Comparative Literature and Thought

COMPLITTHT 5007 Literary Modernities in East Asia: Text & Traditions

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5010 Methods of Literary Study: The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation

This course combines a review of translation theories with a study of translation practices. We will investigate how translations reflect changing literary and cultural values. In addition, we will examine how the nuances of language and culture (source and target) influence the translator's choice of whom and what kind of text to translate. Guest translators will be invited to discuss their work. Requirements: Class presentation of a literary translation of your choice; to be turned into a paper. You must choose a text that has at least two previous translations, which you will evaluate and critique as you work on your own translation and which will be part of your paper. Poetry is preferable; should you choose prose, you must select a challenging text. The paper must include an outline/brief discussion of your methodological assumptions.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5020 Methods of Literary Study: The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation II

A review of translation theories and the study of cultural translation across different time periods and areas of the world. A more general approach to translation and cultural exchange in a globalizing world than Part I (Comp Lit 551), with specific examples to be drawn from Europe, Asia, Latin America and various cultural and literary exchanges between these regions. Topics will include the ideological and ethical underpinnings of translation, the political uses of language in intercultural communication, translation and comparative poetics, the impact of digital technology, and the role of translation in a postcolonial and multicultural world. We will consider not only written texts, but also film and new media as the objects of our critical inquiry. Students will choose a work that has already been translated for critique, in addition to producing their own translation and a critical response to their translation. Requirements: presentations, response papers, final translation project. Native or near-native competence in English and another language. This class is required for students completing the Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies. Open to graduate students in Comparative Literature, English, foreign languages and literatures, as well as any other program across the Humanities with an interest in Translation Studies.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5050 Theory and Research Methods in the Humanities

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5107 Literary Modernities in East Asia: Text & Traditions

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5112 The Empire Writes Back

Britannia did indeed once rule the waves, controlling an empire that encompassed a quarter of the globe. In the estimation of many, literature was a crucial component of its power. This course will examine the nature of Britain's cultural power, as well as the ways colonial authors answered back through an assertive rewriting of the British canon. We will read classic texts of British literature - Charlotte Brontë's JANE EYRE, E.M. Forster's HOWARD'S END, Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS - in tandem with later reworkings of them by authors such as Zadie Smith and Jean Rhys, in order to tease out the implications of literary emendation and adaptation. The course will also look at film versions of these works, as well as some critical theories of revision, hoping to shed light on both the opportunities and the pitfalls of attempting to critique a system of thought within the constraints of that very system.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

COMPLITTHT 5200 Introduction to Comparative Literature

An introduction to the discipline and practice of Comparative Literature, this course explores the concepts most frequently discussed and the methods most successfully practiced. We will study what texts reveal when they are examined cross-culturally. Students will consider the various differences that emerge between texts when themes and genres are followed across more than one national literature. The course includes a short history of the discipline and recent debates about the nature and scope of the field. Topics to be discussed include genres and forms, influence and intertextuality, translation, world literature, exile, and cross-cultural encounter.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5210 Literature in the Making

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5231 Seminar: Transatlantic Modernisms

Credit 3 units.

COMPLITTHT 5295 Seminar in Cultural Theory:

REMINDER: Course X-listed with one in German.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

COMPLITTHT 5301 Data Manipulation for the Humanities

The course will present basic data modeling concepts and will focus on their application to data clean-up and organization (text markup, Excel, and SQL). Aiming to give humanities students the tools they will need to assemble and manage large data sets relevant to their research, the course will teach fundamental skills in programming relevant to data management (using Python); it will also teach database design and querying (SQL). The course will cover a number of basics: the difference between word processing files, plain text files, and structured XML; best practices for version control and software hygiene; methods for cleaning up data; regular expressions (and similar tools built into most word processors). It will proceed to data modeling: lists (Excel, Python); identifiers/keys and values (Excel, Python, SQL); tables/relations (SQL and/or data frames); joins (problem in Excel, solution in SQL, or data frames); hierarchies (problem in SQL/databases, solution in XML); and network graph structures (nodes and edges in CSV). It will entail basic scripting in Python, concentrating on using scripts to get data from the web, and the mastery of string handling.

Credit 1 unit. EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5303 The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Graduate Level Seminar. Topics vary by semester.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5310 Statistics for Humanities Scholars: Data Science for the Humanities

A survey of statistical ideas and principles. The course will expose students to tools and techniques useful for quantitative research in the humanities, many of which will be addressed more extensively in other courses: tools for text-processing and information extraction, natural language processing techniques, clustering & classification, and graphics. The course will consider how to use qualitative data and media as input for modeling and will address the use of statistics and data visualization in academic and public discourse. By the end of the course students should be able to evaluate statistical arguments and visualizations in the humanities with appropriate appreciation and skepticism. Details. Core topics include: sampling, experimentation, chance phenomena, distributions, exploration of data, measures of central tendency and variability, and methods of statistical testing and inference. In the early weeks, students will develop some facility in the use of Excel; thereafter, students will learn how to use Python or R for statistical analyses.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, AN BU: HUM EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5320 Programming for Text Analysis

This course will introduce basic programming and text-analysis techniques to humanities students. Beginning with an introduction to programming using the Python programming language, the course will discuss the core concepts required for working with text corpora. We will cover the basics of acquiring data from the web, string manipulation, regular expressions, and the use of programming libraries for text analysis. Later in the course, students will be introduced to larger text corpora. They will learn to calculate simple corpus statistics as well as techniques such as tokenization, chunking, extraction of thematically significant words, stylometrics and authorship attribution. We will end with a brief survey of more advanced text-classification terminology and topics from natural language processing such as stemming, lemmatization, named-entity recognition, and part-of-speech tagging.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5444 Psychoanalysis and Its Literary Cultures

This course examines interactions between texts from the domains of literature and psychoanalysis. We will read theory and literature side by side, in order to ask the following questions: Does the relationship between literary text and theory necessarily entail the subjection of literature to analysis, or can one, as Pierre Bayard asks, apply literature to psychoanalysis? What can psychoanalytic readings tell us more broadly about the act of reading? How can psychoanalysis enrich our sense of the ethical import of reading and writing, and how can literature challenge psychoanalytic goals and values? In terms of psychoanalytic authors, we will focus on Freud, Lacan, Klein, Winnicott, and Bayard. In terms of literature, we will range widely from Sophocles to Henry James.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

COMPLITTHT 5478 Topics in Transmedia Franchises

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5490 Topics in Comparative Literature

Topics in Comparative Literature vary by semester

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

COMPLITTHT 5501 Interdisciplinary Topics in the Humanities

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5510 Seminar in Comparative Literature

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

COMPLITTHT 5511 Seminar in Comparative Literature I

Seminar in Comparative Literature, Topic will vary per semester.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5512 Seminar in Comparative Literature

Graduate seminar for graduate students only. Varied Topics.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5525 Humanities By the Numbers: Essential Readings in Digital Humanities

To what extent can computational techniques that draw on statistical patterns and quantification assist us in literary analysis? Over the semester, we will juxtapose the close reading of historical documents or literary works with the distant reading of a large corpus of historical data or literary texts. We will ask how the typically human scale of reading that lets us respond to literary texts can be captured on the inhuman and massive scales at which computers can count, quantify and categorize texts.While this class will introduce you to basic statistical and computational techniques, no prior experience with technology is required. Prerequisites: two 200 level or one 300-level course in literature or history. This is a topics-type course and the specific documents and works examined will vary from semester to semester. Please see semester course listings for current offerings.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

COMPLITTHT 5590 Internship in Digital Humanities

A practicum in digital humanities. Graduate students will work on one or more faculty research projects sponsored by the Humanities Digital Workshop. While we will try to assign students to projects that align with their research interests, we will also aim for assignments that will help students extend their skills. Students seeking a DASH internship should consult with the director of the DASH program.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5700 Methods of Literary Study

The seminar deals with recent theories of Modernism, Postmodernism, New Historicism, Multiculturalism, and Postcolonialism. We will read and discuss books and articles by Calinescus, Lyotard, Hutcheon, Greenblatt, Taylor, Habermas, Ashcroft/Tiffin, and Grossberg/Nelson/Treichler. Readings in Enlish. Graduate standing 6 units of literature, or permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

COMPLITTHT 5701 Interdisciplinary Topics:

The current topic for this class will provide students the opportunity to work on a project that uses GPT to study literature. Generative AI systems like ChatGPT are changing the way we understand human creativity and the cultural record. The project leverages GPT to analyze literary history: the project uses computational tools (e.g., natural language processing) to compare synthetic texts generated by GPT to authentic texts written by canonical authors (including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain). Our goal is to better understand GPT's construction of the literary and to better understand how specific authors are remembered and canonized. Students will gain hands-on project experience, including project management and organization experience.  The course will begin with readings on GPT and on Computational Literary Analysis and will evolve to focus primarily on supervised project work.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5720 Cultural Theory/Cultural Studies

Credit 3 units.

COMPLITTHT 5850 Mellon Dissertation Seminar

Credit 3 units.

COMPLITTHT 5900 Independent Work

Prerequisites: senior standing and permission of chair of the committee.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5901 Research

The first part of a two-semester course sequence in reading and translating German. For graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. May not be taken for graduate credit.

Credit 9 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5902 Digital Humanities in the Classroom

For declared DASH Graduate Certificate students. See DASH Director for enrollment.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5921 Translation Module 1

The first of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the practice of translation. The student will translate a published text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text) from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in which the class is taught.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5922 Translation Module 2

The second of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the practice of translation. The student will translate a published text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text) from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in which the class is taught.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 5923 Translation Module 3

The third of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the practice of translation. The student will translate a published text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text) from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in which the class is taught.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

COMPLITTHT 7000 Master's Continuing Student Status

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

COMPLITTHT 7010 Master Nonresident

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

COMPLITTHT 8010 Doctoral Nonresident

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

GERMAN 5010 Introduction to the Teaching of German

This course will introduce students to basic teaching strategies employed in the German department at Washington University and allow students to evaluate these personally by means of required observations of German 102. Discussions and research will call upon students to understand how basic language learning fits into the overall curriculum on a departmental and university level at Washington University as well as in other programs. The examination and evaluation of language textbooks will introduce students to market issues as well as differences in methodology/philosophy represented by the textbook and new issues involving technology.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5020 Teaching Practicum

This course supports beginning university instructors during their first German courses at Washington University. It will be comprised of activity composition, discussion and microteaching with a focus on the following topics: a review of processing instruction, the national standards and the four skills in a cultural context, technology in the foreign language classroom, and appropriate strategies for feedback, assessment and motivation.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall

GERMAN 5030 Theory and Practice of Foreign Language Pedagogy

This third course in the pedagogical series takes a look back and forward to inform future language instruction. Instructors in their second semester of teaching German at Washington University will consider various theories that have been employed for the purpose of second/foreign language acquisition and how these have been incorporated into or overlooked in contemporary SLA methodology. Students will be introduced to important journals as well as professional organizations that assist language instructors at all levels and will present one journal article of their choice to the class. They will also have an opportunity to begin construction of the materials portfolio - gathering exemplary syllabi, lesson plans and evaluations, and creating their first drafts of a statement of teaching philosophy to start them on these aspects of job market preparation. The course will be comprised of active class discussion and group and individual document development.

Credit 2 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5040 Apprenticeship in Course Design

For more information, please check with the department.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5050 Apprenticeship in the Teaching of Literature and Culture I

Apprenticeship in teaching literature and culture in English. For students who have completed at least 1 year of teaching at Washington University.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5060 Apprenticeship in the Teaching of Literature and Culture II

Apprenticeship in teaching literature and culture in German. For students who have completed at least 1 year of teaching at Washington University.

Credit 1 unit.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5063 German Literature and Culture, 1914 to the Present

Exploration of modern and contemporary literature within sociohistorical contexts. Genres and themes vary and may include the representation of history, the crisis of modernity, the two World Wars, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, generational conflicts, the women's movement, and postmodern society. Reading and discussion of texts by authors such as Wedekind, Freud, Mann, Kafka, Brecht, Seghers, Boell, Bachmann, Grass, Wolf. Discussion, readings, and papers in German.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5070 German Reading Knowledge for Graduate Students I

The first part of a two-semester course sequence in reading and translating German. For graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. May not be taken for graduate credit.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

GERMAN 5080 German Reading Knowledge for Graduate Students II

Mastery of more specialized vocabulary and of complex German sentence structure. Emphasis on tools and strategies for researching German language texts. Students who complete L21 5071 and 5081 should be able to read German academic texts proficiently. Prerequisite: L21 5071 or permission of DGS required.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

GERMAN 5081 Topics in German Studies

Focus on particular cultural forms such as literature, film, historiography, social institutions, philosophy, the arts, or on relationships between them. Course examines how cultural meanings are produced, interpreted, and employed. Topics vary and may include national identity, antisemitism, cultural diversity, construction of values, questions of tradition, the magical, the erotic, symbolic narrative, and the city. Course may address issues across a narrow or broad time frame. Discussion, readings, and papers in German.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5382 Contemporary Literature

This seminar deals with contemporary German literature of the last three decades. Prerequisite: graduate student standing. Max Kade Writer/Critic course taught each Spring Semester. Topics vary by year/semester.

Credit 3 units. Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5530 Theories of Literary and Cultural Analysis: Narrative Theory - A Critical and Analytical Toolbox

This seminar familiarizes graduate students with concepts and methodologies that are foundational for research in the humanities. Our discussions will be organized around a range of conceptual categories that have constituted the focus of scholarly reflection in the past few decades, categories such as text, genre, image, medium, discourse, discipline, subjectivity, gender, race, culture, politics, and history. Our consideration of these categories will also require us to examine key currents in recent literary theory and cultural criticism, including (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, feminism and gender theory, postcolonial studies, cognitive science, book history, visual studies, and media theory. Although this seminar does not aim to offer an intellectual history, seminar members will acquire a sense of some of the key trends in cultural theory since 1945, as well as an awareness of the limits and possibilities that characterize each of them. The course also includes an introduction to the tools of scholarly research. Readings and discussions in English.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5700 Seminar: Literature in the Making III

This seminar is designed for graduate students enrolled in the International Writers PhD Track in German and Comparative Literature to put their creative work into conversation with their studies in German language, culture, and literature with an eye to the long-term goal of the hybrid dissertation. Participants will read and discuss practical criticism, present their current creative projects and hone their skills as writers, translators and readers by engaging with a living literature as it evolves. At the conclusion of the course, students will have the choice of presenting a polished work of translation, a piece of original writing (in English or in German), or an essay on one or more of the works read during the semester. German students not officially in the International Writers Track are not eligible to take this course.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5710 Seminar in Medieval Culture

The Middle High German era from 1150 to 1350 produced the first great literary works in the German language. The syllabus will be organized around what may well be the key concept of the period, minne. Minne predominately refers to courtly love, a class-specific set of erotic practices or attitudes--even an ethical system--that characterize the courts of medieval Germany and Europe. Far less research, however, has been conducted on the equally powerful legal and theological meanings of minne as conflict resolution by means of reconciliation. Our seminar will inquire whether classic German texts such as Hartmann's Iwein, Walther's lyrics, or the Nibelungenlied (as a negative exemplum) deploy the multiple meanings of minne to argue for a more peaceful society based on love rather than warfare and vengeance. Since most courtly love literature assumes or creates heterosexual norms, gender relations will be a theoretical and thematic aspect of our thinking. Why would heterosexual love serve well as the allegory for peace? We will consider non-literary texts in prose such as sermons, chronicles, and legal compilations; plus some late medieval selections, especially from the Minnereden. The historical and legal research on medieval conflict resolution by Gerd Althoff, Stephen D. White, William Ian Miller, and Fredric L. Cheyette and others will constitute the interdisciplinary context of our reading and discussion. Readings in MHG as far as possible but translations will also be available.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

GERMAN 5720 Seminar in Reformation & Humanism

During the early modern period, 1500-1750, prose fiction developed as one of the dominant literary forms. We will read and review several important literary expressions along this evolutionary trajectory that mark the narrative changes leading from late medieval/early modern  Prosaromane (Volksbücher) to early forms of the novel. We will explore the relationship of facts and fiction, the influence of magic, demonologies, and travel writings as well as issues of gender construction and their effect on the development of prose narratives.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5730 Seminar in the Late 18th Century

This seminar is designed to provide students with an in-depth introduction to the complete text of Goethe's Faust. Our reading and discussion of the drama will unfold against the backdrop of three distinct but interrelated contexts. 1) We will consider Faust from a literary-historical perspective, situating the work within Goethe's own literary oeuvre as well within the frameworks of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literature more generally and of the long history of literary Faust adaptations. 2) We will also approach Faust from an intellectual-historical perspective, attempting to understand how it engages with the key philosophical discussions and debates of the period during which it was written: theodicy, the dialectic of enlightenment, and the legitimacy of the modern age. 3) Finally, we will read a selection of scholarly essays that demonstrate how Faust sheds light on various theoretical and scholarly pre-occupations, from the relationship between literature and economics to questions of gender and sexuality. One of the aims of the seminar is to expose students, on the basis of an exemplary case study, to a wide range of models of scholarly inquiry. Readings of the primary text will be supplemented with video of performances as well as adaptations of the Faust material to other media.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5740 Seminar in the 19th Century

Examination of violence as a constituent element in literary evocations of community and the formation of reader communities during a century of multiplying print forms and venues, increasing literacy and expanding publics, political and social upheaval, armed conflict, emigration and colonialism, and re-definitions of allegiance and identity in German-speaking territories and communities. Exploration of the portrayal of violence and crime as endemic in human social formations, including the family, and as an indication of a given community's sickness and health. Particular attention will be paid to international and national literary genres (gothic, Geheimnisliteratur, detective fiction, village tale, novella, case history) that treat these themes, and the publication venues and modes of circulation of these works. Supplementary readings will help to analyze and contextualize literary treatments of violence. Works by Kleist, Auerbach, Droste-Hülshoff, Heine, Gotthelf, Storm, Raabe, Fontane, Ebner-Eschenbach, and others. Readings largely in German, discussion in English. Accommodations can be made for interested graduate students in other programs who do not read German at the graduate level. Please see instructor.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

GERMAN 5750 Seminar in the 20th Century

For writers, artists, activists, and intellectuals, expressing their political commitments often requires a strong notion of resistance. While the term resistance has become ubiquitous in contemporary discourse, a closer look at its history since the early 20th century allows for a critical perspective on the complex and contradictory structure of its usage by writers and intellectuals of various ideological leanings. Focusing on the "short 20th century" (1914-1989), this course explores the various understandings of resistance in the context of modern European literature and thought. Students will analyze a range of novels, plays, stories, poems, essays, treatises, pamphlets, and manifestoes with the goal of formulating a - however preliminary - aesthetic theory of resistance. We will discuss how resistance and oppression are related, how aesthetics and politics intersect, how art and ideology permeate one another, and how subversion constantly seeks new ways to express itself. Authors include Luxemburg, Brecht, Seghers, Benjamin, Jünger, Schmitt, Malaparte, Camus, Weil, Arendt, Weiss, or Krasznahorkai. Readings and discussions in English.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5760 Seminar in Romanticism

German Romantic literature goes in many different directions. At its beginning, we have a new appreciation of the world of the arts by Wackenroder and Tieck, a literature that will have an impact on the Romantic Nazarene school of painters a decade later. We have (with Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Schlegel and Novalis) ambitious writers who want to give the educational novel (Bildungsroman) as established by Goethe a more poetic twist. At the same time, they are inventing and rediscovering the world of the fairy tale (Volks- und Kunstmärchen) in the case of Tieck, Fouqué, and the Grimm Brothers. Then there are authors like Chamisso, ETA Hoffmann, and Hauff who show the clash of a romantic concept of life with the new realities of capitalism in trade and industry. Finally, stories by Eichendorff are reflecting the cultural European heritage with its friction between Antiquity and Christianity. We will discuss these stories and novels in their literary and historical contexts (politics and art), and will consult theoretical writings both of the authors and from secondary literature. This is a graduate course, but undergraduate senior majors can be admitted with permission of the instructor.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5770 Seminar in Cultural Theory

Graduate-level seminar. Topics vary by semester.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5780 Literary Seminar

This graduate seminar covers innovative engagements with new media over roughly the past century, incorporating both theoretical frameworks and aesthetic responses. On the one hand, the course will cover major works of media theory from this period, particularly as they apply to literature, with an emphasis on German authors. Theorists are likely to include Benjamin, Heidegger, Adorno, McLuhan, Kittler, Siegert, and Krämer. On the other hand, we will consider how new media have shaped aesthetic practices, particularly in literary movements identified as experimental or avant-garde. The focus in this respect will be on German-language contributions to movements such as Dada and Concrete poetry, including the works of Raoul Hausmann, Max Bense, and Ferdinand Kriwet. In addition, we will consider works by authors such as Yoko Tawada that foreground the role of written media, and by contemporary writers and artists such as Julius Popp and Amaranth Borsuk who work at the intersection of textual and digital media. Readings can be done in German or English; discussion will be in English.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5800 Seminar in the Teaching of German

A practical and theoretical introduction for the new teacher of college-level German. Includes basic linguistic principles, classroom management, teaching of smaller units, testing principles, teaching methodologies, professional orientations, and use of multimedia. Extensive observation and the preparation and delivery of a cultural teaching unit.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

GERMAN 5801 Master's Thesis Research

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

GERMAN 5810 Advanced Pedagogy Seminar: Integrating Technology Into Language Instruction

Seminar offers professional development in language pedagogy with a focus on enhancing the teaching of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and culture through technology. Participants will develop critical skills for assessing, creating, and integrating multimedia courseware into the language classroom. Course formats include readings, discussion, demonstrations, and hands-on sessions with multimedia technologies (e.g., software, WWW, CD-ROM, video). Open to advanced graduate students in all language departments who have completed their required classes. Students with questions regarding eligibility should consult with the instructors.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

GERMAN 5900 Independent Study

Requires a paper or a written examination.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring