Teaching Apprenticeship (3 credits)
16:470:502:01 Alternating Th 4:30 - 6:30
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Syllabus
Dr. Silke Wehner-Franco
In German. The Teaching Apprenticeship in German is designed to give you the opportunity to discuss topics surrounding the practice of German language teaching today in the context of the courses offered at Rutgers. To that end, we will utilize a number of readings from current journals and publications as well the text Perspectives on Learning in light of your teaching experience this semester. In addition to the readings outlined below and distributed during the semester, each participant is also asked to conduct one presentation/discussion (approx. one hour) based on a particular chapter of the text and to submit a short research paper (5-7 pages) that evaluates the learning theory's application in German language courses. Finally, each participant will schedule one class observation and post-observation meeting at some point during the semester.
Frankfurt School Writers (3 credits)
16:470:643:01 M 4:30-7:10
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Syllabus
Prof. Nicholas Rennie
In English. This seminar focuses on a major interdisciplinary theoretical tradition in German writing, and its influence on selected thinkers of the last decades. Work of the Frankfurt School is among the most important 20th-century German-language contributions to such fields as sociology, political science, gender studies, film, cultural studies and comparative literature. We will read texts by such key figures of the Frankfurt School as Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Max Horkheimer for their relevance to a number of disciplines, but we will give particular consideration to literary and aesthetic questions. To this end, we will also read texts by select authors to whom these figures responded (e.g. Baudelaire, Proust, Kafka, Beckett). In the second half of the course we will trace the influence of the first generation of the Frankfurt School in the work of such theorists as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and Axel Honneth. Cross listed with Comparative Literature (16:195:501:01).
Benjamin, Scholem, Arendt (3 credits)
16:470:671:01 T 4:30-7:10
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Prof. Michael Levine
In English. The course examines three towering figures of twentieth-century thought: Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Gershom Scholem (1879-1982), and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Tracing the overlapping and divergent life paths of these figures and the story of their complex friendships and fallings-out, the course brings central issues of contemporary political, philosophical, legal, and religious thought into focus. Issues discussed include: Jewish identity in the modern age; the paradox of non-national nationalism; messianism, trauma and the concept of history; mysticism and the law; German-Jewish letters and Kabbalah; Holocaust memory, human rights, and the Eichmann trial. Cross listed with Comparative Literature (16:195:612:01).
Post-Wall Literature (3 credits)
16:470:672:01 W 4:30-7:10 (172 College Ave)
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Syllabus
Prof. Elke Brüns
In German. Das Seminar geht der Verarbeitung zeitgeschichtlicher Erfahrungen in der Gegenwartsliteratur nach. Welche Bilder – und damit Deutungen – entwerfen die Texte auf dem Hintergrund des politischen und kulturellen Umbruchs, welche Traditionslinien führen sie fort? Anhand der ausgewählten Texte werden die neuralgischen Momente der neudeutschen Verhältnisse und Wirklichkeit(en), aber auch das Spannungsverhältnis von Neuanfang und Verlust thematisiert. Damit wird das Seminar auch das jeweilige Verhältnis von Text und Kontext diskutieren.
