Abroad

The mission of the Summer in Berlin program is multifaceted. By the end of the program, it is expected that students will have:

1. Developed proficiency in German language (all four competencies)

2. Developed a level of German cultural literacy that will offer a different perspective on their home culture

3. Mastered material and methods of investigation specific to individual courses

4. Developed/cultivated research skills in the humanities and social sciences, where appropriate

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This course is designed to refine students’ German skills at an advanced level. This class aims to review key grammar topics while honing skills in reading, writing, and conversation. By the end of the semester, students will have increased the fluency and sophistication of their own German and also the depth and breadth of your German comprehension.

What does it mean to be fremd – a stranger, foreigner, outsider? Students will examine this question through several lenses, from the experience of immigrants in Germany to the complicated relationship between East and West Germany both before and after the Wall fell. Entfremdung is a feeling we all have experienced in one way or another, and that investigation of the concepts of exclusion and community will allow us to view recent German history and culture with a fresh perspective. Students will be reading short stories, poems, songs, comics, and one novel over the course of our study. Students will supplement analytical discussions of readings with creative interpretations of our own, as well as several excursions to sites around Berlin.

The goal of this course is to provide students with an introduction to visual arts and architecture of Germany from the 17th to the 21ST century through lectures conducted in Berlin’s museums and cultural sites. Classroom lectures will be kept to a minimum so that students may encounter actual works of art in the city’s magnificent collections. The course will focus on the development of German art from Albrecht Dürer and other Old Masters through Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and contemporary artists. Students will learn in particular depth about artists and architects such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Caspar David Friedrich, Adolph Menzel, and Mies van der Rohe, as well as about innovative artistic organizations such as Die Brücke and The Bauhaus. Germany’s modernist art movements, such as Realism, Expressionism, Dada, and New Objectivity, will be considered in relation to the many upheavals in modern German history. Students will also be exposed to more recent artists as well as studio visits of contemporary painters. By the end of the course, students will not only have a broad understanding of the development of the visual arts in Germany but also of how art and architecture have served in the problematic search for German cultural identity.