Spring Quarter 2025

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

Not sure where to start with German?

Beginners: GER 001.

If you already know some German, you may be able to start with an intermediate class (020, 021, 022). Students with an AP exam in German and heritage speakers may be able to jump straight into upper division courses (100 numbers) and start working towards a minor or major. Take a placement exam and follow its suggestion unless it places you into 022 (the highest class the test knows): In this case, contact Language Program Coordinator Dr. Kirsten Harjes (kharjes@ucdavis.edu), because you might be ready for the upper division.

Placement exams: Olson Hall 53 (Davis Language Center), walk-ins during business hours, results available immediately. The test takes 20 minutes on the computer.

Lower division language program

GER 001, 002, 003: Elementary German. Introduction into German grammar and vocabulary in cultural contexts around the German speaking world. Classes are taught in German in student-centered small groups, emphasizing speaking, listening, and understanding grammatical concepts.

GER 020, 021, 022: Intermediate German. Classes ensure a review and further practice of first-year grammar with an increasing focus on expanding vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing. Introduction of longer fictional and non-fictional texts and practice of higher-level communicative strategies and presentational skills.

Undergraduate Courses

Language

GER 001 Elementary German

GER 003 Elementary German

GER 22 Intermediate German

Lower Division

GER 10 Fairy Tales
Elisabeth Krimmer

This course introduces students to the genre of fairy tale with a particular focus on the life and works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. All works will be situated in their respective cultural and political contexts. In addition, we will discuss different adaptations of these classic tales, in particular Disney movies, but also Hollywood feature films such as the recent live-action Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Enchanted. 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.

A flyer for GER 010, with various movie poster and a course description.

Upper Division

GER 103 German Writing Skills
Kirsten Harjes

MWF 10:00–10:50 in Wellman 101
Prerequisites: GER 22 or consent of instructor
GE credits: AH, WC, WE

In diesem Kurs üben wir das Schreiben auf Deutsch in verschiedenen Genres: vom autobiografischen Schreiben über das fiktive Erzählen bis hin zu Reportagen, argumentativen Texten und kritischen Rezensionen. Wir wiederholen dazu grammatische und stilistische Regeln, verbessern Vokabular und beschäftigen uns mit Problemen und Tricks beim schriftlichen Formulieren auf Deutsch. Hierzu gehört auch eine umsichtige Benutzung digitaler Schreib- und Übersetzungshilfen. Im gemeinsamen Unterricht üben wir neben dem Schreiben auch das Diskutieren auf Deutsch. Unser Anschauungsmaterial besteht aus Gedichten, Nachrichten, Filmen, Liedern und Kurzprosa ab 1989.

GER 109A Business German
Elisabeth Krimmer

This course focuses on German business practices and current economic, political, and cultural issues relevant to conducting business in the German-speaking world. The German economy is the third-largest in the world and the largest national economy in Europe. Economic relations between Germany and the US are strong, with trade amounting to a total of 173 billion dollars in goods in 2020.

In addition to acquiring the necessary vocabulary for a business environment, students will engage in exercises in cultural comparison designed to promote intercultural awareness and to set the stage for exploring business practices and language use in relevant cultural contexts. Students will also develop a better understanding of German corporate culture, and they will learn how to write a German CV and letter of application. Furthermore, students will learn how to conduct business correspondence and practice job interviews. We will discuss issues related to the European Union and to German unions. A final project will focus on the topic of “Green Germany,” including environmental initiatives and politics.

GER 112 Topics in German Literature - Lost in Translation? An Introduction to German Poetry
Soelve I. Curdts

This course introduces students to German poetry from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth century. We will compare English translations of texts in a genre that is notoriously difficult to translate, paying close attention to translators’ formal choices (prose or verse translations, for example), and to transmutations of tone and structure. We will also consider poems and translations in their historical context.

A flyer for GER 112, the course description is written out above.

GER 120 Survey of German Culture
Kirsten Harjes

A photo of a figure splashing main on a modern train car.

MWF 12:10–1:00 in Robbins 146
Prerequisites: GER 22 or consent of instructor
GE credits: AH, OL, VL, WC, WE

Was bedeutet "deutsche" Kultur? Wer gehört dazu und wer definiert sie? Wir werden diesen Kurs mit einer kritischen Analyse der Begriffe "Kultur", "Nation" und "Stereotypen" beginnen. Dann behandeln wir ost- und westdeutsche Literatur, Musik, Film und Kunst nach 1945. Unser roter Faden ist die Frage, wie deutschsprachige Künstler die Frage nach dem Deutsch-Sein in ihrer Kunst beantworten. Je nach Jahrzehnt und Herkunft der Künstler gibt es auf diese Frage immer wieder andere Antworten: Bertolt Brechts hoffnungsvolle Kinderhymne zur Entstehung der DDR 1949 stellt deutsche Kultur zum Beispiel ganz anders dar als Christa Wolf, die nach 1989 das Wort "deutsch" resigniert nur mit Brot verbinden kann, oder als der namibisch-deutsche Rapper Ees, der heute Lieder in einer Mischung aus Deutsch, Englisch und Afrikaans in Köln singt.

GER 125 Short Fiction: 1880-1914
Sven-Erik Rose

Graduate Courses

GER 212 Literary Theory
Sven-Erik Rose

GER 297 Special Topics in German: Doktor Faustus – A Novel and Its Contexts
Soelve I. Curdts

This course introduces students not only to Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, but also to the novel’s many con- and intertexts. The novel draws on a wide variety of literary and philosophical works, centuries of history, and (in Collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno) on Schönberg’s musical innovations, in an attempt to speak to its immediate historical context: the atrocities of the Holocaust that were being committed in Europe while Mann was writing in California.

We will explore how the novel articulates its historical situation in layers of allusion, narrative technique, and multiple linguistic registers.