Undergraduate Courses

The GER 100Y language course is an introductory German course divided into two sections for students with no prior knowledge of the language. Based on a communicative and task-based approach, it is designed to develop proficiency in oral and written communication skills while providing students with knowledge and understanding of the societies and cultures of German-speaking countries. Students will develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills through a variety of stimulating activities. Vocabulary will be presented in the context of culturally significant issues. Topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, travel, health and fitness or studying abroad. Additionally, the course will provide students with a foundation in a number of basic grammatical structures and concepts. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In addition to preparation at home, regular class attendance is paramount in order to participate successfully in these activities.

This language course will provide students with genuine communication experiences in order to deepen their understanding of German-speaking countries. It has been designed to further develop communicative proficiency in each of the four language skills listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The textbooks are motivating and encourage interest in culture and language through their unique approach to authentic material illustrating vocabulary in context, communicative functions of grammatical structures, and cultural highlights. All readings, videos, projects, and presentations in class explore historical, social, political, and popular topics while aspects of Germanic and North American cultures are being compared. Learning strategies and self-assessment are part of every chapter, allowing for differentiation among various types of learners. The topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, health and fitness etc. Cultural and linguistic variants of all three German-speaking countries are featured. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In order to participate successfully in these activities, preparation at home and regular class attendance are paramount.

More info at https://summerabroad.utoronto.ca/ger354y0-a-tale-of-more-than-two-cities/

The GER 100Y language course is an introductory German course divided into two sections for students with no prior knowledge of the language. Based on a communicative and task-based approach, it is designed to develop proficiency in oral and written communication skills while providing students with knowledge and understanding of the societies and cultures of German-speaking countries. Students will develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills through a variety of stimulating activities. Vocabulary will be presented in the context of culturally significant issues. Topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, travel, health and fitness or studying abroad. Additionally, the course will provide students with a foundation in a number of basic grammatical structures and concepts. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In addition to preparation at home, regular class attendance is paramount in order to participate successfully in these activities.

This language course will provide students with genuine communication experiences in order to deepen their understanding of German-speaking countries. It has been designed to further develop communicative proficiency in each of the four language skills listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The textbooks are motivating and encourage interest in culture and language through their unique approach to authentic material illustrating vocabulary in context, communicative functions of grammatical structures, and cultural highlights. All readings, videos, projects, and presentations in class explore historical, social, political, and popular topics while aspects of Germanic and North American cultures are being compared. Learning strategies and self-assessment are part of every chapter, allowing for differentiation among various types of learners. The topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, health and fitness etc. Cultural and linguistic variants of all three German-speaking countries are featured. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In order to participate successfully in these activities, preparation at home and regular class attendance are paramount.

This language course will provide students with genuine communication experiences in order to deepen their understanding of German-speaking countries. It has been designed to further develop communicative proficiency in each of the four language skills listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The textbooks are motivating and encourage interest in culture and language through their unique approach to authentic material illustrating vocabulary in context, communicative functions of grammatical structures, and cultural highlights. All readings, videos, projects, and presentations in class explore historical, social, political, and popular topics while aspects of Germanic and North American cultures are being compared. Learning strategies and self-assessment are part of every chapter, allowing for differentiation among various types of learners. The topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, health and fitness etc. Cultural and linguistic variants of all three German-speaking countries are featured. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In order to participate successfully in these activities, preparation at home and regular class attendance are paramount.

This course is aimed at students with a high level of competence in German. Building on material covered in GER 100/200/300, it offers advanced studies of German language, including text-based analysis and with a focus on improving communication skills. It includes a systematic review and expansion of grammar and stylistics, and additional emphasis lies on vocabulary building. The course is partly based on newspaper articles, literary texts, films and websites.

This course is an introduction to the Yiddish language and culture of Ashkenazic Jews. It will begin to prepare you to be able to express yourself in Yiddish, acquire strategies to learn Yiddish independently by developing your ability to understand the structure of the language and to cue in on the features of spoken and written Yiddish.

This course will build on the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired in beginner’s Yiddish. Emphasis will shift slightly towards reading, listening and speaking. We will read selections from folk tales, Glatshteyn’s Emil un karl (or another text), and finish College Yiddish. You will write compositions and summaries, acquire new vocabulary words, listen to recordings, watch films, and give presentations. We will sing and play games. We will also go on a tour of Yiddish-speaking Toronto (past and present).

An investigation of a stylistically diverse body of contemporary films thematizing the heightened mobility (social, economic, and spatial) that increasingly defines life in 21st-century German and European societies. Readings from social and cultural theory will be paired with weekly screenings whose compelling narratives capture disparate forms of volitional and enforced movement (migration, exile, job relocation, tourism, flanerie) as well as their modern antithesis – stasis and entrapment – following national nification, establishment of the Euro pean Union, and accelerated globalization. We will also examine how the search for new modes of storytelling finds expression in counter cinematic aesthetic, transnational film styles, minor modes of filmmaking, and the renewal of realist aesthetics.

In this course, we examine key literary, philosophical, and cultural texts, in order to understand how modern culture approaches problems such as property, debt, and exchange value.

This course provides an introduction to German literature and culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Within a chronological framework, we will read and analyze excerpts from representative works of major German writers. Some of the literary texts will be complemented with examples selected from the visual arts, music and film. Throughout the course, our focus will be on three sets of questions: 1. What is the leading question of the text? 2. What are the formal means that the authors employ in order to express their concerns and to conceptualize the topic under discussion? 3. What is the historical and cultural context of the text? By asking these questions, we will not only strive to come to a better understanding of individual works, but also of German literature, its developments and themes. However, although the structure of this course is governed by literary periods, it will also be our aim to question their validity and definition. We will approach the texts with a combination of close readings and broad historical and cultural perspectives. Among the authors we will discuss are Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Joseph von Eichendorff, Franz Kafka, Irmgard Keun and Ilse Aichinger. In addition, we will work on our reading techniques for primary and secondary literature and improve our research skills in the university library system. Sessions involve class discussions, group work, readings, and occasional lectures.

As the concept of culture in today’s world becomes more and more associated with globalisation and international influences, it seems appropriate to supersede the traditional question of ‘What is German culture?’ with the more open question of ‘Where is German culture?’ This course provides an introduction to contemporary German culture and its roots from 1945 onwards, focusing particularly on them es of travel and migration. The course will examine cultural texts and objects including poetry, prose, film, songs and old and new media forms. Sessions involve class discussions, group work, readings, and occasional lectures. The course will be taught in German.

This course introduces to the rich life of the various literary movements during the Age of Goethe (1750-1830). Readings include seminal texts of early European modernity – among them Lessing’s Nathan the Wise and Goethe’s Faust drama – as well as some of the great poetry by the most eminent literary figures active during the period from Enlightenment to Romanticism and the “Ende der Kunstperiode” (Heine).

Topics in modern Yiddish or German Jewish literature and culture from the beginning of the 19th century to the present, featuring a selection of readings of modern Yiddish prose, poetry, drama and cinema. (Taught in English and open to students across disciplines.)

The moniker ‘Berlin School’ references a heterogenous body of German films whose directors first gained sustained attention for their subtle approach to tracking dramatic social changes in the new “Berlin Republic,” following transfer of the governmental seat of power from Bonn to its pre-World War II location. Resisting the temptation to deliver escapist narratives to a public struggling with the erosion of the social welfare state under the pressures of globalization, these directors have instead pursued an uncompromising realism focusing in exacting and uncanny detail upon the forms of subjectivity, both ordinary and extraordinary, produced among different social groups and classes. We’ll engage methodologies from phenomenology, performance studies, theories of affect, practices of the everyday, post-Bergsonian/Deleuzian philosophies of temporality and duration, feminist film theory, genre theory, and the aesthetics of cinematic realism. These readings accompany our exploration of the proposition that this movement, taken as a whole, constitutes a counter cinema, one whose auteurist ambitions accord with concurrent transnational art cinema practices and retraces its lineage to the Nouvelle Vague and the New German Cinema. Directors covered include M. Ade, T. Arslan, V. Grisebach, B. Heisenberg, C. Hochhäusler, U. Köhler, C. Petzold, A. Schanelec, and M. Speth, with occasional screenings of intertextually pertinent global art films. All films are subtitled and class discussions (including course readings) conducted in English.

The GER 100Y language course is an introductory German course divided into two sections for students with no prior knowledge of the language. Based on a communicative and task-based approach, it is designed to develop proficiency in oral and written communication skills while providing students with knowledge and understanding of the societies and cultures of German-speaking countries. Students will develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills through a variety of stimulating activities. Vocabulary will be presented in the context of culturally significant issues. Topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, travel, health and fitness or studying abroad. Additionally, the course will provide students with a foundation in a number of basic grammatical structures and concepts. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In addition to preparation at home, regular class attendance is paramount in order to participate successfully in these activities.

This language course will provide students with genuine communication experiences in order to deepen their understanding of German-speaking countries. It has been designed to further develop communicative proficiency in each of the four language skills listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The textbooks are motivating and encourage interest in culture and language through their unique approach to authentic material illustrating vocabulary in context, communicative functions of grammatical structures, and cultural highlights. All readings, videos, projects, and presentations in class explore historical, social, political, and popular topics while aspects of Germanic and North American cultures are being compared. Learning strategies and self-assessment are part of every chapter, allowing for differentiation among various types of learners. The topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, health and fitness etc. Cultural and linguistic variants of all three German-speaking countries are featured. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In order to participate successfully in these activities, preparation at home and regular class attendance are paramount.

This language course will provide students with genuine communication experiences in order to deepen their understanding of German-speaking countries. It has been designed to further develop communicative proficiency in each of the four language skills listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The textbooks are motivating and encourage interest in culture and language through their unique approach to authentic material illustrating vocabulary in context, communicative functions of grammatical structures, and cultural highlights. All readings, videos, projects, and presentations in class explore historical, social, political, and popular topics while aspects of Germanic and North American cultures are being compared. Learning strategies and self-assessment are part of every chapter, allowing for differentiation among various types of learners. The topics cover areas such as introducing and talking about oneself, shopping, telling time and recounting a day, family life, describing and renting an apartment, health and fitness etc. Cultural and linguistic variants of all three German-speaking countries are featured. Class periods will be devoted mostly to communicative and interactive exercises. In order to participate successfully in these activities, preparation at home and regular class attendance are paramount.

This course is aimed at students with a high level of competence in German. Building on material covered in GER 100/200/300, it offers advanced studies of German language, including text-based analysis and with a focus on improving communication skills. It includes a systematic review and expansion of grammar and stylistics, and additional emphasis lies on vocabulary building. The course is partly based on newspaper articles, literary texts, films and websites.

Advanced reading, writing, vocabulary and conversation. Study of poetry, short fiction and memoir literature by Zeitlin, Bergelson, Gladshteyn, Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer. Selected advanced grammatical topics presented in conjunction with the study of texts. (Conducted entirely in Yiddish.)

This prerequisite course offers an introduction to work methods and skills pertaining to the study of German literature. As such, the course is meant to provide a transition from language to topic courses. Students will receive training in how to give a successful presentation, how to read and analyze texts, how to find secondary literature and how to write short papers. The course is required for majors and specialists and a pre-requisite course for most of the other topic courses. It should be taken as early as possible.

This course introduces students to basic concepts and vocabulary necessary for the German business context. All the language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) will be practiced in appropriate business contexts.

This course looks at the 50+ year cultural history of Germany?s largest ethnic minority. Starting in the 1960s, Turks first came as labour migrants (?guest workers?) and later, in the 1980s, as asylum seekers; there were always artists among them. With them new impulses and perspectives reached German culture. First in Turkish, but soon also in German the migrants reacted to and interacted with their new surroundings. Over the years a vibrant Turkish-German cultural scene developed. Comparable to the political realm, their cultural integration was filled with challenges and obstacles. Nonetheless artists of Turkish origin have since become such an integral part of Germany?s cultural landscape that the scholar Leslie Adelson talks about a Turkish turn of German literature. This development is not restricted to literature, but also encompasses film, political cabaret, stand-up comedy, rap and hip-hop, etc.

This course offers an introduction to the German language, literature, and culture of the Middle Ages. We will read and translate Middle High German texts, study facsimiles of medieval manuscripts, and inquire into epochal cultural concepts like courtly love and chivalry as well as courtly and clerical designs of identity. Authors discussed will include Hartmann von Aue and Walther von der Vogelweide among others. The course fulfills the departmental requirement in Middle High German.