German Literature/Ecology Charlotte Melin Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

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Beyond the “Two Cultures Model”: German Literature/Ecology Charlotte Melin Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

The Case for German + Sustainability Studies Readings Forum Discussions Global Connections On-line

“Literary intellectuals at the one pole—at the other scientists . . .” Each week students participate in a discussion blog written in Links from the course website facilitate exploration of —C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures (1959) German. The topics ask students to connect the assigned readings international connections through supplementary readings, with other aspects of their learning and experience. Students who video, and audio materials. Students have opportunities to “. . . language is understood as an essential element of have engaged in study abroad add contrastive perspectives. critically evaluate the reliability of websites, use on-line a human being’s thought processes, perceptions, and reference sources, and encounter dialectical variations in self-expressions; and as such it is considered to be at the Sample questions: spoken German. core of translingual and transcultural competence. . . . Language is a complex multifunctional phenomenon that links an individual to other individuals, to communities, and Kaminer uses descriptions of photographs at the beginning to national cultures.” of his work to contrast the relationship to nature of —MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages (2007) generations in and past and people today. Select two photographs that show the relationship between man and “Germany is global leader in exports of environmental protection nature and describe them in German. products” —Umweltbundesamt/The Federal Environmental Agency Compare the understanding of environmental issues in (2008) Pfisters Muehle with the situation today. To what extent do we see environmental questions similarly? How do we view Course premise: The majority of German majors are double majors progress today differently from Raabe’s characters? and many students who minor in the department have majors in fields that intersect with sustainability studies, such as Global Consumer goods play an important role in the work we Studies, Journalism, Ecology and related science disciplines. are reading as an indication of our impact on the Internationalization of the curriculum connects these environment. Select an object and analyze its areas of educational concentration. potential impact on the environment. What do you think it means to think of consumption as a sustainability issue? German 3441—Course Description

Volcanic eruptions in Iceland, local food, oil exploration, polluted Works Cited waters, aluminum factories, Chernobyl, global warming—if you Active Learning Assessments follow the news in the past year, these items have been on your Goodbody, Axel. Nature, Technology and Cultural Change in radar, but did you know that these issues have been important in Students research materials for oral reports and collaborative Twentieth-Century German Literature. Palgrave: McMillen, German literature in the long 20th century? In this course, we will final project. (Sample courtesy of Jennifer Decker) 2007. explore environmental issues through the lens of German literary, film, and nonfiction texts. Our readings will include poetry, MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. “Foreign Enzensberger’s epic poem about the limits of technological Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed progress, Der Untergang der Titanic (The Sinking of the Titanic), World.” Profession. New York: Modern Language Association of short novels and novellas. We will begin with Kaminer’s satire about America, 2007. gardening, local food, and Thoreau, Mein Leben im Schrebergarten (My Life in the Garden Plot). Turning our attention to Raabe’s Course Objectives Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pfisters Muehle (Pfister’s Mill) from 1884, which describes the link Press, 1998. between factory construction and water pollution, we will encounter In this course students will: what is considered to be the first text in German about Umweltbundesamt. http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/index-e.htm environmental issues. Thomas Mann’s “Tristan” (1901), a story that takes place in an alpine sanatorium, introduces us to the ways in expand abilities to read, interpret, and appreciate literary which landscape has been imagined to shape identity. and multi-media texts related to environmental topics. Student-generated Glossary Leutenegger’s Kontinent (Continent) records the impressions of a Contact information fictional journalist assigned to research the community near to a For grade credit, students contribute vocabulary items to a glossary Swiss aluminum plant, Wolf’s Stoerfall (Accident: A Day’s News) exercise effective communication skills in German and English located at the course website. Entries include key terminology, Charlotte Melin meditates on the implications of Chernobyl in terms of human life, in ways that lead to the development of critical literacy skills grammatical information (such as noun gender), definitions, an Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch and Falkner’s Bruno takes a wry look at the handling of a rouge example of how the word can be used in a sentence, and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities bear incident as well the issue of global warming. Parallel to the appropriate citations. literary our reading of texts, we will analyze several cinematic explore the complex relationships among the [email protected] treatments of ecological issues and examine essays in ecocritism formal/aesthetic dimensions of literature, the social/historical Sample (in English translation): (Goodbody) that will guide our analysis of texts. contexts of works we read, and the global perspectives relevant der Schrebergarten: small garden in a garden colony, named after to addressing environmental issues today. Dr. Daniel G. M. Schreber (1808-61). The Schrebergarten is a microcosm of Switzerland today .