German

This is a semester 1 course for beginners with no previous knowledge of German, designed to give absolute beginners a basic, working knowledge of spoken and written German. The course is not suitable for students with previous knowledge of German. All students take all elements of assessment, including the examination.

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, institutions, traffic, traveling, health, weather, and festivities.

In January 2021 a commission appointed by the federal government released an extensive report on the integration of people with a Migrationshintergrund, or migration background, in Germany. The report set out a concept of integration, discussed integration with regard to a wide range of policy areas, including health and housing, education, and employment, and raised issues like religion and language. Also included in the report were the dissenting positions of several commission members, which underline the extent to which integration remains a contested and controversial idea. The course uses this report as the starting point for an analysis of the concept of integration. The course considers the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects of the concept developed in the report, and compares it with terms like cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. The course also discusses the implications of integration for employment and education policy.

What does it mean to live in a surveillance society? How does the digital age challenge questions regarding privacy, individuality, and freedom? When does surveillance as care tip over into surveillance as control? And how does the Stasi system of vigilance prefigure contemporary surveillance culture? This course on the one hand examines the impact of surveillance on society by looking at the multifaceted ways technologies, societies, and the arts interact; and on the other hand, reflects on surveillance in a totalitarian context while comparing observation techniques in the GDR with contemporary surveillance methods. The course also explores how surveillance is represented in contemporary literature, film, and popular culture. The course maps out important themes with regards to surveillance and its repercussions (e.g., visibility, identity, privacy, and control). The course provides an overview of the interdisciplinary field of surveillance and covers the latest research in the following major areas: 1. Relationship between surveillance, power, and social control; 2. Histories of Surveillance: GDR and the Stasi (especially in the context of Berlin) 3. The concept of privacy; 4. Surveillance in the arts and popular culture.

This course is for beginners only and covers the A1 CEFR level of German language. Students learn and use expressions and simple sentences for everyday life. Students acquire vocabulary and language structures in order to talk about themselves, places, and time, and in order to ask others about these topics.

This course encompasses more complex structures and communicative competences in the German language. Students gain the ability to express desires and intentions as well as temporal sequences. They solidify their ability to communicate in every-day situations such as searching for housing, travel, general orientation, and relationships. The course also features more demanding texts for listening and reading comprehension. Students distill socio-cultural information from authentic texts such as newspaper articles and short literary extracts. In the realm of writing, the composition of basic types of texts is pursued. This course is at the A2.2/B1.1 level according to CFER.

On the basis of current debates in Germany, this course forms a picture of the state of German debate culture. The course addresses questions in this seminar including: How factual or polarizing are debates in different media? Where do the boundaries lie between free expression of opinion and punishable speech? How do parliamentary debates in Germany formally proceed and what influence does federalism have on political debates and decision-making processes? As a concrete example of debate, the course discusses, among other topics, the current debate on Corona measures such as compulsory vaccination.