assignment of position varies with availability in host institutions. Prerequisite: at least one 250-level GERM course. OLE Core Requirement: OLE Experience in Practice.
For details about the expectations and prerequisites for an IS 298/IR 398 course, see the Academic Catalog section on Independent Study/Independent Research. https://nextcatalog.stolaf.edu/academic-regulations-procedures/registration-course-enrollment/.
Students hone their skills of analyzing the forms and contexts of production and reception of German-language literary works of various genres. Coursework includes close reading, discussion, and interpretation of visual and written texts. Recent topics include: author as public intellectual, die Fantasie, Frauenliteratur, and Wissen-Wissenschaft/en-Wissenschaftler:innen. The course emphasizes strategies for academic writing. Taught in German. May be repeated if the topic is different. Offered in alternate years in spring semester. Prerequisite: at least one 270-level GERM course. OLE Core Requirement: Creativity.
GERM 372Transdisciplinary Topics in German Studies
Students explore an interdisciplinary topic in language, literature, history, or culture through close reading, discussion, analysis, and interpretation of selected works, including theoretical texts. Recent topics: identities and boundaries of the German-speaking world, Arbeitskulturen, and the Rote Armee Fraktion. Taught in German. May be repeated if topic is different. Offered alternate years in spring semester. Prerequisite: at least one 270-level GERM course.
Students spend four weeks during January Term or summer in the German or Austrian workplace. Opportunities include working in health care, communications, and manufacturing as well as non-profit organizations, libraries, businesses, laboratories, offices, and churches. Assignment of position varies with availability of host institutions. Prerequisite: at least one 270-level GERM course. OLE Core Requirement: OLE Experience in Practice.
May be counted toward German major or German studies concentration. For details about the expectations and prerequisites for an IS 298/IR 398 course, see the Academic Catalog section on Independent Study/Independent Research.
