Description
This course presents major German literary works from the earliest period up to today. Specifically, all works deal in one or other form with love, death, and what it means to be heroic.

Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving:
"Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it, they watch endless films about happy and unhappy love stories; they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love--yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love."(p. 1)

Guiding questions:
What can be learned about love? If we can learn about love, how much of what we need to learn is influenced by the culture we live in? How were concepts of love (and therefore also concepts of heroism and death) different in earlier times?

Prerequisite is the completion of at least GN 361 or GN 362, unless by special permission of the instructor.

Student Learning Outcomes
The course will help you to
1. Expand your knowledge of German in the areas of reading and writing, as well as listening and speaking.
2. Become familiar with well-known literary works of German literature.
3. Gain an understanding of various German literary periods.
4. Develop effective written and oral communication skills to express your ideas in German.
5. Recognize and identify key concepts of love, and death to provide a broad perspective on the human condition.
6. Become familiar with scholarly and research methods, such as collecting reliable information, preparing a bibliography, and discussing theoretical approaches for the analysis of love and death in literature.
7. Access, interpret, evaluate and synthesize information using multiple resources, including current information technology
8. Analyze, understand, and evaluate diverse ideas, beliefs, and behaviors.
9. Be able to critically discriminate between reliable and less reliable information in your decision-making.
10. Understand yourself and others as members of our diverse global community.

Assessment
A variety of tools will help me to assess your progress in this course: from short pop quizzes, a bibliography, Power Point Presentations to a a longer research paper with a literary analysis, all in German. A midterm and final exam, each with a short answer section and an essay question, will provide additional feedback on the performance in this class. Since I am using a grading software, students will have the opportunity to keep track of their progress from week to week.

Participation / Preparation
Participation and preparation count as 20 % of your grade. When you come to class, have your homework finished. For this course, this refers mostly to the reading of the assigned texts. I will occasionally check your reading comprehension with small mini-quizzes.
You will have an initial 30 points in your participation/preparation account, with three points per class; if you come prepared you receive full participation/ preparation credit for that class session. For every class you miss I will deduct three points. You cannot earn full preparation/participation points if you have not prepared your homework or any points if you are absent.

Attendance Policy / Missed Coursework
Regular attendance is essential. THERE ARE NO MAKE-UPS for missed quizzes and other assignments. On rare occasions when absence is unavoidable due to serious illness or family emergency, I may require proof of your reason of absence before we discuss the possibility of make-up work.
ATTENDANCE POLICY: If you miss more than 20 % of class time, you will receive an automatic "F", regardless of the quality of your work. Since this course meets only once a week, you will receive an "F" if you miss more than three class sessions.

Grading

Participation/Preparation (incl. quizzes, bibliography)	20%
Oral presentation (Power Point Referat)	20%
Essay (Schriftliche Hausarbeit)	20%
Midterm Exam	20%
Final	20%

 

The Grading Scale is the standard +/- scale used by the university.

A+ 97-100	A 93-96	A- 90-92	B+ 87-89	B 83-86	B- 80-82
C+ 77-79	C 73-76	C- 70-72	D+ 67-69	D 63-66	D- 60-62
F 59 below

 

Assignments
You will have a variety of tasks to complete in this course. Assignments listed on the syllabus are to be prepared for the day they are listed. You will probably spend four to six hours work outside of class for each class session. This includes preparing reading and writing assignments.

Power Point Presentation
You will prepare a Power Point presentation of about 20-30 minutes in length. For this Power Point Referat, you will present on one work and its author from the list below.
Be ready to talk for at least 20 minutes. I encourage you to run a test presentation in order to prepare for your actual Referat. You will be evaluated on content, delivery, and the presentation overall.
Here are some hints for your presentation:
-You may not only read from the slides.
-Slides should be a backdrop for your presentation.
-Make use of photos, illustrations, maps etc. in your slides.
-Make sure that your presentation does not contain any spelling or grammatical errors.
-Rehearse your presentation.

Bibliography
You will prepare a bibliography on recent scholarly research on a work from German literature dealing with love, heroes, and death. I will assign you the work. Your bibliography has to contain 10 -15 articles and/or books. Your bibliography has to be in MLA style. You may wish to prepare a bibliography that will help you with your essay and/or PowerPoint presentation.

Exams / Final
There will be a midterm exam and a final covering the assigned material and the class presentations. You will also prepare two papers.

Essay
Your schriftliche Hausarbeit (essay) will be a research paper on a topic relating to at least one work dealing with some aspects of love, heroes and/or death. This essay should be between 8-12 pages long (MLA Style follow this link to view a sample heading and a works cited page, double spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point font). You have to consult at least three secondary sources (scholarly research articles). You may use internet pages as an additional source, but articles from newspapers or wikipedia are not scholarly research articles. Scholarly articles accessed by means of the library web page are valid secondary sources (research articles). If you are not sure, please check with me.

For all your written assignments you are required to use a Word processor. This will facilitate the editing of your text immensely. German characters: Please make sure that you use in your writing the appropriate German characters (ss for ß or ue for ü etc are not acceptable). If you need help how to type German characters on your computer, please consult this link.

All assignments have to be double spaced and follow MLA Style (please follow this link to view a sample heading and a works cited page). Mark the total of your words at the end of your essay. Please prepare your assignments on time and note that I will not accept any excuses for the lateness of your written work because of any kind of computer related problems. Assignments are due at the beginning of class; all written assignments have to be turned in via Turnitin.com.
The University of Alabama reserves the right to use electronic means to detect and help prevent plagiarism. Students agree that by taking this course all course documents are subject to submission to Turnitin.com. All materials submitted to Turnitin.com will become source documents in Turnitin.com's restricted access database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism in such documents.

Honor Code
Please keep the Code of Academic Conduct as stated in the undergraduate catalogue in mind for all the work for this class. Please follow the link to read the entire Code of Academic Conduct addressing cheating, plagiarism, fabrication and misrepresentation.

Disability Services
It is university policy to provide, on a flexible and individualized basis, reasonable accommodations to students who have disabilities that may affect their ability to participate in course activities or to meet course requirements. Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact me in the beginning of the semester to discuss their individual needs for accommodations. It is standard university procedure that instructors require from students with learning disabilities a letter requesting accommodations in compliance with the Office of Disability Services (ODS). If you have a disability, register with ODS. Instructors are not obligated to provide academic adjustments until they have received an RFA letter ("Request for Accommodations" letter). To request disability accommodations, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 348-4285. After initial arrangements are made with that office, contact your professor. This information refers to all courses at the university.

Semesterplan

 

AUTOR / WERK / Bibliographie	TEXT / QUELLE (wird noch erweitert)	WEITERE INFORMATION
anonym	Hildebrandslied
anonym	Nibelungenlied
Fritz Lang	Die Nibelungen (1924) 1. Teil 142 min 2. Teil 151 min	Die Nibelungen (Wikipedia)
Uli Edel	Die Nibelungen (2004) 177 min	Die Nibelungen (Wikipedia)
verschiedene Autoren	Minnesang
Gottfried von Straßburg Anna	Tristan
Wolfram von Eschembach	Titurel
Oswald von Wolkenstein	Lieder
Johannes von Tepl	Der Ackermann aus Böhmen
anonym	Lübecker Totentanz (1463)
anonym	"Oberdeutscher Totentanz", Heidelberger Blockbuch (~1460-1465)
Friedrich Schiller	Kabale und Liebe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Kevin	Die Leiden des jungen Werther
Georg Büchner	Woyzeck
Heinrich Heine	Sie saßen und tranken am Teetisch (1822/23)
Gottfried Keller Sarah	Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe
Grimm Stephen	Märchen: Dornröschen, Hänsel und Gretel
Theodor Fontane	Effie Briest (1895)
Rainer Maria Fassbender	Effie Briest (1974) 135 min	Fontane - Effi Briest oder: Viele, die eine Ahnung haben ...;
Rainer Maria Rilke Kyle	Gedichte
Frank Wedekind	Frühlings Erwachen (1891)
Oskar Kokoschka	Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (1916)	Oskar Kokoschka, Biographie;
Arthur Schnitzler	Traumnovelle
Thomas Mann	Tristan
Thomas Mann Blake	Tod in Venedig
Luchino Visconti	Tod in Venedig (1971) 130 min	Morte a Venezia;
Thomas Mann	Der Zauberberg (1924)
Hans W. Geißendörfer	Der Zauberberg (1982) 153 min (Fernsehfassung 329 min)	Der Zauberberg (IMDb);
Else Lasker-Schüer	Gedichte
Gottfried Benn	Gedichte
Bertolt Brecht	Gedichte
Hermann Hesse Jan	Der Steppenwolf (1927)
Erich Kästner	Sachliche Romanze (1929)
Josef von Sternberg	Der Blaue Engel (1930)	Der Blaue Engel (Wikipedia);
Friedrich Dürrenmatt Tyler	Der Besuch der Alten Dame (1956)
Max Frisch Josh	Homo faber (1957)	zu Homo faber;
Volker Schlöndorff	Homo faber (1991) 117 min	Homo faber (Wikipedia);
Christa Wolf Lisa	Der geteilte Himmel (1963)
Ulrich Plenzdorf Jacob	Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (1972)	Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (Materialien) Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (Materialien)
Heinrich Böll	Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1974)
Volker Schlöndorff / Margarethe von Trotta	Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975) 100 min	Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (Wikipedia);
Bernhard Schlink Maurice	Der Vorleser (1995)
Benjamin Lebert	Crazy (1999)

Sekundärliteratur (wird noch erweitert)

Aries, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Aries, Philippe. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to Present. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity, and the Aesthetic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992. Cammille, Michael. The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire. New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1998. Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. NY: Harper, 1956. Gediman, Helen K. Fantasies of Love and Death in Life and Art: a Psychoanalytic Study of the Normal and the Pathological. NY: New York UP, 1995. Hatfield, Elaine. Love and Sex: Cross-cultural Perspectives. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996. Heinen, Huber. "Minnesang." Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. Ed. John M. Jeep. Routledge, 2001. 525-532. Jaeger, Stephen C. Ennobling Love: in Search of a Lost Sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others. New York: Routledge, 2005. Kristeva, Julia. Tales of Love. Translated by Leon S, Roudiez. NY: Columbia University Press, 1987. Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York : Macmillan, 1969. Luhmann, Niklas. Love as Passion: the Codification of Intimacy. Transl. Liebe als Passion by Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Miller, Dean A. The Epic Hero. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Murstein, Bernard I. Love, Sex, and Marriage through the Ages. Foreword by William M. Kephart. NY: Springer Pub. Co., 1974. Person, Ethel Spector. Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: the Power of Romantic Passion. NY: Norton, 1988. Schultz, James A. Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Stewart, Robert M. Philosophical Perspectives on Sex and Love, NY: Oxford U.P., 1994. Tweedie, Jill. In the Name of Love. NY: Pantheon Books, 1979. Wagoner, Robert. The Meanings of Love: an Introduction to Philosophy of Love. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.

SPRACHE UND WÖRTERBÜCHER
LEO Deutsch-Englisch-Deutsch
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, ausführlichstes Wörterbuch zur deutschen Sprache
Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch ausgezeichnetes Wörterbuch, besonders für Fachsprachen


Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters erster Überblick
Mittelalter: Althochdeutsche und mittelhochdeutsche Epoche (750-1500) ein kurzer Überblick
Epochenübersicht Daten der deutschen Literatur, ausgezeichneter ausführlicherer Überblick
Rund ums Mittelalter Abteilung für Mittelalterliche Geschichte der Universität Tübingen
Anthology of Medieval German Literature Albert K. Wimmer (Table of Contents)

Minnesang kurzer Überblick mit Musikbeispielen
Minnesang James McMahon, Emory U

LITERATURGESCHICHTEN / BIOGRAPHIEN
Literaturepochen (Literaturwelt) ausführlicher guter Überblick
Literaturepochen (Vocke) kürzer
Literarische Epochen von 1600 bis 1933 (Xlibris) ausgezeichnet und ausführlich, leider erst ab 1600
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie informiert über bedeutende Personen, die vor dem Jahr 1900 verstorben sind

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