German Courses for Interim 2010:

German 233: Language and Culture Studies in Germany (Abroad)

A total immersion experience and capstone course for students completing the language requirement. This course integrates listening, speaking, reading, writing, and cultural competence by exploring the recent history and contemporary aspects of major German cities. Students self-select immersion situations, keep a journal of field experiences, and write short papers on topics from journal notes. Taught in German. May be counted toward the German major. Prerequisite: German 231 or equivalent. Open to first-year students.

German 249: German Cinema (in English)

January is a great time to watch movies, and German 249: German Cinema will be taught in English this January Interim 2010. It counts toward the Media Studies and Film Studies concentrations and carries ALS-A and HWC (pending) credit. Since you will be watching movies in German with English subtitles, this is also a good way to improve your German while satisfying two GE requirements. Taught in English. No prerequisites. Open to first-year students.

The course examines German history through its most renowned films, beginning with the eerie German expressionist classics of the silent era, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1919) and Nosferatu. A Symphony of Horrors (Murnau, 1922); the early "talkies" The Blue Angel (von Sternberg, 1930)," and M. (Lang, 1931); moving from the "haunted screen" of Weimar cinema to the hauntingly beautiful, "fascinating fascism" of The Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1936); and finally to the post-Holocaust struggles with the collective remembering and forgetting of the Nazi past in masterpieces like The Murderers are Among Us (Staudte, 1946), The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979), and The Counterfeiters (Ruzowitzky, 2008).

For anyone with German 232 or equivalent, there is also a FLAC (Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum) section for German Cinema (for an hour a week). Through the FLAC program, students take regular college courses in English with a weekly meeting in the foreign language. Once they have completed two FLAC courses in the same language, they receive certification for Applied Foreign Language Competence (AFLC). This is a good way to use foreign language skills in a variety of disciplines. For more information about the FLAC program at St. Olaf, see: http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/flac