36 courses with the subject GETR, 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.
GETR 1392”Once Upon a Time:” An Introduction to Fairy Tales3
Effective Date 05/01/2026 In fairy tales, anything is possible: throw a frog against the wall and it turns out to be a prince in disguise; visit your grandmother and you realize she has been eaten and replaced by a wolf. Entering the world of fairy tales feels like walking into an elaborate dream. We will discuss the way fairy tales were handed down over generations, how Disney depicts fairy tales, and how fairy tales introduce children to stories. We will also learn how to analyze, discuss, and write about texts. Requisites Students cannot enroll if they previously completed GETR 1559 Topic #1 Fairy Tales
Effective Date 08/01/2026 Study of the Faust legend across a range of texts, films, and contexts, including Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1604/1616), Goethe’s Faust (part 1, 1808) – described by literary theorist Harlod Bloom “as a sexual nightmare of erotic fantasy” without “rival” – and Istvan Szabo’s Academy Award winning film Mephisto (1981), and others. Requisites Students cannot enroll if they have previously completed GETR 2559 Topic #4 Faust: The Dilemmas of Desire
Effective Date 01/01/2019 What does it mean for a country to confront its past, define its present, and imagine its future? This course will introduce you to modern German history and culture by looking at the interaction between culture and memory. We will approach the cities of Berlin and Weimar not just as a collection of streets and buildings, but as multi-layered cultural and historical texts. On-site visits will combine lectures with active student participation.
Effective Date 08/01/2012 A survey of German cultural history from the enlightenment to the present, and an introduction to the field of German Studies. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses. .
Effective Date 01/28/2025 Taking an interdisciplinary and cross-historical approach, this course introduces students to key texts in dream theory and discusses the implications of these theories for prose and poetry, film, and political writing. Students will learn to identify, compare, and contrast different dream theories, understand the importance and limitations of dream interpretation, and explore the significance of dreaming and dream theory for art and literature. Requisites Antireq USEM 1580 Students who took this course in Spring 2022 may not take this course
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course provides a wide-ranging exploration of the culture and thought of German-speaking Jewry from 1750 to the present. It focuses on the Jewish response to modernity in Central Europe and lasting transformations in Jewish life. We read the works of such figures as Moses Mendelssohn, Rachel Varnhagen, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Else Lasker-Schuler, Inge Deutschkrohn, and Katja Petrowskaja.
GETR 3385Kafka’s Short Works: The Quest for Materiality3
Effective Date 03/26/2024 Students will read and discuss the most important short works of Kafka, with an ultimate focus on the problem of the self and the idea of materiality. Short readings from other literatures and other disciplines are included in order to provide historical context and interpretive parallels. Method will be discussion rather than lecture. Two papers required.
Effective Date 10/16/2012 Detailed survey of the historical origins, political structures, cultural dynamics, and every-day practices of the Nazi Third Reich. Cross-listed in the history department. Taught in English.
Effective Date 04/22/2019 Entering the world of fairy tales often feels like passing into an elaborate dream: it is a world teeming with sorcerers, dwarves, wondrous objects, and animals that speak. This seminar explores fairy tales and dream narratives in literature and film from the romantic period into the present. Authors to be discussed include: Goethe, the brothers Grimm, Bettelheim, Hoffmann, Freud, Saint-Exupery, Tolkien, and others.
Effective Date 11/02/2020 In this class we will explore the historical context of serial media, from the journal projects of the German Romantics to the second golden age of television. After a historical survey and a discussion of terminology (“series,” “serial”) we will examine certain specific “series” including Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, Marcel Duchamp’s Ready-mades, or the German Netflix show “Dark.”
Effective Date 05/01/2011 Explores the friend/foe nexus in German history, literature and culture, with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 This course traces the lineage and shapes of the Arthurian legend as witnessed in medieval literature and modern adaptations, including film and television (“Games of Thrones,” “Star Wars,” etc.) The aim is familiarity with the story of King Arthur and his court, as well as an ability to appreciate the permutations of the legend in all forms of media. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken GETR 3590 topic #57 Stories of Love and Adventure
Effective Date 01/01/2025 Introduces the most significant texts and films dealing with the Holocaust and surveys important philosophical and historical reflections on the meaning of the Holocaust. Meets second writing requirement.
GETR 3472Hollywood Exile: German Filmmakers Flee Fascism3
Effective Date 01/28/2025 In the 1930s, many people employed in the German film industry whose lives were threatened by Nazism took refuge in Hollywood. This course examines the contributions exiled directors, writers, actors, and others made in genres ranging from comedy and melodrama to film noir. In addition to indicting fascism and reflecting on the trauma of forced migration these films often turned a critical eye on the U.S..
GETR 3475Body Horror: From Kafka to Cronenberg and Beyond3
Effective Date 08/01/2026 Films like Alien, The Thing, and The Fly broke new ground in depicting extravagantly violent bodily transformations, combining science fiction scenarios with innovative special effects to create what is now dubbed “body horror.” This course will examine the literary and cultural roots of body horror, classic films from the 1980s, and contemporary examples, considering body horror as a cultural object as well as a provocation for theorizing the body. Requisites Students cannot enroll if they have previously completed GETR 3559 Topic #41 Body Horror
GETR 3480German New Wave Cinema: Reinvention, Remembrance, Rebellion3
Effective Date 08/01/2026 This course explores how West German art cinema of the 1960s-80s reinvented filmmaking, remembered the Nazi past, and rebelled against cultural and political institutions. In dialogue with films by Werner Herzog, Helke Sander, R. W. Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, and others, we will examine the aesthetic and political possibilities of cinema, in the context of an affluent consumer society with a violent past that many preferred to forget.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 Explores the relationship between facts and fiction in the representation of the past. Course materials range from archival sources and scholarly articles to novels, films, paintings, sculptures, poems and other creative articulations of the historical imagination. The role of the new media and media analysis in the representation of history will also be examined. Topics vary annually.
Effective Date 08/01/2026 This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject area of German in translation. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.
GETR 3563Spiritual Journeys in Young Adult Fiction3
Effective Date 06/01/2013 This writing-intensive, discussion-based seminar invites students to explore the topic of the spiritual journey both academically and personally. Different disciplinary perspectives and experiential approaches to reading and writing will deepen our exploration of such themes as: religiosity vs. spirituality, becoming a hero, confronting evil, being different, achieving autonomy, faith and doubt, and the magical and the miraculous.
Effective Date 03/16/2018 The course reflects on the often complicated ways in which representations of violence are related to gender codes. we will look especially at films that depict and document the topos of Lager/Camp: the Camp functions as metaphor, as fantasy, gendered space, laboratory, and heterotopia,. Critical look at films that imagine the camp both as a historical site or as a hiding place.
Effective Date 01/30/2020 Reading and discussion of German texts compared to texts from other literatures (all in English translation), with the aim of illuminating a central theoretical, historical, or social issue that transcends national boundaries. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.
Effective Date 01/01/2013 Taking Goethe’s Faust as its point of departure, this course traces the emergence and transformations of the Faust legend over the last 400 hundred years. We explore precursors of Goethe’s Faust in the form of the English Faust Book, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and possibly other popular re-workings of the text. We will Goethe’s Faust in its entirety, and then proceed to Bulgakov’s response to Stalinism in The Master and Margharta and
Effective Date 01/01/2010 Introduction to the work of Franz Kafka, with comparisons to the literary tradition he worked with and the literary tradition he formed.
Effective Date 08/01/2019 In formulating his model of the psyche and his theory of psychoanalysis, Freud availed himself of analogies drawn from different disciplines, including literature. Freud’s ideas were then taken up by many twentieth-century literary writers. After introducing Freud’s theories through a reading of his major works, the course will turn to literary works that engage with Freud.
GETR 3730Modern Poetry: Rilke, Valery and Stevens3
Effective Date 01/01/2010 Studies in the poetry and prose of these three modernist poets, with emphasis on their theories of artistic creation. The original as well as a translation will be made available for Rilke’s and Valery’s poetry; their prose works will be read in English translation.
Effective Date 09/21/2021 Fictions of happiness pursued – and found! Through the ages, people have sought happiness and formulated conceptions of what happiness means. This course compares ideas and stories of happiness from antiquity through the present day in all genres: prose fiction, poetry, essays, film, and humanistic and scientific theory.
