Fall 2024 Germanic Languages Columbia University

FALL 2024 Germanic Languages Literature and Language Courses for the Department of Germanic Languages

GERM3333UN

Introduction to German Literature (taught in German)

11739 - Credits: 3 Instructor: Stefan Andriopoulos

Prerequisites: GERM UN2102 or the equivalent.

Examines short literary texts and introduces students to formal analysis and close reading. Genres include fable, parable, anecdote, the manifesto, radio play, the novel, and blogs. Students gain basic familiarity with the study of German literature and culture.

Time: M W 10:00 - 11:25 AM

GERM3442UN

LITERATURE IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES (Taught in German)

Prerequisite OR Corequisite: GERMUN3333 This class will provide an introduction to the rich and varied forms of literary production between 1750 and 1900 by focusing on the culture of Sensibility, the Enlightenment, Storm and Stress, Romanticism, the “Vormärz” and Realism.

We will situate major literary innovations of the 18th century in the context of changing reading and theater cultures and focus primarily on Lessing’s innovative domestic tragedy, and on poems and an epistolary novel by Goethe. Then we will discuss the literary production of the 19th century by analyzing changing concepts of art, music and literature during those times of great social and political change. We will study (and translate) poems, and read pamphlets and novellas by Tieck, Kleist, Hölderlin, Novalis, Brentano, Eichendorff, Günderrode, Droste-Hülshoff, Heine, Büchner, Mörike, Keller and Fontane.

Instructor: Dorothea von Muecke Time: M W 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM 12857 - Credits: 3

GERM3252UN

Instructor: Annie Pfeifer M W 2:40-3:55 PM

What is Fascism?

(Taught in English)

12849 Credits: 3

This course explores fascism through an interdisciplinary, transhistorical lens. Beginning with Germany’s Third Reich, we will examine fascism’s history and foundations in social, political, religious, and scientic developments. We will explore various theories—ranging from psychoanalytic to philosophical— which try to explain the rise and spread of fascism. To help conceptualize fascism, we will analyze its complex relationship with race, ideology, and nationalism, and in particular, its deployment of technology, aesthetics, and propaganda. We will apply our own working definition of fascism to the contemporary moment by analyzing current populist, authoritarian movements around the globe.

GERMAN TRAVELING CULTURES

Germ BC 3224 00182 Credits: 3

(Taught in English) Examines accounts of traveling or living in South America, Africa, and Germany from a postcolonial and transnational perspective. Discussion of German explorers, colonialism, global tourism, multiculturalism, focusing on the relationship between mobility and the formation of African, Jewish, Turkish bicultural identities in different historical contexts and geographical settings. Close attention to the role of language, ideology, and itinerary in visual, aural, and written records by A.v.Humboldt, Merian, J. Baker, Massaquoi, Wackwitz, Oezdamar, Akin.

Tu Th 2:40 PM - 3:55 PM Instructor: Erk Grimm

Netflix Culture Instructors: Jeremy Dauber and Oliver Simons

T 10:10 AM - 12:00 PM What kind of globe has Netflix invented since its founding in 1997? The course offers an introduction to the analysis of Netflix series in a transnational context: shows from around the world, viewed through multiple lenses - their production in their home countries, their consumership on an American campus, and their existence in the “third space” of the streaming world, and Netflix particularly. In the course, we’ll learn to analyze such series critically, discussing their complex production process and rationale, alongside algorithms used to reinforce viewers' habits. We’ll ask, among other questions, how Netflix represents and imagines different national contexts and traditions, and how Netflix productions have changed or reimagined the narratives of national histories and cultures. Series discussed include, but are not limited to, Berlin Babylon, Dark, Kleo (Germany), Shtisel (Israel), Squid Game (South Korea), Giri/Haji (England/Japan), 3 Body Problem (USA).

CLGR3458UN 14818 Credits: 3

Orientalism and Empire (Taught in English)

CLGR4271 GU

12863 Credits: 3

T 4:10-6:00PM

Instructor: Annie Pfeifer Nearly fifty years after the publication of Edward Said’s groundbreaking work Orientalism, the book is as relevant as ever. At the same time, there have been countless attempts to broaden the scope of inquiry to explore constructions of the Middle East and Asia from different cultural, historical, and theoretical perspectives, including feminist and Marxist revisions of Said’s conceptualization as well as important work examining the role of race and religion. Focusing on the Germanophone context, this seminar traces the interrelationship between Orientalism—the study of the Orient—and the evolution of German scholarship and empire. Without having an imperial presence in the Middle East, Germany quickly developed an authoritative role in the study of many Orientalist fields, prompting several questions. Can Said’s framework be used to describe the experience of non-colonial powers in the Middle East? To what extent was German Orientalism informed by Germany’s colonial experiences—its belated acquisition of overseas colonies and its quasi-colonial relationship with Eastern European states? How does Orientalism reflect Germany’s own nation-building efforts to fabricate a mythic, ancient past? How did Nazi Orientalism perpetuate and exploit these myths? With the contemporary resurgence of antiSemitism and Islamophobia in the Middle East and West, these questions take on renewed importance. Concluding with a discussion of the “migrant crisis” in Europe, this seminar proposes that a historical study of Orientalism can increase sensitivities to the cultural complexities of today’s global environment. Through an interdisciplinary focus on literature, visual arts, and theory, this seminar critically examines the role of scholarship and academia in exploring how humanities can shape and alter such perceptions. Does the study of Orientalism unwittingly contribute to the problem by perpetuating stereotypes and myths while undermining the agency of colonized or non Western peoples?

GERM4350GU 12858 - Credits: 3

GERMAN FILM AFTER 1945

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.

T 2:10 PM - 4:00 PM

Instructor: Claudia Breger

GERM8121GR

PROSEMINAR -DRAMA DER GOETHEZEIT Proseminar for Graduate Students Only

Instructor: Dorothea von Muecke In this seminar we will analyze how the dramatic production of the eighteenth century related to wars and revolution and made references to the Dutch Independence Wars, the Seven-Years War, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars. At the center of our discussion will be plays by Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, and Kleist (Philotas, Minna, Don Karlos, Egmont, Die natürliche Tochter, Krug, Prinz Friedrich). Reading and discussion will be in German.

13982 - Credits: 3

Mo 4:10 PM - 6:00 PM

Language Courses German UN1101 Elementary German I - 4 credits UN1102 Elementary German II - 4 credits UN2101 Intermediate German I - 4 credits UN2521 Intermediate Conversation - 2 credits UN2102 Intermediate German II - 4 credits UN3001 Advanced German I - 3 credits BC2210&2212 - Grammatik Aktiv - 2-3 credits

Dutch UN1101 Elementary Dutch I - 4 credits UN2101 Intermediate Dutch I - 4 credits UN3101 Advanced Dutch I - 3 credits

Finnish UN1101 Elementary Finnish I - 4 credits

Language Courses Yiddish UN1101 Elementary Yiddish I - 4 credits UN2101 Intermediate Yiddish I - 4 credits UN3333 Advanced Yiddish - 3 credits GU4113 Yiddish for Academic Purposes - 3 credits

Swedish UN1101 Elementary Swedish I - 4 points

Advanced Level Classes Advanced German I (UN3001) Let’s explore Berlin from the vantage point of a Columbia German language classroom. Even if we can’t smell Berlin’s legendary air, we can gain insight into the city’s history and atmosphere, explore Berlin’s Bezirke and Kieze, as well as get an idea of what’s happening now in Berlin. We’ll experience Berlin through literature, film, music, art, and news, and an excursion to find Berlin in New York City. What better way to prepare for a visit to the capital city of Germany, for study at Berlin’s Freie Universität, or for an internship at one if its institutions?

MW 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM Instructor: Jutta Schmiers-Heller

11738 - Credits: 3

Advanced Level Classes News and Views (BC 3009 ) MW 4:10 PM -5:25 PM , Irene Motyl-Mudretzkyj This German-language course for students on the Advanced proficiency level will offer students the opportunity to improve their comprehension of German media language through viewing, reading, writing and digital film production. Course materials will be drawn from German-language periodicals, newspapers, TV newscasts, TV documentaries and features digitally available. Students will hone their media competence by analyzing the material at hand and write, film and edit their own digital newscasts and documentaries in German. Through this process students will acquire the media literacy needed to understand cultural differences in media production and presentation and how to successfully communicate and convey messages in a digital format. Finally, students will familiarize themselves with the technical aspects of filming and will learn how to edit digital material. The cultural aspect of the course will give students greater insight into current issues and discourses in German-speaking countries and in the U.S. In the final project students apply their skills and findings, after conducting research in German and working with German, Austrian and Swiss cultural institutions, newspapers, companies, cultural centers located in New York. At the end of the semester, students will create and write their own German-language documentary film, edit the documentary and present it to the class and other students of German.

GERM2520UN

Intermediate Conversation Prerequisite: Completion of 1102 or equivalent. If you have prior German outside of Columbia's language sequence, the placement exam is required.

Desire to speak lots of German! Students in Intermediate Conversation should have completed the equivalent of two semester of college German or placed at the Intermediate level at Columbia. This conversation group is designed for students are either taking Intermediate German I or II and would like additional practice or who take only this class because they wish to maintain their spoken German.

The course is designed to improve your ability to speak and understand and manage German in everyday situations; to provide opportunities to participate in conversational situations on any topics you are interested in; to strengthen and acquire skills to understand German spoken at normal conversational speed; to expand active and passive vocabularies speaking skills; and to maintain a certain level of written German through short written activities. This is a 2-point course and does not count towards the language requirement.

Mo We 10:10am - 11:25am 11737 - Credits: 2