GER 102Beginner's German IIContinues the goals of GER 101, focusing on increased communicative proficiency (oral and written), effective reading strategies, and listening skills. Emphasis on functional language tasks: learning to request, persuade, ask for help, express opinions, agree and disagree, negotiate conversations, and gain perspective on German culture through readings and discussion. Participants eligible to apply for Princeton-in-Munich, GER 105-G, June, 2010. The afternoon section , intended for graduate students, follows the basic syllabus with added emphasis on reading skills.
GER 107Advanced GermanContinues improvement of proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing using news magazines, electronic media, and literary texts as a basis for class discussion. Grammar review is included.
GER 208German Lang: Society, Politics & CultureThe course offers an introduction to German postwar art, society, and politics, featuring the paperwork of denazification and the miracles of economics, a grand coalition and an extra parliamentary opposition, urban guerilleros, squabbling historians, pop enthusiasts, unofficial collaborators, and the paperwork of reunification. Focus on the German obsession with being on time: From the Kulturfahrplan at the zero hour to the unfinished project of modernity, from an anachronistic procession to the mercy of late birth.
GER 210Introduction to German Philosophy(EC)Major works of the German philosophical tradition from the Enlightenment to the present (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Adorno). The course will offer a survey of German intellectual history from a philosophical perspective, but will also engage directly and closely with theoretical texts. Domains to be explored include metaphysics, aesthetics, political philosophy and philosophy of language.
GER 211Introduction to Media Theory(EC)Through careful readings of a wide range of media theoretical texts from the late 19th to early 21st century, this seminar will trace the development of critical reflection on technologies and media ranging from the printing press to photography, from gramophones to radio technologies, from pre-cinematic optical devices to film and television, and from telephony and typewriters to cyberspace. Topics include the relationship between representation and technology, the historicity of perception, the interplay of aesthetics, technics and politics, and transformations of reigning notions of imagination, literacy, communication, reality, and truth.
GER 303Topics in Prose Fiction(LA)Kafka wrote late in life that "one develops in one's own way only after death, only once one is alone." How, then, did Kafka develop, who, upon his death in 1924, had published but a fraction of his writings and left a will that seemed to ask for the destruction of the rest? We will study the emergence of an exemplary author and iconic figure by considering the literary scene he entered in 1908, his romantic and textual engagements in Prague and Berlin, the posthumous struggles over the publication, interpretation, and editing of his novels, short prose, diaries, correspondences, and the love his solitary stance provokes to this day.
POL 305/GER 312/SOC 320Radical Political Thought(EM)This course will examine traditions of political thought--mostly, but not only, on the Left--which challenge mainstream conceptions of liberal democracy and modern capitalist society. The main focus will be on Marxism, anarchism, feminism, religious radicalism, ecological thought, and critiques of alienation in everyday life. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between political and cultural criticism, and to the philosophical anthropologies underlying different theories as well as the mechanisms for social change they envisage. We also ask if liberal democratic thought can effectively respond to radical challenges.
GER 321Topics in German Medieval Literature(LA)A young Arthurian knight loses honor because he enjoys having sex with his wife. The Grail King is wounded near fatally in the genitals while trying to win the "wrong" woman. Young kings dress up and act like women in order to woo their prospective brides. This course will explore what it meant to be men and women in love (with each other or with God) in some of the most spectacular literary works of the German Middle Ages. The larger context for our discussion will be a more nuanced understanding of the history of sexuality. Readings and discussion primarily in modern German, some readings and discussion in English.
GER 324/COM 317Topics in Germanic Literatures(LA)This course instoduces students to the literature of German and European Romanticism. Emphasis on understanding the literature and philosophy of this period in its intellectual and cultural context. Readings include both literary works and a number of theoretical, political, and scientific texts from Rousseau to Kleist that relect the extraordinary developments in Western thought in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
REL 396/GER 304/PHI 396Genealogy of Secularism(EM)This course explores the philosophical development of the concept of secularism, its philosophical and religious sources, as well as its critiques. Among the questions we will consider are: what is universal about secularism? Is critical thought necessarily secular? What is the relation between secularism and readings of the Bible? Our method will be genealogical, meaning that our focus will be on the philosophical aspects of secularism, rather than on the history of secularism.