Spring 2017

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German 001. Elementary German (5 units)
Monika Sierkowska

MTWRF 8:00-8:50A
25 Wellman Hall
CRN 74979

Course Description: This is an introduction to German grammar and development of all language skills in a cultural context with special emphasis on communication.

Course Placement: Students who have successfully completed, with a C- or better, German 02 or 03 in the 10th or higher grade in high school may receive unit credit for this course on a P/NP grading basis only. Although a passing grade will be charged to the student's P/NP option, no petition is required. All other students will receive a letter grade unless a P/NP petition is filed. For more information, please contact the instructor (msierkowska@ucdavis.edu) or the German staff advisor (allowrey@ucdavis.edu).

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and World Cultures.

Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Textbooks:

• Robert Di Donato and Monica D. Clyde, Deutsch: Na klar! An Introductory German Course [7th Edition]  (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015)
• Jeanine Briggs and Lida Daves-Schneider, Workbook/Laboratory Manual to accompany Deutsch: Na klar! [7th Edition]  (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015)

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German 003. Elementary German (5 units)

Course Description: Completion of grammar sequence and continuing practice of all language skills through cultural texts.

Prerequisite: German 002.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and World Cultures.

Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Textbooks:

• Robert Di Donato and Monica D. Clyde, Deutsch: Na klar! An Introductory German Course [7th Edition]  (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015)
• Jeanine Briggs and Lida Daves-Schneider, Workbook/Laboratory Manual to accompany Deutsch: Na klar! [7th Edition]  (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015)

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German 010. Fairy Tales (4 units)    In English  
Elisabeth Krimmer

TR 4:40-6:00P
2 Wellman Hall
CRN 91092

Course Description: The course introduces students to the genre of fairy tale with a particular focus on the lives and works of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Walt Disney. We will discuss different versions of these tales, including visual and filmic adaptations (Disney movies, French films, Hollywood feature films such as Pretty Woman and Enchanted), and we will situate all tales in their respective cultural and political contexts. Throughout we will pay particular attention to the construction of race, gender, sexuality, and power in these tales. Students will also get to know different theories of and approaches to folk tales and fairy tales, including historical and psychoanalytic analysis. The fairy tales to be discussed include Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Little Mermaid. No knowledge of German required.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Visual Literacy and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA

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German 011. Travel and the Modern World (4 units)    In English      [Cross-listed with COM 011]
Chunjie Zhang

TR 9:00-10:20A
217 Olson Hall
CRN 74984

Course Description: When and how did we get to know the exact geography of the earth? How did we get to know other countries and languages? Is national or cultural identity stable and permanent? How should we deal with the challenges of globalization with different cultures, languages, religions, and their conflicts? This interdisciplinary course aims to explore these big questions through the lenses of travel writings, literary works, films, and philosophical essays from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and convey the idea that travel is one of the crucial human activities inherently connected to global modernity. No knowledge of German required.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Visual Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Writing.

Textbooks:

• TBA

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German 022. Intermediate German (4 units)
Kirsten Harjes

MWF 11:00-11:50A
25 Wellman Hall
CRN 74985

Course Description: This course builds on the skills you have acquired in German 021.  It is the completion of 2nd-year proficiency in reading, writing, listening and speaking in German. Our specific topic for this quarter will be immigration, integration, and refugees in Germany today. We will approach this topic by reading first-hand accounts in the form of memoirs or reports, historical accounts, news, and statistics/graphs. Materials will come from Über das Meer (Suhrkamp, 2016) and Dorthin kann ich nicht zurück (ProMedia Österreich, 2016), as well as a set of fluter-magazines written for students (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014-2016) on current topics of interest in Germany (integration, refugees, Africa, gender, language, EU, city vs. country, etc.)

Prerequisite: German 021.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Writing.

Textbooks:

• All materials come from the DAAD and are for free. The instructor will distribute them according to the quarter plan and students' interests.

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German 101B. Survey of German Literature, 1800 - Present (4 units)
Chunjie Zhang

TR 12:10-1:40P
110 Hunt Hall
CRN 75007

Course Description: This course surveys German literature between 1800 and the present by analyzing exemplary short fiction and poetry from major literary movements: the Enlightenment, the Storm and Stress period, Romanticism, the Young Germany and Vormärz periods, Realism, Expressionism and other forms of the Weimar avant-garde, postwar realism, and literature of the GDR. The course will place these movements into their cultural historical context and discuss each of the texts' significance then and today. It will also address the impact of these movements on the visual arts and music. Class is conducted in German.

Prerequisite: German 022.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours.

Textbooks:

• TBA

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German 112. Jugend und Alter in der Literatur des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts (4 units)
Henriette Herwig

TR 10:30-11:50A
110 Hunt Hall
CRN 75009

Course Description: Wie werden die Lebensphasen Jugend und Alter in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts konzeptualisiert? Am Beispiel von Prosatexten von Lou Andreas-Salomé, Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil, Christa Winsloe, Dirk Kubjuweit, Wolfgang Herrndorf, Christian Kracht werden in diesem Seminar die literarischen Darstellungsweisen von Adoleszenzkonflikten junger Figuren betrachtet. Dabei werden neben literarhistorischen auch entwicklungspsychologische, sozialhistorische, macht- und gender-theoretische Gesichtspunkte berücksichtigt. In einem zweiten Schritt werden den Jugend-Texten Prosatexte von Wilhelm Raabe, Theodor Fontane, Arthur Schnitzler, Judith Hermann, Philip Roth, Martin Walser u.a. gegenübergestellt, die alternde Figuren ins Zentrum stellen. Mit Hilfe aktueller soziologischer, psychologischer und kulturwissenschaftlicher Theorien werden die Alterstexte daraufhin untersucht, welche Vorstellungen vom Alter(n) sie entwickeln, mit welchen Figurentypen des Alters sie spielen, welche Altersstereotypen sie dabei variieren und wie sie auf die Herausforderungen des demographischen Wandels reagieren. Gefragt wird auch nach dem Weiterwirken der Weisheitstopik: Wird sie in geschlechterdifferenter Form aktualisiert? Führt das zeitgenössische Konzept der aktiven „jungen Alten“ zur Bestätigung von Weisheitstraditionen oder zu neuen Formen der „Torheit“, wie sie sich in altersdifferenter Liebe, Fitness- und Jugendlichkeitswahn zeigen können. Welchen Beitrag leistet die Literatur zur Reflexion zeitgenössischer Altersdiskurse?

Prerequisite: Upper division standing or consent of instructor.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience. 
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Writing.

Textbooks:

• TBA

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German 114. German Women and Film (4 units)    In English
Elisabeth Krimmer

Lecture: TR 3:10-4:30P
3 Wellman Hall

Film Viewing: W 5:10-8:00P
146 Robbins Hall

CRN 91093

Course Description: This course explores the work of some of the most important German actresses and women filmmakers from the Weimar Republic to the present. We will focus on changing conceptualizations of gender against the historical backdrop of 1) the Weimar Republic, gender experimentation and transgression; male anxiety in a Germany that lost the Great War 2) the Third Reich, the question of fascist aesthetics; gender and Nazi ideology; genre questions: the documentary; 3) the post-war period: attempts to come to terms with the Nazi past, genre
questions: the melodrama; women as victims and perpetrators; 4) terrorism in 1970s Germany, German terrorism and its link to the Nazi past; women as terrorists and icons of innocence 5) recent internationally successful German films. No knowledge of German required.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience. 
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, Visual Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Writing; Film Viewing - 3 hours.

Textbooks:

• TBA

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German 141. The Holocaust and its Literary Representation (4 units)    In English
Sven-Erik Rose

TR 1:40-3:00P
110 Hunt Hall
CRN 91844

Course Description: The Holocaust—the Nazi genocide of European Jews during World War II—has inspired a large, varied and ever-growing body of textual and visual representations. These works of literature, cinema and art have been accompanied by, and indeed often themselves preoccupied with, profound questions about the ethical complexity—and even the very possibility—of representing such extreme mass violence. While some works of Holocaust literature (e.g. Anne Frank's diary, or the memoirs by Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel) and film (e.g. Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster Schindler's List) have achieved iconic status and reached large audiences, we will be focusing in this course on equally crucial but less widely read works of Holocaust literature as well as several films with strong ties to some of these literary texts. Our readings will include short prose texts, poems, and diaries written by Jews confined to Nazi ghettos in Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna. Most of the authors did not survive, but many of their texts did—usually by being buried in the ghettos and dug up after the war. We will even read one text that was written and buried in the extermination camp Auschwitz by Zalmen Gradowski and later recovered. These powerful works will enrich your knowledge of the diverse ways the victims of the Nazi genocide responded to their personal and collective horror with courage and creativity. The course will also address Holocaust literature written after the war years by Holocaust survivors and their children, including the autobiographical novel Fatelessness by Nobel Prize winning author Imre Kertész and the groundbreaking two-volume comic book Maus by Art Spiegelman. No knowledge of German required.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience. 
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 2 hours; Discussion - 1 hour; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA

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German 297

German 297, Section 001 has been cancelled.

 

Section 002. Sprachkritik in der osterreichischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts[Criticism of Language in Austrian Literature of the 20th Century] (4 units)
Henriette Herwig

 

T 1:10-4:00P
201 Wellman Hall
CRN 91096

Course Description: Wittgensteins Sprachphilosophie, Machs Empfindungspsychologie, Freuds Entdeckung des Unbewussten und seine Traumtheorie sowie ein reger Austausch zwischen KOnstlern, Musikern, Dichtern, Philosophen und Arzten losten im Wien der Jahrhundertwende eine sprachkritische Wende der Literatur aus, von der die osterreichische Literatur bis heute gepragt ist. Schon um 1900 waren Sprach- und Kulturkritik eng verbunden. Die nach 1945 entstandene Literatur setzt sich stark mit der Beteiligung Csterreichs an den Verbrechen der Nationalsozialisten und der fehlenden Entnazifizierung Osterreichs auseinander. Sprachkritik wird mehr denn je politisch. Das Seminar zeichnet diese Entwicklung von Hugo von Hofmannsthals ,,Chandos"-Brief, Ober Peter Altenbergs Skizzen, sprachkritische Glossen von Karl Kraus Ober ausgewahlte Lyrik von Ernst Jandl und Ingeborg Bachmann bis zu Prosatexten von Peter Handke, Barbara Frischmuth, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek u.a. nach. 
Bereitschaft zur Lekture und Diskussion der Primartexte ist Voraussetzung fur die Teilnahme an diesem Seminar. 

Format: Seminar- 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• TBA