Fall 2006 Course Listings Undergraduate Courses
Please note that the sequenced language courses are numbered with the prefix 091. The literature courses are numbered with the prefix 090.Sequenced Language Courses
Final placement in language courses is determined by a placement exam taken during orientation week or by the completion of the prerequisite courses at Johns Hopkins.091.101-102 Elementary German
An introduction to the German language and a development of reading, speaking, writing, and listening skills through the use of basic texts. Language lab is required. Both semesters must be completed with passing grades to receive credit. May not be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
Staff 4.5 credits 091.201-202 (H) Intermediate German
This course is designed to continue the four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) approach to learning German. Readings and discussions are topically based and expanded upon through audio-visual materials. Students will also review and deepen their understanding of the grammatical concepts of German. In the second semester, the capital city of Berlin is highlighted. Language lab is required. Conducted in German. Prerequisites: 091.101-102 or equivalent.
Staff 3.5 credits 091.203 (H) German for Professional Communication in Science and Engineering
This Intermediate level course is designed to provide students in engineering and sciences with "real life skills" and cultural background necessary for internship or research trips to Germany. Prerequisites: 091.101-102. Taught in German.
Staff 3 credits 091.301 (H,W) Advanced German Composition and Conversation I. Culture and Politics in Postwar Germany
Topically, this course focuses on the political and societal developments in Germany from 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Topics covered include reconstruction, (re)development of the party system, the student protests of the 1960s, and developments in West and East Germany. Students analyze literary and journalistic texts, films and print media. Emphasis on style and clarity in both written and oral expression. Review of advanced grammar. Taught in German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Staff 3 credits 091.302 (H,W) Advanced German Composition and Conversation II. Introduction to Contemporary German Issues
Topically, this course focuses on contemporary issues such as national identity, multiculturalism, and the effects of globalization. Pertinent historical and cultural developments of the 19th and 20th centuries are highlighted to help students understand contemporary German society. Readings include literary and journalistic texts. Emphasis on style and clarity in both written and oral expression. Review of advanced grammar. Taught in German. Prerequisite: 091.301 or equivalent.
Staff 3 credits 091.303-304 (H) Business German
This course sequence is designed as a two-semester intensive introduction into the language and culture of German business, commerce, and industry. Combines the study of foreign language (with its four essential skills: reading, speaking, writing, and listening comprehension) with business skills, including Web publishing through the design and maintenance of a course web page. Students will learn basic economic and business vocabulary; investigate the current status of the German and European economy; and become familiar with economic and political structures as well as specific business practices, customs, and codes of behavior in the business world. Analysis and discussion of German economic and business texts and translation of economic and business materials. Taught in German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Staff 3 credits 091.305 or 091.306 (H) German for Science and Engineering
This course is designed as an introduction to the language used by scientists and engineers. Analysis of texts, preparation of presentations, and discussion of topics. Specific areas of interest to the course members will guide the selection of materials. While focusing on the language of science, students will develop their skills in reading, writing, and oral expression. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Staff 3 credits 091.351 or 091.352 (H) Introduction to German Literature and Culture: 1900-1945
Introduction to analysis of literary and cultural topics. Early 20th-century texts and visual media will form the basis for discussion of literature and cultural phenomena specific to the time period. Attention given to student writing. Readings, discussions, and written assignments in German. Prerequisites: 091.301-302 or equivalent.
Staff 3 credits Literature Courses
These courses count as advanced courses for the major and minor.090.250 (H) German Modernity
We will read and discuss masterpieces by four German writers and four German philosophers who have defined and redefined modernity: Goethe and Kant; Buchner and Nietzsche; Kafka and Benjamin; Bachmann and Adorno. Reading and discussion in English.
Campe 3 credits 090.300 (H) Teaching a Modern Foreign Language
Principles, methods and materials of language learning and teaching. Topics range from national standards to proficiency guidelines. Includes lectures, activities and visit to professional conference. Opportunity to focus reading in areas of interest.
Mifflin 3 credits 090.305 (H) Wireless Imagination: Introduction to Media Theory
This class focuses on key texts of media theorists such as Walter Banjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, and Paul Virilio. The history of radio technology will serve as a case study for understanding the transformations new media introduces in a society. Readings and discussion in English.
Niebisch 3 credits 090.314 (H) Berlin and Modernity
Explanation of literature and film from early 20th century. Focus will be on literary movements which developed in Berlin (Expressionism, Neue, Sachlichkeit, Agitprop) and effects of urban life on artistic technique. Readings in German, discussion in English.
Tobias 3 credits 090.318 (H) Kafka and Robert Walser: Narrating the Institution
Kafka, writing in German in Prague, and Robert Walser, a Swiss author living in Berlin, created their own type of novel at the beginning of the last century. The subjects of their narration are not persons or protagonists, but institutions that frame their being in the world: bureaucracy in Kafka’s Castle, pedagogy in Walser’s Institute Benjamenta. Reading will focus on what can still be narrated under modern conditions. Readings and discussion in German.
Campe 3 credits 090.322 (H) Fin de Siecle Vienna
Exploration of the major currents in turn-of-the-century Viennese culture: dreams, eroticism, violence, literary experimentation and crisis in paternity. Authors to include Freud, Musil, Schnitzler, Zweig, Trakl and Wittgenstein. Readings and discussion in English.
Tobias 3 credits 090.324 (H) The Origins of Conscience
Where does the inner voice come from which admonishes us not only about our actions but also about our thoughts and desires? This question has received different answers; in our discussions we will focus on those given by Kant, Nietzsche and Freud. Readings and discussion in English.
Twellmann 3 credits 090.330 (H) Austrian Literature Since 1960
The course focuses on both poetological aspects and topics of cultural and political relevance in Austrian literature since 1960. Close readings will be contextualized within theoretical approaches (e.g. deconstruction, discourse analysis, psychoanalysis). Readings include prose by Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Gerhard Roth, and Werner Schwab.
Strowick 3 credits 090.332 (H) German Poetry in the Age of Romanticism
Introduction into one of the most flourishing periods of German poetry, when revolutionary new modes of expressions emerged with lasting impact not only on German, but on European poetry up to the 20th century. Reading of poems by Goethe, Hölderlin, Novalis, etc., combines formal analysis with historical perspectives. Texts in German; discussion in English. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Nägele 3 credits 090.334 (H) Goethe’s Faust
A close reading of Goethe’s major masterwork.
Nägele 3 credits 090.335 (H) Modern German Poetry
A close reading of some of the representative German poets of the 20th century, among them Rilke, Trakl, Celan, and others. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Nägele 3 credits 090.345 (H) Chess Games
Chess surfaces frequently in literary and philosophical works as metaphor or allegory of battle of pure wits. Course will examine status assigned chess and, more generally, games in texts by Hoffmann, Zweig, Nabokov, Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Beckett, Freud. Texts available in original and translation; discussions in English. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Tobias 3 credits 090.348 (H) Speaking Philosophically: Introduction to German Philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche
Examination of crucial positions in German philosophy in works by Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Discussion of the question: what did it mean to speak as a philosopher? Attention given to areas of law and poetics. Speaking philosophically-meaning both to speak as a philosopher and to speak philosophically. Lectures in English and discussions in English and/or German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Campe 3 credits 090.349 (H) Speaking Philosophically: Enlightenment
In the Enlightenment philosophers take on a role in public affairs. What have been their basic claims? What were their fundamental ways of making those claims? Readings of selections from Leibniz to Kant. Conducted in English with a reading section in German.
Campe 3 credits 090.350 (H) In Search of the Absolute
During the Enlightenment, instrumental music was generally described as a "pleasant noise" below language. In the 19th century, the romantic metaphysics of art declared it a communicative force above language. Perceptions of Beethoven had much to do with this shift in aesthetic paradigm. This course explores the changing image of Beethoven in the 19th and 20th centuries and in so doing traces the genesis of "absolute music" as presented in the works of writers and philosophers from Friedrich Schlegel and E.T.A. Hoffmann to Theodor Adorno and Carl Dahlhaus. English with reading section in German.
Celenza 3 credits 090.353 (H) Realism
Introduction to mid- and late-19th-century literature focusing on the reinvention of the sentimental narrative, the tension between the natural and the supernatural, and the emphasis on local or regional folklore. Authors include Keller, Stifter, Droste-Hülshoff, Storm, Fontane. Readings and discussion in German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Tobias 3 credits 090.365 (H) Questions of Accountability in Law and Literature
Examination of how the development of our modern notion of legal accountability during the Romantic period is refracted in central literary texts. Selected tales from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Seraphionsbrüde, in which the modern detective story originates, and Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck will be closely studied. Adaptations of the latter in film and opera will also be studied. Readings in German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Campe 3 credits 090.369-370 (H) Modernism in German Literature
Covering major texts, authors (Kafka, Brecht, and others), and movements (Expressionism and others) that changed literary paradigms and constituted "Modernism" between 1890 and 1930. Readings in German; discussion in English. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Nägele 3 credits 090.371 (H) Franz Kafka, Writer of Modernity
Introduction to Franz Kafkas prose and its position in 20th-century literature, the relationship between autobiography, history, and writing. Emphasis will be on close readings. Readings in German; discussion in English and German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Nägele 3 credits 090.373 (H) Thomas Mann Doktor Faustus
Thomas Mann’s monumental novel Doktor Faustus is one of the first important literary responses to the horrors of Nazi-Germany. It does so in a complex way: weaving together the mythic figure of Faust embodied in the figure of modern composer and musician, with traits of the philosopher Nietzsche, and all this before the background of German cultural and political history from Luther to Third Reich. Readings in German, lecture and discussion in German and English.
Nägele 3 credits 090.375 (H) Georg Büchner
Will investigate the works of one of the most unsettling German writers between romanticism and modernism in its political context and introduce to the analysis of narrative and dramatic texts. Readings and discussion in German.
Twellmann 3 credits 090.384 (H,W) A Dialogue Between Old and New Theories of the Origin of Language
This course examines thesimilarities and differences between answers to the question of the origin of language given by philosophical writings from the 18th century and recent scientific research. Dean's Teaching Fellowship course.
Wilczek 3 credits 090.385 (H) In Transit: German-Jewish Literature of Exile
Examination of 20th-century German-Jewish works which were written in exile and which write of exile as existential condition and literacy space. Authors include Roth, Canetti, Becher, Seghers, Zweig, Döblin. Readings and discussions in German. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Tobias 3 credits 090.386 (H) German-Jewish Thought Since the Enlightenment
Survey of trends in German-Jewish thought since Haskala (Enlightenment). Emphasis on debate regarding "Deutschtum" and "Judentum" in 18th and 19th centuries; rationalist interpretations of Judaism; rediscovery of mysticism in 20th-century and anti-rationalist tendencies. Readings in German and English; discussion in English. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Tobias 3 credits 090.395 (H) Literature and Photography
Investigation of the intersection of literature and photography in 20th century fiction. How does the frozen image of photography affect narrative representation? The syllabus will include works conceived as collages (Sebald, Roth) as well as theoretical works (Sontag, Barthes, Benjamin) and literary texts indebted to the visual arts (Rilke, Baudelaire, Calvino, Bernhard).
Tobias 3 credits 090.400 (H) German Literature after 1989
The course focuses on topics of cultural and political relevance after 1989 - the fall of the Berlin wall - and how they are presented in contemporary German literature, including drama and fiction. Close readings will investigate into the concepts of generation, nationality, and gender and the textual strategies to develop and actualize them in the literary texts; in this context we will outline a poetics of observation. Readings will refer to recent theoretical approaches such as poststructuralism and gender studies and include the following authors: Grass, Sebald, Jirgl, Christa Wolf, Rainald Goetz, the post-Shoah generation (Biller, Menasse), Turkish-German voices, pop literature, plays and productions by Jelinek, Pollesch, and Schlingensief.
Strowick 3 credits 090.402 (H) Small Prose of the Classical Modern 1900-1933
We will read shorter narrative texts and essays from 1900-1933 which then flourished in the feuilleton sections of the print press (Kafka, Benn, Musil, Walser, and others). Reading focuses on their specific contribution to modern writing and the cultural and political contexts. Readings and discussion in German.
Groddeck 3 credits 090.403 (H) Visions of Cinema: Weimar Film 1913-1933
Provides an overview of major developments in German cinema during the first third of the 20th century. We will submit films to a detailed analysis that combines close reading and historical contextualization. Films include "Nosferatu," "M," "Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari," "Metropolis," and others.
Gold 3 credits 090.405 (H) From Print to Electronic Media
Introduction to the history of media, tracing the transformation triggered by the invention of the printing press in the early modern period to the impact that media as diverse as the microscope, camera, radio, film, and television have had on 20th-century culture.
Campe 3 credits 090.420 (H) The Human and the Machine in German Literature and Film
Human machines and mechanical humans haunt the imagination of writers, filmmakers and their audiences, particularly in Germany. Discussion of influential works like Hoffmann's "Sandmann," Kafka, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and contemporary cyborgs. Readings and discussion in German.
Pahl 3 credits 090.429 (H) The Lyric
Survey of 19th- and 20th-century German lyric poetry for beginning graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Course will focus on intersection of theoretical writings on the lyric with lyric form itself. Authors include Eichendorf, Brentano, Heine, Droste-Hülshoff, Hoffmannstahl, George, Trakl, Rilke, Bachmann, Celan. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Tobias 3 credits 090.460 (H) Reading Nietzsche in German
Course series introducing major thinkers in German in the original. Introduction to philosophical and theoretical language and modes of thought through close reading of representative samples of Nietzsches writings. Use of text translations encouraged. Prerequisites: 091.201-202 or equivalent.
Nägele 3 credits 090.501-502 Independent Study
Staff 090.510 (H) German Honors Program
Staff Graduate Courses 091.601-602 Reading & Translating German for Academic Purposes I, II
This course is designed for graduate students in other departments who wish to gain a reading knowledge of the German language. The first semester assumes no knowledge of German and covers the grammatical principles of the language. The second semester assumes a basic knowledge of German grammar and vocabulary and concentrates on reading practice. For certification or credit.
Clark 091.608 Principles and Practice of German Foreign Language Instruction
This course will familiarize students with pedagogic principles and teaching methodologies in the field of foreign language instruction. Readings will provide a foundation to assess best practices in the teaching of listening, reading, speaking, writing, and culture in the second language classroom. It will emphasize topics such as teacher and student roles in learning, reflective teaching, individual learner differences, classroom management, lesson planning, task-based activities, test design, and technology enhanced language learning. All incoming T.A.s are required to participate in the workshop which includes class observations and in-class presentations.
Mifflin 090.605 (H) The Life of Stones: Geology in the Works of Goethe, Novalis, and Celan
Examination of the geological motifs in all three authors literary works. Emphasis on geological theories of the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the debates between the neptunists and plutonists. Consideration of theological, aesthetic, and philosophical ramifications of debate.
Tobias 090.607 Places of Sovereignty
Modern drama’s stage often is specifically related to sovereignty - as the antechamber of the king, as the place of acclamation or expulsion, or the ambivalent zone between territories. Readings from 16th to 20th entury will include Shakespeare’s Richard II, Racine’s Britannicus, Hölderlin’s Empedokles, and Handke’s Königsdrama. They will be supplemented by materials from legal and theatrical history. Readings in English and German; discussion in English.
Campe 090.617 Robert Walser’s Mikrogramme
The course concentrates on Walser’s Mikrogramme, a five-hundred-page convolute, which Walser left behind in microscopic handwriting. Readings will focus on the challenges involved in editing this unique ensemble and on broader issues relating to writing and textuality. Readings and discussion in German.
Groddeck 090.620 Modern Verse: Individual Poems, Poetic Cycles
Consideration of the questions of composition in the case of poetic works by Rilke, George, Heym, and Celan. Examination of different strategies required in reading an individual poem and a series or cycle.
Tobias 090.622 Negative Theologies: Meister Eckhart and Georges Bataille
Examination of Meister Eckharts sermons with attention to tension between a God identified with Being and one identified with Not-Being, such that this God is removed from the realm of all lived or conscious experience.
Tobias 090.624 On Tolerance
The course examines political and juridical aspects of toleration as it was conceived in the 18th century by Lessing, Dohm, Mendelssohn, and Hamann. Additional readings include Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke. Readings and discussion in German.
Twellman
090.625 Redemption and Utopia: The History of a Concept
An examination of the concepts of redemption and utopia as they appear in the works of 20th-century German-Jewish thinkers, including Adorno, Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Scholem, and Buber. To what extent is redemption presented as a specifically Jewish concept in these authors works, one which is opposed to the Western metaphysical tradition?
Tobias
090.630 Novalis, Hölderlin, and the Philosophy of Poetry
Once consigned to literary legend, Novalis and Hölderlin are now recognized as rigorous thinkers in their own right. This seminar examines their attempts to elaborate theories of poetry and poeticizing following their critiques of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre; we will also consider their significance for such commentators as Benjamin, Heidegger, de Man, and Lacoue-Labarthe. Texts include Hyperion, "Die Vefahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes," Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Hymnen an die Nacht, Fichte-Studien, and selected poems.
Gold 090.632 Celan
Examination of Celans work from middle/late period with attention to temporal aspects of his verse, i.e., treatment of time in his work and experience of time fostered. Investigation of distinctions "early," "middle," and "late" period, assumptions underlying distinctions, and relevance of such genealogical categories in Celans case.
Tobias 090.635 Guilt in Heidegger and Kafka
Investigation of concept of guilt in Heidegger and Kafka with emphasis on theological precedents and ramifications of concept. Primary texts: Sein und Zeit and Octavhefte; ancillary readings in Augustine and Kierkegaard.
Tobias
090.655 ‘Beautiful Soul’ and Romantic Irony: Feeling, Gender, and Theory
One might be tempted to oppose the critical attitudes of Sensibility and early Romanticism: one allegedly simpler and more conservative, complementing enlightened rationality by cultivating feeling, and the other playful and sophisticated, bending the Enlightenment’s firm stance with its complex theory and practice of irony. In this course, we will try to mix up the two discourses of the ‘beautiful soul’ and of Romantic irony and, since they tend to fall along gender lines, this will also be a way of troubling gender constructions. Readings and discussion in English.
Pahl 090.660 Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka is the most important German-language author of the 20th century. His influence on world literature can hardly be underestimated. His modernity is based not primarily on bold linguistic experiments (as is the case with the expressionists and Dadaists), but rather on the intricate cultural diagnosis of the century in which he lived, and also on his persistent meditation on the situation from which his writing arose. There are in all six fields towards which Kafka's writing is directed. They are (1) the diagnosis of family structure (Das Urteil), (2) the exploration of thought on cultural origin (Ein Bericht fuer eine Akademie) and (3) on cultural difference (Einleitungsvortrag ueber den Jargon), (4) the observation of cultural reproduction by sexuality and feeding (Ein Hungerkuenstler), (5) the observation of legal order (Der Prozess, In der Strafkolonie) and finally (6) the question of the possibility of narrating life careers (Der Verschollene). The seminar will - with the description of these six thematic fields - attempt to bring together literary and cultural perspectives, thus encompassing Kafka's work in its entirety. Familiarity with Kafka's complete works by preparatory reading and active participation in the seminar are the prerequisites for the succwss of this project.
Neumann 090.664 Theater of Institution: German Baroque Trauerspiele (Gryphius, Lohenstein)
Institutionality is at the heart of the baroque Trauerspiele: Gryphius’ and Lohenstein’s plays were mostly staged in pedagogical institutions, the protestant gymnasium. Institution of sovereignty is the centerpiece of their theological/political debates; institutionality, finally, characterizes the status of the language spoken on the stage. "Institutionality" may be the key term for an intensive reading of the most important Trauerspiele in the same way as "negotiation" is said to be the key term for Elizabethan theater.
Campe 090.670 Hermeneutics - Literary and Philosophical (Schleiermacher, Szondi, Heidegger, Gadamer)
Examines the cometing claims and assumptions of two models of hermeneutics: literary and philosophical. Reading works by four thinkers - Friedrich Schleiermacher, Peter Szondi, Martin Heidegger, and Hans Georg Gadamer - we will ask how it is possible to place these two conceptions of interpretation in dialogue with one another.
Gold 090.672 Einfhlung - Verfremdung - Katharsis
Discussion of three terms and their conflictual constellation in Modernity, not only in modern drama and theater but as constitutive elements of shifts in cultural representation. Readings/discussions center on texts of Brecht, Artaud, Benjamin, Bataille, Freud.
Nägele 090.685 Hegel, Die Phaenomenologie des Geistes
A close reading of Hegel's Phenomenologie des Geistes. We will pay particular attention to the work of emotionality in the development of Spirit's self-reflection.
Pahl 090.691 Proseminar
Introduction to research techniques and resources in Germanistik.
Weimar 090.700-701 Introduction to Nietzsche I, II
Introduction to Nietzsche’s work. Focus on Nietzsche’s diverse literary styles from the Birth of Tragedy to Zarathustra.
Groddeck 090.702 Aphoristic Writing Around 1800
Focus on Lichtenberg’s Waste books. Readings include the ancient (Hippocrates), early modern (Montaigne) traditions, and Romanticism (Schlegel, Novalis). Key issues: poetics of aphorism as form; concept of ‘literary technology’ and science.
Campe 090.705 Nietzsche-Mann-Adorno
This course will examine two novels by Thomas Mann (Doktor Faustus, Feliz Krull), which draw heavily on Nietzsche (Geburt der Tragodie) and Adorno (Philosophie der neuen Musik). Of concernwill be the 'power' the texts attribute to art and the political dimensions of the aesthetic sphere.
Tobias 090.706 Archives of the Present: Grammatology
(Re-) reading of Ferdinande de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale and its reception in Jacques Derrida’s De la grammatologie. Further readings include Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de Man. Readings and discussion in German.
Twellmann 090.709 Catharsis and Contamination
Discourses about pure/impure play a foundational role in constitution of cultural systems, and define various concepts of ethics/aesthetics/poetics. Last but not least, they underlie all kinds of fundamentalisms in politics/religion/academia. Course will address these questions through texts from Aristotle through Nietzsche to Brecht/Kafka/Bataille. Concentration on texts and areas of choice concerning this question is encouraged.
Nägele 090.716 Contingencies: Semantics of Probability & Narrative Forms in the 18th Century
Focuses on Wielan’s Agathon and Kleist’s novellas for exploring variants of a poetics of contingency. Discussion on event, chance and probability from philosophy, science and poetics of the time will be included. Readings and discussion in German.
Campe 090.721-722 Dialectics of Enlightenment I, II
Nägele 090.723-724 Poetry and Poetics I, II
Investigation of the relationship between specific poetic and aesthetic projects and poetic praxis with emphasis on poets such as Hölderlin, Rilke, Celan, and others where the poetic praxis is especially strongly linked to the articulation of poetics.
Nägele 090.745 (H) Ontological Aesthetics
Comparison of Heidegger’s and Benjamin’s claims about the work of art as purveyor of truth and truth as event. Primary emphasis will be on ontological value assigned art in modernity.
Tobias 090.757-758 Studies in 20th-Century German Literature I, II
Nägele 090.759 Constructions of Modernity I: Heine and Baudelaire
Through an intensive reading of Heine and Baudelaire, the seminar will investigate problems of text and history, of periodization and transformation with a particular view on the status of construction and de(con)struction in Modernism.
Nägele 090.760 Constructions of Modernity II: Freud, Benjamin, Adorno
Construction as a key concept in the theories of Modernity and in the rethinking of memory and history.
Nägele 090.764 Rücksicht auf Darstellbarkeit
"Rücksicht auf Darstellbarkeit" - consideration for (re-)presentability - is a phrase coined by Freud denoting one of the four labors of the dream. But this "consideration" is obviously one that is at the constitutive basis of any (re-)presentation. We will pursue the questions through close readings of texts beginning with Aristotle and Plato through Lessing, Klopstock, Hölderlin, Kleist to Freud and Benjamin (and others).
Nägele 090.765 Theatrical Bodies and Gestural Language: Brecht and Artaud
Brecht and Artaud are the most paradigmatic writers rethinking and reshaping the concept of theater and gesture as a rethinking both of language and the political space. Other authors and texts, however, will be included in the discussion, such as Benjamin’s essay on surrealism, and texts by Bataille, Kafka, and Heiner Müller, among others.
Nägele 090.766 Theatrical Theories: Hölderlin’s Notes on Sophocles, Kierkegaard's Either/Or, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, and Benjamin’s Origin of the German Trauerspiel
Nägele 090.769 Walter Benjamin: The Parisian Arcades - Passagen Arbeit
Walter Benjamin's unfinished project on the Parisian Arcades is one of the most daring experiments in reading the traces of history and texts. We will focus particularly on Benjamin's procedures in presenting his material and in his methods of reading it.
Naegele 090.773-774 History and Theory of Tragedy I, II
Nägele 090.775-776 Special Problems in Aesthetics and Literary Theory
Nägele 090.779 Thinking Poetry: The Late Hölderlin and Rilke
Nägele 090.780 Writing as Auto-Bio-Graphy: The Case of Kafka/Kafka’s K’s
Readings include both ‘fictional’ and ‘non-fictional’ writings of Kafka, analyzing their interrelation in view of question: what is at stake in writing?
Nägele 090.781 (H) Theory of Meaning, History of Science
The emergence of post-phenomenological studies on the history of science in the 1960s made a strong impact on theories of meaning and representation in literature. Readings and discussion in English.
Campe 090.800-801 Independent Study
Staff 090.811-812 Directed Dissertation Research
Nägele 090.813-814 Directed Dissertation Research
Campe 090.819-820 Directed Dissertation Research
Tobias
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