Germany

Using examples taken from literature, art, television, stand-up comedy, and everyday discourse, this course explores the use of humor in British culture. A defining characteristic of Britishness, the use of humor is examined in a range of contexts, with a focus on literary and comic deployments of irony, satire, farce, surrealism, and incongruity. The course develops students’ ability to understand, describe, and analyze particular examples of humor, along with opportunities to practice their analytic writing skills.

This course is intended for students who have no prior knowledge of German. In this class on the A1 level according to CEFR, students learn and solidify basic grammatical structures and systematically build their vocabulary. They train the four skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in everyday situations and do simple exercises to practice and improve their verbal and written skills. Students are introduced to independent forms of learning and studying. The class covers and reflects on civilization and culture in Germany, Berlin, and at the university as related to everyday life. Topics include personal information, living situation, work, institutions, and traffic.

This course is designed for students who have successfully completed the intermediate level of German and who have a sound knowledge of German. The course deepens student's competence in speaking and writing and expands and refines their vocabulary usage, so that they are able to express and discuss ideas, opinions and information at the academic level. Special attention is given to the consistent use of self-correction. Furthermore, the course helps students to develop effective reading and listening strategies and deepen your knowledge of grammar structures. In addition, students analyze and interpret cultural, political, and historical topics in German-speaking countries and compare them with your own cultural background. Through this course students develop and regularly use new strategies for language acquisition. Students gain an improved ability to choose the right linguistic register for different situations, topics and communication partners. Students are able to lead and participate in academic discussions about certain course-related topics. In addition, students expand and refine their essay writing skills, are able to write, revise, and proofread essays that meet the standards of academic writing.

This course examines the evolution of “Green Germany” through history, up to the present moment. The course studies key moments in the history of the German relationship to nature and the environment, looking at the role of grassroot movements on the one hand and state policy on the other hand. Among the topics discussed are: the movement for nature conservation at the end of the 19th century during industrialisation; the period of National Socialism, when the legal foundations of the protection of the environment were laid; the environmental movement of the 1970s in West Germany; environmental protection in East Germany, and, finally, current debates and conflicts around the conservation of nature and landscape on the one hand and climate protection as well as energy policy on the other hand, looking at government policy and protest movements. The course also examines the specifically German attachment to the forest; accordingly, one session is held in Grunewald, the large forest in Berlin.

This seminar explores issues of medieval embodiment. On the one hand, students are looking at the role of the lived body as it is depicted in literature – the body that eats and sleeps, loves and desires, suffers and dies; on the other hand, they are examining the significance of divine physicality that becomes manifest in Christ’s incarnated and resurrected body. Students pay close attention to the imbrications between sacred and secular notions of the body, and they also challenge the idea of the Middle Ages as "dualistic," by questioning predominant dichotomies between body and soul, immanence and transcendence, masculinity and femininity. By drawing on written representations of the body by authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, John Gower, and William Langland, as well as on some of the seminal studies on medieval embodiment, students explore the medieval body as a site of multiple and competing discourses.