Graduate seminars

Below are the seminars available during the Fall 2023 term. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to the Graduate Schedule of Classes.

Graduate seminars

GER 613/713: Topics in Discourse Analysis (Questions and Answers in Social Interaction)

(Held with GER 431-001/ANTH489/ANTH661)       Professor: Emma Betz       Date/time/location: 11:30-2:20 Thursdays, ML 109

This seminar examines the connection between language and social life by focusing on one pervasive action: answering a question. To understand how we give answers in real life, we will read empirical work from interactional linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communication studies, and sociology, and we will study video recordings of spontaneous interaction. We will ask questions such as: How do answers become recognizable as answers? What can an answer reveal about the answerer's understanding of the question? And how can answers be designed to accomplish very different things: to agree, confirm, acquiesce; to evade, resist, or reject a question? Finding hidden patterns in how we answer questions can reveal what is important to us in managing social relationships in interaction.

We will also strive to discover new features of questions and answers in different settings and languages. To this end, you will learn the basic theoretical foundations and methodological tools of Conversation Analysis. This includes participating in oral group analysis sessions and writing data analyses. The final course assignment involves original research (either a proposal or a full paper).

Prerequisite: previous coursework in linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language studies, ethnomethodology, or communications.

Main course text: Stivers, T. (2022). The book of answers: Alignment, autonomy, and affiliation in social interaction. Oxford University Press. (e-copy available at UW)

Recommended text: Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation Analysis: An introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.

Recommended preparatory reading: Enfield, N. (2017). How we talk. The inner workings of conversation. Basic Books. (e-copy available at UW).

GER 620/720: The Berlin Project

Professor: James Skidmore       Date/time/location: 9:30-12:30 Thursdays, ML 245

In this project-based course, students will work with Prof. Skidmore to create an open textbook containing original essays and other resources pertaining to novels and films that one might find in an undergraduate German studies course on Berlin. This "applied literary studies" approach will further develop the students' powers of literary/cinematic analysis and interpretation while at the same time giving them writing tasks of a more targeted and purposeful nature. The open textbook will be publicly available for use in whole or in part by anyone teaching an undergraduate course on Berlin and wishing to incorporate supplemental material by students for students. 

Past graduate seminars

Fall 2023 Graduate Seminars

GER 613/713: Topics in Discourse Analysis (Questions and Answers in Social Interaction)

(Held with GER 431-001/ANTH489/ANTH661)       Professor: Emma Betz       Date/time/location: 11:30-2:20 Thursdays, ML 109

This seminar examines the connection between language and social life by focusing on one pervasive action: answering a question. To understand how we give answers in real life, we will read empirical work from interactional linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communication studies, and sociology, and we will study video recordings of spontaneous interaction. We will ask questions such as: How do answers become recognizable as answers? What can an answer reveal about the answerer's understanding of the question? And how can answers be designed to accomplish very different things: to agree, confirm, acquiesce; to evade, resist, or reject a question? Finding hidden patterns in how we answer questions can reveal what is important to us in managing social relationships in interaction.

We will also strive to discover new features of questions and answers in different settings and languages. To this end, you will learn the basic theoretical foundations and methodological tools of Conversation Analysis. This includes participating in oral group analysis sessions and writing data analyses. The final course assignment involves original research (either a proposal or a full paper).

Prerequisite: previous coursework in linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language studies, ethnomethodology, or communications.

Main course text: Stivers, T. (2022). The book of answers: Alignment, autonomy, and affiliation in social interaction. Oxford University Press. (e-copy available at UW)

Recommended text: Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation Analysis: An introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.

Recommended preparatory reading: Enfield, N. (2017). How we talk. The inner workings of conversation. Basic Books. (e-copy available at UW).

GER 620/720: The Berlin Project

Professor: James Skidmore       Date/time/location: 9:30-12:30 Thursdays, ML 245

In this project-based course, students will work with Prof. Skidmore to create an open textbook containing original essays and other resources pertaining to novels and films that one might find in an undergraduate German studies course on Berlin. This "applied literary studies" approach will further develop the students' powers of literary/cinematic analysis and interpretation while at the same time giving them writing tasks of a more targeted and purposeful nature. The open textbook will be publicly available for use in whole or in part by anyone teaching an undergraduate course on Berlin and wishing to incorporate supplemental material by students for students

Winter 2023 Graduate Seminars

GER 601/701: Approaches in Linguistics (Linguistic landscapes)

(Held with 431-002)       Professor: Grit Liebscher       Date/time/location: 11:30-2:20 Thursdays, ML 117

The course is an introduction to "linguistic landscapes" as a recent approach in sociolinguistics that focuses on the analysis of public signage. In drawing on examples from Germany and Canada, we will address larger theoretical issues such as diversity, power, use of du vs. Sie, English in the world, and language attitudes and ideologies. In addition to the discussion of readings and the analysis of data provided, students will be trained to collect their own data and do their own analyses.

GER 620/720: Topics in German Literature & Culture (Graphic Novels)

(Held with GER 431-001)      Professor: Paul M. Malone       Date/time/location: 11:30-2:20 Tuesdays,
HH 124

This course examines the contemporary German-language graphic novel in the context of the national comics industry. Particular aspects under discussion may include tensions with the popularity of Japanese manga and the Franco-Belgian and American comics traditions fiction vs. fact (biography/ autobiography), canonicity and canon-building, feminism, multilingualism, and engagement with history (e.g., Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Ostalgie, etc.).

Fall 2022 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description
GER 431/620/720
Introduction to Medieval German Studies
(Rasmussen)
11:30-2:20 Mondays
ML 245

This course uses a discovery approach to introduce students to (1) Middle High German (MHG) [Mittelhochdeutsch], the language that is medieval precursor to modern German and that was spoken and written in German-speaking lands from roughly 1100 to 1500; (2) highlights of literary and cultural production from this time period; (3) select theoretical approaches to medieval literature; (4) intellectual reflection on historical thinking, the legacies of the medieval past in the contemporary world, and the use and abuse of the medieval past in the contemporary world.

GER 612/712
(held with ANTH 489 / ANTH 661)
Language and Social Life: Seminar in Linguistic Anthropology
(Lo)
11:30-2:20 Wednesdays
HH 259

This course examines contemporary research on language and society. Drawing upon readings in linguistic anthropology, students will examine contemporary debates about language and migration, labour, liberalism, colonialism, citizenship, nation, neoliberalism, and social justice. Students will examine different approaches to the study of language and social life, including activist anthropology, semiotic anthropology, and language and political economy. 

Prerequisite: previous coursework in linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communications, language studies, or a related field

Winter 2022 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 601-701

Approaches in Linguistics: How we Talk

(Einführung in die Konversationsanalyse)

(Betz)

TBA

Die Konversationsanalyse bietet eine eigene Perspektive auf das zentrale Thema der linguistischen Pragmatik: Sprache als eine Form sozialen Handelns. Ihre Erkenntnisse zeigen, dass sich die uns eher unbewussten Prozesse, mit denen wir Rederechte verteilen, Handlungen über Sequenzen hinweg aufbauen und erkennbar machen, Verständigungsprobleme anzeigen und lösen, über Sprachen und Kulturen hinweg überraschend ähnlich sind. Gleichzeitig sind die Realisierungsmöglichkeiten dieser Prozesse sprachspezifisch und oft kulturell kodiert. In diesem Kurs befassen wir uns sowohl mit den grundlegenden Mechanismen sprachlicher Interaktion als auch mit sprachspezifischen Mustern.

You will learn the theoretical and methodological tools of Conversation Analysis through participating in structured and unstructured group data sessions, the central research and training tool in the field, and through writing data analyses. Our data sources for analysis are recordings and transcripts from a variety of settings and languages. This will help us identify and precisely describe language-specific resources in the practices and patterns we use in interaction. Your final project is an original research presentation and paper.

Readings and class discussions will be in both English and German.

GER 620/720: Dis/ability in German Literature  

(Boehringer)

TBA

While class, race, gender, and sexuality have become key analytical terms in literary and cultural studies, disability is as yet an under-represented category that underpins conceptualizations of the able-bodiedness and able-mindedness. As Carol Poore reminds us, “both cultural representations of disability and debates about the proper places for disabled people in German society have often been central to major controversies about aesthetics, normality, individuality, citizenship, and morality” (Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, xv). In this seminar, we will engage with key concepts of disability theory and trace the representations of disability in German-language literature from the 19th to the 21the century, in order go gain a critical understanding of how dis/ability informs our basic assumptions about identity, meaning, and the body. 

Fall 2021 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 612/712 

Topics in Sociolinguistics: Multilingualism

(Liebscher)

TBA

This course explores research in multilingualism from a sociolinguistic perspective, including an individual’s use of two or more languages, attitudes towards multilingualism, and multilingualism in the linguistic landscape and in education. We will discuss questions such as: How have theories on code-switching and translingualism explained multilingual language use? What positive or negative stances towards multilingualism do people express and how, and how may ideologies affect these stances? How are languages represented in the linguistic landscape of cities and countries, i.e. on signs and posters? How do classrooms exhibit aspects of multilingualism, e.g. what kinds of policies and multilingual language use is evident in language classrooms? Course participants are encouraged to pursue their own interest in a research topic within multilingualism as their final project for the course.

This course is intended for graduate students with interest in language, literature, linguistics, anthropology, developmental psychology, cognitive science and related fields. While readings and discussions will be in English, students of German will have the opportunity to do some readings and writings in German.

GER 620 / 720

Topics in German Literature & Culture: Kafka Classical Short Stories

(Malone)

GER 600 / 700

Methods of Research

(Skidmore)

TBA

An examination of Franz Kafka's writing style by means of his most notable short stories throughout his career. What effects does his writing achieve, and by what means?

Winter 2021 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 613/713 

Managing understanding: Repair in different interactional contexts

(Betz)

TBA

Repair describes a range of practices, found across languages, by which interactants manage moments of trouble in speaking, hearing, understanding, and agreement and thus preserve intersubjective understanding. We will take a discursive view of understanding, one that views understanding as constructed and publicly displayed in interaction, and we will study moments of trouble empirically by analyzing recordings and transcripts of talk.

One goal of this course is to raise awareness of culture- and context-specific practices in the discursive construction of understanding. We will thus read research on repair in typologically diverse languages and in different contexts, including child language socialization and second-language learning. The course culminates in an original research project: Course participants identify a specific repair practice in German (or in comparison of German with another language) and describe its linguistic structure, locate its place in the larger interactional architecture of repair, and connect it to social-interactional dimensions such as the negotiation of evaluative stances, social identities, or rights to knowledge.

GER 620/720

Court, Cloister, and Culture in the Medieval German World

(Rasmussen)

TBA

Around the year 1200, a wealth of literary texts begins appearing in the German language for the first time. These sophisticated works explore timeless issues from the perspective of their time and place: navigating the social conventions of gender roles; conflicts between love and marriage; dilemmas of honor and reputation; the elusive quest for justice; the entwinement or separation of religion and the secular world; the role of writing and other media in creating and transmitting knowledge. Exploring these issues will inform our reading of what are widely recognized as masterpieces of German (and world) literature, some of which resonate in German culture to this day.

Fall 2020 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 615

Online Teaching and Learning

(Skidmore)

TBA

This graduate seminar will explore the theory and practice of online teaching and its impact on student learning. Students will assess the efficacy of different approaches, analyze online courses currently on offer in higher education, learn about the role of technology in content delivery and community building, and develop their own approaches by designing their own online course in their discipline.

Geared to online teaching in the humanities, social sciences, and languages, this seminar will be offered online asynchronously with additional synchronous elements as agreed upon by seminar participants.

If you have questions or comments about the course content, contact James Skidmore (skidmore@uwaterloo.ca)

GER 600

Methods of Research

(Malone) 

TBA

A course designed to foster an understanding of the fundamental notions of critical inquiry and to provide training in intellectual and practical skills common to research in the areas of applied linguistics, film and literary studies.

GER 615/715

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Education

(Schmenk)

TBA

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is chiefly concerned with the relationship between language, power and identities. According to CDA, language is not a neutral tool we use to represent truth and reality, but a social semiotic that produces social realities and truths. Critical Discourse Analysis “studies the way ideology, identity and inequality are (re)enacted through texts produced in social and political contexts. Language is seen as crucial in constructing and sustaining ideologies, which, in turn, are seen as important in establishing and maintaining social identities and inequalities.” (Wodak, 2013, p. xix)

This course first provides an overview of the emergence and developments of CDA. What is “critical” about it and how does it differ from other approaches to discourse analysis? What notion(s) of “discourse” is CDA based on? And what types of analyses does CDA bring about?

Following these general considerations of CDA, we will move on to specific research areas/topics that have been investigated using CDA (e.g., racism and marginalization; gender and sexuality; CDA of discourses in education and politics; crisis and criticality) in various media (texts, images, music, film).

We will look at CDA through the lens of language education. Traditionally, in educational contexts language has been viewed as a rather neutral means whose grammar and lexis students need to study and use correctly and/or fluently. CDA poses enormous challenges on educators as it requires us to rethink the goals and practices of language education today. In our study of CDA we will therefore include a focus on possible educational implications and alternative educational scenarios.

Wodak, Ruth (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis. Vol. 1. Concepts, History, Theory. Los Angeles et al.: Sage.

Winter 2020 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 620/720

Cultural Identities and Dislocation

(Boehringer)

TBA

This seminar will investigate the different parameters (race, ethnicity, nation, religion, sex/gender, age, class, ability) around which cultural identities are constructed and how dislocation can challenge the seeming fixity of these categories. Our theoretical readings (from a.o. nation theory, critical race theory, gender & masculinity theory, precarity theory, intersectionality theory) will guide our readings and viewings of examples of classical and recent German-language literature and film that foreground questions of cultural identity and dislocation from the 18th century to today. In the process we will gain a deeper understanding of how issues that inform current nativist political and identitary cultural discourses have long resonated within the cultural space and how film and literature can produce and unsettle reductive notions of self and otherness.

GER 601/701

Approaches in Linguistics: Studying Interaction

(Betz)

TBA

(Einführung in die Konversationsanalyse)

Dieser Kurs bietet eine Einführung in die Konversationsanalyse. Die Konversationsanalyse (CA) bietet eine eigene Perspektive auf das zentrale Thema der linguistischen Pragmatik: Sprache als eine Form sozialen Handelns. Ihre Erkenntnisse zeigen, dass sich grundlegendste Mechanismen sprachlicher Interaktion über unterschiedliche Sprachen und Kulturen hinweg gleichen: Die uns eher unbewussten Prozesse, mit denen wir Rederechte verteilen, Handlungen über Sequenzen hinweg aufbauen und Verständigungsprobleme anzeigen und lösen, scheinen überraschend robust. Gleichzeitig sind aber sprachlichen Realisierungsmöglichkeiten dieser Prozesse unterschiedlich und kulturell kodiert.

Fall 2019 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 613/713

Cooperation 

(Betz)

Monday

2:30-5:20 pm

ML 117

Man continually standing in need of the assistance of others, must fall upon some means to procure their help.(Adam Smith, 1763)

In this course, we study how humans recruit the assistance of others and thus manage cooperation in social interaction. Using conversation analytic and interactional linguistic methods, we will describe how actions such as proposing, offering, and requesting unfold. These actions can be done using a variety of grammatical formats: Requests can employ imperatives, declaratives, interrogatives, or no language at all. We will discover how the grammatical and embodied choices we make in requesting an object or action are systematically connected to the request’s placement in both its immediate context and the larger course of action. We will see how the choices we make in recruiting assistance more generally are shaped by interactants’ agency, social commitment, and deontic rights/responsibilities. Studying requests and related actions helps us trace important aspects of pro-social behavior in the minute details of talk and gesture.

Our data sources for analysis are recordings and transcripts from a variety of settings: family meals; game playing interactions; cooking, music, and pilates classes; driving instruction; emergency calls. The course focuses on German interaction, but we will also discuss research on recruitment in other languages, e.g., Polish, Italian, English, Lao, and Estonian. This will help us identify language-specific resources and possibly culture-specific patterns in the practices we use to mobilize others to act with, or for, us.

Readings are in German and English. Throughout the term, we will participate in group data sessions and write data analyses. The final project is an original research presentation and paper.

GER 620/720

Dark Romanticisms

(Kuzniar)

Wednesday

2:30-5:20 pm

AL 110

Nightmares, Anxiety, Catastrophe--Romanticism's fascination with the irrational has left a lasting legacy in the narrative, musical, and visual arts.  This course will investigate apprehension of mysterious forces starting with Tieck, Hoffmann, Eichendorff, and the Grimm brothers , moving on to the paintings of C. D. Friedrich and the operas of Richard Wagner, and finishing with the dark images of Expressionist cinema.

GER 600/700

Methods of Research

(Speltz)

Friday

10:30-1:20 pm

PAS 2084

A course designed to foster an understanding of the fundamental notions of critical inquiry and to provide training in intellectual and practical skills common to research in the areas of applied linguistics, film and literary studies.

Winter 2019 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 613/713

Language, Identity and Mobility

(Liebscher)

Wednesdays

2:30-5:20 pm

AL 209

In this course, we focus on language and identity in the context of mobility. What happens to language use and/or identity construction when people migrate or temporarily move away? Approaching such questions from a discourse perspective means that we will analyze textual data such as interviews, narratives, conversations, as well as multilingual signs and postings. We will focus on (im)migration and study abroad as common contexts of mobility. Seminal as well as recent theoretical concepts will be part of our discussions, including the notion of indexicality of sociolinguistic variation, identity construction and positioning, code-switching and translanguaging, language attitudes and emotions. Readings include excerpt from: Jaworski, A., & Coupland, N. (Eds.) (2014). The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge. (Third edition); Weber, J.-J., & Horner, K. (2012). Introducing Multilingualism. A Social Approach. London: Routledge.

GER 620/720

Graphic Novels

(Malone)

Mondays

11:30-2:20 pm

HH 344

This course examines the contemporary German-language graphic novel in the context of the national comics industry. Particular aspects under discussion may include tensions with the popularity of Japanese manga and the Franco-Belgian and American comics traditions fiction vs. fact (biography/ autobiography), canonicity and canon-building, feminism, multilingualism, and engagement with history (e.g., Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Ostalgie, etc.).

Fall 2018 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 613/713

Discourse Markers

(Betz)

Mondays

2:30-5:20 pm

ML 117

Okay, anyway, y’know, that’s right, eh? – genau, also, uallah, ach komm, okee? Discourse markers are central elements in managing conversation in real time: in distributing turns, displaying speaker attitudes, managing expectations and social obligations, and negotiating relationships and rights to knowledge.

This course introduces you to the analysis of discourse and surveys different methodological approaches to discourse markers. We will ask: What are typical features of discourse markers? Are discourse markers a purely spoken phenomenon, and how do they emerge? What are some common discourse markers in German, and how are they used? What can we learn about language – and social interaction more generally – from studying discourse markers? All classroom discussion and project work will be based on empirical data, that is, on transcribed face-to-face, telephone, and online interaction.

The course focuses on German, but we will regularly discuss work on other languages (e.g., Polish, Finnish, Korean, English, Danish). A cross-linguistic approach will help you appreciate the functional spectrum of discourse markers, trace cross-cultural differences in research traditions, and explore applications of basic research to, e.g., language teaching and human -computer interaction.

Throughout the course, you will practice reading, contextualizing and assessing published research, and you will generate and carry out your own empirical research project using conversation analytic tools.

GER 620/720

Reading the Canon

(Skidmore)

Tuesdays

11:30-2:20 pm

HH 123

This course has two objectives:
Learn how to read literature: We will spend a great deal of the time in the seminar discussing how to approach literature. We’ll look at the works structurally (how they are constructed), historically (how they fit into the society and time in which they were produced) and thematically (how the themes or ideas that come forward in the works escape the bonds of place and time).
Understand canon formation: We will discuss from time to time the role of literary canons, the politics of their formation, the pitfalls of canonizing literary works, etc. We’ll also look at how to approach the works on the GSS PhD list with regard to their place in Germanistik.

Spring 2018 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 623/723/ENGL 785

From Freud to Lacan: Psychoanalysis in Literary, Visual, and Sexuality Studies

(Kuzniar)

TBA Each session is devoted to introducing a particular Freudian or Lacanian theory such as the uncanny, voyeurism, fetishism, melancholia, masochism, the imaginary, Symbolic, and the Real. Each concept is examined in the light of how it can be adapted in visual, sexuality, feminist, and literary studies. The goal is to insure sufficient familiarity with these theories so that students are at ease in deploying them richly in their own readings of literary and visual texts.

Winter 2018 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 615/715

The Native Speaker in language education

(Schmenk)

TBA In this course we will take a critical look at the ideal of the native speaker in language education and beyond.

The course will first provide an overview of ‘classic’ texts on the native speaker ideal. Then we will turn towards recent critical works in this area: What exactly is a native speaker? What beliefs and assumptions underlie the educational aim of native speaker competence? And are native speakers better language teachers? To what extent can alternative notions such as the “intercultural speaker” (Byram), “symbolic competence” (Kramsch), or “transcultural and translingual competence” (MLA) help to address the problem of native-speakerism? And what implications do these discussions have for classroom language teaching?

GER 620/720

Gender, Migration, Generation

TBA

Literature, both as an institution and a social practice, provides a testing ground of the new realities that we live in, charting different ways of seeing and being in the world. This seminar will explore the ways in which we encounter the "other" by probing the interconnections between gender, generation, and migration in recent German-language literature. As available subject positions can be thought of as being culturally circumscribed by various, often hegemonic discourses on sex, gender, age, class, ethnicity and ability, the question arises what happens when these discourses intersect, or, put differently, when a person must negotiate her/his sense of a seemingly stable identity through, for example, war, trauma, ageing, or migration.

Fall 2017 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 612/712

Laughter in Interaction

(Liebscher)

Thursdays

8:30-11:20 am

ML 117

In line with reconceptualizing interaction as multimodal, there has been an increase in laughter research over the past few decades, starting with Glenn’s (1990) seminal book. While laughter has been connected with humour, there are several other contexts and functions that laughter research has described. In providing an overview of this research, some key foci will be: studying the expression and placement of laughter in different kinds of interactions (e.g. casual conversations, workplace conversations, interviews, and online interactions), practicing and reflecting on the transcription of laughter, discussing different functions of laughter with regard to e.g. alignment, resistance, arguing, identity, learning. Some of the questions we will address are: How can we capture the elusive nature of laughter with regard to e.g. its beginning and end in conversation, its reference and its meaning?  How can laughter be expressed and what roles does it fulfill in different kinds of interactions? Are there different kinds of laughter and how do we know? Can laughter be helpful in connecting with people? Does it have a political, transcultural, gendered or other dimension?  In addition to discussing the nature of laughter, this course will be an introduction to conversation/discourse analysis, provide some training in transcription, and allow students to write a research paper on laughter related to their specific area of interest (e.g. laughter in everyday interaction, online contexts, literature, or film).

GER 621/721

Adaptation: Theory and Practice

(Rasmussen)

Tuesdays

8:30-11:20 am

ML 117

In this course, students will gain expertise in recognizing, explaining, assessing, critiquing, and applying theories of adaptation, defined with theorist Linda Hutcheon as “both a product and a process of creation and reception” that is “a deliberate announced, and extended re-visitation of prior works” in different media (text and different genres; moving image; radio; etc.) (A Theory of Adaptation, 2013, p. xvi). Students will write a research paper applying theories of adaptation to a set of related adaptations of their choice, in different media, from different time periods, and if they wish in different languages.

GER 600/700

Methods of Research

(Betz/Malone)

Wednesdays

11:30-2:20 am

ML 117

A course designed to foster an understanding of the fundamental notions of critical inquiry and to provide training in intellectual and practical skills common to research in the areas of applied linguistics, film and literary studies.

Winter 2017 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 611/711

Complexity: Second-Language Development

(Schulze)

Thursdays

8:30-11:20 am

HH 123

Recent advances in Applied Linguistics are based on an understanding of second-language development and foreign-language learning as complex processes. In this course, we will discuss how approaches from Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory have been applied in theoretical and empirical research in Applied Linguistics to gain further insight into the intricacies of individual second-language development. As a student of a previous incarnation of this course put it: linguistics like you have not seen it before.

GER 622/722

German Literature and Film Now

(Skidmore)

Mondays

11:30-2:20 pm

HH 123

What is Germany now? We will consider this question with the help of the contemporary narrative arts (i.e. literature and film). We will read/view very recent narratives with the goal of gaining a greater understanding of how these works represent the issues and discourses of the day. To guide our work, we will pay particular attention to how scholarly research on ultracontemporary works is undertaken and managed: what questions need to be asked, what sources need to be used, and what strategies need to employed in order to establish a narrative work's resonance with the society in which it is created and set.

Fall 2016 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 600/700

Methods of Research

(Betz)

Mondays

2:30-5:20 pm

ML 117

A course designed to foster an understanding of the fundamental notions of critical inquiry and to provide training in intellectual and practical skills common to research in the areas of applied linguistics, film and literary studies.

GER 620/720

Dark Romanticism: from Novalis to Nosferatu

(Kuzniar)

Wednesdays

2:30-5:20 pm

AL 210

Nightmares, Anxiety, Catastrophe--Romanticism's fascination with the irrational has left a lasting legacy in the narrative, musical, and visual arts.  This course will investigate the uncanny, the fantastic, and other mysterious forces starting with Novalis, Tieck, Hoffmann, Eichendorff, and the Grimm brothers , moving on to the painting of C. D. Friedrich and the operas of Richard Wagner, and finishing with the dark images of Expressionist cinema.

GER 613/713

Doctor-Patient Interaction/Medizinische Kommunikation

(Betz and Spranz-Fogasy)

Mondays

2:30-5:20 pm

ML 117

Communication between doctors and patients is at the heart of medicine. Whether it is primary care, anamnesis (medical history taking), diagnosis, therapy planning, pre-operative discussion, or aftercare – crucial tasks in medical care are accomplished via talk. Linguistically, this includes task-oriented interaction and special language, the negotiation of differing rights to knowledge, and institution-specific communication. Our focus is on gaining insight into the spectrum and patterns of medical communication by analyzing and discussing recorded data.  This includes interactional tasks, e.g., exploring, understanding, or breaking bad news, and interaction types, e.g., the first medical interview, communicative disturbances and their sources.

A specific look at doctor-patient interaction constitutes the core of this course.  The analysis of medical interaction is preceded by a general introduction to analyzing language-in-interaction using the tools of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics; it is followed by a contextualization of medical communication within the larger frame of institutional interaction and within the study of meaning-making in every-day life (e.g., negotiating knowledge, constructing identities).

Winter 2016 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 615/715

Foucault's Impact on Applied Linguistics

(Schmenk)

Thursdays

2:30-5:20 pm

ML 311

This course focuses on Michel Foucault's writings and their reception and impact in applied linguistics. In the first part of the course we will read and investigate selected works by Foucault (focusing on his notions of discourse, power, and governmentality). In the second part, we will turn towards Foucault's impact on Applied Linguistics and Language Education. How have his theories changed current thinking about language and discourse, language and education, power and language? What implications can be and have been drawn for language education in a multilingual world? Why do his complex, difficult, and often confusing theories and ideas continue to have such a lasting effect on educational thinking?

GER 620/720

Volksstück

(Malone)

Tuesdays

8:30-11:20 am

ML 354

This course explores the historical development of the

Volksstück as a dramatic tradition, with emphasis on the problematic nature of Volksstück as a generic definition. Since the early nineteenth century, this form has regularly been described as on the verge of extinction, only to be reappropriated and reinterpreted, sometimes radically, by new generations of dramatists in differing social and historical contexts.

Fall 2015 Graduate Seminars

Course/Professor Day/Time/Location Description

GER 600/700

Methods of Research

(Betz/Kuzniar)

Wednesdays

11:30-2:20 pm

ML 216

A course designed to foster an understanding of the fundamental notions of critical inquiry and to provide training in intellectual and practical skills common to research in the areas of applied linguistics, film and literary studies.

GER 613/713

Language and Identity

(Liebscher)

Mondays

11:30-2:20 pm

ML 212

In this course, with a focus on language and identity from a discourse perspective, we investigate how identity is constructed through language. We will discuss how membership categories are assigned and negotiated, and how individuals position themselves and are positioned by others. The categories discussed include, but are not limited to, ethnic, gender, as well as professional identities and affiliations. We will discuss analyses of data sets from a range of contexts such as conversations, interviews as well as classroom and online interactions. The two main questions we will address are: how are identities constructed, i.e., through which linguistic resources (e.g. code-switching, laughter, prosody) and mechanisms (e.g. repair)?  And what is this construction doing within the local context of the interaction as well as society at large?

GER 623/723

Transnationalism in Film and Literature 

(Boehringer)

Fridays

11:30-2:20 pm

RCH 106

National literatures have long been understood as inventions meant to support the idea of the nation state by supposedly reflecting on national or ethnic themes and traits. Over the last few decades, literary works written by migrants in the German language have called into question this hegemonic interpretation of the national literature, giving way via various "Turkish" or "Eastern" turns to notions of transnationalism and world literature. In this seminar, we will attempt to square the circle and investigate issues of transnationalism in German literature and film. Through these texts we will explore issues of identity and otherness, belonging and exclusion to come to an understanding of culture as a dynamic process between cultures and languages that exceeds notions of nationality and ethnicity.