TERM 1: September 2020 – December 2020
GERM 500A Introduction to German Studies Research Methods/GERM 531 Special Topics: Memory Cultures
Tue: 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM in BUCH-B312
This course will provide students with an introduction to the essential methodologies of German studies through the analysis of how we construct, maintain, use, forget, and erase memory. Looking at the memory culture that has emerged around East Germany since 1989, students will explore a selection of sites and practices of memory and memory-making. Topics will include narratives of remembering (literature, film, television, and comics), the physical spaces of memory (memorials and museums), and the objects of memory (furniture, fashion, and food culture). Primary texts will be supplemented with interdisciplinary secondary literature to foster students’ critical engagement with East German memory culture(s) and include theory from memory studies, museum studies, cultural studies, comics studies, visual culture studies, and film and media studies. Lastly, this course will integrate practical instruction on graduate studies to support students in developing the strategies they will need to succeed in graduate school, while practicing the various genres of academic writing essential to our field.
TERM 2 – January 2021 – April 2021
CENS 201 Contrasts and Conflicts: Representing European Crises – from the Holocaust and Chernobyl to the “Refugee Crisis,” the Cultural and Language Crises of the Sámi Indigenous People, and COVID-19
Tue/Thu: 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM in BUCH-D218
In this course we will engage with a selection of media texts on European crisis periods during and after WWII to discuss media studies and cultural studies theories of representation. Although each unit will focus on one specific media type and introduce students to the essential theory of that medium, each topic will be approached through a combination of media texts (i.e., comics, film and television, photography, digital and news games, and internet culture). Students will thereby strengthen their critical thinking and visual analysis skills, while developing their media literacy through their engagement with fundamental media studies theory. Texts will be supplemented by historical, political, and cultural context presented via mini-lectures recorded and posted on our class’s Canvas site to facilitate class discussion and assignments.
Coursework will include weekly readings, online class participation, and weekly assignments. Students will respond to the readings through class discussion, in-class writing, and one Reader Response Essay per unit on the Class Blog. Additional assignments will include the production of weekly media texts (webcomics, podcasts, vlogs, TikToks, YouTube videos, GIFs, Memes, etc.) engaging our current crisis period (the COVID-19 global pandemic), a final project, and a reflective essay. No artistic skills are required, but creativity will be encouraged.
GERM 412 German Media Studies: The New Media of Migration
Tue/Thu: 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM in UCEN-103
Global forced migration has become one of the most complex issues of the new millennium. Since 2011, in particular, and the start of Syrian civil war, 5.6 million people have fled the country, with millions more displaced inside Syria itself. As of the end of 2019, 79.5 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. Media portrayals of forced migration have likewise proliferated. However, the visual regime of refugee experience is fraught. With mediated representations of gender, ethnicity, and migration playing an important role in the way the public understands these categories, it is more urgent than ever to critically examine the mediation of refugee experience. Furthermore, new forums for and strategies of representation require attention to help recalibrate narratives of migrant experience.
This course looks to the emerging platforms of digital storytelling to examine how the new media are presenting new opportunities for narrating refugee experience. Presented alongside essential discourses in migration studies and theories of media representation to frame their issues and interventions, course content will draw from news journalism, photojournalism, narrative and documentary film, comics and graphic novels, and digital games thematizing refugee experience. Coursework will then ask students to examine the contexts, histories, conventions, genres, and medium-specific characteristics of representations of the migration journey or post-migration life, interrogating what the affordances of new media bring to (or take away from) discourses in migration studies and debates on refugee experience.
Units will be divided by media type, but students will be encouraged to take a transmedial approach to the course content. Course texts will be accompanied by mini-lectures and readings on theoretical approaches for engaging the various media, introducing methodologies from media and new media studies, cultural studies, visual culture studies, migration studies, political science, and sociology to illuminate the narrative, visual, and technical strategies of course content, while developing students critical thinking skills.