Winter 2024 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/
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Not sure where to start with German?
Take a placement test in the Davis Language Center in Olson 53. The Center administers walk-in placement exams on the computer during regular business hours. The test takes about 20 minutes, and you get the results immediately. https://ucdlc.ucdavis.edu/
If the test places you into GER 22, or into a class we don’t offer in that quarter, email the Language Program Coordinator for advice at kharjes@ucdavis.edu.
CEFR (European reference scale) equivalence:
A2 = Successful completion of 1st year German at UC Davis
B2 = Successful completion of 2nd year German at UC Davis
Course definitions:
Elementary German = 1st year
GER 001: Basic grammar, vocabulary, and conversation for absolute beginners. Grammar concepts are taught in authentic cultural contexts whenever possible. Not open to heritage speakers or those who took German classes in high school.
GER 002: Continuation of basic language and culture instruction. Prerequisite: GER 001 or consent of Language Program Coordinator.
GER 003: Conclusion of elementary German. Prerequisite: GER 002 or consent of Language Program Coordinator.
Intermediate German = 2nd year
GER 020: First course in intermediate German reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension. Introduction to longer authentic fiction and non-fiction texts and basic text analysis vocabulary. Practice of higher-level communicative strategies. Review of 1st year grammar concepts.
Prerequisite: GER 003 or consent of Language Program Coordinator.
GER 021: Continuation of intermediate German, and review of 1st year grammar concepts.
Prerequisite: GER 020 or consent of Language Program Coordinator.
GER 022: Conclusion of intermediate German. The curriculum is designed around a special topic chosen by the instructor.
Prerequisite: GER 021 or consent of Language Program Coordinator.
Undergraduate Courses
Language
GER 002, 003 Elementary German
GER 021 Intermediate German
Upper Division
GER 101B German Literature: 1800-Present
Kristen Harjes
221 Jahre deutsche Literatur in 10 Wochen? Das geht so: Wir behandeln bekannte oder preisgekrönte Kurzgeschichten, Gedichte und Tagebuchauszüge von Schriftsteller*innen wie Heinrich v. Kleist, Bettina v. Arnim, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Else Lasker-Schüler, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Ilse Aichinger, Christa Wolf, May Ayim und Fatma Aydemir. Wir lesen 10 vollständige Novellen und Kurzgeschichten, die in unseren zwei Kursbüchern als deutsch-englische Paralleltexte zur Verfügung stehen. Im Unterricht analysieren wir Kurstexte vor den Hintergründen ihrer politischen und historischen Rahmenbedingungen. Student*innen werden am Ende des Quartals mit den Inhalten diverser literarischer Werke vertraut sein und diese im Kontext ihrer Zeit interpretieren können. Sie werden weiterhin in der Lage sein, eine grobe Übersicht über die kunsthistorischen Epochen der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte zu erstellen.
Prerequisites: GER 22 or consent of instructor
GE credits: AH
GER 120 Survey of German Culture
Kirsten Harjes
Was bedeutet Kultur? Wo fängt deutsche Kultur an, wo hört sie auf, und wer gehört dazu? Wie hängen Kultur und Nationalbewusstsein zusammen? Wir werden diesen Kurs mit allgemeinen Fragen zum Kultur- und Nationalstaatsbegriff beginnen und uns einen geografischen und politischen Überblick über die Geschichte deutschsprachiger Länder verschaffen. Dann konzentrieren wir uns auf ost- und westdeutsche Literatur, Musik und Kunst nach Ende des 2. Weltkriegs. Unser roter Faden bleibt dabei die Frage, wie deutschsprachige Künstler, einschließlich eingewanderter Künstler, die Frage nach dem Deutsch-Sein in ihrer Kunst beantworten. Je nach Jahrzehnt und Herkunft der Künstler wird es auf diese Frage immer wieder andere Antworten geben: So wird uns zum Beispiel Bertolt Brechts hoffnungsvolle Kinderhymne zur Entstehung der DDR 1949 eine andere Antwort geben als Christa Wolfs Essay Zur Sache: Deutschland, in dem sie 1993 nach der Wende resigniert nur noch auf das deutsche Brot als verbindendes Identitätsmerkmal verweisen kann. Wir beschließen das Quartal mit der Erfolgskomödie Willkommen bei den Hartmanns, die sich mit der Flüchtlingskrise von 2015 befasst.
Prerequisites: GER 22 or consent of instructor
GE credits: AH, OL, VL, WC, WE
GER 176A Weimar Cinema
Jaimey Fisher
the diverse film culture of 1920s Germany – gave birth or early impetus to some of the most important film genres for global cinema, including horror, film noir, science fiction, and melodrama. The course will chart how it was within the context of Weimar Germany and, above all, its uneasy confrontation with modernity and modernization that the horror film, film noir, science-fiction film, and the melodrama all emerged. In these cultural products, the class will discuss various topics like: the twentieth-century revolution in aesthetics, the impact of war on society, Expressionism in text and in film, technology and the metropolis, changing gender roles as well as the changing nature of work. Focusing on these questions of modernity and cinema as well as the origins of these film genres, the course will reevaluate the canonical films of this period, including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, and M as well as address lesser known works like The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, The Last Laugh, and Girls in Uniform. This course will analyze these films but also the varied and variegated scholarly approaches to Weimar Cinema. A study of Weimar cinema, in fact, affords an indispensable occasion on which to engaged with what is probably the most famous single book of film criticism, Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler. But the course will not only address Kracauer’s canonical work, but also set Kracauer in a mutually illuminating dialogue with Lotte Eisner and Thomas Elsaesser – and thereby offer diverse approaches to film, an approach that will highlight the range of approaches and stakes in film studies.
Graduate Courses
GER 285- Middle High German Literature
Carlee Arnett
Middle High German Literature is a survey of the writings of the High Middle Ages. We will cover topics such as courtly love and chivalry, by reading an epic poem. We will also look at other genres of the time that reflect the culture of the time. These might include the poems and the lives of the traveling entertainers who wrote them or letters that show the life of a family. The poems and epics are meant to entertain but they also have a larger function in society that we can explore. No knowledge of German or Middle High German is required.
GER 297 - Special Topics in German Literature - Women, War, and Migration
Elisabeth Krimmer
This course offers:
1) the theoretical foundation for a discussion of women, war, and violence;
2) a comprehensive analysis of how women experienced the First World War, Second World War, and the Iraq War both as victims of violence and as participants in warfare and genocide.
We often conceive of war as an exclusively masculine affair. And yet, in the twentieth century, the number of civilian victims, that is, women and children, exceeded that of soldiers by a factor of two. Because scholars tend to conflate warfare and frontline fighting, woman’s experiences (the suffering of the refugee, the rape victim, or the concentration camp inmate) are often sidelined and dissociated from the “actual” violence of war. Conversely, until recently, scholars have ignored women’s active contributions to and complicity with warfare and genocide, e.g., as army auxiliaries and as secretaries who helped organize the Holocaust.
It is the goal of this course to:
1) to make women’s experiences in warfare visible;
2) to promote a complex understanding of the categories of victim and perpetrator, which are often conceived as mutually exclusive;
3) to understand and critique aesthetic strategies used in the representation of war and violence.
Topics to be discussed include:
1) Theories of Violence and War
2) War and Representation (Käthe Kollwitz);
3) War and Propaganda (Leni Riefenstahl);
4) War and Rape (Erpenbeck, Visitation);
5) War and Genocide (Marie Simon Jalowicz, Underground in Berlin);
6) War and Refugees (Christa Wolf);
7) War and the Media (Elfriede Jelinek, Bambiland)
GER 390B - Teaching of German
Kirsten Harjes
This course is only open to graduate students currently teaching in the German language program.