GERM GU

What kind of teacher would you like to become? What experience, knowledge and opinions regarding learning and teaching a language and language and communication do you bring to class? How can theoretical and practical literature help us augment our personal experiences? How do we plan and execute lesson plans? What role do institutional expectations play? What can we learn from how others teach? How can we ensure to welcome a wide spectrum of students into our classes? What impact has the pandemic on the way we approach teaching? How can we grow as educators through self-reflection, our interactions with colleagues, and through our understanding theoretical and practical knowledge that goes beyond planning the next class? Collaboratively, we will discuss these and other questions using our concrete experience, practical and theoretical literature, and opportunities for professional development. We will apply our knowledge and create materials together, visit colleagues in other language and reflect on our learning and teaching experience. Learning Goals: At the end of this class, you will: be able to understand and use the concept of ‘Backward Design’ have acquired a basis in a spectrum of different research-based perspectives that you can use to decide on the usefulness of pedagogical strategies in a given situation. be familiar with the basic terminology as well as the most relevant sources for the field of foreign language pedagogy have familiarity with applying theory to practice by designing classroom activities you will be able to use in your class have started to develop strategies for continuous reflection and deepening of pedagogical practices (through discussion, observations, journals) take first steps to developing your own teaching philosophy statement

Subject

GERM GU

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

Fall 2026: GERM GU4170 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment GERM 4170 001/10430 W 10:10am - 12:00pm 511 Hamilton Hall Mark Anderson 3.00 16/25

Subject

GERM GU

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

This introduction to German film since 1945 (in its European contexts) deploys a focus on feelings as a lens for multifaceted, intersectional investigations of cinematic history. We will explore how feelings have been gendered and racialized; how they overlap with matters of sex (as closely associated with political revolt in Western Europe, while considered too private for public articulation in the socialist East, especially when queer); and how they foreground matters of nation and trauma (for example via the notions of German ‘coldness’ and inability to mourn the Holocaust). Simultaneously, the focus on feelings highlights questions of mediality (cinema as a prototypically affective medium?), genre and avant-garde aesthetics: in many films, ‘high-affect’ Hollywood cinema intriguingly meets ‘cold’ cinematic modernism. In pursuing these investigative vectors through theoretical readings and close film analysis, the course connects affect, gender, queer, and cultural studies approaches with cinema studies methodologies. The films to be discussed span postwar and New German Cinema, East German DEFA productions, the ‘Berlin School’ of the 2000s, and contemporary transnational cinema

Subject

GERM GU

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu

This seminar explores the literary representation of the child and childhood. It focuses on three key areas, which will be examined through a selection of texts by authors including Hoffmann, Keller, Busch, James, Proust, Rilke, Benjamin, and March. (1) Figures: The seminar will analyze literary depictions of the foreign, mysterious, anarchic, and, most importantly, the evil child, a figuration that began to displace the Romantic image of the "divine child" by the 19th century. (2) Theories: The seminar will consider the pedagogical and developmental psychological theories of the time, which underpin this shift in discourse, alongside foundational historical and theoretical reflections on childhood, including those by Ariès and Agamben. (3) Poetics: Central to the selected texts is the question of how childhood can be grasped in literary form—what kinds of memory are invoked, and how the recalled experience of childhood can be articulated in language. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this seminar will engage with both the evolution of childhood as a cultural construct and the aesthetic challenges of representing it in literature. We will be reading both German and English literature; the reading load typically amounts to 30-50 pages per week, with the exception of two sessions in which we will discuss two English novel(la)s. Course readings and discussions will be in German

Subject

GERM GU

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Bulletin

Source

bulletin.columbia.edu