Graduate Program

For a listing of current courses, see our COURSES page.

SELECTION OF PAST GRADUATE COURSES:

GRMN2320 “1700” (K. Goodman)

Comparing language (rhetoric, style), literature (poetry, drama, novel), and other cultural phenomena (theater, dictionaries, emblem books, professionalization), we will consider shifts in cultural paradigms from the early modern to the modern period. Grimmelshausen and Gellert; Gryphius and Gottsched; Opitz and Haller.

GRMN2340B Poetik der AutorInnen (T. Kniesche)

This course will examine postwar literary aesthetics as put forth in the so-called "Poetikvorlesungen" which several universities in German-speaking countries have instituted since 1959. These lectures have featured important contemporary authors thinking about their work - from poetic practices and aesthetic theories to biographic considerations and the technicalities of writing literature in today's world.

GRMN2460 German Literature 1945-1967 (T. Kniesche)

Examines the literature and the literary debates in postwar Germany, East and West. Authors to be discussed include those of the Gruppe 47 and those excluded from the group in the West; Brecht, Seghers, Becher and the new generation in the East. Emphasis on cultural politics and the role of literature in postwar German society (the work of the mourning, political restoration).

GRMN2460B German Literature 1968-1989 (T. Kniesche)

Discussion of major trends in literature written in German: New Subjectivity, postmodernism, feminist literature, the role of mythology, post-histoire. Authors to be discussed include Botho Strauss, Elfriede Jelinek, Thomas Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, among others.

GRMN2660 On the Sublime (Z. Sng)

Survey of major theories of the sublime from antiquity to modern times, with emphasis on German, British, and French texts from the 18th to 20th centuries. Authors to be read include Longinus, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Neil Hertz.

GRMN2660 Nationalism (R. Simanoswki)

This course examines the rise of German nationalism in literature and writing in 18th and 19th century and discusses the issue of national identity and multiculturalism. The course will also consider globalization and terrorism in the 21st Century. Readings among others by Lessing, Herder, Jean Paul, Fichte, Arndt, Kleist.

GRMN2660C Socialism and the Intellectuals (C. Poore)

The international socialist movement was born in Germany, and many of Germany's most important intellectuals were attracted to its striving for social justice. Against the background of 19th century politics and theory, the course focuses on the Weimar Republic, the cultural politics of the German Democratic Republic and the New Left in the Federal Republic, and developments since reunification. Authors may include Heine, Marx, Hauptmann, Brecht, Müller, C. Wolf. Readings in German, discussions in English and/or German.

GRMN2660D Aesthetics of the Spectacle (R. Simanowski)

The seminar focuses on figurations of mass culture, culture industry and diversion as conceptualized primarily by Enlightenment thinkers, Frankfurt School, French Situationism, French postmodern philosophy and contemporary German debate. Special attention will be paid to "Autonomieästhetik", "Engagement" and the new "cultural underclass" in Germany. Readings include texts by Pascal, Fichte, Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno, Debord, Baudrillard, Jameson, Nolte and many others. In German.

GRMN2660F Benjamin and Kracauer (B. Stiegler, Max Kade Visiting Prof.)

The writings of Benjamin and Kracauer are of major importance for media history, the concept of cultural critique, and theories of media, history, and propaganda. We will read some of their theoretical and autobiographical texts and some unpublished papers by Kracauer on a "Project of a Test Film," undertaken with Horkheimer and the Institute of Social Research in the 1940s.

COLT2820P Aesthetics and the Eighteenth Century Subject (Z. Sng)

The debates about taste, judgment, beauty, sentiment, and sensation in the eighteenth century gave rise to the discourse of aesthetics as we know it today, but they also exerted a powerful influence on how knowledge, virtue, and subjectivity were imagined in the post-enlightenment period. In this course, we will examine some of the founding texts of aesthetic theory from the era (including Locke, Smith, Burke, Lessing, and Kant), and then turn to consider how aesthetic questions informed and were taken up by Goethe's narrative of subject-formation in his Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.