Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences • Northwestern University
GERMAN LITERATURE AND CRITICAL THOUGHT (PhD Brochure)
Program Description
The Department of German Literature and Critical Thought offers a graduate program that focuses on the theoretical and cultural foundations for the development of German literature, critical thought, and media from 1750 onward. In order to acquire these foundations, students take a two-year sequence of six required (core) and twelve elective courses. Students are encouraged to choose electives in related disciplines such as art history, comparative literary studies, film studies, French/Italian, history, philosophy, Slavic, and Spanish, as well as in the German Department.Critical theory and media studies contribute to some of the most exciting work being done today in German studies and the broader humanities. Both investigate the unrepresented conditions shaping specific epochs of culture: Immanuel Kant's interest in the a priori conditions of knowledge and in the typography of his books is but one example of such parallel interest, which finds perhaps its richest articulation in the work of Walter Benjamin. The graduate program at Northwestern combines a challenging curriculum in critical thought with an innovative approach to the mediality of meaning. Literary study and media study are not conceived of as being mutually exclusive but rather as interrelated components of a productive dialogue that has a complex intellectual tradition as well as an exciting contemporary dimension. To make the conjunction of theoretical, textual, and media studies fully operative, we construe their respective domains as inclusively as possible. Just as critical thought draws on works in philosophy, aesthetics, literary and political theory, media studies focuses on the institutions of scholarship, on the theater, on the history of science, as well as on radio, film, and digital media. The focus of these investigations is the tradition of German literature from 1750 to the present, from Brockes and Lessing to Bachmann and Sebald.
Students have the opportunity to study in small groups with experts from a variety of cutting edge fields of research, while at the same time building a strong basis in the canonical works of the literary and audio-visual tradition. Our core faculty includes specialists in 18 th -century literature, Kant and the Enlightenment, Classicism and Romanticism, Science Studies, 19th -century narrative, Nietzsche, fin-de-siècle literature, Freud and psychoanalysis, German Expressionism and the Avant-Garde, Benjamin, Heidegger, post-war and contemporary literature, and German film. Library resources of note include the exceptional Schulze collection of 18th - and 19th -century printed works, and our extensive archive in Special Collections of documents and original manuscripts from twentieth century art movements, including the German and European avant-garde. Students in the department also benefit from the large community of vibrant scholars at Northwestern in Comparative Literature, French and Italian, Classics, Screen Cultures [Radio/Television/Film], Philosophy, History, Political Science and Art History.
Faculty
Professors: Peter D. Fenves, Helmut H. Müller-Sievers (Director of Graduate Studies), Rainer Rumold, Samuel Weber
Associate Professors: Franziska Lys (Chair), Marcus Moseley
Assistant Professors: Jörg Kreienbrock
Joint Appointments: Peter Hayes (History), Alex Weheliye (English), Christine Helmer (Religion)
Distinguished Senior Lecturers: Denise Meuser, John Paluch
Senior Lecturers: Ingrid Zeller
Lecturers: Martina Kerlova, Kristine Thorsen, Katrin Völkner
The graduate program is home to the annual Northwestern University Department of German Speaker Series. The lectures, which take place approximately once a month over the academic year, are organized entirely by the graduate students, who invite scholars from around the world to discuss papers or pre-distributed materials with the academic community in Chicago.
