Undergraduate courses in German General

(Same as GERLIT 138.) The oldest attested stages of the Germanic language family, including Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian (Old Dutch), and Old High German. The linguistic interrelationships, prehistory, Germanic tribal groupings, and literature. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Robinson, O)

GERGEN 61Q. Culture and Conflict in Contemporary Europe

(S,Sem) (Same as COMPLIT 61Q.) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sophomores. Transformation of European culture and identity in the wake of the Cold War, European unification, and the post 9/11 environment. Pressures on transatlantic relationships; anti-Americanism; tensions around national cultural identity due to regional integration and globalization; immigration and the European experience of multiculturalism; and flashpoints of conflict concerning religion, secularization, and antisemitism.

3-5 units, Spr (Berman, R)

GERGEN 104N. Resistance Writings in Nazi Germany

Preference to sophomores. The letters and diaries of individuals who resisted Nazi oppression and paid with their lives. Readings include the Scholl diaries, Bonhoeffer's letters and his Ethics, and letter exchanges from other crucial figures. No knowledge of German required; students may read texts in original if able. GER:DB-Hum

3 units, not given this year

GERGEN 129. German Cinema

(Same as GERGEN 229.) History of German cinema in the Weimar Republic, Nazi era, and the immediate aftermath of WWII. German thought, political valences, and social potential as portrayed in film.

5 units, Win (Daub, A)

GERGEN 141. Fables of Retreat

Modern anti-heroes who assert themselves through feats of reduction and retreat. Writers include Rousseau, Tieck, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Kafka.

3-5 units, not given this year

GERGEN 144. Germanic Theologies

(Same as GERGEN 244.) Thinkers from Martin Luther to Martin Buber who have transformed western notions about God. Contributions from philosophers, poets, and theologians on the role of the Bible, the meaning of revelation, and the status of human beings in the Universe. Readings from Luther, Hamann, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Kafka, and Rosenzweig. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Aut (Pourciau, S)

GERGEN 148. A Brief History of Misogyny

(Same as GERGEN 248.) Genealogy of philosophical misogyny in 19th- and 20th-century German thought from German idealism. Authors include Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Weininger, and the George circle. In English. GER:DB-Hum, EC-Gender

3-5 units, Spr (Daub, A)

GERGEN 160. Interiors and Interiority in the 19th Century

Interiority and the interior as focal points of 19th-century Europe. Domestic space, and its political dimensions and structures of feeling in 19th-century German literature, from the romance to the detective novel. Ideology of domesticity in German music, design, architecture, visual art, and science of the period. In German. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

GERGEN 170A. Postwar: German Culture after World War II

(Same as GERGEN 270A.) How did German culture react to WW II, the Holocaust, and the exile of Germans from E. Europe? Questions of representations, political debate, and the future of Germany in Europe. German cinema, architecture, and art related to the subject. Readings include: Adorno, Grass, Habermas, Kluge, Bachmann, Jelinek, and Beyer. Recommended: German, but not required.

3-5 units, not given this year

GERGEN 181. Philosophy and Literature

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Anderson, L; Vermeule, B)

GERGEN 183. Scenarios of Dissolution in the Modern Novel

(Same as GERGEN 283.) How do novels capture chaos? 20th-century novels responding to catastrophes such as: the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (Musil, Roth); demise of the Third Reich (Mann); chaotic forces in an oppressive order (Bulgakov); corrosion of imperial confidence through fear of barbarian invaders (Coetzee); and transformation of masses into a mob destroying the body politic from within (Krasznahorkai). GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

GERGEN 191A. Oedipus, Hamlet, Moses: Archetypes of the Hero

(Same as GERGEN 291A.) Texts that provided psychoanalysis with its foundational myths. Oedipus, Moses, and Hamlet as archetypes of the hero related to moments of emerging modernity: from mythos to logos, polytheism to monotheism, and action to thought. The interplay among knowledge, recognition, and desire; the role of sameness and alterity in the constitution of personal, familial, and national identities; and the relation between violence and the construction of history. Readings include: Exodus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Freud, Aeschylus, Euripides, Cavafy, Hofmannsthal, and Wolf; theoretical and critical essays by Laplanche, Lyotard, Lacan, de Certeau, Kofman, Assmann, Said, and Cavell. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, not given this year

GERGEN 205. Technologies of the Self

(Same as GERGEN 305.) Important moments in the history of the discursive and rhetorical construction of the subject. Emphasis is on tensions between uniqueness and exemplariness, chronology and repetition, narrative and archive, and aesthetics and ethics of retrospection. Works by Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Montaigne, Rousseau, Goethe, Nietzsche, Joyce, Gide, Sartre, Leiris, and Barthes. Theoretical and critical essays including by Lejeune, Starobinski, De Man, Derrida, Marin, Koerner, Foucault, and Beaujour. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, not given this year

GERGEN 212. The Invention of Experience

(Same as GERGEN 312.) Experience viewed as a source of orientation irreducible to discursive knowledge in the 19th century. The encounter with art as the paradigm of experience; lived vs. cumulative experience; the modern crisis of experience; experiential openness and the authority conferred by experience. If it is neither pleasure nor knowledge sought in art, could it be experience? Role of Goethe in the cult of experience (Faust I, Elective Affinities). Montaigne, Hegel, Emerson, Rilke, Benjamin, Koselleck, and Gadamer. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Spr (Dornbach, M)

GERGEN 267. Freud and the Apostle Paul

(Same as GERGEN 367.) Intersections between Freud's psychoanalysis of society and Paul's political theology. Emphasis is on the issues of law, love, justice, community, and language. Readings include Freud and Paul, and theoretical essays by Taubes, Badiou, Santner, Agamben, Assmann, Zizek, and Boyarin. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, not given this year

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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Alphabetical Index

Bulletin Archive

Undergraduate courses in German General