GER 361 - Literary Topics: Imagining Berlin

Although the “Berlin Republic” is more than twenty years old, journalistic assessments of the city emphasize its youthful energy and the start of a new era. Yet literary and filmic representations of Berlin offer a more variegated picture, one both celebratory and critical. This course aims to get beyond the official hype by looking at recent novels and films and how they: represent Berlin topography; call upon historical and ideological perspectives as well as individual and collective memory; depict everyday life and fantasies in a multicultural city; allude to historical and/or continued divisions between East and West. In the process students will encounter both concrete and imaginary conceptions of what one critic has called “the capital of the 20^th century.” All readings, class discussions, and essays will be in German.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
German 250 or 260 or permission of the instructor.