Undergraduate Program in German

Selected Undergraduate Course Offerings (100 - 200 level)

Courses taught in German | Courses taught in English | Current Courses

Courses taught in German

German 1: First-Year German I. Credits: 1.00
First semester of a two-semester sequence. Communicative approach to the language of every-day life in German-speaking countries. Practice in spoken and written German (speaking, listening, reading, writing); introduction to German culture and society through poems, songs, films, and other authentic materials. Computer, video, and audio labs are an integral part of the course. Click here for sample
German 001 Syllabus.

German 2: First-Year German II. Credits: 1.00
Second semester of first-year sequence (see above). Click here for sample German 002 Syllabus.

German 14: Intensive First-Year German. Credits: 2.00
Combines in one semester the work of German 1 and 2. Also taught in Duke-in-Berlin fall semester program.

German 65: Intermediate German I. Credits: 1.00
First semester of a two-semester sequence (65-66). Builds language proficiency through a topic-oriented syllabus focusing on contemporary German-speaking cultures and societies (family, leisure, work, education, environment, current events). Provides a thorough review of German grammar. Authentic texts from a variety of media will provide the basis for discussion and cultural awareness. Extensive reading includes one longer prose text (in 65) and one full-length play (in 66) by contemporary German, Swiss, or Austrian writers.
Click here for sample German 65 Syllabus.

German 66: Intermediate German II. Credits: 1.00
Second semester of Intermediate German (see 65 above). Click here for sample German 66 Syllabus.

German 69: Intensive Intermediate German. Credits: 2.00
This one-semester intermediate course (two-course credits) provides a thorough review of the basic structures of the German language, and further develops reading, listening, speaking and writing abilities through a topic-oriented syllabus dealing with contemporary German-speaking cultures and societies (see 65-66). Authentic texts from a variety of media will provide the basis for discussion and cultural awareness. This course effectively combines the two-semester Intermediate sequence (65-66) into one semester, thus preparing students more quickly for 100-level courses. Click here for sample German 69 Syllabus.

100S. Business German.                                                        

Introduction to the language of commerce and industry; modes of expression for technology and marketing. Particular attention to cultural differences affecting German-American business transactions.

117S.   Advanced German I: Culture and Society

This upper level course expands and deepens students' cultural literacy and interpretive skills by focusing on issues of social, cultural, and political significance in German-speaking countries (e.g. reunification, multiculturalism, representations of women, globalization of media, role of Germany in United Europe, dealing with the holocaust, issues of identity, etc.).   Students work on increasing active and passive vocabulary and perfecting sentence structure for oral and written communication in various formats: formal and informal. Intensive work on idiomatic vocabulary, sentence structure and patterns of expression will enable students to discuss a variety of complex topics with increasing ease and confidence. Extensive reading includes a full-length novel by a contemporary German, Swiss, or Austrian writer.

Development of advanced German language proficiency, with particular attention to written expression. Emphasis on stylistic variation, complex grammatical structures, and lexical sophistication (vocabulary building). Analysis of authentic texts from a variety of genre will provide the basis for practice in creative, descriptive, narrative, argumentative, and analytical writing.

121S. — 122S. Intro to German Literature.

These seminars will introduce you to principal authors, genres, concepts, and selected works of German literature from the Middle Ages to the present.

126S. Masters of the Modern

Studies in four giants of twentieth-century German literature: Rilke, Kafka, Mann, and Hesse. May also include short works by Bertolt Brecht, and recent Nobel prize winners Heinrich Boell and Guenter Grass. Defining "world literature" and the shaping of "modern" Western thought by these major literary figures. Readings explore major twentieth century themes: modernism, totalitarian politics, Eastern spirituality, German identity and the situation of Germany within Europe. Regular written exercises, readings, and discussion in German.

128S. The Märchen

The uses of fantasy. Types of short prose narrative: joke, anecdote, farce, fable, legend, fairy tale. Contrastive approaches to interpretation: allegorical, social, psychological, mythological. Comparative global distribution of folklore motifs. The Brothers Grimm and their literary relatives.

131S. Romantic Dreams and Ironies

The modern self emerging from the French Revolution into the intellectual ferment of the 1790s; new modes of knowledge (aesthetics, anthropology, linguistics); new literary forms (novel, fragment); the struggle to ground values in history. Major figures: Novalis, Tieck, F. Schlegel, Kleist, Hoffmann, with Heine and Eichendorff looking back from a perspective drenched in Romantic dreams and ironies.

The German theater from Lessing to Brecht and beyond, focusing on the relationship between dramatic form and social, historical, and cultural contexts. Topics may include: the Trauerspiel, Sturm und Drang, expressionism, epic theater, documentary drama. Final project may include performance of a play or scenes from different plays.

136S. Utopias and Nightmares: Science and Technology in German Literature and Film

This course examines a selection of German films and texts that in some fashion serve as vehicles for examining the current state of the world and envisioning attractive and frightening alternatives to it. We will foreground the role of science and technology in shaping those alternative realities, especially as used to make films. The responsibility of the scientist and contexts of science will receive additional attention. This course will introduce you to the methods of textual analysis, film analysis and the vocabulary of film criticism; major issues surrounding the rise of science and technology in the twentieth century; and develop all your German language skills. A science background is helpful but not required!

137S. Gender and German Culture

Representations of gender in German culture through literary, cultural, and theoretical readings. Topics vary: literature by women from medieval times to today; gender and national identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture; gender and technology; comedy and gender.

139S. Legacies of the Holocaust in German Culture

Literary, cinematic and cultural representations of the Holocaust in German-speaking countries. Core issues of the Holocaust haunting subsequent cultural and national politics and cultural works: fanatical nationalism, racisms, genocide, technological efficiency, extreme and arbitrary suffering, the quality of German resistance, contested postwar interpretations, globalization of Holocaust memories.

An interdisciplinary approach to the cultural and political transformations taking place in Vienna around 1900 (art, architecture, literature, psychoanalysis, music). The common contexts and interconnections between writers such as Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Musil and Kraus, Freud?s psychoanalysis, Klimt and Schiele's Jugendstil and Expressionist art, the architectural innovations of Wagner, Loos and the Ringstrasse, and the music of Mahler, R. Strauss, and Schoenberg. Focus on issues such as sexuality, disease, desire, and modernity. The rise of mass politics and modern anti-Semitism.

Introduction to the social and cultural universe of the European middle ages through reading literary texts in their original form and language. You will learn to read medieval German (Middle High German). We will study, in the original form, medieval ideas and concerns about love, honor, justice, and virtue in political poetry, courtly love poetry, Arthurian romances, and heroic epic. We will work with fascimiles and microfilms of medieval manuscripts.

204S. Advanced Business German

Examination of current German economic and business debates and events. Emphasis on vocabulary acquisition as well as intercultural conduct in business situations. Topics include state of Germany's industry and energy resources, monetary policies and banking systems, environmental issues, trade and import/export, taxes and the social safety net, with particular attention to Germany's self-understanding as a "soziale Marktwirtschaft," and its (non?) compatibility with current trends in globalization.

215S. Renaissance and Reformation

The development of 'personality' from 'type' to 'individual' in German culture in the great transition from medieval to early modern times, with examples from literature, history, art, architecture, music, science, and religion. Emphasis on the Italian connection, northern mysticism, Prague in the fourteenth century, fifteenth-century poetry and prose, and Luther.

The life and career of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Major works in all genres (lyric, drama, narrative, theory and criticism) from all periods of Goethe's poetic career: Sturm und Drang, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism.

Poetry is often thought to be the expression of an individual subjectivity; but it can equally be read as the purest vehicle of a "Zeitgeist." And since modernity installs the self at the center of history's dreams and possibilities, German poetry tells us intimately about what was widely felt and thought at a given moment of German history. We will read all the major poets of German modernity: Goethe, Hoelderlin, Schiller, Eichendorff, Heine, Moerike, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, the Expressionists, Benn, Brecht, Enzensberger; also those who can tell us most about the German world as lived before and after 1989. The course will probe the links between subjectivity, history and textuality, exploring the ways in which images become stale, only to be renewed through irony, allegory or collage.

245S. German Literature and Culture 1900-1945

Radical social shifts and their disruption of German culture and literary conventions during the first half of the 20th century. From the poetry, film, manifestoes, and revolutionary theater of Expressionism, to the high modernism of Rilke, Kafka, Hesse, and Mann, to the didactic literary program of Brecht and his circle, including Kurt Weill and Marieluise Fleisser, to the internationalist goals of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. Emphasis on relations between text and history, from WWI to Weimar to the persecutions and systematic destructions of the Nazi era.

261S. Second Language Acquisition Theory and Practice          

Overview of current research in the fields of second language acquisition and foreign language pedagogy, and its implications for the teaching of the German language, literature, and culture at all levels. Readings and discussions on competing theories of language acquisition and learning, issues of cultural identity and difference, learner styles, and the teaching of language as culture; training in contemporary teaching techniques and approaches.