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Department of Germanic Studies

Department Chair

  • David Levin

Director of Undergraduate Studies

  • Sophie Salvo

Director of Graduate Studies

  • Margareta Ingrid Christian

Professors

  • David J. Levin
  • Catriona MacLeod
  • Eric L. Santner
  • David E. Wellbery
  • Christopher J. Wild

Associate Professors

  • Florian Klinger
  • Margareta Ingrid Christian

Assistant Professors

  • Sophie Salvo

Senior Lecturers

  • Maeve Hooper
  • Kimberly Kenny, Norwegian

Assistant Instructional Professors

  • Colin Benert, German
  • Jessica Kirzane, Yiddish
  • Nicole Burgoyne, German
  • Shiva Rahmani, German

Emeritus Faculty

  • Reinhold Heller
  • Samuel Jaffe
  • Kenneth J. Northcott
  • Hildegund Ratcliffe

Affiliated Faculty

  • Alice Goff, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of German History and the College
    Interests: Cultural and intellectual history 1750-1850, museums and collecting, aesthetics, looting, historical reception in the GDR. 
  • Philip V. Bohlman, Ph. D., Mary Werkman Professor of the Humanities and of Music; Chair of the Committee on Jewish Studies
    Interests: German-Jewish and German-American ethnomusicology; theory and history of folksong.
  • John W. Boyer, Ph. D., Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History; Dean of the College
    Interests: German and Austrian history, 18th century to the present; religion and politics in modern European history; European urban history.
  • Daniel Brudney, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Philosophy
    Interests: Marx, German philosophy, Frankfurt School.
  • James Conant, Ph. D., Professor of Philosophy
    Interests: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Wittgenstein.
  • Kathleen Conzen, Ph. D., Professor of History
    Interests: German-American history and the history of international migration.
  • Constantin Fasolt, Ph. D., Karl J. Weintraub Professor of History; Master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division; Deputy Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences; Associate Dean of the College
    Interests: Early modern German history.
  • Michael Forster, Ph. D., Professor of Philosophy
    Interests: Herder, Hegel.
  • Michael Geyer, Ph. D., Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European History
    Interests: German history of the 19th and 20th centuries with special interest in contemporary German and European affairs.
  • Andreas Glaeser, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Sociology
    Interests: Theories of culture and identity; with reference to Germany mostly post-unification controversies, social memory and architecture, reality construction processes among civil servants in authoritarian regimes.
  • Gary Herrigel, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Political Science
    Interests: Political economy of advanced industrial states (Germany, USA, Japan), German political and industrial history in the 19th and 20th centuries, social and political theory.
  • Berthold Hoeckner, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Music and the Humanities
    Interests:19th century Austro-German music; Lyrik und Lied; Romantische Musikästhetik; Wagner; Adorno and music.
  • Loren Kruger, Ph. D., Professor, Department of English; Department of Comparative Literature; Committee on African Studies; Committee on Cinema and Media Studies; Committee on Theatre and Performance Studies
    Interests: German literature 18th century to present (esp. drama); GDR and contemporary Germany; Brecht, Heiner Müller, Marxism; the Cold War; Frankfurt School; "Das andere Deutschland."
  • Jonathan Lear, Ph. D., John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy
    Interests: Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger.
  • Francoise Meltzer, Ph. D., Mabel Greene Meyers Professor of French, Comparative Literature, and the Divinity School; Acting Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities
    Interests: German romanticism, philosophy.
  • Paul Mendes-Flohr, Ph. D., Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Divinity School, Committee on Jewish Studies; Associate Faculty in the Department of History
    Interests: German-Jewish intellectual history.
  • Glenn W. Most, Ph. D., Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought
    Interests: German literature and philosophy since the 18th century.
  • Robert B. Pippin, Ph. D., Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor; Committee on Social Thought and Department of Philosophy
    Interests: Kant; German Idealism; Nietzsche; Heidegger; Modernity Theory.
  • Moishe Postone, Ph. D., Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor of History; Committee on Jewish Studies
    Interests: Marx, Frankfurt School, contemporary European social theory, contemporary German affairs (with particular focus on issues of anti-semitism and the relation of the Nazi past to postwar German society and culture).
  • Robert Richards, Ph. D., Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science and Medicine; Professor in the Departments of Philosophy, History, Psychology, and the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
    Interests: German Romanticism, history and philosophy of science.
  • Jerrold Sadock, Ph. D., Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics
    Interests: Germanic languages (Scandinavian, Yiddish).
  • Malynne Sternstein, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures
    Interests: Central European Studies, Literary, Psychoanalytic and Cultural Theory; Art and Media Theory
  • David Tracy, Ph. D., Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religion in the Divinity School; Committee on Social Thought
    Interests: 19th century German philosophy and theology.

Website

https://german.uchicago.edu/

Overview

The graduate program in Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago stresses an interdisciplinary model of study, long an emphasis at this University, which allows students to construct fields of research in fresh ways. In order to draw on the University's strengths, both inside and outside the department, students are encouraged to work not only with departmental and affiliated faculty but with faculty throughout the University whose courses are of relevance to their particular interests.

The University's Workshops (non-credit, interdepartmental seminars that meet biweekly) offer a further avenue for interdisciplinary work. Students are also encouraged to participate in the department's colloquia and lecture/discussions.

Language courses taught in the department include German, Norwegian, and Yiddish.

Application and Financial Support

Applicants to the Department of Germanic Studies should have a solid background in German language and culture. Students with undergraduate degrees in other fields are encouraged to apply, but must include with their application a list of relevant German/Germanic courses as well as a letter of recommendation from a faculty member able to evaluate their level of German language competency. Such students will be asked to make up deficiencies in their language preparation before entry into the graduate program. All entering students whose native language is not German are required to pass an ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) oral proficiency examination in German during their first quarter in the program.
Admission to the department is competitive.
PhD students who matriculate in Summer 2016 and after will be guaranteed to have funding support from the University of Chicago, external sources, or a combination of the two for the duration of their program to include the following:

● Full tuition coverage
● Annual stipend
● Fully paid individual annual premiums for UChicago's student health insurance (U-SHIP, the University Student Health Insurance Plan)

  • Student Services Fee Coverage

The goal of the University’s commitment to ensuring that students are supported is to allow students to prioritize their studies and prepare for rewarding careers. We expect students to remain in good academic standing and to be making progress toward completing degree requirements.

Additional fellowships and awards are available to support language study, conference travel, and research travel. 

Pedagogical training is a required component of doctoral education, and University resources can help you acquire the skills and experiences you need to feel at ease in the classroom, whether you are leading a discussion section, lecturing in the Humanities Common Core, or teaching a course of your own design. 

The Department of Germanic Studies has some funds to support students in summer projects, travel, and research. In addition, the Norwegian Culture Program Endowment Fund provides some money for research and travel support for students interested in Norwegian language and culture.

Applications to the program must include a writing sample of not more than twenty pages, in German or English; TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) scores, if applicable; and three letters of recommendation.

The application process for admission and financial aid for all graduate students is administered through the divisional office of the Dean of Students. The Application for Admission and Financial Aid, with instructions, deadlines and department-specific information is available on the Graduate Student Online Application page. Please note that the application and all supporting materials are to be submitted online. Questions pertaining to admissions and aid should be directed to: humanitiesadmissions@uchicago.edu.

International students must provide evidence of English proficiency by submitting scores from either the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). (Current minimum scores, etc., are provided with the application.) For more information, please see the Office of International Affairs website at https://internationalaffairs.uchicago.edu/, or call them at (773) 702-7752.

Degree Requirements

The following is an outline of the main features of the graduate program. If you need additional information, please write directly to the Department of Germanic Studies.
Students in the Department of Germanic Studies are  admitted into the Ph.D. program of study. Students interested in a one-year interdisciplinary Master's program in Germanic Studies should contact the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. Study towards the M.A. degree, normally completed after the first year, is intended as an introductory period, a time for both faculty and students to decide on the suitability of an extended graduate program. All students entering the Ph.D. program with a master's degree from another institution will undergo an informal evaluation at the end of their first year in the department to assess their progress and to plan their further course of study.

Master of Arts Degree Information

Course Work

Students in the Department of Germanic Studies are admitted into the Ph.D. program of study, but can receive an MA degree.

Three quarters of course work and a total of eight courses are required during the first year of study. These include the mandatory pedagogy course ("Acquisition and Teaching of Foreign Languages"). A completed M.A., which includes the pedagogy courses and a "superior" rating on the German oral proficiency test, are prerequisites for teaching appointments. Besides the pedagogy course, students must take at least one course each quarter from departmental faculty, and at least two additional courses from departmental faculty during the year. The remaining courses could contain little or no Germanic material and may be taken primarily for methodological, theoretical, or historical interest. Course selections must receive the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies. All courses must be taken for a letter grade. We expect students to develop a broad historical sense of German culture through coursework as well as their own background reading. The primary aim of the master's year is for students to explore a variety of materials, approaches and problems.

Language Examination

Students who do not achieve a "superior" rating on the oral proficiency examination in German (to be taken early in their first quarter) will be advised to undertake further language training or to take other steps to improve their skills; they will be re-tested during the second quarter.

M.A. Exam

The purpose of the M.A. exam is to test students’ ability to work with concepts central to the discipline, to articulate literary-historical arguments, to discuss significant patterns that extend beyond individual texts, and to articulate how such concepts relate to the interpretation of individual works. In addition, the exam establishes a useful foundation of knowledge upon which the student can build in later studies.

The examination takes place in the eighth week of Spring Quarter of the student’s first year of graduate study. Its basis is a list of some twenty to twenty-five texts selected by the student in consultation with the two members of the student’s M.A. exam committee. (The committee—consisting of two members of the department’s core faculty—is to be designated by the Director of Graduate Studies in consultation with the student.) This list reflects a category of literary research such as a genre, a period, or a general concept bearing on a mode of writing. Examples of the former might be “The Bourgeois Tragedy” or “Modern Urban Short Prose” or “The Elegy.” Periods can be variously conceived: Enlightenment, Realism, Weimar Republic. General concepts are more abstract categories such as “narrative” or “performance” or “argumentative writing.” Lists could also be organized along thematic lines or in terms of a traditional narrative subject. The point is that the list be designed so as to sustain a process of coherent intellectual inquiry. In addition to the 20-25 primary texts, the list includes a representative cross-section of secondary literature addressing the topic under study.

The examination itself has two components:
a) a take-home written examination, and
b) an oral examination approximately one hour in length.

The take-home component consists of three essays (of two and one half, never more than three double-spaced pages) written in answer to questions devised by the faculty. These questions offer the student an opportunity to demonstrate her/his ability to explore various intellectual issues raised by the list as a whole as well as by specific works on the list. Students will receive these questions on Friday morning of the eighth week of classes and hand in their completed essays by 5:00 p.m. the following Monday. The oral examination is devoted to a critical discussion of the students’ three essays as well as to works included on the list but not addressed in the written part of the examination. It will take place one week after the written exam. Following a forty-minute discussion of the essays, the student and the faculty examination committee will assess the student’s overall progress, including course work.

A crucial aspect of the M.A. examination is planning and advising. Students should choose their examiners and have one planning meeting with each examiner by the eighth week of Autumn Quarter. Students should choose examiners and design the lists with a view to the seminars they plan to attend throughout the year. Students must submit their lists for approval at the end of the fourth week of Winter Quarter. Two weeks after submission, they should meet with their examiners to discuss preparation for the exams. During Spring Quarter, students should meet with their examiners twice prior to the exam in order to discuss questions arising from their readings. Of course, throughout the process students are encouraged to discuss questions arising from their readings with other faculty members, both inside and outside the Department of Germanic Studies.
 

First Year: Time Schedule for M.A. Exam

Fall, Week 8 - Choose examiners
Winter, Week 4 - Submit exam list for approval
Winter, Week 7 - Arrange to meet with examiners to discuss exam preparation
Spring, Week 8 - Written exam
Spring, Week 9 - Oral exam

The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Students who enter with an M.A. from another university will be required to take one pedagogy course in their first year ("Acquisition and Teaching of Foreign Languages"). This requirement may be waived by the department if a student can demonstrate that equivalent work was successfully completed at another institution. Completion of the course (or a departmental waiver), together with a "superior" rating on the oral proficiency interview in German taken early in the first quarter (or re-taken later if necessary), are prerequisites for teaching appointments.

COURSE WORK: Students will establish that balance of course work and individual preparation that best suits their intellectual agenda. Course selections, however, must be approved by the director of graduate studies. A minimum number of eight courses over two years, not including the pedagogy course, is required. All of these courses must be taken for credit. Six must be taken for a letter grade. The remaining two may be taken Pass/Fail. Typically, the two post-M.A. years (during which students will also be teaching) will look as follows: two seminars each quarter the first year; at least one seminar each quarter for the fall and winter quarters of the second year; exams in the spring quarter of the second year. In this way students will have ample time during the second Ph.D. year to prepare for the exams.

LANGUAGE EXAMINATION: All students are required to pass one university foreign language reading examination before taking their Ph.D. oral exams. The choice of language should be made in consultation with the director of graduate studies. Exams are administered by the Chicago Language Center.

Ph.D. EXAMINATIONS: The exam focuses on a small archive of literary, philosophical, and literary critical works (approximately 50 works) established by the student. This “major field list” should be organized around a broad topic that will in many cases anticipate the larger field within which the dissertation project will be situated. Some examples from previous exams: “Discourses of Madness from Kant to Musil,” “Worldly Provincialism: German Realism 1850-1900,” and “The Aesthetics of Sacrifice in Postwar German Literature and Art.” Works on the list should be grouped into clusters according to categories and questions relevant to the topic. These criteria should be expressly formulated in the list. Students are encouraged to meet with as many faculty members as possible as they work on these materials. In consultation with the director of graduate studies, they should arrange for an exam committee of three faculty members: two faculty members (normally both members of the department) to compose and evaluate the written examination questions, and a third faculty member (from either departmental or resource faculty) to serve as an additional examiner for the oral exam. At the beginning of the fall quarter of the second Ph.D. year, students will submit a preliminary exam list to the faculty committee they have chosen and to the director of graduate studies.

The four-hour, open-book, written exam will normally be taken around the seventh week of spring quarter. Five weeks prior to the exam, each student will submit to the exam committee and to the director of graduate studies a final draft of the list. As noted, the list should be organized by way of the categories and questions that indicate what the students considers to be the salient issues animating the different clusters of texts. Faculty will use this list as a guide in preparing the exam. Within two weeks of the exam, the full committee will meet with the student for an hour-long discussion that will encompass the exam and plans for the dissertation. Students should work on their dissertation proposals over the summer and schedule the formal proposal defense at the beginning of the fall quarter of the third Ph.D. year. For further details regarding the Ph.D. exams, students are encouraged to consult with the director of graduate studies.

To summarize, the second Ph.D. year will normally flow in the following way. In the fall quarter, the student establishes the exam committee in consultation with the director of graduate studies. A preliminary list is submitted by fifth week of the quarter. The winter quarter is dedicated to reading and exam preparation. By the second week of spring quarter, the final list (articulated into clusters of texts) is submitted to the committee. The written exam is taken in the second half of the quarter, typically around the seventh week. Within two weeks of the written exam, the student meets with the committee for an hour-long discussion of the exam and dissertation plans. The summer after the exam is dedicated to elaborating the dissertation proposal. The final proposal is due no later than one quarter (not including summer) after passing the Ph.D. exam.

DISSERTATION PROPOSAL: Within three weeks of the Ph.D. exam, a student must identify a primary dissertation advisor (in some cases there will be two co-advisors). A full dissertation committee of three members will be established in consultation with the advisor. The committee need not be identical with the exam committee and there is always the possibility that the dissertation committee and primary advisor(s) will change over the course of the project (it may turn out, for example, that another faculty member proves to be more engaged with the primary materials of the dissertation). The proposal itself ought not attempt to predict the final conclusions of the project before the research is fully under way. Instead, it should seek to divide the project into subordinate questions and to rank the parts of the project in terms of priority. It should include a preliminary bibliography and a potential chapter structure, and also indicate a rough timetable for the research and writing of the dissertation. The proposal of approximately 20-25 pages should be problem-driven and question-oriented, and should contextualize the project within relevant scholarly debates. The student will discuss the project in a proposal defense with the dissertation committee, to be scheduled in consultation with the primary advisor and the departmental administrator. This will typically be done one quarter (not including summer) after the Ph.D. examination. Students must file copies of their exam lists and proposal with the department administrator.

SYLLABI PROPOSALS: During the third summer of the Ph.D. program, students will compose two syllabi, one for an upper-division undergraduate class and one for a graduate seminar (consultations with faculty about the syllabi should already have begun in the spring quarter). These syllabi may overlap to some extent with the dissertation project but should ideally represent other areas of interest and developing expertise. They may be designed as courses in translation, courses taught in German, or courses requiring reading knowledge of German. In many cases students will wish to submit one of these syllabi for the annual Tave competition in the winter quarter. (The Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowship allows graduate students to teach a free-standing, self-designed undergraduate class.) The primary advisor(s) of the dissertation will meet with the student in the course of the fall quarter to discuss and evaluate the syllabi.

WRITING THE DISSERTATION: After the proposal has been approved by the readers, the student should plan on spending the remainder of that year researching and reading. Some students may spend this time away from campus; others may choose to remain in Chicago to work closely with their committee. Students are strongly encouraged to try to complete the dissertation during the sixth year. All students should complete the dissertation by the end of the fall quarter of their seventh year.

Teaching in the College

Graduate students in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago will enter the job market with a solid basis in current pedagogical theory and practice as well as a range of teaching experiences in a variety of classroom settings. Teaching in the undergraduate language program is an integral part of the graduate program.
 

Before they begin teaching, graduate students must participate in a graduate seminar on pedagogy ("Acquisition and Teaching of Foreign Languages"). This course is an introduction to foreign language acquisition and to the theoretical models underlying current methods, approaches and classroom practices. Syllabus and test design and lesson planning are also treated. All participants do two days of observation and two days of supervised teaching in a first-year class.

Graduate students have the opportunity to teach in the beginning and intermediate German language program. They have full responsibility for the courses they teach, including syllabus design, day-to-day instruction, test design, grading and all other record keeping. Input from the graduate students is also critical in the ongoing implementation and revision of the curriculum. Internal grant monies have been made available to support the development of an on-line writing project designed by graduate students, as well as other curricular innovations.
 

Graduate students also have the opportunity to work as on-site coordinators and/or instructors in study-abroad programs in Vienna and Freiburg. The preparation of students for study-abroad and their reintegration into the curriculum is an ongoing process in which graduate students, in their roles as instructors, are deeply involved.

Each fall there is an orientation for all graduate students who will teach that year. It is held in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning and deals with general procedural and pedagogical issues as well as specific course objectives and practices. This inter-departmental cooperation also includes jointly held workshops and seminars on different topics in the field of second language teaching, offered by University of Chicago faculty and experts from other institutions.

Germanic Studies Graduate Courses

 

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): FNDL 24805, GRMN 24801, THEO 31801, DVPR 31801, RLST 24801

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 33235. European Crime Fiction and Film. 100 Units.

Edgar Allan Poe, when accused of being too much under the influence of German literary sources, claimed that: "if in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul." In this course, we will read a selection of European crime fiction not only to be in a better position to judge Poe's protestations, but more importantly, to familiarize ourselves with a selection of canonical writers as well as with the history and the characteristics of the genre. Why is crime fiction one of the most popular literary genres today? What is the relationship between the genre and society? We will consider - among other questions - the figure of the detective, the history of policing, different concepts of justice and guilt, the status of clues, indices, evidence. Materials will include Poe, Foucault, Ginzburg, Droste-Hülshoff, Christie, Doyle, Kleist, Eco among others as well as a selection of films. Readings and discussions in English.

Instructor(s): Margareta Ingrid Christian     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 23235

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): ARTV 32526, ARTH 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): DVPR 33595, THEO 33595, RLST 23595, GRMN 23595, FNDL 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): RETH 33600, FNDL 23600, RLST 23600, GRMN 23623, THEO 33600, JWSC 23600

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): ARTV 20807, TAPS 35050, CDIN 35050, CDIN 25050, 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): CMLT 35325, SCTH 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): RDIN 35412, CMLT 35412

GRMN 35426. Marked and Unmarked Thinking. 100 Units.

This class explores a basic tenet of Marxist, feminist and black political thought: to the extent to which we carry marks of oppression, we have knowledge of the relations under which we suffer, and to the extent to which we are unmarked oppressors, we are ignorant of the relations in which we inflict suffering. Since each of us is marked in some ways and unmarked in others, our relating to one another is made up of shifting constellations of intersecting such knowledges and ignorances. The class looks at historical as well as recent treatments of the marked-unmarked contrast from sociology, political philosophy, literature, and the arts. Key concepts include double consciousness, standpoint theory, intersectionality, phenomenology of class, race and gender. Artists and literary authors include Anne Imhof, Cassils, Jerome Ellis, Maria Chavez, Claudia Rankine, Kim de l'Horizon. Theorists include Karl Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, Hannah Arendt, Audre Lorde, Donna Haraway, Charles Mills, Wayne Brekhus, Linda Alcoff.

Instructor(s): Florian Klinger     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 25426

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 35908. Media Revolutions Then and Now. 100 Units.

This seminar explores how the Protestant Reformation and innovations in printing technology coincided to catalyze a sweeping revolution that paved the way for today's media culture. The class will center around the eponymous exhibition curated by the instructors at the Hannah Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center in Winter 2026, which upends 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 both provided content and theological legitimacy that sustained the print industry, transforming print from a nascent technology into a powerful tool for religious and cultural change. Crucial to the class is the notion of the Reformation as the first modern media event that laid the foundation for our modern media landscape. However, the aim is not to chart a straightforward linear narrative of progress from the woodcut to the meme; instead, we will focus on the commonalities as much as on the differences of the two eras. The class will touch upon a variety of themes (e.g., the page layout of printed Bibles, propaganda wars, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and witchcraft), illuminating what the early modern reformation of media can teach us about today's media culture and its potential future.

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): CDIN 20908, GRMN 25908, ARTH 20908, CDIN 30908, ARTH 30908

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, SIGN 26225, ARTH 26225, HIST 32510, GNSE 36255, GRMN 26225

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 37328, SCTH 37327, PHIL 27328, FNDL 27328

GRMN 38926. The Romantic Fragment. 100 Units.

A central experimental genre of Early Romanticism, the fragment was defined by Friedrich Schlegel in Athenäums-Fragment 206 as: "entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog." This seminar will consider fragments both conceptually and as isolated texts that are, however, gathered together materially in medial collections such as encyclopedias and albums. What is the relationship of the fragment to totality or coherence? What kinds of knowledge and reading practices does the fragment presuppose? What is the relationship between the literary fragment and other kinds of fragmentary artifacts such as ruins, torsos, and cut-outs? Readings will include fragments and fragmentary works by, among others, Winckelmann, Lichtenberg, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Novalis, and Karoline von Günderrode.

Instructor(s): Catriona MacLeod     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 38926, ENGL 28926, ARTH 28926, ARTH 38926, GRMN 28926

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): RLST 29005, RLVC 41205, ARTH 29005, ARTH 41305, GRMN 29005

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 50522. Reading Walter Benjamin's 'Artwork' Essay. 100 Units.

Seldom has a canonical essay been at once so widely and so carelessly read as Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.' This seminar takes a deep dive into the text, reading it alongside writings by Benjamin's contemporaries as well as more recent analyses. We will discuss themes including the technological transformation of the conditions of experience amid the rise of fascism, the significance of Benjamin's highly complex conception of aura, the indexicality of the photographic image, the political potentialities of innervation, the psychoanalytic implications of the notion of the optical unconscious, the redemption of distraction and mimesis (including Benjamin's mimetic theory of language), and Benjamin's productively ambivalent relation to right-wing cultural theorists.

Instructor(s): William Mazzarella     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 50522, CCCT 50522, AASR 50522