Syllabus for Roster(s):

  • 14Sp GETR 3462-001 (CGAS)
  • 14Sp HIEU 3462-001 (CGAS)
In the UVaCollab course site:   Neighbors & Enemies 2014

Course Description (for SIS)

GETR 3462 / HIEU 3462: Neighbors and Enemies in Modern Germany (Spring 2014)

Manuela Achilles, Departments of German and History, University of Virginia (ma6cq@virgina.edu)

 

Course Outline

A biblical injunction, first articulated in Leviticus and then elaborated in the Christian teachings, stipulates that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself. This course explores the friend/enemy nexus in German history, literature and culture. Of particular interest is the figure of the neighbor as both an imagined extension of the self, and as an object of fear or even hatred. We will examine the vulnerability and anxiety generated by Germany’s unstable and shifting territorial borders, as well as the role that fantasies of foreign infiltration played in defining German national identity. We will also investigate the racial and sexual politics manifested in Germany’s real or imagined encounters with various foreign “others.” Most importantly, this course will study the tensions in German history and culture between a chauvinist belief in German racial or cultural superiority and moments of genuine openness to strangers. In the concluding part of this course, we will consider the changing meanings of friendship and hospitality in a globalizing world.

Requirements: regular attendance, active participation, one in-class presentation, weekly reading responses (1 page), and three short essays (5 pages each). There will be no mid-term or final examinations.

Assignments and Grading:

  • 20%     Attendance and Participation
  • 20%     Reading Responses
  • 10%     Oral Presentation
  • 10%     Short Essay #1           
  • 15%     Short Essay #2
  • 25%     Short Essay #3           

Attendance policy: Attendance in class is mandatory. You will be allowed one unexcused sick day, after which further unexcused absences will have a negative effect on your grade.

Oral presentation: Once during the semester, you will be asked to introduce the materials we have read or viewed for that class. This presentation should last ten to fifteen minutes. At the end of your introduction, you should ask three discussion questions. Feel free to bring in hand-outs or display images.

Weekly Reading Responses: On the days that are marked with an asterisk (*), you are expected to bring along to class two sentences (in writing) from the reading(s) assigned for that day. While you are free to choose any sentences that strike you as suitable, you might want to focus on the ones that you found (a) objectively most important and (b) subjectively most surprising or thought provoking. Please add a short explanation why you chose each of these sentences.

Your reading response should be typed, and should be no longer than one double-spaced page. You may be asked to present your sentences and explain your choices in class, and you will hand in a copy of your reading response at the end of class. This will give me an opportunity to monitor your progress and discuss it with you if I sense your grasp of the material isn’t perhaps as developed as it ought to be.

Written assignments: Over the course of this semester, you will write three short essays (5 pages each). The assignments for the first two papers will be handed out approximately one week before the due date of these papers. There will be no pre-assigned questions for your final paper. Rather, a key component of this task will be your ability to define your paper topic in consultation with me. Your final essay is due on Tuesday, May 6, 2014. This final paper should be turned in to me in my office by 1 PM.

All written work should be word-processed, double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font on paper with 1” margins. You will receive more information on all of the assignments as we get closer to their due dates.

Grading policy: Your papers will be graded on clarity, creativity, organization, writing style, and the effective use of evidence from the readings, films, lectures and discussions.

No late papers will be accepted without penalty except in cases of documented illness or severe personal emergency. The penalty for unexcused late essays is 1/3 of a grade for each day the essay is late. If you are concerned about meeting any of the deadlines, please notify me ahead of time.

Honor: It is expected that all wording and ideas presented in any written work handed in for this class are your own, unless you have explicitly credited your source/s. It is also assumed that any work turned in for this class was composed exclusively for this class. If you have questions about the honor code and related issues, please feel free to talk with me or go to: http://www.virginia.edu/honor/

The use of laptops, i-pads, or cell phones is not permitted in this class. Please plan on taking your notes the old fashioned way (pen and paper). J

 

Course Readings

Books Available for Purchase (at the University of Virginia Bookstore)

  • Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, ISBN: 0060995068
  • Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, ISBN: 0-393-30158-3
  • Anna Funder, Stasiland: True Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall, ISBN: 1862076553
  • Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, ISBN: 1596055499
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise, ISBN: 0312401523
  • Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ISBN: 0-7178-0241-8
  • Michael E. Nolan, The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany 1898-1914, ISBN: 1845453018
  • Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 0226738922
  • Elie Wiesel, Night, ISBN: 0374500010

Required Readings on Collab

  • Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, “February 15, or, What Binds Europe Together”, and introduction, in: Daniel Levy, Max Pensky, and John Torpey (ed.), Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War (London 2005), pp. xi-xxix; 3-13.
  • Karen Hagemann, “Francophobia and Patriotism: Anti-French Images and Sentiments in Prussia and Northern Germany During the Anti-Napoleonic Wars”, French History, Vol. 18, No. 4, 404-425.
  • Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel (New York 2004), 91-120.
  • Robert Moeller, “Remembering the War in a Nation of Victims: West German Pasts in the 1950”, in: The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968, ed. Hanna Schissler (Princeton and Oxford 2001), 83-109.
  • Victor Klemperer, I will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (New York 1999), 289-324 (“1939”).
  • Primo Levi, “The Gray Zone”, in: The Drowned and the Saved (New York 1989), 36-69.
  • Bill Niven, “The GDR and Memory of the Bombing of Dresden”, in Germans as Victims, ed. Bill Niven (New York 2006), 109-129.
  • Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York 1958), 199-229.
  • Günter Wallraff, The Lowest of the Low, translated by Martin Chalmers (London 1988).
  • Zafer Şenocak, Atlas of a Tropical Germany: Essays on Politics and Culture, 1990-1998 (University of Nebraska Press 2000), pp. 1-9; 32-36; 72-73; 83-98.

Online Editions of Required Texts, and Useful Links

Required Online Documentaries

Films on Reserve

  • The White Ribbon, by Michael Haneke (2009) – VIDEO.DVD12460
  • Joyeux Noel/Merry Christmas, by Christian Carion (2005) – VIDEO.DVD 06762
  • Metropolis, by Fritz Lang (1927) – VIDEO.DVD 02793
  • Europa, Europa, by Agnieszka Holland (1991) – VIDEO.VHS 10851
  • Dresden (2006), directed by Roland Suso Richter – VIDEO.DVD 09112
  • Head On (Gegen die Wand), by Fatih Akin – VIDEO.DVD 06336 2005
  • The Lives of Others, by F. H. von Donnersmarck (2006) – VIDEO. DVD 07685

The video reserves can be viewed at the viewing stations of the Robertson Media Center, located on the 3rd floor of the Clemons Library.