German in Translation

In fairy tales, anything is possible: throw a frog against the wall and it turns out to be a prince in disguise; visit your grandmother and you realize she has been eaten and replaced by a wolf. Entering the world of fairy tales feels like walking into an elaborate dream. We will discuss the way fairy tales were handed down over generations, how Disney depicts fairy tales, and how fairy tales introduce children to stories. We will also learn how to analyze, discuss, and write about texts.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject area of German in translation.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject area of German in translation.

A survey of German cultural history from the enlightenment to the present, and an introduction to the field of German Studies. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses. .

Taking an interdisciplinary and cross-historical approach, this course introduces students to key texts in dream theory and discusses the implications of these theories for prose and poetry, film, and political writing. Students will learn to identify, compare, and contrast different dream theories, understand the importance and limitations of dream interpretation, and explore the significance of dreaming and dream theory for art and literature.

This course provides a wide-ranging exploration of the culture and thought of German-speaking Jewry from 1750 to the present. It focuses on the Jewish response to modernity in Central Europe and lasting transformations in Jewish life. We read the works of such figures as Moses Mendelssohn, Rachel Varnhagen, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Else Lasker-Schüler, Inge Deutschkrohn, and Katja Petrowskaja.

Detailed survey of the historical origins, political structures, cultural dynamics, and every-day practices of the Nazi Third Reich. Cross-listed in the history department. Taught in English.

Entering the world of fairy tales often feels like passing into an elaborate dream: it is a world teeming with sorcerers, dwarves, wondrous objects, and animals that speak. This seminar explores fairy tales and dream narratives in literature and film from the romantic period into the present. Authors to be discussed include: Goethe, the brothers Grimm, Bettelheim, Hoffmann, Freud, Saint-Exupery, Tolkien, and others.

In this class we will explore the historical context of serial media, from the journal projects of the German Romantics to the second golden age of television. After a historical survey and a discussion of terminology ("series," "serial") we will examine certain specific "series" including Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers, Marcel Duchamp's Ready-mades, or the German Netflix show "Dark."

Readings in philosophical and social history of Germany from the late 19th century onward.

Explores the friend/foe nexus in German history, literature and culture, with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.

This course traces the lineage and shapes of the Arthurian legend as witnessed in medieval literature and modern adaptations, including film and television ("Games of Thrones," "Star Wars," etc.) The aim is familiarity with the story of King Arthur and his court, as well as an ability to appreciate the permutations of the legend in all forms of media.

Introduces the most significant texts and films dealing with the Holocaust and surveys important philosophical and historical reflections on the meaning of the Holocaust. Meets second writing requirement.

This course explores the film culture of the Weimar period (1918-1933). Rife with ambition, experimentation, and sometimes disastrous failure, Weimar cinema forces us to confront fundamental questions of how moving images work, what they can do, and how they relate to the sociopolitical conditions that produce them.

In the 1930s, many people employed in the German film industry whose lives were threatened by Nazism took refuge in Hollywood. This course examines the contributions exiled directors, writers, actors, and others made in genres ranging from comedy and melodrama to film noir. In addition to indicting fascism and reflecting on the trauma of forced migration these films often turned a critical eye on the U.S..

This course explores how West German art cinema of the 1960s-80s reinvented filmmaking, remembered the Nazi past, and rebelled against cultural and political institutions. In dialogue with films by Werner Herzog, Helke Sander, R. W. Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, and others, we will examine the aesthetic and political possibilities of cinema, in the context of an affluent consumer society with a violent past that many preferred to forget.

Explores the relationship between facts and fiction in the representation of the past. Course materials range from archival sources and scholarly articles to novels, films, paintings, sculptures, poems and other creative articulations of the historical imagination. The role of the new media and media analysis in the representation of history will also be examined. Topics vary annually.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject area of German in translation. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.

This course explores how West German art cinema of the 1960s-80s reinvented filmmaking, remembered the Nazi past, and rebelled against cultural and political institutions. In dialogue with films by Werner Herzog, Helke Sander, R. W. Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, and others, we will examine the aesthetic and political possibilities of cinema, in the context of an affluent consumer society with a violent past that many preferred to forget.

Reading and discussion of German texts compared to texts from other literatures (all in English translation), with the aim of illuminating a central theoretical, historical, or social issue that transcends national boundaries. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.

Taking Goethe's Faust as its point of departure, this course traces the emergence and transformations of the Faust legend over the last 400 hundred years. We explore precursors of Goethe's Faust in the form of the English Faust Book, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and possibly other popular re-workings of the text. We will Goethe's Faust in its entirety, and then proceed to Bulgakov's response to Stalinism in The Master and Margharta and

This course aims to clarify basic facts and explore competing explanations for the origins and unfolding of the Holocaust--the encounter between the Third Reich and Europe's Jews between 1933 and 1945 that resulted in the deaths of almost six million Jews. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at: http://www.virginia.edu/german/Undergraduate/Courses.

This course explores what it means not only to read or listen to but also to see testimony by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. We will also view and analyze testimony by survivors of other genocides and atrocities. The purpose of this course is to enable students to develop the theoretical background and skills of close reading and close viewing necessary to analyze oral testimony.

This course explores the pursuit of legal justice after the Holocaust. Study of legal responses to the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews in Europe, Israel, and the United States from the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust to the present. Focus on the Nuremberg, Eichmann Trial, Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, among others. The course ask how the pursuit of legal justice after the Holocaust affects our understanding of the legal process.

Introduction to the work of Franz Kafka, with comparisons to the literary tradition he worked with and the literary tradition he formed.