GERMAN
Language and Reading Courses -- Graduate Courses 2008/2009 -- Undergraduate Courses 2008/2009
GRADUATE COURSES: Fall 2008
Knowledge and Sensibility from Spinoza to Kant.
GRMN 47501.
Behind the unassuming title of Herder's 1778 treatise, "Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele," stands one of the most central and hotly-debated issues of the 18th century. To what extent does "cognition" rely on "sensation"? Are knowledge and sensibility two autonomous faculties? Or are they merely two sides of an inseparable unity? Do they have a history? Do animals share these faculties? These questions are at the crux of developments in the domains of epistemology, psychology and aesthetics that will trigger the emergence of modernity around 1800. The course traces the steps that lead up to this all-important historical juncture by examining the discursive and epistemic history of the relationship of knowledge to sensibility from Spinoza to Kant.
Christiane Frey.
Between Realism & Modernism: Theodor Fontane and Thomas Mann.
GRMN 37208.
This course will be
devoted to two major works of modern German literature: Fontane's "Der Stechlin" and Thomas Mann's "Der Zauberberg." These two
monumental novels are about turning points in German history: the
decline of Prussia and the spiritual malaise in Europe on the eve of
World War I. The two books also straddle the divide between realism
and modernism. Traditionally regarded as the culmination of
nineteenth-century realist narrative in Germany, there is a
distinctly modernist sensibility which announces itself in them.
Readings in German (and English); discussion in English. Open to
advanced undergraduates pending instructor's consent.
Robert Buch.
Conversion: Between Philosophy and Religion
GRMN 37508
It is often forgotten that the experience and concept of conversion originally belonged to the discourse and practice of ancient philosophy, and was only later appropriated by Christianity in its claim to be the true pursuit of wisdom. In this seminar we will investigate the ways in which this double provenance cross-fertilized its historical and discursive fate in both arenas by pursuing questions such as: What lends conversion its exemplarity and evidence, and how does it, in turn, lend evidence to philosophical and religious reasoning? What is its contribution to the founding a new philosophical system or religious faith? How is it replicated to other subjects across time and space? What are some of its most important media and genres? What is its role in the formation and narration of the self, and, more specifically, what is its relation to the tradition of spiritual exercises and meditative practices? We will start with ancient philosophy (Plato, Seneca et al.) and early Christianity (Paul, Augustine et al.), move into early modernity (Ignatius, Descartes et. al.), and, if time permits, will end with 18th-century philosophy (Hamann, Fichte et al.).
Christopher Wild
Classic Yiddish Fiction: Sholem-Aleichem & Diasporic
GRMN 27708/37708, YDDH 27708, CMLT 29401/39401, ENGL 28908/ 48909
Course description to be added shortly.
Jan Schwarz
Old English
GRMN 34900, ENGL 14900/34900
Course description to be added shortly.
Maria von Nolcken
GRADUATE COURSES: Winter 2009
Literary Realism
GRMN 35209
Realism in German literature reached its peak in the period between 1850 and 1890 when authors increasingly focused on the literary representation of bourgeois experience and everyday life. However, programs of realism are in a way as old as literature itself: Mimesis, imitation of the contemplated or experienced reality and verisimilitude have been ideals in Arts and Literature since antiquity and they have seen numerous revivals and transformations throughout history. Yet it was only in the 19th century that the “realistic impulse” (Richard Brinkmann) became so explicit that a whole generation of artists and writers now called itself “realists”. However, this “programmatic realism” came along with the withdrawal of reality itself which no longer appeared a simple ‘given’ or self-evident to human perception. Thus, “realism” is not only a category of style or the designation of a period but also the indication of a problem: the problem of how to bridge the gap between representation and what is represented, between the ‘subjectivity’ of an observer and the supposed ‘objectivity’ of the observed. The more sophisticated the literary techniques of description and hypotyposis became, the more reality revealed itself to be dependent on the media in which it is described. In this course we will reconstruct the history of the ‘realistic problem’ through a range of literary and theoretical texts from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Readings will include Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Franz Grillparzer, Gottfried Keller, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Fontane and Robert Musil. The course will be given in German.
Susanne Lüdemann
Richard Wagner and Critical Theory
GRMN 41200
PQ: Advanced standing and consent of instructor. This course examines the intersection of Wagner and contemporary critical theory. We read a broad range of Wagner’s writings and a broad range of writings on Wagner; we explore a number of the stage works on paper and in production. In addition to Wagner’s own writings, we read critical works by: Carolyn Abbate, Theodor Adorno, Elisabeth Bronfen, Catherine Clement, Carl Dahlhaus, Friedrich Kittler, Barry Millington, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Michel Poizat, Michael Steinberg, Hans-Rudolf Vaget, Samuel Weber, Marc Weiner and Slavoj Zizek.
David Levin
Poor World: Walser, Kafka, Beckett
GRMN 37909
The seminar will focus on a series of modernist authors whose project would appear to be to discover the possibilities of human life and expression at the point of a radical impoverishment of one's world or form of life. The seminar will begin with a discussion of Melville's Bartlbeyand morve on to novels and short prose by Walser, Franz Kafka, and Samuel Becket.
Eric L. Santner
Media and Theology
GRMN 35509
Theology as the discourse of the divine is predicated on the deep chasm between God and man, transcendence and immanence, as well as the assumption that communication across this divide is simultaneously possible and problematical. At different historical junctures the problem of mediation and communication came especially to the fore. Beginning with the Old and the New Testaments we will examine some of these junctures, but we will focus in particular on the European Reformation and its cultures of communication. Arguably, at the center of the Reformation was a crisis of mediation to which it responded and which it helped to perpetuate. Religious media were thought to be fundamentally corrupted and corruptive and hence in need of reform. To name only a few examples, priesthood, liturgy, worship, and scripture had all been perverted and had to be restored to their original state of ‘pure communication.’ Consequently, media were as much instruments of reform as they were its targets. Likewise, the various theologies of the Reformation offered different solutions to the perceived crisis of mediation. It will be one of the working assumptions of this course that theology and Reformation theology in particular are one of the major tributaries of modern thinking about media and communication. Readings and discussions in English.
Christopher Wild
GRADUATE COURSES: Spring 2009
Literary Case Studies
GRMN 35109
Since the French lawyer Francis Gayot de Pitaval published his famous collection of criminal cases (“Causes célèbres et intéressantes”, 1734-1743), the case study as a specific genre has basically been developed in the fields of clinical and juridical anamnesis. At the same time, this genre has always been very close to literature: Not only have lawyers and psychiatrists always used literary techniques to present their cases, but literature itself has picked up these ‘real’ cases and made them the initial basis for investigating the hidden mainsprings of crime and madness. However, the objectives of literary case studies are neither clinical nor juridical in the narrower sense of these terms: whereas medicine and law aim at subsuming the individual case under general categories of disease or crime (such as “schizophrenia” or “murder”), the cognizance of literature is more directed at bringing out the stress ratio between singular case and general norm. In literary texts, an individual becomes a ‘case’ just because his or her singular fate cannot be subsumed under general rules, because he or she remains excluded and / or exempt from the law. If deviant subjectivity in modern literature can nevertheless be called exemplary, this exemplarity is paradoxically due to its state of exception. In this course we will read literary case studies from Schiller to Handke to examine how they deal with this paradox of a ‘particular general’ or an ‘exemplary singularity’. We will also read selected clinical and juridical case studies with regard to the mutual interferences of law, literature and medicine.
Readings will include Friedrich Schiller, „Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre“ / „Schillers Pitaval“ („Merkwürdige Rechtsfälle als ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Menschheit, verf., bearb. u.hg. v. Friedrich Schiller“) / Carl Philipp Moritz, „Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde“ [excerpt] / Heinrich v. Kleist, „Michael Kohlhaas“ / E.T.A. Hoffmann, „Der Einsiedler Serapion“; „Der Sandmann“ / Georg Büchner, „Lenz“ / Theodor Fontane, „Unterm Birnbaum“ / Sigmund Freud, „Studien über Hysterie“ / Michel Foucault, „Der Fall Rivière“ / Ingeborg Bachmann, „Der Fall Franza“ / Peter Handke, „Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter“. The course will be given in German.
Susanne Lüdemann
Translations. Figurations of Trans-Nationality in Texts of Goethe and Political Romanticism
GRMN 36009
What is now called by historians as “the long 19th century” (the period from the French Revolution to the end of World War One), was mostly interpreted as the main period of modern European nation building. But nevertheless, already at its very beginning, this period is also a time of thinking the trans-national structure of Europe in a new way. Especially in the ‘Age of Goethe,’ the number of attempts viewing and conceiving Europe as an entity of mutual translations (and transfers) in the domains of culture and politics are increasing. But on the other hand, thinking Europe as an entity of translation means something different in this time: to take up the traditional doctrine of translatio imperii, which had its origins in the Christianity of the Middle Ages. Against the background of current philosophical theories concerning the future of Europe (Rémi Brague, Massimo Cacciari, Peter Koslowski), the course will investigate the contemporary combination of as well as the contemporary tension between these two models of cultural and political translation. It will be devoted to close readings of texts of Goethe, Kant, Novalis, and Friedrich Schlegel in their cultural and political aspects and implications. Readings in German (and English); discussion in German.
Uwe Hebekus
For German for Research Purposes (GRMN 33300), please refer to German Language and Reading Courses