Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Schuylkill · Courses
GER
27 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.
GER 510Literary Theory: An Introduction3
Introduction to the major theoretical approaches to the contemporary study of culture (literature, film, art and politics). GER 510 Literary Theory: An Introduction (3) This seminar will introduce students to contemporary literary and cultural theory in an effort to provide them with the methodological tools they need to undertake cutting-edge literary and cultural analysis themselves. German Studies in the U.S. has at least two defining characteristics. First, though, at least for those of us in German Departments, its emphasis is mainly on culture, it is genuinely interdisciplinary, attempting to explore how cultural products and practices (defined as extending far beyond the traditional canon of German literature) are constituted by and help to constitute history and politics. And, secondly, it advances its interdisciplinary analyses by drawing increasingly on new methodologies elaborated by Anglo-American and foreign cultural theorists. Among the theoretical approaches we may focus on will be formalism and structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory, and post-colonial theory. These new theories have profoundly transformed disciplines such as Anglo-American literary studies, comparative literature, women's studies, history, and anthropology, since the Seventies. In this course we shall find out if/how such theories could transform German Studies, too. The course is reading-intensive and students are expected to invest most of their time in reading and preparing for class discussions. Regular attendance and informed participation in class discussion will be required. This involves reading all assigned articles on a regular basis (20%); oral presentation of one weekly section (30%); second oral presentation that includes a sample analysis of the assigned texts (20%); and one 12-15 page paper due at the end of the semester (30%). German 51 0 will be the second unit in a three-course package intended to provide beginning graduate students with a set of correlated introductory courses. German 510 is the only wide-ranging course in theory offered by the Department for incoming students. This course will be offered once a year with 5 to 1 0 students (1 5 max) per offering.
Theory, methods, techniques, materials, bibliography contributions of linguistics and psychology to language learning; methods of teaching post- secondary German. GER 511 The Teaching of College German (3) German 511 introduces students to the theory and methods of teaching German at the college level. It deals not only with techniques, materials, and bibliography of the field but also evaluates the contributions of linguistics and psychology to college-level language pedagogy. German 511 familiarizes students with current theories of foreign language education as they relate to post-secondary language acquisition. This course further includes the practical aspects of college-level teaching with special reference to problems related specifically to the teaching and learning of German. Evaluation procedures include examinations, research papers, and the preparation of sample teaching materials. German 511 is a required course for all German graduate students both at the M.A. and Ph.D. level. It is offered every year.
This course examines German speech sounds and their organization into a linguistic system. GER 513 German Phonetics and Phonology (3)This course provides an overview of the major subfields of phonology as they apply to the German language. No prior knowledge of linguistics or phonology is assumed. Topics discussed include articulatory phonetics, the phoneme, distinctive features, and common phonological processes in German such as final devoicing, prosody, prosodic morphology and dialectal variation. The class will practice phonetic transcription of German and English. We will discuss common phonetic and phonological difficulties presented by German for native speakers of English. In addition to practical applications of phonetics, the class will investigate theoretical concepts such as the phoneme, distinctive features, lexical stress, the syllable and the prosodic foot. Reading assignments include scholarly articles employing different theoretical frameworks and excerpts from seminal works in the field. Frameworks to be discussed include derivational approaches and Optimality Theory. The class will also examine dialectal variation with a particular emphasis on differences between Low, Middle and Upper German dialects. Each students will make a presentation investigating the phonological system of a German dialect. Evaluation is based on problems, class presentations and a final research paper.
This course provides an overview of morphosyntactic processes in German. GER 514 German Syntax (3)This course provides an overview of the major components of morphology and syntax as they apply to the German language. No prior knowledge of linguistics or morphosyntax is assumed. Topics discussed include the basic syntactic constituents in German, the verbal bracket and movement rules, German argument structure, the tense/mood/aspect system for German verbs, the connection between pragmatics and word order in German, and dialectal variation as it relates to German syntax. Emphasis will also be placed on how these different areas of German syntax are related to descriptive grammar rules as presented in many German language classes. Reading assignments include scholarly articles employing different theoretical frameworks, including minimalism, and excerpts from seminal works in the field. Evaluation is based on problem sets, two take-home exams and a research paper.
In most university courses, the Holocaust is taught chronologically, beginning with the rise of the Nazi Party and then following the German armies through Europe and into the Soviet Union. The retreat of those same forces beginning in 1943 parallels the concentration and professionalization of the killing process which then begins to break down as the war comes to an end. This narrative is not incorrect, and certainly makes sense for introductory courses. Yet it also mirrors the perpetrators' perspective. A graduate course allows us to explore different perspectives on the war and genocide and how these affect both the periodization and the geography of the Holocaust. In this course we will examine a number of divergent historiographic trends regarding the origins, enactment, end, and aftermath of the Holocaust. These will help students to think more broadly about the place of the Holocaust in world history and how new theories, methods and questions can be applied to other historical events.
GER 530The Frankfurt School & the Politics of Visual Aesthetics3
The course examines the Frankfurt School's critical theories regarding visual strategies for representing and challenging urban consumer culture. The course will examine critical theories by members of the Frankfurt School regarding visual strategies for representing and challenging urban consumer culture. The course will center on German Marxist theories about how the rise of urban mass culture at the beginning of the twentieth century produced Modernist forms of visual representation. The course will examine how the spread of fashion-driven behavior had dramatic implications for aesthetic theory, film, architecture, and literature. The course will provide a survey of the most important works in the German critical tradition and the major thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School. These include Georg Simmel, Georg Lukacs, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas, among others. Students will learn how these modern theories relate to the German Idealist tradition, particularly Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, as well as the history of German Marxism. Topics include the psychology of the metropolitan individual, the commodification of culture, money, and interpersonal relationships, the architecture of shopping, visual advertising through posters and photography, and cinema as a means of understanding social relations, as well as the role of visual media in public debate. The course will consider how modernist architecture, particularly from the Bauhaus school, redefined urban spaces and introduced new functionalist designs. The course will examine how Frankfurt School thinkers responded to the provocative design proposals presented by modernist architects. Students will examine specific modernist designs for consumer products to examine the relationship between the appearance of a commodity and its use, in order to understand how appearance and function are interdependent within modernism. In broad terms, class discussions will focus on such questions as: How does the relationship between the visual image and society change under industrial capitalism? What political functions do visual images have in consumer culture? What visual mechanisms does the "culture industry" deploy to organize public consciousness? What critical responses are available to visual artists within a mass-market economy? The course will provide students an historical understanding of early twentieth-century German consumer culture and its visual representation, while also offering them critical intellectual tools to understand the social and economic implications of visual images within consumer culture. The course will be taught in English with readings in both languages.
This course studies how art, literature, film, and other media can provide a perspective on one of the most horrific events in human history, the Holocaust: the genocidal murder of more than six million men, women, and children (mostly Jewish) under the Nazi regime during World War II. The course examines the theoretical questions involved in any attempt to capture what appears to be beyond comprehension in terms of moral outrage and the sheer scale, inhumanity, and bureaucratic efficiency of the violence perpetrated by the Nazis. This course examines formal approaches of depicting the Holocaust in literature and film, as well as photography, museum installations, and memorials. Topics to be discussed include include memorialization (Holocaust museums and memorials), mass murder of the disabled, national guilt, survivor's guilt, stigmatization, and the ethics of historical representation. The course will analyze cinematic strategies for representing the unrepresentable, dark humor about the Holocaust, the persistence of the past, Nazi propaganda, Holocaust photography, trauma theories, graphic novels, the Nuremberg trials, survivor memoirs, representations of the Nuremberg Code and the International Bill of Norms, and possibilities for art after Auschwitz.
This course will examine the history, theory, and practice of German photographic and moving picture technology from its origins to the digital age. The course will be structured around important innovations in visual technology, including: 1) the pre-history and invention of photography, 2) pre-cinematic moving pictures (Anschütz), 3) the invention of cinema (Skladanowsky Bros.), 4) sound and color innovations, 5) video, digital, and installation work. The aim of the course is to provide an historical overview of visual culture in which the radical shifts inaugurated by new technologies are examined in terms of their aesthetic, philosophical, and political impact. In the German context these shifts have been examined by important theoreticians of visual culture (most notably Arnheim, Balácz, Benjamin, Kracauer, and Flusser) whose work has changed the way we think about our relation to images. Practitioners in the German sphere have been no less influential: from Ottomar Anschütz's pre-cinematic experiments with moving pictures to the very first public demonstration of cinematic technology (the Skladanowskys' bioscope, one month before the Lumières' first show) to the avant-garde animation of the Weimar period; from the narrative and design innovations of the Expressionist filmmakers to the rich and varied independent films of the New German Cinema to the radical documentarians of the past decade. By providing students with an understanding of German innovations in and responses to new technologies this course will ground readings of particular works historically. In broad terms, class discussion will consider questions such as: What is the aesthetic status of the photographic image in relation to painting? What is the ontological status of the photograph as a chemical imprint of light? How do these new technologies lend themselves to political action? How is the spectator differently constructed by these technologies? In what way is the still image integral to the moving image-and what implications do these have for our perception of time? What is the new role of the image in mass, consumer culture (subversive or complicit)? How do the formal and technical affordances of the film-based image contribute to the construction of national, race, and gender identities, to spectator desires, and to new aesthetic categories? Readings will be available in German and in English. Class discussion will be in English.
This course explores the role of photography in the context of the racialized politics of genocides and their aftermaths. The course aims to critically examine photographic evidence of genocidal violence, revealing the long shadow of modern genocides from colonialism, to the Holocaust, the Armenian, Cambodian, Rwandan genocides, to the present. At the intersection of modern constructs of race as they culminate in genocidal violence, the course investigates the political and ethical potential of photography. Topics include: definitions of genocide; modern genocides; colonialism and the concept of race; the origins of photography; photography in literature and film; the civil contract of photography; the ethics of testimonies; atomic light; commemoration and the aftermath of genocides; race after technology.
GER 538German Expansionism, War & Violence: From the Seven Years' War to the War in Afghanistan3
The course explores the various intersections between domestic politics and sociocultural developments and policies of martial brinksmanship, spatial expansion, and policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The course traces change over time with respect to ideas and practices of ethnic cleansing and genocide from the seven Years' War and the division and absorption of large portions of the former Polish state by Prussia in the late eighteenth century all the way to today, when racist reverse-colonialist notions of "white genocide" are being promoted by terrorist (and only recently uncovered) subsections of the German armed forces. Topics include: Pre-nationalist expansion in the late eighteenth century; the beginnings of German nationalist and racist discourse; imperialist and racialist settlement policies within the German Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century; global racialized policies of space, expansion and genocide in Africa and Asia during the age of imperialism; genocide and mass death during the First World War; Nazi ideology and genocide; genocidal fantasies in post-1945 Germany.
GER 589Technology in Foreign Language Education: An Overview3
Approaches to the uses and research applications of multimedia and other educational technologies applied to the teaching of foreign languages. (also crosslisted with SPAN 589)
Formal courses given on a topical or special interest subject which may be offered infrequently; several different topics may be taught in one year or term.
