31 courses with the subject GER, 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.
Instructor Denham For beginners. Introduction and development of the basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing across all modes of communication, along with presentation of the fundamental structures of German. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes Requires participation in two AT meetings a week.
Instructors McCarthy For beginners. Introduction and development of the basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing across all modes of communication, along with presentation of the fundamental structures of German. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 101 or placement. Requires participation in two AT sessions a week.
Instructor Henke Continuing work in developing language skills across all modes of communication and understanding the structures of the language. Continuing critical engagement with German-language culture, literature, and history. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 102 or placement. Requires participation in two AT meetings a week.
Instructor Henke Continuing work in developing language skills across all modes of communication and understanding the structures of the language. Continuing critical engagement with German-language culture and history. Attention to historical documents in their context and the nexus between history and storytelling. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Historical Thought Ways of Knowing requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 201 or placement. Requires participation in one AT meeting a week.
Instructor Henke and Lerner An interdisciplinary exploration of the music, myth, and cultural legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven. Commemorating the bicentennial of his death, this course traces Beethoven’s genius from its 18th-century European roots to its global impact today. Students will examine his revolutionary compositions alongside the literary and political movements that shaped them, discovering how a deaf composer from Bonn, Germany, became a global icon. This course offers specialized credit pathways for advanced students. Music Majors/Minors: Students who read music can earn major or minor credit for MUS 330 by attending a weekly supplemental meeting. German Studies Majors/Minors: Students with intermediate German proficiency can earn major or minor credit by participating in an additional weekly meeting. All enrolled students are eligible for a fully funded spring break study trip to Bonn and Vienna (pending final funding approval).
Instructor Henke Would the six million Jews have lived had the estimated 100 million books not been destroyed? What is it about books that suggests such a link to the human condition? Using the 1933 book burnings as its point of departure, this course explores the nature of literature in the context of the Third Reich. As you learn about Nazi Germany and the imaginary, and literary resistance to it, you will also be introduced to some basic methods of literary criticism. The end of the course is devoted to literary representations of the Holocaust. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Prerequisites & Notes Taught in English.
Instructor McCarthy This course offers a sampling of historical and contemporary attempts to challenge Hollywood’s dominant cinematic codes. We will watch films from the Weimar Republic, “New German Cinema” of the 1970s, Russian montage, French New Wave, art house cinema of the 1960s, as well as feminist, Black, and queer films. Filmmakers include: F.W. Murnau, Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Hanecke, Todd Haynes, Charles Burnett, Barry Jenkins, Chantel Akerman, Claire Denis, and Celine Sciamma. Students will write short essays and make their own short experimental films. Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Satisfies Film, Media, and Digital Studies major requirement.
Instructor Staff Small group tutorial or independent study under the direction and supervision of a faculty member who chooses or approves the topic of the study, meets with the student regularly, reviews the student’s work, and evaluates the student’s accomplishment. A major paper or project will be among the requirements. Prerequisites & Notes Permission of the instructor and the department chair. (Fall and Spring)
Instructor Henke, Denham Advanced work on language skills and structures. Focus on issues of memory and Heimat (Belonging). Attention to questions of language, form, and aesthetics as well as justice and equality in various German-speaking communities. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor McCarthy Advanced work on language skills and structures. Focus on issues of memory and Heimat, with an emphasis on artistic representation. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Denham The work of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan provide a window into the poetics, as well as the politics, of literature after the Nazis and after Auschwitz. Bachmann, whose father was a Nazi party member in Austria, and Celan, whose parents were murdered in the camps in Transnistria, created some of the very best of postwar German literature, winning major literary prizes in the 1950s and 1960s. They also had an intense intellectual, artistic, and personal relationship. In this course we will study their pathbreaking poetry and their precise prose, their epistolary bond, and the politics of their poetics. In German. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Denham A literary and cultural history of Jews and Germans from the Middle Ages to the present, with close attention to several canonical Jewish authors writing in German, especially in the twentieth century. In German. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Henke Study of complex grammatical forms, combined with advanced work in written German. Suitable as preparation for the Goethe-Zertifikat B2. Prerequisites & Notes German 201 or above. (Fall)
Instructor Denham An interdisciplinary study in English of modernist movements in Central Europe between 1890 and 1940. Topics covered include literary movements (Naturalism, Expressionism, New Realism); artistic movements (Blue Rider, the Bridge, Jugendstil, Neue Sachlichkeit, Bauhaus); music (Neo-Romanticism, Second Viennese School, Jazz); culture and politics (Freud, fascism, urbanism, film, anti-Semitism). Some key figures include: Kandinsky, Klee, Gropius, Rilke, Kafka, Luxemburg, Modersohn-Becker, Th. Mann, Musil, Döblin, Nietzsche, Lasker-Schüler, Hitler, Riefenstahl, Trakl, R. Strauss, Torberg, Jünger.
Instructor Denham In this course we will read and learn about the ideas and influence of Hannah Arendt, one of the most important thinkers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century. We will learn about her critical thinking on totalitarianism, violence, freedom, power, and what she calls “the life of the mind” in our shared human condition. We will look closely at her writings on authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the Holocaust, state power, freedom and the role of the individual in a modern society and polity and community. We will look at Arendt’s Jewish writings. We will read her essay on violence. We will see Arendt as a virtuoso of several genres, from letters and op-eds to extended essays, to philosophical argument, reportage, history, even poetry and the course syllabus. At the end of our course I hope we can answer the question: why read Hannah Arendt now? Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies PPE major requirement. Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.
Instructor McCarthy In the wake of 2020’s racial reckonings, memory culture has expanded and gained contemporary relevance. This course will examine memory as a frequent theme in film, film as a form of memory, how filmic structures represent memory, and memory’s role in countering the official stories of history and nation. It will also include attention to visual artists, like Kehinde Wiley and Kara Walker, who represent U.S. racial history, German memory sites that document its turbulent 20 th century history, and ongoing archiving of Covid-related experiences. Besides weekly film viewing, students will write short essays and create a larger memory project which can take written, filmic, or other kinds of creative form. This course may also include a post-semester research trip to Berlin. Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Satisfies Film, Media, and Digital Studies major requirement.
Instructor McCarthy Cultural, Filmic and Digital Adaptations examines a variety of medium-specific transformations that occur across German and American culture. We will read adaptation theory, examine intercultural and intermedial manifestations of the adaptation process, and consider connections with translation studies. “Intertextuality” will also serve as a touchstone throughout, or multidirectional movements between source and adaption and art itself as dialogic in nature. Our material will include Weimar cinema as source for Hollywood noir films, web series like “Awkward Black Girl” as template for stories about multicultural creatives in Berlin, Grimm’s fairytales in video game format, and American horror films and westerns as inspiration for German arthouse cinema. Students will write analytic essays and complete one creative assignment that adapts a source in one medium to another. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Film, Media, and Digital Studies major requirement. Satisfies Visual and Performing Arts requirement.
Spring 2025 Topic: Erinnerungskultur Instructor Denham “Erinnerungskultur” is the German term for “remembrance culture” or “memory culture.” In this class, we will explore and analyze a variety of ways in which the past - particularly Germany’s tumultuous past - have been remembered. Using the tools of cultural studies, we will ask questions about the possibilities and limitations of representing the Holocaust, the Porajmos, and colonial violence in contemporary Germany. We will explore the ways that Germany’s past, present, and futures are intermingled, and how the ways the past is remembered has profound and often material effects, especially on vulnerable populations (e.g., refugees entering and living in Germany, Afro-German and Black people, Jewish communities, LGBTQIA folx, …) today. This class is taught in German. Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor McCarthy Overview of German literature since 1989, with particular emphasis on prose fiction and popular literature. Authors discussed include: Günter Grass, Judith Hermann, Florian Illies, Daniel Kehlmann, and Juli Zeh, among others. Taught in German. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Henke Coming Soon!
Instructor McCarthy Although the “Berlin Republic” is more than twenty years old, journalistic assessments of the city emphasize its youthful energy and the start of a new era. Yet literary and filmic representations of Berlin offer a more variegated picture, one both celebratory and critical. This course aims to get beyond the official hype by looking at recent novels and films and how they: represent Berlin topography; call upon historical and ideological perspectives as well as individual and collective memory; depict everyday life and fantasies in a multicultural city; allude to historical and/or continued divisions between East and West. In the process students will encounter both concrete and imaginary conceptions of what one critic has called “the capital of the 20 th century.” All readings, class discussions, and essays will be in German. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor McCarthy Selected topics primarily in German and Austrian film which introduce students to genres, historical periods, and methods of film analysis. Sample topics include an overview of German cinema, as well as German popular film. Classes are taught in German and focus on close readings and discussions. Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. Satisfies Film, Media, and Digital Studies major requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Henke Study of complex grammatical forms, combined with advanced work in written German. Suitable as preparation for the Goethe-Zertifikat B2. Prerequisites & Notes German 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Henke Small group tutorial or independent study under the direction and supervision of a faculty member who chooses or approves the topic of the study, meets with the student regularly, reviews the student’s work, and evaluates the student’s accomplishment. A major paper or project will be among the requirements. Prerequisites & Notes Permission of the instructor and the department chair. (Fall and Spring)
Instructor McCarthy This course focuses on German film and television, mainly from the last decade as streaming platforms made them more available. Its touchstones include traditional hierarchies between high and low culture, as well as representational considerations for depicting German history and contemporary multiculturalism, its continuing East/West divides, and the extent to which a capitalistic culture has affected the humanistic values underpinning parts of GDR ideology. Examples include films by Maren Ade, Christian Petzold, Fatih Akin, and Marie Kreuzer, as well as TV shows like Babylon Berlin , Criminal Germany , and The Empress . In German. Prerequisites & Notes German 301 or 302 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Denham A literary and cultural history of walking and hiking in German-language literatures, imagined spaces, and actual places from Romanticism to the present. In German. Prerequisites & Notes German 301 or 302 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Denham In this seminar we will encounter and study a broad array of cultural manifestations of the Weimar period (1919-1933). The course will center on individual characters, their self-reflection, and self-representation. Some anchors in the seminar will be the self-portraits of artists Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen, Otto Dix, Hannah Höch, and Max Beckmann; the living spaces designed by Bauhaus-influenced architects and designers Marguerite Wildenhain-Friedlaender, Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun, Bruno Taut, Alma Siedhoff-Buscher; the music of Kurt Weill, The Comedian Harmonists, and jazz in Berlin; cabaret and the dance of Anita Berber and Veleska Gert; literature by Alfred Döblin, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Irmgard Keun, and Hans Fallada; and the films of Robert Wiene, F.W. Murnau, Walter Ruttmann, Joseph Sternberg, Fritz Lang, G.W. Pabst and others; essays, journalism, and feuilleton of Kurt Tucholsky, Maria Leitner, and Walter Benjamin. The seminar includes a required weekly Wednesday night film series.
Instructor Denham History and historiography of the origins and execution of the Nazi genocide during World War II, with a focus on representations of the Holocaust and cultural memory practices in popular and public history, in the visual and performing arts and in literature, and especially in memorial structures and spaces. Prerequisites & Notes German 301 or 302 or Permission of instructor required.
Instructor McCarthy Capstone course for the German Studies major. Students develop and complete a substantial thesis that demonstrates their critical skills, proficiency in the German language, and knowledge of German-speaking culture, literature, or history. The colloquium format provides opportunities for research presentation, peer feedback, and faculty mentoring throughout the thesis-writing process. Satisfies German Studies major and minor requirement. Prerequisites & Notes German 301 or 302 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor Staff For majors or minors. Small group tutorial or independent study under the direction and supervision of a faculty member who approves the topic of the study, meets with the student regularly, reviews the student’s work, and evaluates the student’s accomplishment. A major paper or project will be among the requirements. Prerequisites & Notes Permission of the instructor and the department chair. (Fall and Spring)
Source: Davidson College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
