For all meeting days and times please see the Online Schedule of Classes
Readings and discussions happen in English. These courses fulfill the second half of the university’s Reading & Composition Requirement (equivalent to English 1B, Comp. Lit. 1B, etc.).
German R5B: Reading and Composition
4 Units
This course offers a survey of modern German literary, cultural, and intellectual currents, as well as an introduction to argumentation and analysis. Students will examine numerous issues and questions central to defining the complexity of modern German culture. R5B satisfies the secong half of the Reading and Composition requirement, and R5A satisfies the first half.
All readings will be in English, and no prior knowledge of the materials is required.
German 24: Bureaucracy at Berkeley
Freshman Seminar, 1 Unit
Instructor: Karen Feldman
This course will look at theories and studies of bureaucracy, and apply them to student experiences at UC Berkeley. We will attempt to understand how bureaucracy has been theorized, how it proliferates, and how it functions at our university. Students will do short readings and also journal about their experiences with university bureaucracy. They may also write short reports, including studies of university emails, websites, and offices; and may also conduct interviews with administrators to find out how bureaucracy is perceived by different stakeholders in the university.
Taught in English.
German C25/ L&S C60U: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
Freshman Seminar, 4 Units
Instructor: Karen Feldman
This course explores the ways in which Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--three of the most important thinkers in modern Western thought--can be read as responding to the Enlightenment and its notions of reason and progress. We will consider how each remakes a scientific understanding of truth, knowledge, and subjectivity, such that rationality, logic, and the powers of human cognition are shown to be distorted, limited, and subject to forces outside our individual control. All lectures and readings in English.
Taught in English.
German 39A: Creative Reuse
Freshman Seminar, 4 Units
Instructor: Deniz Gokturk
Arguing remediation is at the core of creation, this seminar explores artistic practices of creative reuse across multiple media and contexts. Analyzing techniques of montage and collage in film, video, visual art installations, and literature, we trace how new media forms recycle old media both in digital and material reconfigurations. We probe concepts of ownership, copy right, originality, and authorship. A good introduction to the topic of waste is John Scanlan’s book On Garbage (2005). We ask why people preserve, what they discard, and what can be created out of refuse. These questions are central to decisions regarding waste management, sustainability, and archiving. We consider some local initiatives such as the East Bay Depot of Creative Reuse, the San Francisco Recology Artist in Residence Program, and Rick Prelinger’s collection of home movies and ephemeral film and his archival compilation films. In this regard, the seminar will interface with the series on Documentary Voices at BAMPFA. We also revisit earlier examples of montage in film and literature, such as excerpts from Alfred Döblin’s famous novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), where fragments of public language circulating in the city permeate the protagonist’s and the narrator’s consciousness. While our focus is on aesthetic practices, we think about reuse not simply in terms of decorative production but also as a political intervention. Students develop their own projects in creative reuse over the course of the semester along the lines of their own interests and skills.
Taught in English.
German 39Q: Philosophy and Film
Freshman Seminar, 4 Units
Instructor: Nicholas Baer
Is film a unique medium of thought? This seminar explores the nature and relation of philosophy and film, framed by questions such as: Do films make independent and innovative contributions to philosophy or rather illustrate and express pre-existing ideas? Can we make general claims about cinema’s philosophical capacities and concerns or only specific arguments about films, directors, and genres? We will place philosophical texts in conversation with films such as Battleship Potemkin, Modern Times, Rashomon, Journey to Italy, Close-Up, Paris Is Burning, The Piano, and Get Out.
Taught in English.
German 109: Bringing down a Democracy. The Example of Austria 1918-1938
Compact Seminar, 2 Units
Instructor: Florian Wenniger
Note: This class only meets for 5 Wednesdays from 01/22/2025-02/19/2025. This course is open for majors and minors to count as a german taught course if the reading material and homework is completed in "German".
The proposed course sheds light on a society which, for all its differences, shows astonishing parallels with the present in many countries of the Western world: Austria in the interwar period 1918-1938. This first democracy on Austrian soil was characterized by political polarization, fierce conflicts over distribution, cultural struggles, endemic racism and a militarization of politics that was
unprecedented in Europe. Under the impact of the global economic crisis and the rise of National Socialism, the conservative establishment finally overcame democracy and, supported by large sections of the state
apparatus, the military and the police as well as the Catholic Church, established a fascist regime based on the Italian model. However, while Mussolini’s Italian regime succeeded in integrating large sections of
society into the new order, Austrian fascism failed in this respect and eventually collapsed under pressure from neighboring Nazi Germany.Embedded in the history of the rise of fascist movements in Europe, the five units deal with the causes and dynamics of conflicts that
ultimately led to the destruction of parliamentary democracy.
Taught in English.
German 114: Language after Language Models
4 Units
Instructor: Hannes Bajohr
This course explores the profound impact of large language models (LLMs) on our understanding of language, meaning, and literary works. As AI systems like ChatGPT increasingly influence writing, translation, and communication, we will ask what becomes of language when it is computed by intelligent machines. Does it matter if an LLM can’t mean what it says if what it says is right? Is a sonnet by a machine less valuable than one by a human? And what is the politics of global English in the age of AI? Students will engage with philosophical theories of meaning, the intersection of AI with poetry and literature, and the ethical and technical challenges in the field of machine translation. By blending readings from philosophy, literary theory, and technical discussions of AI, this course bridges the gap between the humanities and computer science, offering a unique perspective on language after language models.
Taught in English.
German C160G/ L&S 120T: Ideas of Education
4 Units
Instructor: Lilla Balint
What is the purpose of education? Should the university prepare students for the job market or emphasize the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake? Is knowledge a value in itself? This course explores these questions, among others, while concentrating on the German idea of Bildung. It introduces students to the classical idea of education and self-formation by reading a wide range of texts from German philosophy, intellectual history, and literature. Furthermore, the course traces the history of this idea by exploring how Bildung informs contemporary literary works and film. Emphasis will be on issues of class, race, and gender.
Taught in English.
German 179: Reading, Theory, and Critical Engagement
4 Units
Instructor: Lilla Balint
What is theory, and how does it inform the way we read and interpret texts? How has theory shaped our understanding of what literature is? To explore these questions, we will engage with seminal texts from various theoretical traditions. Our topics may include old and new formalisms, psychoanalysis, gender and queer theory, Marxism, poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, trauma theory, critical race studies, affect theory, posthumanism. We will bring these theoretical perspectives into dialogue with key literary texts written in German; authors may include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, Friederike Mayröcker, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Mithu Sanyal, Fatma Aydemir, Kim de l’Horizon, Judith Schalansky. Some reading knowledge of German required; discussions in English.
Taught in English.
German 182/ Film 171 sec.003: German Cinema (Film Noir)
4 Units
Instructor: Nicholas Baer
This course focuses on film noir, one of the most notable phenomena of mid-twentieth-century cinema. We examine the aesthetic and narrative features of classic noirs in tandem with primary and secondary texts that employ a wide range of approaches, treating film noir as a genre, movement, period, cycle, and/or style. Individual units are devoted to film-historical precursors; gender and sexual relations; concurrent aesthetic, sociopolitical, and philosophical developments; and film noir’s global legacy up to the present day. Not least, the class traces the emergence of film noir as a discourse and explores the ways in which it obfuscates established categories of Film and Media Studies, refusing easy definition, localization, and periodization.
Taught in English.
German 184/ Film 125: Documentary Cinema
4 Units
Instructor: Deniz Gokturk
This course surveys the history, theory and practice of the genre called documentary cinema in a transnational horizon. We will explore what this amorphous and vague term means and examine the ways its forms and ethics have changed from the beginning of cinema to recent digital production and online exhibition. Major modes of documentary filmmaking will be covered, including cinema verité, direct cinema, investigative documentary, ethnographic and travel film, agit-prop and activist media, autobiography and the personal essay as well as recent post-modern forms that question relationships between fact and fiction such as docudrama, archival film, and "mockumentary." Through formal analysis, we will examine the "reality effects" of these works, focusing on narrative structures, visual style, and audience address. We will ask: How do these films shape notions of truth, reality, and point of view? What are the ethics and politics of representation? Who speaks for whom when we watch a documentary? Who stages whom for whom and to what end? What do documentaries make visible or conceal? What, if anything, constitutes objectivity? And by the way, just what is a document anyway?
Taught in English.