GER 222 - The Holocaust in Literature, Film, and Monument (Winter 2008)

This course explores diverse representations of the genocidal murder of the European Jews in Nazi Germany. We will focus largely, but not exclusively, on representations that have been produced by Germans, some of whom are Jews, some of whom are of Christian heritage. We will read history, novels, poetry, and some more theoretical essays, and we will view and discuss several cinematic depictions. We will ask questions both about the events represented and also (prominently) about the conditions of their representation, including questions of point of view, fictional vs. factual representations, and ideology.

German 410/510 - Orientalism in German Modernity: an Introduction

The construal of the “East” as “Orient” has been a crucial component of all modern cultural discourses in Germany. After all, the “Abendland”—the Occident--can define itself as such only in relation to the “Morgenland”—the Orient. One of the ways in which this definition has taken shape is as the Aryan myth, a story of origin of the (“Germanic”) West out of the (“Indo-Germanic”) East, a myth whose flip side was the racial anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust. We will explore this formation, and we will consider its place within the more general discussion of "origins." For the modern Western determination of the “Orient” concerns the concept of “origin” and "foundation" in general, and that of the “origins” or "grounds" of culture/civilization and history in particular. Taking Spinoza as our point of departure—since his “pantheism” comes to be seen as the fundamental philosophical doctrine of the Orient (in part because he is the first “Oriental” to speak the philosophical language of the West)—we will then look at Lessing’s brief text, The Education of the Human Race, selected poems from Goethe’s West-East Divan, sections of Hegel’s Philosophy of History, and Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. Background readings in Raymond Schwab, Edward Said and other, more recent scholarship will provide the necessary context.

GER 623 - Lyric (Fall 2007)

The first half of this course will provide an introduction to the poetic and poetological writings of the person regarded by many as the most important lyric poet in the modern German tradition--i.e. since God became particularly difficult to get in touch with-- Friedrich Hölderlin. Whereas speaking in-lyrical-isolation, or speaking to oneself, had always necessitated an address to a kind of absent other, or someone (as we say) "not all there," with the secularization and the rise of Kantian philosophy, the absence or inaccessibility of the absolute Other becomes particularly acute. The not-all-there-ness of the Other attains new heights, goes to new extremes (from the ontological to the psychopathological). After exploring this problematic in the works of Hölderlin, in the second half of the course, we will listen for some of its echoes in twentieth century verse composed in the wake of Hölderlin, and with his example in mind. Throughout, we will read some of the more important interpretations of this poetry by Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Jean Laplanche, Michel Foucault, and others.