GERM 355 - Advanced Seminar

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

An examination of selected topics in German literature and culture. May be taken more than once for credit when topic changes.

Topic for 2013/14b: Literary Science: Exploring the Fusion of German Literature and the Natural Sciences. This seminar investigates the border crossings between German literature and the natural sciences from the Enlightenment to the present. We consider how and why scientists such as Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Sigmund Freud cultivate a literary style in their evocations of nature or human psychology. We also study how and why authors such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appropriate in their literary work principles derived from the natural sciences, and how and why authors such as Bertolt Brecht, Helga Königsdorf, or Daniel Kehlmann (author of the best-selling novel Measuring the World) depict the lives of scientists such as Galileo, Lise Meitner, or Alexander von Humboldt. In addition, we discuss the extent to which scientific theories (e.g., Einstein’s theory of general relativity) can be applied to literature. Our overarching questions are: What have the modern arts and sciences learned from one another, and what can we as readers learn by studying German literature and science in relation to one another? Other authors and scientists we may consider include Friedrich Hölderlin, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Heinrich von Kleist, Adalbert von Chamisso, Georg Büchner, Charles Darwin, Kurd Lasswitz, Werner Heisenberg, Christa Wolf, Michael Frayn, and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Mr. Schreiber.

Prerequisite(s): GERM 260 or GERM 270 or the equivalent.

Two 75-minute periods.