Germanic Languages and Literatures
W. L. Harkness Hall, 432.0788
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Carol Jacobs
Director of Graduate Studies
Brigitte Peucker (302 WLH, 432.0789, brigitte.peucker@yale.edu)
Professors
Cyrus Hamlin, Carol Jacobs, Brigitte Peucker, Henry Sussman (Visiting [F])
Assistant Professors
Kirk Wetters, Kirk Williams
Lecturer
William Whobrey
Affiliated Faculty
Seyla Benhabib (Political Science; Philosophy), James Kreines (Philosophy), Christine Mehring (History of Art), Leon Plantinga (Music), Kevin Repp (History), Steven Smith (Political Science), Katie Trumpener (Comparative Literature; Film Studies), Jay Winter (History)
Fields of Study
Fields include medieval literature, German literature and culture from the Reformation to the twenty-first century in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; literary and cultural theory; literary sociology; film.
Special Admissions Requirement
All students must provide evidence of mastery of German upon application.
Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Students are required to demonstrate, besides proficiency in German, a reading knowledge of two other foreign languages, one at the end of the second term, the other by the fifth term of study. Recommended are Latin and French, although other relevant languages may be substituted for these. The faculty in German consider teaching to be essential to the professional preparation of graduate students. Students in German teach in their third and fourth years, at least. Students are normally expected to teach undergraduate language courses under supervision beginning in the third year of study. An oral examination must be passed not later than the end of the sixth term of study, and a dissertation prospectus should be submitted soon thereafter, but not later than the seventh term of study. All students will be asked to defend the prospectus in an informal discussion with the faculty. The defense will take place before the prospectus is officially approved, usually in November or early December of the seventh term. Students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus. After the submission of the prospectus, the student's time is devoted to the preparation of the dissertation. A dissertation committee will be set up for each student at work on the dissertation. It is expected that students will periodically pass their work along to members of their committee, so that faculty members in addition to the dissertation adviser can make suggestions well before the dissertation is submitted.
Two concentrations are available to students: Germanic Literature and German Studies.
Special Requirements for the Germanic Literature Concentration
During the first two years of study, students are required to take sixteen term courses, four of which may be taken outside the department.
Special Requirements for the German Studies Concentration
During the first two years of study, students are required to take sixteen term courses, seven of which may be taken outside the department. Students are asked to define an area of concentration upon entry, and will meet with appropriate advisers both from within and outside the department.
Joint Ph.D. Program
The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures also offers, in conjunction with the Program in Film Studies, a joint Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures and Film Studies. For further details, see Film Studies. Applicants to the joint program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to Film Studies and to Germanic Languages and Literatures. All documentation within the application should include this information.
Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements. Additionally, students in Germanic Languages and Literatures are eligible to pursue a supplemental M.Phil. degree in Medieval Studies. For further details, see Medieval Studies.
M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). Students enrolled in the Ph.D. program may qualify for the M.A. degree upon completion of a minimum of eight graduate term courses and the demonstration of reading knowledge in either Latin or French.
Master's Degree Program. For the terminal master's degree students must pass eight term courses, six of which must be in the department, and demonstrate a reading knowledge of either Latin or French. A comprehensive written examination will be given at the end of the second term. See the quality requirement for the M.A. degree.
Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Yale University, PO Box 208210, New Haven CT 06520-8210; e-mail, german@yale.edu.
Courses
GMAN 545a, Ideology, Religion, and Revolution in German Thought. Henry Sussman.
Th 3.30–5.20
This is a course, pivoting on the close reading of its materials, whose challenge is to explore the cross-currents of conservatism and radicality in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German thought. It begins with Nietzsche's critique of Christianity and religion in general, in the Genealogy of Morals and the Anti-Christ (selected passages). It proceeds to a section on Marx, one including the formative first volume of Kapital and Derrida's surprisingly heartfelt tribute, Specters of Marx. Through readings of Moses and Monotheism and some of the metapsychological essays, we trace both the radical and counterrevolutionary politics inherent to Freudian psychoanalysis. Among sources of illumination on this material, we consult Ernesto Laclau, Fredric Jameson, and David Harvey. Collateral literary readings, read in the context of the aforementioned authors, include Zola (Ladies' Paradise), Brecht (Saint Joan of the Stockyards), and Döblin (Berlin Alexanderplatz). Students are welcome to do their reading and writing in German, French, and/or English. Also CPLT 650a.
GMAN 585b, Introduction to Middle High German Literature. William Whobrey.
TTh 11.30–12.45
A survey of the major works of German vernacular literature from 1150 to 1250, including selections from courtly love poetry, heroic epic, Arthurian romance, crusader songs, and religious narratives. Works are read in the original Middle High German, and aspects of reading and translation are closely linked to an examination of the development of the German language. Special attention is given to the development of vernacular literature, the broader context of Latin culture, and the problems of manuscript transmission. Works to be read in whole or part include: Nibelungenlied, Parzival, Tristan, Minnesang, Gregorius, and Der arme Heinrich. Also CPLT 585b.
GMAN 605bu, Interpretation and Authority. Carol Jacobs.
T 1.30–3.20
The seminar explores the writings of four theorists of the twentieth century who meditate on the concepts of authority and interpretation. Our method entails close readings of these works in which much of what goes on is not only in the ostensible contents of the works, but also in the performance of the writing. One is confronted in each case with writers who question the relationship between text and simplistic notions of truth. The obvious problem we encounter, then, is how, in turn, to read texts which claim to unsettle that relationship. The issues raised are those among interpretation and authority, both textual and political. Works by Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, Paul de Man, and Walter Benjamin. Also CPLT 517bu.
GMAN 628b, Visuality and German Writing, 1750–1820. Brigitte Peucker.
T 3.30–5.20
Focusing on sight and the senses, this course explores vision and affect, problems of spectatorship, and the visual arts as they are articulated primarily, but not exclusively, in the German tradition. Texts are read against the backdrop of theories of visuality, both past and present, including essays on the picturesque, on landscape gardening, on physiognomy, and texts by Addison, Diderot, Walter Benjamin, E.H. Gombrich, Michael Fried, Jonathan Crary, Barbara Stafford. Authors include Winckelmann, Lessing, Lichtenberg, Goethe, Wackenroder/Tieck, Schlegel, Kleist, Hoffmann. Also CPLT 628b.
GMAN 630au, German Literature, Thought, and Culture in the Age of Goethe. Cyrus Hamlin.
TTh 1–2.15
Interdisciplinary survey of German culture, literature, philosophy, music, and the arts during the Romantic era (1770–1830). Focus on concepts of the individual and self-consciousness, freedom and self-development, the rise of alienation, pessimism, and despair in the early nineteenth century. Among authors to be studied: Kant, Goethe (Werther and Faust), Mozart (Magic Flute), Schiller, and Hölderlin; music by Beethoven and Schubert; Romantic literary criticism and theory (the Schlegels, Novalis); stories by Kleist and Hoffmann; painting by C.D. Friedrich and architecture by C.F. Schinkel; philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer. No prerequisites. Readings and discussion in English. Also CPLT 630au.
GMAN 635a, Plato's Legacy. Carol Jacobs.
W 3.30–5.20
German thinkers such as Schleiermacher, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Arendt have pondered what it means to read Plato. As they do, a constellation of issues inevitably takes form. How are we to come to terms with the relationship between language and what we tend to call truth? How is language, in turn, fundamental to broader questions of epistemology, ethics, and the political? Our intensive readings in Plato's Republic are coupled with the sometimes unsettling readings of the German tradition. What considerably complicates this enterprise, in those who write about Plato no less than in Plato himself, is the uneasy disjunctions one often encounters between what is said and what is performed. Thus we want to analyze the way in which Socrates and his later readers formulate their arguments. In their own contributions to the seminar, students are encouraged to take this constellation of ideas into a variety of literatures or other relevant media. Also CPLT 583a.
GMAN 795bu, Nazi Cinema. Brigitte Peucker.
Th 1.30–3.20
An examination of German film during the Nazi period, including the propaganda film, the entertainment film, and the documentary. Special attention to the expression of ideology through cinema and to the development of a fascist aesthetics, its origins and its aftermath. Films by Fritz Lang, Leni Riefenstahl, Detlef Sierck (Douglas Sirk), G. W. Pabst, Veit Harlan, and others. In English; films with subtitles. Also CPLT 930bu, FILM 763bu.
GMAN 900a,b, Directed Reading.
By arrangement with the faculty.
GMAN 928b, Germany and Eastern Europe: Literature and Film. Katie Trumpener.
MW 2.30–3.45
Juxtaposing German with selected Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Russian texts, this course explores the twentieth-century encounter between Central and Eastern Europe, and the ways German expansionism (from imperialism to Nazism) shaped cultural identity in both Europes. Particular focus on divergences in German and Eastern European cultural memory, on postwar German attempts at expiation and “decolonization” (particularly within the shared communist framework of the Warsaw Pact), and on how local cultural and political conditions shaped regional versions of modernism, magical realism, and feminist analysis. All texts available in English translations (although knowledge of relevant languages welcome). Texts by Musil, Roth, Hasek, Döblin, Jiri Weiss, Tadeusz Borowski, Christa Wolf, Miron Bialoszewski, Grass, Bobrowski, Herta Müller. Films by Pudovkin, Munk, Konrad Wolf, Szabo, Jonas Mekas, Egon Günther, Petra Tschörtner. Also CPLT 928bu, E&RS 628bu, FILM 769bu.
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