Spring 2023 Courses

Spring 2023 Courses

• For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF SCHEDULE or the class search tool https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm.
• For all courses not described here, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions: https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/ger/

Jump to --> Language Courses | Lower-div | Upper-div | Graduate Courses

Undergraduate Courses

Language

GER 001, 003 Elementary German

GER 020, 022 Intermediate German

Lower Division

GER 011 Travel & The Modern World
N. Talbott

GER 045 Vampires & Other Horrors
Prof. Kirsten Harjes

Why are we fascinated by vampires and zombies? What are the questions to which these particular monsters are the answer? Social anxieties, forbidden desires, urgent questions about life and beyond: Vampires and other undead souls throughout the centuries have proven to be extremely adaptable lenses through which we face fears about political instability, gender relations, sexuality, race and racism, epidemics, religious and moral uncertainty, technology, and, above all, human mortality. The class explores these topics through cultural history, literature, and film. For the first few weeks, the course focuses exclusively on the figure of “Dracula” in European folklore and literature, Weimar Cinema (Germany), and Hollywood. Then, we will turn to the Zombie and its racial origins in the colonial history of the Caribbean, ending the quarter with an excursion into the legacy of Frankenstein’s monster in debates about artificial intelligence, governance, and ethics.

Upper Division

GER 103 German Writing Skills
Prof. Carlee Arnett

GER 112 Topics in German Literature - Literature Written During the Holocaust
Prof. Sven-Erik Rose
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. 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 that have for various reasons not become part of the standard Holocaust literature canon. The special focus in this course, moreover will be on literary responses to the Holocaust written while the Holocaust was still unfolding—a very different perspective from that of survivor memoirs written in retrospect. Our readings will include the diary of Hélène Berr, a Parisian Jewish college student; the diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, a teenager writing in the Lodz ghetto; and various short prose texts, poems, and diaries written by other Jews confined to Nazi ghettos in Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna. Most of the authors did not survive, but much of what they wrote did—often by being buried and dug up after the war. We will even read one text, by Zalmen Gradowski, that was written and buried at the extermination camp Auschwitz. These powerful works will enrich your knowledge of the diverse ways in which the victims of the Nazi genocide responded to their personal and collective horror with courage and creativity. 

Graduate Courses

GER 297 - Holocaust Literature before “the Holocaust”

Prof. Sven-Erik Rose
Tuesdays, 2:10-5:00 in Olson 0109

The Holocaust—the Nazi genocide of European Jews during World War Two—has inspired a large, varied and ever-growing body of textual and visual representations. Overwhelmingly, the works of Holocaust literature that have attained canonical status were written after WWII, by survivors memorializing the horrible events or by subsequent generations of writers still grappling with their aftermath. What has received less attention—and decidedly less canonical status—are the salvaged corpora of literary works written while the events of the Holocaust were still unfolding. To refer to these texts as works of Holocaust literature is thus in a sense anachronistic, for the chaotic, terrible, and always local events to which these writings directly and indirectly respond could be conceived of as “the Holocaust” only post factum, at a certain historical and conceptual remove. In this seminar, we will be focusing precisely on such works: written during the whirlwind from temporally, spatially, and epistemologically limited vantage points. Our readings will include short prose texts, poems, and diaries written by Jews confined to Nazi ghettos in Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna, and by others in hiding during the war years. Most of the authors did not survive, but many of their texts did—often by being buried and dug up after the war. We will also read texts by Zalmen Gradowski and Leyb Langfus that were written and buried in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and later recovered. Engagement with these works written from "within" the events of what we now call the Holocaust enriches our knowledge of the diverse ways the victims of the Nazi genocide responded to their personal and collective horror. Towards the end, the course will also address Holocaust literature written from a range of perspectives, cultural and political situations, and subject positions, in the immediate postwar years, when narratives of what we now call the Holocaust were still very much evolving.