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What German Studies Means at Michigan
The goal of our graduate program is to train scholars who will be able to practice radical interdisciplinarity. By radical interdisciplinarity, we mean work across and beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries that is guided by faculty with deep methodological training and experience not only in language and literature, but in other fields as well. Our department is unusual in having been able to incorporate such a wide array of interdisciplinary expertise into its own faculty.
In addition to training in German Studies proper, members of the Department hold advanced degrees in History, Comparative Literature, Political Science, Film Studies, Linguistics, Sociology, Philosophy, Business, and Music. Most are jointly appointed in the corresponding units. One of the largest in the country, Michigan's graduate program offers outstanding training not only in literature and literary theory, but also in German history, politics, film, philosophy, music, gender studies, sociology, art and architecture, and – a newly emerging strength – Turkish-German culture.
Faculty and students at Michigan are engaged in a lively, interdisciplinary dialogue ranging across the humanities, the social sciences, and the professions that nevertheless coheres as a curriculum, due to the faculty’s shared interest in historical, cultural, and aesthetic questions. Traditionally, departments of “language and literature” have sought to provide rigorous training in literary criticism, literary history, and linguistics. We are strong in all these areas, but we are also able to incorporate these more traditional approaches into a broader vision of German Studies that includes the social sciences and the professions. Seminars offered in the different areas of German Studies cover a wide array of historical and theoretical concerns across the disciplines while also emphasizing the distinct textual and analytical skills required for this kind of work, from close textual reading through film analysis to the study of architectural form.
Thus our program is able to offer a sustained reflection on the literary in relation to other disciplines and modes of representation. We take it for granted that the term “German Studies” should refer to both high culture and popular culture. We also remain committed to full historical coverage of German culture from the Middle Ages to the present.
The faculty’s research and teaching encompass a wide array of theoretical approaches and fields of inquiry, some of which are outlined in the following thematic clusters:
Citizenship, State, and Nation
Here we seek to come to terms with crucial aspects of power, politics, and identities in Central European history and theory. Michigan’s curriculum offers a wide range of opportunities to study the great theoretical traditions of German-language social and political thought. The Department also offers courses on related topics such as German, Austrian, and Swiss nationalism, the emergence and development of Central European states, the place of language in discussions of Central European nationalism, and relations between German and immigrant identities in Central European history.
Literary Theory, Aesthetics, and Philosophy
The faculty’s research and teaching in this area focuses on the origins and history of literary and aesthetic theory, medieval and early modern forms of representation, the materiality of the text, the aesthetics of German Classicism, Idealism and Romanticism, decadent aesthetics, Nietzsche, psychoanalysis, twentieth-century cultural and critical theory, and theories of ideology.
Social Theory/Social Studies
Several members of our faculty are actively engaged in research on both German and Central European social theory and a wide range of historical and contemporary social phenomena in Central Europe. The traditions of social theory covered in departmental teaching and research range chronologically from Kant through Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Simmel, Lukacs, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno, Horkheimer, Norbert Elias, Arendt, and contemporary theorists writing in German such as Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and Ulrich Beck. Foci of current teaching and research include left- and right-wing social movements, sports, the state, urbanism and cultural geography, spatial cultural studies, the sociolinguistics of German-speaking Europe, and globalization.
Film, Visual Culture, and Architecture
A substantial group of faculty and graduate students specializes in the areas of film, visual culture, and architecture. This focus includes coverage of the whole of German film history and theory, with an emphasis on the relationship between film form and the socio-cultural role of the medium in twentieth-century German, Austrian, and Swiss history. Particular research strengths include early German film, the Weimar period, Nazi Cinema, the New German Cinema, and films representing the Holocaust. In addition to survey courses on the history of film theory, faculty interests in this area revolve around questions of film historiography, genre, cultural studies, neoformalism, and psychoanalysis. Students with an interest in film studies can also apply for admission to the Certificate in Film Studies offered by the Program in Film and Video Studies. The history and theory of art and architecture are also strongly represented in our program: graduate offerings have included seminars on Frankfurt School aesthetic theory, Weimar culture, and Viennese modernism. In the summer of 2004, Michigan will host the biannual German Film Institute for the first time. This event brings together eminent scholars in the field of German Film Studies for a week-long seminar of screenings and intensive discussions. This year's Institute is devoted to the topic of "Unknown Weimar." The Department has a standing exchange with Germany's best film school, the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Konrad Wolf, in Potsdam near Berlin. Students with a strong interest in visual culture can apply for admission to U of M's new program leading to a Certificate in Museum Studies.
Psychoanalysis and Culture
The study of psychoanalytic theories is another focus of our department. The faculty’s research and teaching interests represent an unusually wide array of approaches ranging from the intellectual history of the psychoanalytic movement (Freud Studies) to Lacanian and post-Lacanian readings of Freud. Key areas of research include 1) the connection between psychoanalysis and ideology, or the issue of subjectivity and power; and 2) the question of psychoanalysis and gender (for instance, studies in masculinity, or the relation between psychoanalysis and feminist theory). Faculty working in this area bring psychoanalytic theory to bear on issues of fin-de-siècle culture (discourses on paternity/masculinity), or postwar culture (trauma, remembrance, and post-holocaust authorship). Many of our seminars in cultural and political history and theory involve the teaching of psychoanalysis, e.g. “Introduction to Ideology,” “Introduction to German Studies,” “Colonialism and Post-Colonialism,” “Trauma, Memory, and Cultural Analysis.”
Genders, Bodies, Sexualities
The study of genders, bodies, and sexualities has generated a rich scholarly debate that has been marked by attention to historical specifics as well as by an interest in advancing our theoretical understanding of what it means to inhabit a gendered body in various texts and contexts. In their teaching and research, our faculty is revisiting German culture and literature through the lens of gender, body, and sexuality as categories of analysis. These interests cover a wide array of historical perspectives and include focal points such as the formation of a society invested in sexual discipline, gender and genre, gender and modernities, psychoanalytic approaches to the body, representations of sexual violence, the gender of space, the fin de siècle sexual system, re-imaginings of corporeality during the Weimar Republic, and post-World War II reconfiguration of gender. Students with strong interest in gender studies can apply to the program leading to a Certificate in Women's Studies, and they can take advantage of Michigan's extraordinary Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Since 1998, the important journal Gender and History has been co-edited by our colleagues Kathleen Canning and, more recently, Helmut Puff.
Colonialisms, Migrations, and Minority Culture
Reconceptualizing Germany as a multi-ethnic nation raises questions about colonialism, migration, and minority culture. Departmental research and teaching thus focuses on the history, language, and cultural production of contemporary minority communities such as Turkish-Germans, Jews, Roma and Sinti, African Germans, Asian Germans, and refugees. Associated with these groups are issues of asylum and immigration policy, grassroots organizing, identity and gender politics, bilingualism and language contact. Teaching and research also focuses on the contribution of Orientalism, music, travel writing, and cross-cultural encounters to the construction of racial and national ideologies, with a specific focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Operating within anthropological, historical, sociological, sociolinguistic, and postcolonial critical frameworks, we ask questions about Germany’s colonial past and its legacies. With multiple specialists in a variety of different units, U of M is exceptionally strong in Turkish-German Studies.
Graduate students in German Studies can earn certificates in Screen Arts and Cultures, Women’s Studies, and Museum Studies. The Department is also working with Michigan's prestigious Business School to develop a graduate certificate in International Business. German and Linguistics offer a standing joint Ph.D. program in Germanic Linguistics; it is also possible in principle to negotiate joint Ph.D.s with other fields on an ad hoc basis.
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