About the Course
GERMAN 15SC
Prerequisites: Two Years of High School German, GERMAN 1, 2 and 3 or equivalent
We designed this course for students who have some German, but who want to jumpstart their language acquisition through an intense and immersive experience. If you have taken two or three quarters of German, or if you took German in high school, this course will allow you to dramatically improve your proficiency, all the while immersing you in German music, film, literature and journalism.
Our main thematic focus will be the city of Berlin, and the many groups that have migrated there over the years: such as their experience and artistic creations--from concertos to hip hop videos, from poems to comic books, and from classic films to viral videos--will be our guides through both a fascinating city and a fascinating language.
Our assignments are aimed at getting you to engage creatively with the city of Berlin--from group presentations, via research projects to video production. How much can a city map of Berlin tell you about its eight-hundred year history? Can you follow the protagonists of Erich Kästner’s children's stories through Berlin...even though his books are from the 1920's? Can you create a convincing music video for a German pop song all the way in sunny California?
The course will combine intensive language study, in-depth work with texts, music and films, and class-trips, including to the Goethe Institute San Francisco and the San Francisco Opera.
Instructor Bio
Adrian Daub is Associate Professor of German Studies at Stanford. Prof. Daub received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent books are Tristan’s Shadow: The Total Work of Art after Wagner (2013) and Four-Handed Monsters: Four-Hand Piano Playing and Nineteenth Century Culture (2014). In 2015, he published The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism together with Charles Kronengold from Stanford’s Department of Music.
Jason Kooiker is a Lecturer for the Stanford German Language Program. He holds a BA in German Language and Literature from the University of Washington and both an MA and PhD in Germanic Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. His interests include second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and dialectology.
Paul Nissler is a Lecturer and Coordinator of the Stanford German Language Program. He holds a B.S. from UW-Madison in German Culture and Economics and a Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in German Literature. He publishes and presents regularly on German and Latin American literature, language acquisition and teaching.
