Through an examination of literary texts over several centuries, along with relevant background readings, we will analyze issues of European power and identity, thinking of “Europe” as a socially and politically constructed fiction rather than as a normative fact. To do this we will pay particular attention to literary texts that thematize this constructed notion of identity or that were written by authors who themselves reside on the margins of Europe. Among more canonical authors who address these issues, this will include authors of immigration, displacement, and marginalization, as well as authors writing from the traditional border areas of European culture. Sample authors include: J.W. Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Christa Wolf, Emine Özdamar, Zafer Şenocak, Orhan Pamuk, Laila Lalami.

This class will center queer history and liberation in the German (and to a lesser extent the US) context(s) by studying various cultural productions and the meanings they generate alongside the history of social movements. We will think critically about how queerness has been understood, constructed, and policed in the German (and to a lesser extent US-American) context, as well as how systems of oppression like homophobia, transphobia, and cis-heteropatriarchy have marginalized, and continue to marginalize, queer people in German-speaking countries. We will also discuss the state of queer liberation today, including the western concept of 'coming out,' and consider the possibilities and limitations of queer futurity. We will read works of social history and sociology to learn about the history of gender and sexuality in Germany and how this history is entangled with other systems of oppression such as racism, ableism, and classism. We will also analyze literary and cinematic texts and discuss the meaning of these texts in various historical and contemporary contexts, considering how their political and aesthetic meanings engage queerness in some way and raise important questions about the urgency and challenges of community, solidarity, and liberation. EP:G

What is “Europe”? What does it mean to be “European”? Who gets to define the boundaries of Europeanness, and what groups have been included or excluded, centered or marginalized as a result? This course seeks to answer such epistemological questions by unraveling and deconstructing some of the central, naturalized, imposed, and often monolithic narratives that have been projected onto and out from Europe. Examining these mechanisms from a critical perspective, students will look at the diverse cultural, linguistic, national, religious, ethnic, racial, and other factors that have continued to shape Europe throughout its history. They will consider debates around issues of identity and ideology, including the histories and legacies of colonialism, imperialism, fascism, and racism, and learn to view Europe as a place of multiplicity and difference, changing institutions, and ever-shifting borders. Taking a transdisciplinary approach that includes literary studies, art history, race and ethnic studies, film and media studies, cultural studies, history, and geography, among other fields and theoretical frameworks, “Unraveling Europe” unsettles the common assumption that Europe is and always has been fundamentally European.

Explore Berlin as a global city through its long-standing vibrant film culture! This course offers a journey through Berlin’s fascinating cinematic history and examines its far-reaching effects beyond borders and across time. IN addition to our select films and readings, this journey will take us all over the city with visits to filming locations, historical landmarks, film infrastructures, and institutions of cinema to trace the lasting impact of film history on the makeup and identity of Berlin today. This course fulfills the Equity & Power graduation requirement.

The seminar introduces policy-making in the parliamentary democracy of Germany and compares it with other European systems and the United States. In discussion with Armand Zorn, Member of the German Bundestag since 2021, the seminar shows how a young person, immigrated to Germany from Cameroon at the age of 10, got politically active in German politics and became a 'rising star' in the Bundestag. We will look closely at working a political party, the candidate nomination process, electoral campaigning, coalition building, parliamentary organization and the processes of legislation and oversight. The individual and practical experience of Armand Zorn is reflected based on a deep theoretical thinking and current empirical knowledge. Comparing the German case with other political systems in Europe leads to the broader understanding of challenges to representative democracy around the globe. At the beginning of this comparative politics class, we will co-create the focus, accomodating the interests of class participants. The class requires no previous knowledge of German politics and will be held in English. Students can choose to take exams in German.

As a burgeoning turn-of-the-century metropolis, the capital of Imperial Germany, an early epicenter of queer culture in the 1920s, the administrative center of the Nazi genocide, a frontline city in the Cold War, a hotbed of leftist activism in the 1960s, and a symbolic capital of post-Cold War Europe, the city of Berlin has played an outsized role in twentieth-century history. Using a wide array of primary documents (ranging from experimental films and mass-market novels to political manifestos and architectural plans), this course explores the history of Berlin from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. In so doing, it both familiarizes students with some of the central events of twentieth-century European history and serves as an example for how to employ the tools of cultural and urban history.

Over the last decade, Europe, and Germany in particular, have received an unprecedented number of refugees. This course looks at recent and historical conditions of movement and displacement, from European colonialism, Nazi Germany, postwar labor migration, and European integration to the fall of the Berlin Wall, current EU policies, the rise of the far right, and larger global debates. Through the lens of social justice and using literature and film as the main frameworks for analysis, students will investigate the long-term social and cultural impacts of these developments and explore larger questions of identity, inclusion, exclusion, borders, migration, and citizenship.

We will focus in this course on literature of dark impulses and the irrational—on literature that we might specifically connect with psychanalysis. Psychoanalysis arose around the turn of the 20th century, during the height of the cultural period generally known as Modernism. In many ways cultural texts such as literature, the new medium of film, music, and the visual arts of the modernist period reflect questions, concerns, and issues that were also at the heart of psychoanalysis. It is not simply that culture was influenced by psychoanalysis—authors inserting Freudian ideas into their works, for example—but that all of these texts—scientific and cultural alike—reflected the issues, fears, and concerns of the era. In other words, we are concerned here with the “discourse” that arises in the years around 1900, particularly as it concerns the “psyche.” No German required.

This course focuses on Turkish German cinema, its history and aesthetic conventions, and also introduces students to literature, music, and cultural production at large along the Turkish German axis. We will discuss questions of identity, migration, mobility, nation, and belonging, and explore how these topics have been treated cinematically and across other genres. Special emphasis will also be placed on the cities of Berlin and Istanbul. Through on-site visits and field trips, we will explore firsthand the connections between historical context, cultural expression, social practices, and urban form, and trace the lasting impact of Turkish German entanglements and transnational cultural flows on the makeup and identity of those cities today. Sample filmmakers and other artists might include: Fatih Akın, Kutluğ Ataman, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Sabahattin Ali, and Ipek Ipekcioglu.