Website
Roberto Simanowski
Cultural
and Media Studies
- Language
Classes
Cultural
and Media Studies 
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GRMN1450: 20
Years After: The End of GDR and German
Reunification -
Brown University, Spring 2010
The fall of the Berlin wall heralded the German
reunification rather than the reformation of the
GDR as an example of “democratic
socialism”. The 20th anniversary gives reason
to discuss the development of Germany since 1990.
Readings of Volker Braun, Christa Wolf, Thomas
Brussig, Ingo Schulze, Clemens Meyer, Yadé
Kara. Films: Goodbye Lenin, Das Leben der anderen,
Willenbrock. Issues discussed: Cold War,
Perestroika, Reunification, East-/West-German
identity, Migration and Globalisation. In
German.
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GRMN2660:
Cultural Industry and the Aesthetics of the
Spectacle -
Brown University, Spring 2008 and 2010 (graduate
course)
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. Readings
and discussions will engage with the emergence of
distraction as a category of experience discussed
from the 17th century on; the function of
entertainment in the culture industries of Nazi
Germany; the critique of mass culture in post war
Germany, and the reformulation of spectacle and
distraction in Culture Studies and postmodern
discourse. Readings: Pascal, Schiller, Adorno,
Benjamin, Kracauer, Debord, Baudrillard, Jameson,
Postman, Virilio, Norbert Bolz. In German.
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GRMN 1330:
The Individual in the Age of Industry
- Brown
University,
Fall
2009
This seminar discusses
the second part of the 19th century, which is
distinguished by nation building, industrial
revolution, advance of science, realism and belief
in progress but also nihilism and cultural
pessimism. We investigate how the new age of
pragmatism and the “technological
sublime” is reflected in short stories by
major German writers of Poetic Realism and
Naturalism such as Berthold Auerbach, Karl Gutzkow,
Theodor Storm, Gottfried Keller, Maria
Ebner-Eschenbach, Theodor Fontane, Arno Holz and
Gerhart Hauptmann. The portrayed conflict between
individualism and industrial revolution in Germany
is finally compared with the situation in the US as
symbolized by the encroaching railroad in Sergio
Leone’s Western “Once Upon a Time in the
West.” In German.
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GRMN 2660:
Nationalismus in Germany
- Brown
University, Spring 2007 and 2009 (graduate
course)
This course examines the raise of German
nationalism in literature and writing in 18th and
19th Century and the perspective on nationalism and
patriotism in Germany after World War II and after
Reunification. The discussion will include the
issue of national identity in light of
globalization and terrorism in the 21st Century.
Readings among others by Lessing, Herder, Jean
Paul, Fichte, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Kant, and Kleist
as well as theorists such as Huntington, Flusser,
Gellner, Bhabha. In German
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GRMN
1616: Migrant Culture in Contemporary
Germany -
Brown University, Spring 2009
This course examines writings and films by and
about migrants in contemporary Germany with a
comparative outlook at contemporary writings by
migrants in the U.S.A. The discussion includes
aspects of cultural identity, multilingualism,
Gastarbeiter, displacement, xenophobia, and
cultural clash as well as concepts of hybridity,
multiculturalism, post-colonialism, and
identity-tourism. In English.
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Faculty
Seminar: Reading Digital Literature and Art
- Brown
University, Faculty-Seminar, Fall 2005 and Spring
2006
The seminar invites scholars mostly, though not
exclusively, from the humanities to discuss how to
read and make sense of the signs a work of digital
literature or art offers to its audience. The
seminar intends to bring together different
perspectives and especially to include faculty who
have not worked in the field of digital literature
and art. It is the special aim of the seminar to
introduce such scholars to the subject as well as
to learn from their specific approach to literature
and art. It is our hope that the seminar will
benefit from the different points of view various
participants have on the subject matter. While
participants with expertise in programming may
stress the role code and software plays in the
process of creation, scholars of literature, visual
art, and performance art may demonstrate to what
extent the methods used in their disciplines help
understanding digital literature and art. In
English.
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GRMN 1440:
Dada-Performance and
Digital-Interactivity
- Brown University, Spring 2005
This course investigates the invention of
performance art and new art genres in German Dada
and its legacy and further development in
contemporary interactive art in digital media. Both
phenomena are discussed with respect to their
aesthetic, philosophical, and social roots and
intentions. In German.
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GRMN
1440: Digital Literature and
Aesthetics
- Brown University, Fall 2003, 2004, 2005 and
2007
We discuss intermediality, multilinearity,
interactivity, and programming as features of
digital literature and art, investigate the
relationship between text, image, and performance,
and read classical texts on and analyze various
examples of digital aesthetics. Keywords: painting
with words, visual writing, text-image-transfer,
mapping art, digital performance, transgenic art,
neo-baroque spectacle, technical/post-human
sublime. The course does not focus on programming
but is rooted in art questions and philosophical
concerns. Courses in literary theory or visual art
would help. The course is open to all students. In
English.
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GRMN
1340: Contemporary German Literature and Film
- Brown
University, Fall 2005 and 2007
Pop-literature is obsessed with brand names, young
female authors depict melancholic city-singles,
books report about "Generation Golf" and
"Generation Ally", 'Ossis' say goodbye to Lenin,
Lola runs through Berlin to rescue her boyfriend.
How is unified Germany doing? What do Germans read
and see? The course will examine both German
literature and films of the last decade. In
German.
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GRMN
1320: Coming of Age' Thematic in German
Literature Within the 20th
Century -
Brown University, Spring 2004
The classroom environment provides a significant
setting for the theatrics of the adolescent
experience and for the ideological shaping of both
person and nation. The course explores how this
aspect is described by authors such as Rilke,
Hesse, Mann, Zweig, Johnson, Andersch, Grass, and
Wolf. The investigation will be supplemented by
examples from European and North American film. In
German.
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GRMN
900: Great Works from
Germany -
Brown University, Spring 2004, 2006, and 2007
Cultural and historical analysis of some of the
most significant German texts from the past two
centuries. Writers: Lessing, Kleist, Büchner,
Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, Christa Wolf.
Philosophers: Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud.
Subjects: Enlightenment and its limits, liberation
and oppression, and love and death. Students will
give one presentation in class and write a final
essay. In English.
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GRMN
600: What is German?, Brown University
- Spring
2006 and 2008
In this course we will examine some of the ideas
and myths used over the centuries to unify Germans
and give them a sense of their heritage and
distinctiveness: concepts like "das Reich" or
"Bildung", figures like "Barbarossa" or "der
deutsche Michel". In some cases we may find the
same words ("Freiheit" or "Gesellschaft") have very
different connotations. In German.
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GRMN 500: Germans'
Self-Identification Before and After the
Unification - Brown
University, Fall 2003, 2004, and
2009
The year
1990 unifies Germany and divides two decades in
German history. The course investigates the
depiction of individual and national identity in
this period. We will examine literature and film in
East and West Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. Oral
and written skills in German are furthered while
deepening participants' understanding of Germany's
cultural and social situation. In German.
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Multimedial,
Multilinear, Multipersonal
Writing -
University of Jena, Spring 2002
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Electronic
Publishing: Theory and Praxis of Digital Designs
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Universität of Jena, Spring 2002, University
of Göttingen, Spring 2001, University of
Erfurt, Fall 2000
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Rise of a
Medium: The Book in the Age of
Enlightenment
- Universität of Jena, Spring 2002,
Universytet Torun, Fall 1996
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Languages
Classes
German for Reading
Knowledge, University of Washington, Seattle, Fall 2002,
Brown University, Spring 2005
German Advanced Reading,
Conversation and Composition, Harvard University, Fall
1998
Summer German Language
Classes, Europazentrum Köln/Weimar, 1993, 1994, 1995,
1996
German for Foreigneirs,
Adult Education Center, Berlin, Fall 1995
German Literature, Language
and History, High School Stadtroda, Fall 1989/ Spring
1990
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