Course Offerings

2013-2014

AP/GER 1000 6.0 — Elementary German

PREREQUISITE: None; no previous knowledge of German is assumed.

DESCRIPTION: Students learn the basic elements of German grammar through an active and participatory approach that should enable them, by the end of the course, to communicate in German in everyday situations. Reading and writing skills are developed parallel to oral and listening skills. Audio visual and culturally related materials provide opportunity for students to expand their understanding of the cultural implications of the language. Note: Supplemental interactive exercises are available in the Multimedia Language Centre (S117 Ross) for language practice in addition to classroom instruction.

FORMAT: Four class hours per week.

AP/GER 2000 6.0 — Intermediate German

PREREQUISITE: AS/GER1000 6.0, University Preparation Level 4 High School or OAC German, or an equivalent background in German.

DESCRIPTION: In addition to a review of basic grammatical structures, students learn and use, in appropriate contexts, more advanced grammatical structures and idioms. The course uses an approach in which all language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) are further developed with the goal of functioning effectively in various German-speaking situations. Students are expected to attend the Multimedia Language Centre (South 117 Ross Building) to use various audio-visual materials, computer programmes and the Internet to assist in the process of language acquisition and cross-cultural literacy.

FORMAT: Four class hours per week.

AP/GER 2790 9.0 – Germany Through the Ages: Culture and Society

(Cross-listed with AP/HUMA 2190 9.0)

Instructors: Ulrich Best and staff

PREREQUISITE: This course is offered entirely in English; no knowledge of German is required or assumed.  The course is a required course for the German Studies degree program (both streams).

DESCRIPTION: In the heart of the "New Europe" lies a "New Germany," united in 1990 after almost a half-century of division. In attempting to answer the question as to how new and how united this new Germany is, events, movements, and personalities are examined which throughout German history have shaped German culture and society. Texts are taken from a variety of fields such as literature, journalism, political science, sociology, history, music, cinema and other visual arts. Topics discussed include: Germany and other German speaking countries, medieval heritage, religion, nationalism, resistance to authority, every day life under National Socialism and Socialism, minorities, Germany's role in today's Europe, and finally, an intercultural reflection of Canadian views of Germany.

FORMAT: Two hours lecture and two hours tutorial. The course is team-taught. Some guest lectures, as well as showing of some films/videos in class, as appropriate.

AP/GER 3001 3.0 Advanced Level German, Level IA

Instructor: Gabriele Mueller

PREREQUISITE: AP/GER2000 6.0 or equivalent. Departmental Course Entry Authorization slip required PRIOR TO ENROLMENT.

DESCRIPTION: This course will build upon and expand the students' knowledge of the German language and culture. It will focus on the development of a wider range of vocabulary, more complex grammatical structures and on pronunciation. Emphasis will be put on the exploration of authentic and up-to-date German language materials and on the discussion of current cultural issues.

Note: Upon completion of this course, the majority of the students should have sufficient background to sit for a language proficiency examination. For students not majoring in German, the Certificate of Proficiency in German Language, offered by the Department, should be of interest.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 3002 3.0 Advanced Level German, Level IB

Instructor: Gabriele Mueller

PREREQUISITE: AP/GER 3001 3.0 or equivalent. Departmental Course Entry Authorization slip required PRIOR TO ENROLMENT.

DESCRIPTION: This course will build upon and expand the students' knowledge of the German language and culture. It will focus on the development of a wider range of vocabulary, more complex grammatical structures and on pronunciation. Emphasis will be put on the exploration of authentic and up-to-date German language materials and on the discussion of current cultural issues.

Note: Upon completion of this course, the majority of the students should have sufficient background to sit for a language proficiency examination. For students not majoring in German, the Certificate of Proficiency in German Language, offered by the Department, should be of interest.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 3200 6.0 Modern and Contemporary German Writers

(Cross-listed with AP/EN 3461 6.0 and taught with AP/GER 4200 6.0)

Instructor: Diana Spokiene

NO PREREQUISITE.

Note: The course does not count for German major/minor credit in the German Studies (Language, Literature and Culture) stream. However, this course (or AP/GER4200 6.0) is a required course for students pursuing a major or minor in the German Studies (Culture and Society) stream.

DEGREE CREDIT EXCLUSION: AP/GER4200 6.0

DESCRIPTION: This course aims to familiarize students with some of the major German-language writers and works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Writers may include Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Georg Simmel, Irmgard Keun, Bertolt Brecht, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin, Günter Grass, Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Wolf, Bernhard Schlink and W.G. Sebald. We will apply various theoretical and critical approaches in order to establish the historical, sociological and cultural conditions under which these texts were produced and to discuss the particular pressures and concerns to which they represent a response.

Topics may include: modernism and modernity; gendered urban spaces; war and social disorder; post-war reflections on National Socialism; history, memory and representation; Germany divided/Germany reunified; migration and transnational/multilingual identities. Other media such as film, music and visual arts may also be considered.

FORMAT: Two hours of lecture and discussion and one hour of tutorial.

AP/GER 3600 3.0 Berlin in German Literature and Culture

(Cross-listed with AP/HUMA 3600 3.0)

Instructor: Christina Kraenzle

NO PREREQUISITE.

DESCRIPTION: In the last century, Berlin has undergone changes and upheavals more radical than those experienced by virtually any other great metropolis. During the first three decades of the 20th century, it was a world centre of modernism. It then served as the capital of Hitler's Third Reich. After World War II, Berlin became a microcosm of the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany began a new and challenging era for Berlin, now the capital of a "New Germany."

This course highlights the following periods in the story of modern Berlin: the making of a metropolis; Weimar; Hitler and the aftermath; the Cold War; and reunification. In particular, it will consider Berlin's rich cultural history and the artists, filmmakers, writers, architects, intellectuals and other cultural agents who influenced, and were influenced by, the developments of modern Berlin.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 3640 3.0 Women in German Literature and Culture

(Cross-listed with AP/HUMA 3602 3.0)

Instructor: Susan Ingram

NO PREREQUISITE.

DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the rich cultural history of women writers, filmmakers and artists from German-speaking Europe, their roles and identities, and the formation of gender-specific national and intercultural models in literary works and other forms of cultural representation.

We will encounter Europe's first female playwright, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, and one of the 21st century's brightest young literary stars. We will apply various theoretical and critical approaches, ranging from feminist theory, feminist or other literary criticism and social and literary history, in order to establish the historical, sociological and cultural conditions under which these texts were produced and to discuss the particular pressures and concerns to which they represent a response.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 3793 3.0 Screening the Past: Rewriting German History in Film

(Cross-listed with AP/HUMA 3986)

Instructor: Gabriele Mueller

NO PREREQUISITE.

DESCRIPTION: This course will look at the medium of film as a cultural product which contributes to the shaping of national/collective identities by its representation of history. We will look at film texts which were produced in the Weimar Republic, in West and East Germany, and in post-unification Germany during the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century.

Our analyses and discussions will focus on the different approaches to the reconstruction of history within the context of political, social, and cultural developments. We will structure our discussion around major themes such as nostalgia, cultural heritage, autobiography and discuss issues of 'collective memory', 'reality', 'realism', 'representation', and 'authenticity' against the background of dominant aesthetic positions at the time of the films' production and reception.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 3840 3.0 German Romanticism: Tradition and Revolution

(Cross-listed with AP/EN 3460 3.0)

Instructor: Diana Spokiene

NO PREREQUISITE.

DESCRIPTION: German Romanticism (c. 1796-1830) produced radical and innovative works that profoundly influenced German and European culture. Searching for new forms of expression in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Romantics embraced new impulses from music, the visual arts, philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences, initiating developments that anticipate the modernity of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In this course we will explore the seminal ideas of Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, and Wackenroder, and read popular stories of Tieck, Fouqué, Chamisso, and Brentano as well as the fairy tales of women writers such as Günderrode and Bettina von Arnim, and those of the Brothers Grimm; we will examine Romantic tropes such as madness, the quest, the uncanny and the subject as hero and/or antihero, and explore painting, music, architecture, philosophy, as well as literature.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 3989 6.0 Germany and the Global Imaginary

(Cross-listed with AP/HUMA 3989 6.0)

Instructors: Christina Kraenzle and Gabriele Mueller

NO PREREQUISITE.

Note: This course is a required course for students pursuing a major or minor in the German Studies program (both streams).

DESCRIPTION: This course aims to familiarize students with major trends in contemporary, transnational German Studies through the analysis of key moments that have informed German self-imagination and the imagination of other cultures. It considers how other nations' engagement with Germany has influenced German self-definition. Through the examination of select intellectual, artistic, and social engagements with various parts of the world, the course aims to challenge simple national paradigms of 'Germanness' and to highlight cross-border contacts and exchanges that have helped to shape Germany's history.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week.

AP/GER 4200 6.0 Modern and Contemporary German Writers

Instructor: Diana Spokiene

PREREQUISITE: AP/GER 3002 3.0, or permission by the Department.

Note: This course is a required course for students pursuing a major or minor in the German Studies (Language, Literature and Culture) stream.

DESCRIPTION: This course aims to familiarize students with some of the major German-language writers and works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Writers may include Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Georg Simmel, Irmgard Keun, Bertolt Brecht, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin, Günter Grass, Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Wolf, Bernhard Schlink and W.G. Sebald.

We will apply various theoretical and critical approaches in order to establish the historical, sociological and cultural conditions under which these texts were produced and to discuss the particular pressures and concerns to which they represent a response.

Topics may include: modernism and modernity; gendered urban spaces; war and social disorder; post-war reflections on National Socialism; history, memory and representation; Germany divided/Germany reunified; migration and transnational/multilingual identities. Other media such as film, music and visual arts may also be considered.

FORMAT: Two hours of lecture and discussion and one hour of tutorial.

AP/GER 4600 3.0 Berlin in German Literature and Culture

(Taught with AP/GER 3600 3.0)

Instructor: Christina Kraenzle

NO PREREQUISITE.

DESCRIPTION: In the last century, Berlin has undergone changes and upheavals more radical than those experienced by virtually any other great metropolis. During the first three decades of the 20th century, it was a world centre of modernism. It then served as the capital of Hitler's Third Reich. After World War II, Berlin became a microcosm of the Cold War.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany began a new and challenging era for Berlin, now the capital of a "New Germany." This course highlights the following periods in the story of modern Berlin: the making of a metropolis; Weimar; Hitler and the aftermath; the Cold War; and reunification. In particular, it will consider Berlin's rich cultural history and the artists, filmmakers, writers, architects, intellectuals and other cultural agents who influenced, and were influenced by, the developments of modern Berlin.

FORMAT: Three class hours per week for one term.

AP/GER 4640 3.0 Women in German Literature and Culture

(Taught with AP/GER 3640 3.0)

Instructor: Susan Ingram

NO PREREQUISITE.

DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the rich cultural history of women writers, filmmakers and artists from German-speaking Europe, their roles and identities, and the formation of gender-specific national and intercultural models in literary works and other forms of cultural representation. We will encounter Europe's first female playwright, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, and one of the 21st century's brightest young literary stars.

We will apply various theoretical and critical approaches, ranging from feminist theory, feminist or other literary criticism and social and literary history, in order to establish the historical, sociological and cultural conditions under which these texts were produced and to discuss the particular pressures and concerns to which they represent a response.

FORMAT: Three contact hours a week.