GERM 301 - Senior Seminar

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2017/18a: Before the Law: Visions of Justice in German Literature and Culture. What is justice? Is it attainable? What is its relation to law? How effective is the intervention of “poetic justice”? German literature and culture offer some of the most original reflections on these questions. This course focuses on the rich literary exploration of justice that reaches a high point in Franz Kafka’s fragmentary novel, The Trial. It also addresses how German writers and artists have responded to actual, highly contested trials, such as the trial in Jerusalem of the SS officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the prime architects of the Nazi genocide. Authors and filmmakers may include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Bertolt Brecht, Hannah Arendt, Fritz Lang, and Bernhard Schlink. Elliott Schreiber.

Prerequisite(s): GERM 260 or GERM 270 or the equivalent.

One 3-hour period.