Language Courses
Literature & Culture Courses
SAS Core Goal Courses:
Intermediate German I 01:470:131
Intermediate German II 01:470:132
Advanced German II 01:470:232
Tales of Horror 01:470:227:01
Introduction to German Studies 01:470:275
The Culture of Yiddish: An Introduction 01:470:280
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis 01:470:301
Nazi Period in Film 01:470:350:01
Literature of Chaos & Order 01:470:364:01
Language Courses
Elementary German 101
01:470:101:01
Anna Mayer
MWTh3 11:30-12:40pm, Scott Hall 115
Syllabus
01:470:101:02
Alexander Pichugin
M6 4:30-5:50pm, Scott Hall 106
W67 4:30-7:30pm, Scott Hall 221
Syllabus
01:470:101:03
Anthony Kosar
MTh2 9:50-11:10am, Scott Hall 201
W2 9:50-11:10am, Scott Hall 214
Syllabus
01:470:101:04
Damian Grammatikoupolos
M6 4:30-5:50pm, Scott Hall 219
W67 4:30-7:30pm, AB 2250
Syllabus
Not open for credit to students who have had two or more years of high-school German. Such students should enroll in German 121, unless they have placed into a higher-level German course.
The first semester of Elementary German introduces students to the language and culture of German-speaking countries. By the end of the semester students will be able to: talk about their activities, including studies, recreational pursuits; express their likes and dislikes; talk about possessions; give opinions on matters of taste or style; describe their talents and those of others; express their intentions, obligations, and necessities; describe feelings; talk about things that happened in the past; talk about shopping, work, and daily life at home; describe their career plans.
Elementary German 102
01:470:102:01
Susan Doose
MWTh3 11:30am-12:50pm, Scott Hall 104
Syllabus
Not open for credit to students who have had two or more years of high-school German. Such students should enroll in German 121, unless they have placed into a higher-level German course.
The second semester of Elementary German expands the student’s vocabulary and knowledge of German grammar. By the end of the semester students should be able to: talk about housing and housework; describe what to do when in need of medical assistance; talk about shopping and ordering food at restaurants; talk about family and community issues in a multicultural society; talk about the past and historic events.
German for Travel
01:470:103:01
Alexander Pichugin
Th4 1:10-2:30pm, AB 3100
Syllabus
This course will introduce students to the language and culture of German-speaking countries focusing on the language competencies particularly relevant in travel situations. By the end of the semester students will be able to speak about themselves in general and as travelers; ask basic questions about travel; discuss their travel interests and express likes and dislikes; speak about German-speaking countries and their inhabitants; orient themselves in means of transportation and accommodations used in Europe; purchase tickets and book hotel rooms on German-language websites.
German Conversation
01:470:104:01
Anna Mayer
W5 2:50-4:10pm, AB 2200
Syllabus
This course will introduce students to the language and culture of German-speaking countries focusing on the language competencies particularly relevant for oral communication in everyday situations. By the end of the semester students will be able to speak about themselves; ask basic questions; share basic information about their families and relatives; speak about their studies; speak about objects relevant to everyday situations; speak about the weather; express likes and dislikes.
Intermediate German I
01:470:131:02
Janine Wahrendorf
TTh7 6:10-7:30pm, Scott Hall 204
Syllabus
Prerequisite: 01:470:101, 01:470:102, or placement test
The first semester of Intermediate German further develops students' German language skills with an emphasis on conversation and composition based on everyday situations, aspects of culture, contemporary German short stories, and review of major grammatical points. Students will strengthen their listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as cultural competency by discussing a variety of cultural topics and themes in the German-speaking world, including personal and community life, media, travel, and art. Fulfills SAS core goal AH q.
Intermediate German II
01:470:132:01
Doris Glowacki
TTh6 4:30-5:50pm, Murray Hall 111
Syllabus
Prerequisite: 01:470:131
The second semester of Intermediate German further expands German language skills with an emphasis on conversation and composition. Students will strengthen their listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as cultural competency by discussing a variety of cultural topics and themes in the German-speaking world, including traditions and celebrations, science and technology, nature and the environment, economy and the job market, and history and society. Fulfills SAS core goal AH q.
Advanced German I
01:470:231:01
Manuel Clemens
TTh4 1:10-2:30pm, AB 1252
Syllabus
Prerequisite: 01:470:132 or placement test
This course is designed to further students' overall German language proficiency at an advanced level. Students read authentic texts from a variety of media and genre with a thematic focus. Students work on increasing active and passive vocabulary and perfecting sentence structure in oral and written communication. The course includes intensive work on idiomatic vocabulary, sentence structure, and patterns of expression, to enable students to discuss a variety of complex topics with increasing ease and confidence.
Literature & Culture Courses
Tales of Horror
01:470:227:01
Nicola Behrmann
F23 9:50am-12:50pm, AB 1180
pdf
Syllabus
(923 KB)
In English. No prerequisites.
Frankenstein and Dracula, vampires and zombies, Doppelgängers, ghosts, and artificial humans continue to haunt the cultural imagination throughout the centuries. This course explores tales of horror through some of their most spellbinding creatures and fantasies in a period ranging from the Brothers Grimm to surrealist cinema. We will consider the historical or political context and psychoanalytical underpinnings in each horrific tale and we will pay close attention to the ways a narrative (text or film) establishes, safeguards, or releases its horrific kernel. We will reflect on the ways in which horror enters German Expressionism and why moving images relate particularly well to the uncanny, and will expore the similarities and differences in the way film and literature explore horror. Readings include tales by the Grimm Brothers, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Mary Shelley, Jeremias Gotthelf, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James, Bram Stoker, and Franz Kafka. Film contributions range from Murnau's Nosferatu and Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Louis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Fulfills SAS core goals AH o, p.
Introduction to German Studies: 1750-1900
01:470:275:01
Manuel Clemens
T3 11:30am-12:50pm, Hardenbergh Hall A7
Th3 11:30am-12:50pm, Hardenbergh Hall A5
Syllabus
In English. No prerequisites.
An interdisciplinary inquiry into the seminal literary, artistic, social, political, and intellectual movements in the history of Germanic cultures and thought from 1750 to 1900. Fulfills SAS core goals AH p; WC d.
The Culture of Yiddish: An Introduction
01:470:280:01
Cross-listed with Jewish Studies 01:563:245:01
Jeffrey Shandler
TTh6 4:30-5:50pm, Miller Hall 116
Syllabus
In English. No prerequisites.
Did you know:
- there were once 11 million Yiddish speakers worldwide?
- there are neighborhoods in Brooklyn where the ATMs offer a Yiddish option?
- there are 300-year-old alternate prayers, especially for women, written in Yiddish?
- there was a Jewish Autonomous Region, with Yiddish as its official language, established in the Soviet Union in the 1930s?
- there are more then a dozen different words for "Christmas" in Yiddish?
- you can visit an organic farm in upstate New York where only Yiddish is spoken?
- you can watch videos in Yiddish produced in New York, Montreal, and Stockholm?
Explore the thousand-year history of Yiddish, key to centuries of Jewish folklore and politics, great works of modern literature and traditional spirituality. Learn how a language thrives in diaspora and endures a genocide, and how it has enriched the lives of fundamentalists, revolutionaries, avant-garde performers, and others—including many people who aren't Jewish—around the world. Fulfills SAS core goal AH q.
Contemporary German Media & Society
01:470:299:01
Janine Wahrendorf
T8 7:40-9:00pm, AB 2200
Syllabus
Prerequisite: 01:470:102 or 01:470:121, or higher.
In German. If taken twice, 470:299 may be counted for three credits towards the major or minor.
The main goal of this course is to increase the students' cultural awareness through the study of the various media and their role in contemporary German society, while furthering the students' German language skills through consistent speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In this course, students will explore the traditional, modernized, and news media and the role they play in different realms of contemporary German society. Chosen topics of the course are crucial to understanding the modern German-speaking world and include themes such as social structure, politics, culture, and everyday life. Special attention is paid to cultural comparisons between Germany and the United States.
Introduction to Literature & Culture Analaysis: Love and Fear: Coming of Age
01:470:301:01
Manuel Clemens
TTh6 4:30-5:50pm, AB 3450
Syllabus
In German.
Prerequisite: Current enrollment in or prior completion of 01:470:231 or 01:470:232.
Please note 470:301 may be repeated for credit when topics vary!
In the song "Growing Up," Bruce Springsteen described coming of age as an ambiguous process where he "lost everything I ever loved or feared." This course will examine the liberating yet troublesome experience of losing love and fear during the process of growing up. Excerpts from coming-of-age novels in the German tradition will be discussed in order to explore how "losing fear" is achieved via a new kind of self-esteem, rebellious hopes, and possibilities, and how each protagonist deals with "losing love" by means of giving up old habits and securities. Furthermore, we will also explore how this process might lead to new kinds of "loves and fears," and how different social and cultural conditions shape this development. Fulfills SAS core goals AH p; WC r; WC d.
Nazi Period in Film
01:470:350:01
Alexander Pichugin
MW5 2:50-4:10pm, Campbell Hall A5
Syllabus
In English. No prerequisites.
Cinema played a special role both in the Third Reich and in the representation of the Nazi period long after it ended. Between 1933 and 1945, the German film industry was the second-largest in the world after Hollywood. It was controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda and was remarkable for its production volume (more than 1000 feature films issued) and the role these films played in the everyday life of German citizens. The many feature films as well as documentaries functioned as a propaganda tool for National Socialist ideology, but also provided entertainment within the permissible parameters of the regime. This course invites students to explore the important role film played during the Nazi time/era, as well as the role of film in the representation of events in Germany of the Nazi period. Films include: Metropolis (1927), Triumph of the Will (1935), The Eternal Jew (1940), Germany, Pale Mother (1980), Das Boot (1981), Schindler's List (1993). Fulfills SAS core goal AH p.
Literature of Chaos & Order
01:470:364:01
Cross-listed with Comparative Literature 01:195:364:01
Nicholas Rennie
MW4 1:10-2:30pm, Campbell Hall A3
Syllabus
In English.
Considering how the world began has always also meant wondering how it might end. In recent centuries, increasingly, it has also involved thinking about the position of human beings in a physical and moral universe whose structures can no longer be taken for granted. This course examines the ways a selection of writers and philosophers from the Renaissance to the present have represented dramatic upheavals in the phyiscal universe as analogies for crisis and revolution in the realms of history, politics, psychology, science, and the arts. Fulfills SAS core goals AH o, p.
Topics: Expressionismus, Dada, Surrealismus: Kunst und Revolution
01:470:389:01
Nicola Behrmann
T4 1:10-2:30pm, Scott Hall 215
Th4 1:10-2:30pm, Scott Hall 219
Syllabus
In German. Prerequisite: 470:232.
This interdisciplinary course is an introduction into various avant-garde movements in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. We will consider innovations in art, music, film, architecture, and literature, beginning with Expressionism, followed by Futurism and Dada, and later Surrealist works. We will look at the various and often contradictory ways in which these movements discover the irrational, the pathological, the unconscious, the precarious, and the abandoned as revolutionary gesture with the potential of changing the world in an aesthetical, but also in a political, sense. Readings include poems and short stories (Heym, van Hoddis, Benn, Scheerbart, Becher, Ball, Hennings, Arp, and Kafka); art (Kirchner, Marc, Kokoschka, Höch, Heartfield, Ernst); architecture (Loos, Taut); and silent films (Wiene's Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, Richter's Vormittagsspuk, Pabst's Die Büchse der Pandora).
Byrne Seminars
Dreams of (Human) Machines
01:090:101:80
Nicola Behrmann
T5 2:50-4:10pm, AB 2150
Syllabus
In English. Open only to first year Rutgers students.
This seminar examines the role of machines and automatons in regard to the modernist crisis of representation, the fantasy of artificial procreation, and the connection between art and life. Beginning with a discussion of E. T. A. Hoffmann's horror story, "The Sandman," and several key passages of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, we will investigate the ways in which dreams of human machines are linked to ways to overcome a loss; we will then look at the ways in which 19th century hysterics and their doctors influenced each other; try to make sense of Dada sound poems and the Surrealist concept of "automatic writing," read Franz Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony," travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see Marcel Duchamp's famous installation The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), and view science fiction films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
