Department of Germanic Studies

GRMN 31801. Being and Time. 100 Units.

It has been almost one hundred years since Martin Heidegger published his magnum opus, Being and Time (1927). One of the greatest philosophical works of the twentieth century, it continues to inspire and disturb. To inspire: few books have had such a powerful influence or have been so generative in so many fields of inquiry. To disturb: few have been so forcefully denounced, in no small part because of Heidegger's notorious involvement in National Socialism. In this class, we will revisit this unsettling classic and gauge its impact. What does it mean to read Being and Time today? What difference does today make in our reading? What future, if any, awaits this book? In asking these questions, our primary focus will be Heidegger's analysis of futurity (Zukünftigkeit) and its link with anxiety, death, conscience, tradition, and history.

Instructor(s): Ryan Coyne     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This class counts as a Gateway course for the Fundamentals program. This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 24801, FNDL 24805, DVPR 31801, RLST 24801, THEO 31801

GRMN 32124. The Cultural History and Politics of Postwar Germany. 100 Units.

The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again," announced the critic Theodor Adorno on German radio in 1966. By this he meant not only the education of children, but also the re-education of the German people. After World War II, with the Third Reich in ruins and confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, Germans were forced to reckon with their past as they attempted to build the country anew, entering into a period of dramatic political and cultural reorientation. This course traces the history of "rebuilding" Germany after 1945, from the immediate postwar period through the East/West division to reunification to today. Drawing on a broad range of source material, including film, literature, government documents, art, and architecture, this interdisciplinary seminar studies the limits and possibilities of conceiving of Germany as a post-war Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), and its implications for German cultural production. We will pay special attention to the way that debates from the postwar era still reverberate today, for instance in racial discrimination and the rise of the German far-right. This course is required for all Germanic Studies majors and minors. Readings and discussion in English.

Instructor(s): Sophie Salvo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 22124, HIST 23100, DEMS 22124

GRMN 32324. The Human Form in Contemporary Art. 100 Units.

In a present where humanity faces planetary challenges with an unprecedented urgency, the human form - what Marx calls our "genus-being" (Gattungswesen) - has become a focus for artistic production of all sorts. The thesis of the class is this: Contemporary art is an actualization of the human form that doesn't presuppose the form, doesn't take it for granted, but instead troubles the form and poses it as a question. The class considers presentations of the form in performance art (Tino Sehgal, Anne Imhof, Wu Tsang), sculpture (Kara Walker, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cecilia Vicuña), writing (Friederike Mayröcker, Layli Long Soldier, Tracie Morris), sound (Maria Chavez, Christina Kubisch, Samson Young), and painting (Michael Armitage, Tammy Nguyen, Mark Bradford). The class contextualizes these artists with theoretical work by Sylvia Wynter, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Peter Sloterdijk, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jane Bennett, Achille Mbembe, Eva Horn, and Emanuele Coccia. Readings and discussion in English.

Instructor(s): Florian Klinger     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 23324, MUSI 23324, CMLT 23324, CMLT 33324, ARTH 23324, ARTH 33324

GRMN 32425. City of the Century: Vienna 1900 and the Making of the 20th Century. 100 Units.

In 1910, Vienna, with a population of 2 million was the 6th largest city in the world; it was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a multiethnic and multilingual state. As the "cradle of modernism and fascism, liberalism and totalitarianism" (to use a phrase from The Economist), Vienna around 1900 has fundamentally altered the way we understand ourselves in the West. In this course, we will examine the cultural currents that came together in the city and have since determined our self-image as psychological, sexual, gendered, and political beings. We will explore these and other revolutions in our sense of identity through the lens of literature and art in conjunction with other historical materials. Readings and discussions in English. Undergraduate and MAPH students welcome.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 32425

GRMN 32526. Aby Warburg and the Memory of Images. 100 Units.

Trained as an art historian with an expertise in Renaissance art, Warburg morphed into a historian of images (i.e., Bildwissenschaft) and - more broadly - into a historian of culture. We will trace Warburg's cultural historical method as it develops primarily from philology, but also art history, anthropology, the comparative study of religions, and evolutionary biology. How does Warburg read culture? What is his methodological approach for examining a wide variety of cultural artifacts ranging from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Poliziano's poetry, and Dürer's etchings to postal stamps and news photographs? How can these artifacts be vehicles for cultural memory? And how does the transmission of cultural memory in artworks manifest itself in different media such as literary texts, religious processions, astrological treatises, photography, and painting? Moreover, how does Warburg's work help us contextualize and historicize "interdisciplinarity" today? This course explores Aby Warburg in the context of other thinkers of the time including Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl, and others. Readings and discussions in English. Undergraduates and MAPH students welcome.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 32526, ARTV 32526, MAPH 32526

GRMN 33595. Nietzsche: The Will to Truth. 100 Units.

The will to truth - Nietzsche first uses the phrase in a notebook entry written in late 1882: "Will to truth!" Let us stop speaking so simplistically and bombastically!" From then on, the critique of this will would preoccupy him for the rest of his career. In this seminar we will study this critique as it develops in Nietzsche's middle and later writings. We will read closely his published works as well as recently translated notebook entries. What exactly is the will to truth? Why critique it? Can philosophy and/or thinking resist it or somehow do without it? What is the status of the discourse that contests it? In asking these questions, we will examine a still underappreciated aspect of Nietzsche's post-Zarathustra writings: the gap separating his polemic against metaphysics qua Platonism from his polemic against the so-called Judeo-Christian, i.e. the inheritance of the Biblical tradition.

Instructor(s): Ryan Coyne     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 23595, THEO 33595, FNDL 23595, DVPR 33595, GRMN 23595

GRMN 33623. Evil: Myth, Symbol and Reality. 100 Units.

From the horrors of the Shoah to violence suffered by individuals, the question of the origin, meaning, and reality of evil done by humans has vexed thinkers throughout the ages. This seminar is an inquiry into the problem of evil on three registers of reflection: myth, symbol, and reality. We will be exploring important philosophical, Jewish, and Christian texts. These include Martin Buber, Good and Evil, Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, Edward Farley, Good and Evil, Hans Jonas, Mortality and Morality and Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm. There will also be a viewing of the movie Seven (1995) directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. Accordingly, the seminar probes the reality of evil and the symbolic and mythic resources of religious traditions to articulate the meaning and origin of human evil. The question of "theodicy" is then not the primary focus given the seminar's inquiry into the fact and reality of human evil. Each student will submit a 5-7 page critical review of either Jonathan Glover's Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century or Susan Neiman's, Evil in Modern Thought. Each Student also will write a 15 page (double spaced;12pt font) paper on one or more of the texts read in the course with respect to her or his own research interests.

Instructor(s): William Schweiker     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the HS or CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): JWSC 23600, THEO 33600, FNDL 23600, GRMN 23623, RLST 23600, RETH 33600

GRMN 34614. Public Art, Land Art in Europe-Gold Gorvy Traveling Seminar. 100 Units.

This class examines the intersections of two categories of sculpture traditionally understood separately: land art and public art. If the former term typically captures artworks made in remote locations, the latter concept is associated with objects conceived in relation to architecture for dense urban contexts. Land Art usually features ephemeral earthen or other natural ingredients, whereas public art tends to be made from durable industrial and other man-made materials. In the context of postwar Europe and in the wake of the continent's reconstruction, however, artists often worked across these categories, problematizing dichotomies of nature and civilization, landscape and urbanism, artwork and context, figure and ground. We will read foundational texts on postwar sculpture; test the relevance of theories of the public; consider the roles of context, site-specificity, commemoration, architecture, and photography; and examine questions of materials and conservation. This is a Gold-Gorvy Traveling Seminar and students will travel to relevant artworks, sites, and exhibitions, including the 2027 iteration of Skulptur Projekte Münster and documenta 16 in Kassel, Germany. Students must be available for two weeks of department-sponsored travel following June 5 convocation and prepare guided reading and research during spring quarter leading up to the traveling seminar itself.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent note: Students should email instructor explaining relevant background and interest by January 10, 2027. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 34614, ARTV 30461, ARTV 20461, ARCH 24614, ARTH 24614, CEGU 24614, GRMN 24614, ARTH 34614

GRMN 34621. Do You Read Me? Curating Postwar Artists's Books. 100 Units.

This course is a combined research seminar and curatorial practicum with students co-curating an exhibition of artists' books. Following World War II, visual artists took up the book as an artistic medium, experimenting with and expanding the essential components of a medium that had remained unchanged for centuries. The results defied all expectations about traditional understandings of what constitutes a book, including the primacy of text and the use of paper, pages, and binding. This class will consider how books became visual and material objects to be viewed rather than read; made from modern materials such as plastics, concrete, or newspaper and in sizes as small as a square inch or as large as an over-life-sized wood construction; featuring unusual objects such as a sack of flour, a display shelf, or a comic book with stenciled holes; or prompting readers to actions with urban performance instructions or do-it-yourself watercolor kits. Drawing on (U)Chicago collections and a recently gifted private collection, students will work on a fall 2027 exhibition in the Regenstein Library's gallery, including researching artists, visiting local collections, selecting artists' books, assessing conservation needs, writing object and section labels, and designing layout.

Instructor(s): Christine Mehring     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students should email instructor explaining relevant background and interest. This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American post-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 30642, FNDL 24621, GRMN 24621, ARTH 34621, ARTV 20642, ARTH 24621

GRMN 35050. Adaptation Laboratory: Staging Berlin at Court Theatre. 100 Units.

From 2000-2018, the graphic novelist Jason Lutes published Berlin, a sprawling, formally inventive, & idiosyncratic account of life in the German capital city during the years just prior to National Socialism. Court Theatre, the Tony award winning professional theater on the UChicago campus, has commissioned the playwright Mickle Maher to prepare an adaptation of Lutes' novel for Court's 2024-25 season; David Levin is the collaborating dramaturg. This interdisciplinary team-taught seminar invites students into the process of adaptation, exploring a range of practical, conceptual & artistic challenges. The course will take place in two locations: at Court Theatre (where we will attend rehearsals for the world premiere production, from first rehearsal through opening) and in a theater lab on campus, where we will consider a range of critical and creative materials - e.g., Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori's adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home or Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis" - to establish a dialogue between Lutes' novel, its progenitors, and the work in Court's rehearsal room. An additional & significant component of our work will involve creative exercises. Students will prepare adaptations of their own - first, of Lutes' novel, then of works of their own choosing. Artists from Court's production will join us for workshop sessions. The seminar aims to serve as a creative and critical forum, exploring the challenges of adaptation.

Instructor(s): David Levin and Mickle Maher     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): An interest in the graphic novel and/or 20th century German history & culture is welcome but not required. An active interest in – and a willingness to think critically and creatively about – the practices of interpretation on stage is essential.
Equivalent Course(s): CDIN 25050, TAPS 35050, CDIN 35050, ARTV 20807, TAPS 25050, ARTV 30807

GRMN 35325. Nietzsche as Critic. 100 Units.

Friedrich Nietzsche was as much a critic (of literature, art, music, culture) as he was a philosopher, and the purpose of this seminar is to bring out the conception of criticism that unfolds across his work. Doing so will require some comparisons: with the Enlightenment (Lessing) and Romantic (esp. the Schlegel brothers) conceptions of criticism, but also with notions of criticism advanced, for example, by the New Critics, by Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno, and in contemporary work on aesthetics. Our main focus, however, will be on pertinent writings by Nietzsche, including the early essay on "Truth and Lie in a Non-Moral Sense," Birth of Tragedy, Untimely Meditations, relevant aphorisms from Human, All Too Human, Dawn, Joyful Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and Twilight of the Idols, concluding with Case of Wagner. The topic of criticism in Nietzsche is not separable, of course, from the core themes of Nietzsche's work and the seminar may therefore be considered as one avenue of approach to Nietzsche's overall achievement. Major positions in the boundless secondary literature on Nietzsche will be considered. This course is open to graduate students. Advanced undergraduate students with a special interest in the topic may be admitted after consultation with the instructor.

Instructor(s): David Wellbery     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SCTH 35325, CMLT 35325

GRMN 35412. Writing Between Worlds: Exile, Migration, and Diaspora. 100 Units.

This course will examine the themes of exile, migration and diaspora in a variety of literary texts from the late 20th and early 21st centuries in dialogue with recent cultural theoretical work. The texts to be studied will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and films from three sets of locations: authors of South Asian (Indian and Sri Lankan) origin in North America and Europe; writers of Turkish, Japanese and Indian origin in Germany; and Latin American-born writers writing from abroad, in addition to Johny Pitts' ethnographic book Afropean. Notes from Black Europe (2020). Besides charting the theoretical coordinates of exile, migration and diaspora studies, we will explore questions such as: How has the accelerated movement of people, ideas, goods, and cultural practices affected literary authors of different racial, class, gender, religious, and national origins? What is the meaning of belonging, home and homeland? How do authors relate to concepts of the nation, national identity, and nationalism? What happens to the physical body, affect, love and intimacy, the family, and intergenerational relations in migration? What are the narrative and lyric patterns and tropes of writing between worlds? Is there a "poetics of dislocation"? How do writers handle issues of language, the mother tongue and bi- or multilingualism? All texts will be read in English translation, but we will also make translation a central issue of discussion by examining original texts.

Instructor(s): Nisha Kommattam     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 35412, RDIN 35412

GRMN 35526. Hamlet and Faust. Studies in Modern Tragedy. 100 Units.

In this seminar, we will examine two major works that bear on the question: What is modern tragedy? Shakespeare's Hamlet and Goethe's Faust will serve as our major points of reference. Various philosophical and critical engagements with this question will also be considered.

Instructor(s): David Wellbery     Terms Offered: Winter

GRMN 35750. Heidegger and the Gods (I): Philosophy and Theology. 100 Units.

This seminar marks the beginning of a triad - (II) Philosophy and Poetry, (III) Philosophy and Politics - which confronts Heidegger's thinking with particular attention to the question of what significance it attaches to the gods and to the divine after the "death of God" - from the early encounter with Christian theology; to the expectation of the "last God as beginning"; to the conception of the "fourfold" of heaven and earth, mortals and divinities; to the saying "Only a God can save us." At the center will be Heidegger's appeal to Hölderlin's poetry; the consequences for philosophy and politics will form the vanishing point.

Instructor(s): Heinrich Meier     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 25750, DVPR 35750, SCTH 35750, PHIL 35733, PHIL 25733

GRMN 35908. Media Revolutions Then and Now. 100 Units.

Media Revolutions Then and Now" explores how the Protestant Reformation and innovations in printing technology coincided to catalyze a sweeping revolution that paved the way for media culture as we know it today. The seminar aims to interrogate traditional narratives that center on printing technology as the driving force of the Reformation, and instead shows how essential religious thought and practice were for the emergence and success of modern media. We will highlight how Reformers like Martin Luther not only provided content but also a theological legitimacy that sustained the print industry, thereby transforming print from a nascent technology into a powerful tool for religious and cultural change. Central to this historical and critical interrogation is the notion of the Reformation as the first modern media event, showcasing how this interplay of theology and technology laid the foundation for our modern media landscape. Accompanying an exhibition at Regenstein's Special Collections which is running through the winter quarter, the seminar draws not only on the displayed items but also the library rich holdings in early prints. Students will be encouraged to put their own understanding and experience of contemporary media ecologies in dialogue with media ecosystem of the early Gutenberg Galaxy.

Instructor(s): T. Golan and C. Wild     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Fulfills the following categories in the ARTH major and minor: European and American, pre-modern (pre-1800)
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 33101, RLVC 30908, GRMN 25908, RLST 28708, ARTH 30908, HIST 23101, CDIN 30908, ARTH 20908, CDIN 20908, MADD 15908

GRMN 36225. Get Cultured in Nine Weeks: Historical Perspectives on Art and Education. 100 Units.

Get Cultured in Nine Weeks: Historical Perspectives on Art and Education: What does it mean to 'get cultured'? Why-and how-do we do it? Does an education in the arts and letters make us more moral, more intelligent, more resistant to authority-or perhaps more submissive? These questions are at the center of debates about the place of cultural learning in the contemporary world, but our century was not the first to think critically about the social and political functions of this form of education. This course investigates how students, educators, writers, and artists conceptualized the aims and means of becoming cultured from the 1700s forward, focusing on European history and connecting it to the concerns of the present. We will pay particularly close attention to both formal and informal means of cultural education, and to the ways in which these practices have been understood to produce social structures of class, gender, and race. Readings will draw from the fields of history, literature, philosophy, sociology, and art history. At the end of the quarter, students will be asked to design their own fantasy syllabus for "getting cultured in nine weeks."

Instructor(s): Sophie Salvo and Alice Goff     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 22510, GNSE 26255, GNSE 36255, GRMN 26225, SIGN 26225, HIST 32510, ARTH 26225

GRMN 36527. Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Culture. 100 Units.

This seminar aims to introduce students to the work of Walter Benjamin, one of the most important literary theorists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. More than any other member of the so-called Frankfurt School, Benjamin was committed to bringing German letters into dialogue with other national literary traditions and literature itself into contact with the newly emergent media of his time. He fundamentally changed the way we study both literature and culture to this day. While we will be reading most of his best known works, we will be organizing our syllabus around four major topics: 1) Benjamin's studies of media and technology, especially photography and film, and their impact on literature and culture; 2) his writings on allegory in early modern drama; 3) his essays on modern literature and culture and, more generally, his theorization of modernity; and 4) his theoretical essays on language and history. Reading and discussions in English. A reading knowledge of German is helpful.

Instructor(s): Christopher Wild     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 26527

GRMN 36826. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. 100 Units.

A study of Aesthetic Theory by Theodor W. Adorno. We'll reconstruct the main ideas and get in view the project as a whole. We'll assess the plausibility of those ideas in the context of contemporary aesthetic production. I leave it up to the participants what role Adorno's other work - especially his philosophy of music and his essays on literature - will play in our discussion. Reading in the original German (Suhrkamp Verlag) or in English (Hullot-Kentor translation at University of Minnesota Press), discussion in English.

Instructor(s): Florian Klinger     Terms Offered: Winter

GRMN 37327. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science. 100 Units.

The Gay Science is the only work that Nietzsche wrote and published before and after the Zarathustra experiment of 1883-1885. It first appeared in 1882, ending with the last aphorism of Book IV and anticipating verbatim the opening of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In 1887 Nietzsche republished The Gay Science and added a substantial new part: Book V looks back to "the greatest recent event" announced by The Gay Science of 1882, "that 'God is dead'." I shall concentrate my interpretation on books IV and V, the only books of The Gay Science for which Nietzsche provided titles: "Sanctus Januarius" and "We Fearless Ones." And I shall pay special attention to the impact of the Zarathustra endeavor, which separates and connects these dense and carefully written books.

Instructor(s): Heinrich Meier     Terms Offered: Spring. Spring 2025
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates Need Instructor's Permission to Register.
Note(s): The seminar will take place in Foster 505 on Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m.*, during the first five weeks of the term (March 24 – April 23, 2025).
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 27328, FNDL 27328, SCTH 37327, PHIL 37328

GRMN 38626. Literature as Therapy: The Poetry of Rilke. 100 Units.

Lady Gaga has a Rilke quote tattooed on her arm; Jimin of the band BTS showed off a temporary tattoo of a Rilke poem in 2023; Gwyneth Paltrow cited Rilke when asked what gave her "spiritual sustenance"; Oprah Winfrey's website features the volume Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties on her website. This list could go on and on. Rilke's writing is famous for its lyrical intensity. The pathos of his poetic language appears to "move" and "touch" readers in an unparalleled way. Soldiers going to fight in WWII carried volumes of Rilke's poetry in their knapsacks and letters of fallen soldiers contained quotes from his verse ("Who talks of victory? To endure is all.") Editions of his writings, such as Rilke for the Stressed, Words of Consolation, Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation attest to Rilke being viewed as someone who can provide The Poet's Guide to Life. This course introduces students to Rilke's poetry and correspondence as well as excerpts from his writings on art to critically examine his language's ability to express our innermost feelings and to offer solace. Along the way, we will also situate his work in the context of "modernism," and we will consider it in the framework of bibliotherapy (reading therapy, poetry therapy). Readings and discussions in English. All students welcome!

Instructor(s): Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 28626, FNDL 28626, MAPH 38626

GRMN 38826. Print, Media Transformation and the Beginnings of Mass Communication. 100 Units.

Printing is one of the truly transformative communication technologies, but in the fifteenth century it was by no means certain it would succeed or even survive. One thing that we will learn in this course, is that new media are always accompanied by a deluge of optimistic prophecy, and this was the case with printing just as much as with the internet. New technologies do not destroy what went before: instead they take their place in an ever-richer communication nexus. This course will examine all aspects of this fragile trade, authors and readers, booksellers, printers and publishers, along with the numerous strategies pursued by members of the book trade to find their audience. It will engage with how the new tools at the disposal of book historians are transforming our understanding of the early modern print world. It takes the story through to the new technologies of the last two centuries, and how the knowledge revolution made possible through new technology and the provision of universal educational transformed the book world. This course will be taught in Special Collections.

Instructor(s): Andrew Pettegree     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25428, GRMN 28826, CMLT 28826, SIGN 28826, ENGL 28826, ENGL 38826, HIST 35428, CMLT 38826

GRMN 39005. From Vienna to Hamburg: Theories of Art in the 20th Century--Historiography, Religion, and Crisis. 100 Units.

This course lays out the background to the historiographic complexities of studying visual culture and art history now in relation to the ways the dominant theories and methods of the discipline involved in the context of 20th-century history and ideologies. It is impossible in 9 sessions to cover the entire historiography of an ancient discipline. The course will therefore take a selective approach by focusing on the foundations of the art historical approaches in Germany in the Twentieth century that have proved most formative for the development of the discipline in Anglo-American contexts after the Second World War. This may be seen as a narrowing of focus, but it has the benefit of offering a coherent if highly complex and conflictive story to uncover: effectively the most philosophically intense moment in art history from 1900 to the 1950's, the relation of the discipline and its exiles to the rise, triumph and demise of the Third Reich, and the beginnings of its development in the post-War period.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course will be taught virtually for the last two weeks of the quarter. This course meets the LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 29005, ARTH 41305, RLST 29005, GRMN 29005, RLVC 41205

GRMN 41202. Back to Life: Reading Reich After Foucault. 100 Units.

When Michel Foucault delivered his scathing critique of the 'repressive hypothesis' in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, he had Wilhelm Reich in mind. After Foucault, Reich's vitalist critique of sexual repression and its relation to authoritarian politics has often been dismissed as naïvely 'liberationist,' and based on an untenable positive vital ontology. But does this need to be an either/or? Is it possible that the rejection of the repressive hypothesis is itself a kind of repression? In this seminar, we reconsider the work of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), reading it alongside some of his inspirations, fellow travelers, critics, and successors. Reich was a pioneering sexologist, a member of Freud's inner circle in the 1920s and of the German Communist Party in the early 1930s, an unrelenting critic of the libidinal grounds of the patriarchal family and fascism, and, finally, a bio-scientist and therapist in the field of cosmic 'orgone energy.'

Instructor(s): William Mazzarella
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 41202, AASR 41203, CCCT 41202

GRMN 42326. Hamlet and Faust. Modern Tragedy from the Perspective of Philosophical Anthropology. 100 Units.

This seminar explores an alternative model to the nation-based study of literary history. The figures of Hamlet and Faust do not belong to single narratives, but radiate through multiple cultural contexts, participate in diverse simultaneities. New models of analysis and comparison are required to negotiate this complex field. In this seminar we will explore one such model, the leading concepts of which are derived from philosophical anthropology. Shakespeare's Hamlet and Goethe's Faust are perhaps the two most significant dramatic explorations of what might be termed the tragedy of reflective consciousness. The way in which each drama shapes this dimension of experience, however, is quite unique. A major task of the seminar will be to find a conceptual framework capable of grasping both the differences and the deep similarities between the two plays. These concepts can then serve as the basis for examining these and other works in various cultural contexts and historical time frames. Our reference texts will be Shakespeare's Hamlet (version of 1623) and Goethe's Faust (Part I in its entirety; Part II, Acts Three and Five). Theoretical contributions on the nature of modern tragedy as well as selected interpretive scholarship will be discussed. We will use an English translation of Goethe's Faust, but students are encouraged to study it in the original language as well. Required texts: William Shakespeare, Hamlet. A Norton Critical Edition (second edition), ed. Robert S. Miola

Instructor(s): David Wellbery     Terms Offered: Spring

GRMN 45211. Being and Space: Peter Sloterdijk's 'Bubbles' and Beyond. 100 Units.

In this seminar, we will devote ourselves to the first volume of Sloterdijk's three-volume study of existential spatiality, a study he himself considered to be the missing part of Heidegger's conception of "being-in-the-world." For Sloterdijk, our disposition to create and inhabit various kinds of spheres begins in the womb and develops historically and culturally in seemingly infinite variations. Sloterdijk's idiosyncratic phenomenology of "micro-spheres," the project of the first volume and one that reveals the traces of an intimate alterity, generates a matrix for further thinking about enclosures, boundaries, community, immunity, intimacy, and ecstasy. Along the way, we will draw in material from other thinkers and artists to complement and challenge Sloterdijk's work.

Instructor(s): William Mazzarella / Eric Santner
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 45211, CCCT 45211, AASR 45211

GRMN 49999. Graduate Writing Workshop. 100 Units.

In this writing workshop for humanities PhD students (with a focus on Comparative Literary methods) we will develop and refine skills in various modes of writing, editing, and revision. Writing assignments may include developing conference papers, writing a dissertation prospectus, generating a chapter draft, reformulating a paper for submission as a journal article, and other professional writing development to prepare students for writing in the academy and communicating with readers.

Instructor(s): Leah Feldman     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This workshop is designed for PhD students in the humanities but may be taken by MAPH students upon instructor consent request.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 59999, REES 59997, EALC 59999