18-19 GM1009: German Language I
GM1009
GM1009 is a compulsory Year 1 Language Course. Students have to attend 3 weekly lessons + a fortnightly grammar lecture (Intermediate):
- Grammar
- Comprehension
- Oral Practice
- Grammar Lecture (fortnightly, please refer to "Language Skills" site on MOODLE)
ASSESSMENT:
3-Hour Written Examination (50%):
- Grammar
- Composition
- Comprehension
English/German
- German/English or German monolingual dictionaries are allowed for the
written examination. Dictionaries will NOT be provided.
Oral Examination (50%):
- Short presentation
- Discussion
PLEASE NOTE THAT IN ORDER TO PASS THE CORE LANGUAGE UNIT YOU MUST OBTAIN AN OVERALL PASS MARK (AVERAGE OF THE WRITTEN AND ORAL EXAM MARKS) AND PASS THE FINAL WRITTEN EXAMINATION.
Teacher (Course Author): Karina Berger, Jon Hughes, Emily Jeremiah, Julian Koch, Nicholas Martin, Anja Peters, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth
18-19 GM1120: Introduction to German Studies
This course will:
Introduce you to three key areas of interest in contemporary German Studies: literature, film, and history
Introduce you to basic study skills
Teach you how to analyse different kinds of texts (literary, theoretical, filmic, historical)
Equip you with the vocabulary needed to discuss such texts
Introduce you to techniques used in class discussion and seminars at university level
Introduce you to three key areas of interest in contemporary German Studies: literature, film, and history
Introduce you to basic study skills
Teach you how to analyse different kinds of texts (literary, theoretical, filmic, historical)
Equip you with the vocabulary needed to discuss such texts
Introduce you to techniques used in class discussion and seminars at university level
18-19 GM1122: German History and Culture
The course presents key developments in German history through the lens
of culture including literature, film, paintings, caricatures.
Students will gain an insight into German culture and history from the
Middle Ages to the present, and acquire skills and knowledge that will
serve them throughout their degree.
18-19 GM2009: German Language II
GM2009
GM2009 (Full Unit) is a compulsory Year 2 Language Course. Students have to attend 3 weekly lessons + a fortnightly grammar lecture (Intermediate)
- Grammar/Business German
- Comprehension
- Oral Practice
- Grammar Lecture (fortnightly, please refer to "Language Skills" site on MOODLE)
ASSESSMENT:
3-Hour Written Examination (50%):
- Grammar
- Comprehension
- Commentary
English/German - German/English or German monolingual dictionaries are allowed for the written examination. Dictionaries will NOT be provided.
Oral Examination (50%)
PLEASE NOTE THAT IN ORDER TO PASS THE CORE LANGUAGE UNIT YOU MUST OBTAIN AN OVERALL PASS MARK (AVERAGE OF THE WRITTEN AND ORAL EXAM MARKS) AND PASS THE FINAL WRITTEN EXAMINATION.Teacher (Course Author): Karina Berger, Jon Hughes, Emily Jeremiah, Julian Koch, Nicholas Martin, Anja Peters, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth
18-19 GM2010: Intensive German for Beginners II
TEACHING:
5,5 hours / week (please refer to timetable)
ASSESSMENT:
3-hour written examination (50%)
English/German - German/English or German monolingual dictionaries are allowed for the written examination. Dictionaries will NOT be provided.
Oral examination (50%)
PLEASE NOTE THAT IN ORDER TO PASS THE CORE LANGUAGE UNIT YOU MUST OBTAIN AN OVERALL PASS MARK (AVERAGE OF THE WRITTEN AND ORAL EXAM MARKS) AND PASS THE FINAL WRITTEN EXAMINATION
5,5 hours / week (please refer to timetable)
ASSESSMENT:
3-hour written examination (50%)
English/German - German/English or German monolingual dictionaries are allowed for the written examination. Dictionaries will NOT be provided.
Oral examination (50%)
PLEASE NOTE THAT IN ORDER TO PASS THE CORE LANGUAGE UNIT YOU MUST OBTAIN AN OVERALL PASS MARK (AVERAGE OF THE WRITTEN AND ORAL EXAM MARKS) AND PASS THE FINAL WRITTEN EXAMINATION
Teacher (Course Author): Nicholas Martin, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth
18-19 GM2122: Death, Desire, Decline: Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka
This course will introduce you to two key figures in twentieth-century German-language literature, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Through an examination of the work of these writers, it will explore such issues as the individual v. society, the role of the artist, and the nature of desire. Mann’s work evinces a fascination with disorder and decadence even as it remains bound to bourgeois ideals of respectability and sobriety. In Kafka’s work, the everyday world of bureaucracy and officialdom is invaded by fantastical and bizarre elements. The course will focus on the unsettling and disruptive elements of these writers’ works, asking what they tell us about life in the twentieth century.
18-19 GM2124: Representations of Childhood and Youth in Modern German Culture
Childhood and youth - the formative periods in our lives - are of obvious crucial importance for individuals, for society and for culture. They have also been contested and controversial concepts. Children and adolescents have long been the subject of social, familial and educational pressures against which they have often rebelled in the attempt to assert individuality and develop their own identities. This course aims to introduce students to a range of literary and cinematic responses to the lives of children and young people in the context of the German-speaking countries between the late nineteenth century and the present day. Using a range of classic and recent texts and films, it will explore the historical contexts of the theme, and consider the way broader social, political and ethical issues that emerge from the representation of young people, and of institutions such as the school and the military.
18-19 GM3009: German Language III
GM3009 (Full Unit) is a compulsory core language course at final year level.
The course will be taught with 3 hours / week + a fortnightly grammar lecture (Advanced)
- Essay
- Translation
- Oral Practice
- Grammar Lecture (fortnightly, please refer to "Language Skills" site on MOODLE)
ASSESSMENT:
3-Hour Written Examination (50%)
- Erörterung (German essay)
- Translation
English/German - German/English or German monolingual dictionaries are allowed for the written examination. Dictionaries will NOT be provided.
Oral Examination (50%)
- Presentation
- Discussion
FOR THE ATTENTION OF ALL STUDENTS OF LANGUAGE:
PLEASE NOTE THAT IN ORDER TO PASS THE FINAL YEAR CORE LANGUAGE UNIT YOU MUST PASS BOTH THE FINAL ORAL EXAMINATION AND THE FINAL WRITTEN EXAMINATION.
Teacher (Course Author): Karina Berger, Jon Hughes, Emily Jeremiah, Julian Koch, Nicholas Martin, Anja Peters, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth
18-19 GM3131: Narrative and Identity
This course will introduce you to two key figures in twentieth-century German-language literature, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Through an examination of the work of these writers, it will explore such issues as the individual v. society, the role of the artist, and the nature of desire. Mann’s work evinces a fascination with disorder and decadence even as it remains bound to bourgeois ideals of respectability and sobriety. In Kafka’s work, the everyday world of bureaucracy and officialdom is invaded by fantastical and bizarre elements. The course will focus on the unsettling and disruptive elements of these writers’ works, asking what they tell us about life in the twentieth century.
18-19 GM3133: Dark Tales. E.T.A. Hoffmann and German Romanticsm
In this course we want to focus on German Romanticism's fascination with what was perceived as the "night side" of (human) nature. In response to the Enlightement's belief in rationality and objectivity Romantic writers tended to explore the more subjective and irrational aspects of life, like emotions and imagination, but also more unsettling psychological phenomena like dreams, hallucinations and mental illness.
E.T.A. Hoffmann is widely regarded as the undisputed master of dark, frightening and often bizarre tales whose protagonists experience their worlds as inexplicable and frightening places that drive them to the brink of insanity. The human psyche here appears to be unstable and easily influenced by factors beyond the individual's conscious control. The self is perceived as divided into "day" and "night" sides and notions of a unified stable identity become questionable. In our analyses of Hoffmann's texts we will explore themes and motifs such as the doppelgänger, the signifiance of dreams, the blurring of boundaries between sanity and insanity, the artist's role in society and the uncanny. Furthermore, we will discuss the author's specific mode of writing and select critical approaches to Hoffmann. While focusing on Hoffmann we will also consider a range of poems/excerpts from other Romantic authors in order to gain a better understanding of the period.
E.T.A. Hoffmann is widely regarded as the undisputed master of dark, frightening and often bizarre tales whose protagonists experience their worlds as inexplicable and frightening places that drive them to the brink of insanity. The human psyche here appears to be unstable and easily influenced by factors beyond the individual's conscious control. The self is perceived as divided into "day" and "night" sides and notions of a unified stable identity become questionable. In our analyses of Hoffmann's texts we will explore themes and motifs such as the doppelgänger, the signifiance of dreams, the blurring of boundaries between sanity and insanity, the artist's role in society and the uncanny. Furthermore, we will discuss the author's specific mode of writing and select critical approaches to Hoffmann. While focusing on Hoffmann we will also consider a range of poems/excerpts from other Romantic authors in order to gain a better understanding of the period.
18-19 GM3134: National Socialism and the Third Reich in German film and visual culture from 1933 to the present
The course covers the period of the Third Reich to present-day Germany. You will study a broad range of examples of the visual representation of National Socialism as an ideology, a political movement and a 'national' phenomenon. Starting in the 1930s and 1940s, you will be introduced to National Socialism in its historical context and asked to consider its defining characteristics. You will consider the Nazis’ use of propaganda and ceremony, focusing on film and graphic and fine art under Hitler. The course will then focus on the aftermath of the war in both West and East Germany, and the problematic idea of the 'Zero Hour'. You will consider early attempts to 'come to terms' with the past. The debates around Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) provide the focus for the next part of the course. You will study the depiction of perpetrators/victims, and of moral ambiguity before moving on to analyse the debates around German national responsibility for the Holocaust in the context of depictions of the failure of memory and denial in German film of the 1980s and 1990s, and conclude by studying the more recent trend towards 'normalization' in films incorporating 'ordinary' Germans and/or 'good Germans'. Throughout, you will comparatively consider the role of visual art in the above debates and trends, using the post-war work of Anselm Kiefer as a case studies, alongside analysis of site-specific memorials.
Teacher (Course Author): Jon Hughes, Nicholas Martin