GERST 4100 - The Seminar

(LA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Prerequisite: any German course at the 3200-3499-level or equivalent. Taught in German. The Seminar is a requirement of the German Studies major but is open to all students who have met the prerequisites. The course has a research component and is taught each fall by a faculty member in the Department of German Studies on a topic of their expertise.

E. Siegel.

This seminar explores 1) how texts try to move; how they attempt to create or shape (artistic, political) movements, 2) how texts attempt to capture political movements. We will study flyers and leaflets (the first mass medium in the 15th century), manifestos, and theses from Luther via Marx and Engels and the First Women’s Movement, to the New Social Movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the end of the GDR. What rhetorical means are employed to provoke, and inflame? Is there an art of the manifesto? What programs and positions are proposed (and were these realized in the course of history)? How do these ‘small forms’ displace the difference between “text” and “context” which implies a clear dividing line between writing and history?

Topic: Texts and Movements