Introduction to German Culture Studies Credit Hours: 3 This course explores German literature as a window onto central themes and developments in German and Austrian society, culture and history in the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus is on realistic fiction as testimony to the lived experience of daily life, place, social class, gender, national identity, modernization, political crisis and conflict, persecution, and memory. Required of German majors; open to all students. Taught in English. Satisfies Core Area IV (World Languages and Culture or Humanities and Arts) and the Franklin College Fine Arts/Philosophy/Religion requirement. Fall 2025 Description: The main aim of this survey course is to introduce you (undergraduate students) to German literature, culture, and media of the 20th and 21st century. While engaging with cultural products, we will address aspects of the social, political, economic, and demographic changes and shifts in Germany of the 20th/21st century. The class will ask questions in relation to the changing circumstances and discourses, and will determine how these changes are produced by, reflected in, and elaborated on in German cultural products. The material to be discussed ranges primarily from the late Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic, to the Third Reich, the post-war years, the Cold War period of divided Germany, to contemporary productions. We will discuss these materials (advertisements, films, literary works, and other texts) as case studies. Selected films and textual works will be discussed in segments/excerpts, others in their entirety. The coursewill be accompanied with selected readings about the individual cultural products and periods. The course is for the most part chronologically structured. You do not need prior knowledge of German cultural history. The course aims to give a broad overview of some of the ruptures and continuities in the cultural history of Germany in the 20th/21st centuries. It tries to do this by highlighting select cultural products (with examples from cinema, film, and literature) that engage with German’s history & present in one way or another. Semester Offered: Fall Course Type: German Courses Level: Undergraduate
