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Graduate Courses - Fall 2008

To make an appointment with an advisor or for general information about our graduate courses, please contact Lutz Koepnick, Director of Graduate Studies.

The course listings below are also available as a download.

• GER 456 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE
• GER 5052 TEACHING PRACTICUM
• GER 5061 APPRENTICESHIP IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE I
• GER 5062 APPRENTICESHIP IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE II
• GER 5071 GERMAN READING KNOWLEDGE FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS I
• GER 521 FROM VOLKSBUCH TO NOVEL: NARRATIVE EVOLUTIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
• GER 526 SEMINAR IN THE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: VICTORY AND ITS DISCONTENTS 1871-1914: NATIONAL CULTURE IN IMPERIAL GERMANY
• GER 529 WALTER BENJAMIN & CO.
• GER 532 SEMINAR IN EUROPEAN HISTORY: HABSBURG CENTRAL EUROPE
• GER 580 RESEARCH FOR MASTER'S THESIS
• GER 590 RESEARCH

• GER 456 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE This course provides a solid introduction to the earliest forms of German language and literary culture, with the emphasis on Middle High German and the years around 1200. A variety of approaches--paleographical, linguistic, semantic, theoretical--encourage a broad-based fluency in MHG. Students apply this knowledge to the texts at hand. Exemplary readings are drawn from heroic epic, Minnesang, courtly romance and other legal, historical and devotional texts of the German Middle Ages. Instruction, discussion and assignments in English. For students with graduate standing only. Credit 3 units. TuTh 3:00-4:30; Eads Hall, Room 115. Layher
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• GER 5052 TEACHING PRACTICUM This course supports beginning university instructors during their first German course at Washington University. It will be comprised of activity composition, discussion and microteaching with a focus on the following topics: a review of processing instruction, the national standards and the four skills in a cultural context, technology in the foreign language classroom, and appropriate strategies for feedback, assessment and motivation. Credit 1 units. TuTh 2:00-3:00; Eads Hall, Room 115. Russo
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• GER 5061 APPRENTICESHIP IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE I Apprenticeship in teaching literature and culture in English. For students who have completed at least 1 year of teaching at Washington University. Credit 1 unit. Tatlock
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• GER 5062 APPRENTICESHIP IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE II Apprenticeship in teaching literature and culture in German. For students who have completed at least 1 year of teaching at Washington University. Credit 1 unit. Tatlock
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• GER 5071 GERMAN READING KNOWLEDGE FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS I The first part of a two-semester course sequence in reading and translating German. For graduate students in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. May not be taken for graduate credit. Credit 3 units. MW 6:30-8:00; Lopata Hall, Room 103. Staff
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• GER 521 FROM VOLKSBUCH TO NOVEL: NARRATIVE EVOLUTIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES Prose fiction developed as the dominant literary form during the early modern period (1500-1700). We will read and review several important literary milestones that mark the narrative changes leading from late medieval/early modern prose narratives (Volksbücher) to early forms of the novel. We will explore the relationship of facts and fiction, the influence of magic, demonology, and travel writings as well as issues of gender construction and their effect on the evolution of these narratives. Readings include Melusine, Dr. Faustus/Wagner, Fotunatus, Courage, and a novel by Eberhard Happel.M 4:00-6:00; Cupples I, Room 218. Williams
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• GER 526 SEMINAR IN THE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: VICTORY AND ITS DISCONTENTS 1871-1914: NATIONAL CULTURE IN IMPERIAL GERMANY This course treats expressions of national culture in Imperial Germany in the first three decades after the victory over France in 1871. It will include examination of painting; monuments; school plays, school readers, and books for children; historical fiction and drama; and poetry with regard to the myths and values espoused by those promoting national culture, particularly as rooted in Preußentum. These cultural artifacts will be contrasted with critical works by Storm, Fontane, Raabe and others that give voice to profound discontent with developments after 1871. The course will conclude with a leap forward to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as a summation of and meditation on the discontents of the national imperial project. Reading in German, discussion in English. Credit 3 units. M 1:30-4:00; Earth & Planetary Sciences Bldg, Room 102. Tatlock
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• GER 529 WALTER BENJAMIN & CO. (Home-based in Comparative Literature) This course will explore the seminal work of Walter Benjamin, one of the major figures of early 20th-century theory and cultural criticism. Our discussions will focus on how his thought reflected and inspired contemporary conversations about the role of art in society; the cultural logic of capitalism; the specificity of older and newer media; the tasks and limits of literary translation; the relation of history, memory, and theology; and the historical transformations of sensory perception. This seminar engages with some of the most important texts and critical interventions of Benjamin from the 1920s to 1940, including Goethe’s Elective Affinities, “The Task of the Translator,” One-Way Street, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," and The Arcades Project. We will read these contributions against the backdrop of the texts, authors, traditions, sites, and conceptual constellations that were at the center of Benjamin’s intellectual pursuits. Works by Adorno, Baudelaire, Breton, Eisenstein, Goethe, Kafka, Klee, Kracauer, Lukacs, Marinetti, Marx, Proust, Riegl, Valery, and Weber will help us to illuminate Benjamin’s thought, highlight the interconnectedness and interdisciplinary vibrancy of his work, and probe the continued actuality of his writing about the dialectic of the aesthetic and the political, of history and redemption, of modernity and myth, of progress and catastrophe. Same as Comp Lit 511. Credit 3 units. W 4:00-6:30; Cupples I, Room 115. Koepnick · Course website
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• GER 532 SEMINAR IN EUROPEAN HISTORY: HABSBURG CENTRAL EUROPE (Home-based in History) [The following seminar may be of interest to graduate students. It would count as a course taken outside of the department.] This seminar is designed to introduce graduate students to current scholarly literature in the social, political, and cultural history of East Central Europe - defined geographically by the modern boundaries of the Habsburg monarchy, its later incarnation as Austria-Hungary, and its successor states in the 20th century, including Austria, the Czech lands, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The themes and readings for this course would be relevant to students interested in German history and culture, empires and imperialism, modern European and modern Jewish history, as well as specialists in East Central Europe. In addition to the weekly reading and discussion, students will write several short, critical reviews as well as a seminar paper on a research topic of their choice. Same as History 5442 and EuSt 5442. Credit 4 units. M 6:00-9:00; Eads Hall, Room 205. Kieval
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• GER 580 RESEARCH FOR MASTER'S THESIS Credit to be arranged.
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• GER 590 RESEARCH Credit to be arranged.
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