German Course Descriptions Third and Fourth Year B.A. Students Semester 1 2020/21 - NUI Galway
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German
Course Descriptions
Third and Fourth Year
B.A. Students
Semester 1 - 2020/21Year Coordinator: Dr Simone Klapper, email:simone.klapper@nuigalway.ie.
Consultation time: Wednesday 2.00-3.00 p.m. (during term time) and by appointment.
Entry requirements: A pass in Second Arts German or its equivalent, for example in the case of
visiting and exchange students. Students registered for the B.A. International must also have achieved a
satisfactory academic performance during their year abroad.
Compulsory Modules: Students are obliged to take all three modules offered in Semester 1.
All modules have the value of 5 ECTS.
Essay Guidelines:
All essays which form part of the assessment of any module within the BA German programme must
adhere to the format and the referencing system laid out in the department’s essay guidelines, available
on the departmental website (Section: Undergraduate Programmes).
Please note: All announcements can be changed if deemed necessary.
For further details, please check our Departmental website: www.nuigalway.ie/german
Important Dates
Academic Year 2020-21
Semester 1
Teaching Period 28th September 2020 – 18th December 2020
Christmas Holidays 19th December 2020 – 10th January 2021
Semester 1 Exams Period 11th January 2021 – 22nd January 2021
Semester 2
Teaching Period 1 8th February 2021 – 2nd April 2021
Field Trips 6th – 9th April 2021
Teaching Period 2 12th April – 7th May 2021
Semester 2 Exams Period 18th May 2021 – 4th June 2021
Important Note:
The Covid-19 situation confronts both students and staff in the Discipline of German with
unprecedented challenges. New forms of teaching and learning will complement the
traditional ones. All modules taught in Semester 1 will include both online teaching and
2teaching in the classroom. Further details will be announced by the lecturers via blackboard
in due course.
Information about modules taught in Semester 2 will be available in December 2020.
Please note that there will be different classes for third year students, i.e. students who have
not yet spent an Erasmus year abroad, and fourth year students i.e. students who have
returned from their Erasmus year.
Semester 1
Third year students only
Module Components
(All modules are compulsory.)
GR341 German Language I Classes for third year students
GR337 German Cultural Studies I Extended Essay 60%
Enlightenment 40%
GR338 German Cultural Studies II DDR Literature 100%
Fourth year students only
Module Components
(All modules are compulsory.)
GR341 German Language I Classes for fourth year students
GR337 German Cultural Studies I Extended Essay 60%
Enlightenment 40%
GR338 German Cultural Studies II UlrichTukur 100%
3GR341 German Language I (5 hrs. per week)
Separate classes will be offered for third and fourth year students. Further details
will be announced in due course via blackboard
GR341 German Language I for third year students (5 hours per week)
Lecturers: Simone Klapper, Jeannine Jud
Course description: Intense language tuition developing oral, aural and writing skills
to prepare students for their Erasmus Year in Germany or Austria. The course will
include a mixture of different online-learning methods, project work and taught
classes. One class per week is reserved for translation – English into German.
Students will….
further expand their linguistic skills and cultural knowledge acquired
during the second year of their studies
actively prepare them with the required linguistic, generic and transferable
skills to study or work in an international university or work environment
expand on special purpose vocabulary and place particular emphasis on
the register and communication skills appropriate to study and live in
German speaking countries
extend their knowledge of German/Austrian culture and intercultural
communication
understand more complex language/grammar structures and comfortably
apply them in the written and spoken context
analyse, reflect and discuss a variety of broad subjects and contemporary
issues relating to Germany and the German-speaking world
Prerequisites: Successful completion of Second Arts German language or equivalent.
Methods of assessment: Continuous Assessment 70 %, Oral Exam 15%, Translation
15%
Please note: All assignments must be handed in on time and will not be accepted later
unless medical certificates are provided.
Core Texts: Course material and handouts will be provided via Blackboard.
4GR341 German Language I for fourth year students (5 hrs. per week)
Lecturers: Simone Klapper, Jeannine Jud
Course description: Intense language tuition developing oral, aural and writing skills
to a high standard.
One class per week is reserved for translation – English into German.
Students will be enabled to
understand the main ideas of complex oral and written communication on both
concrete and abstract topics
interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes interaction with
native speakers possible without strain for either party
produce clear, detailed written texts on a wide range of subjects
express complex ideas and opinions about a broad range of topics
translate appropriately from English to German and from German to English
understand the grammatical structures of the German language
train presentation skills in German
Prerequisites: Successful completion of Second Arts German language or equivalent.
Methods of assessment: Continuous Assessment 70 %, Oral Exam 15%, Translation
15%
Please note: All assignments must be handed in on time and will not be accepted later
unless medical certificates are provided.
Core Texts: Szilvia Szita, Susanne Raven und Anne Buscha: Erkundungen Deutsch
als Fremdsprache C1: Integriertes Kurs- und Arbeitsbuch. Deutsch als Fremdsprache.
2. veränderte Auflage. Leipzig: Schubert-Verlag 2016. ISBN: 978-3-941323-25-4
Other course material and handouts will be provided via Blackboard.
GR337 German Cultural Studies I
(for both third and fourth year students)
Extended Essay 60%
Enlightenment 40%
Extended Essay
Lecturers: Tina Pusse (co-ordinator), Deirdre Byrnes, Simone Klapper, Aine Ryan,
Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, Michael Shields, Michaela Schrage-Frueh.
Course description: Writing the Extended Essay is an opportunity for students to
thoroughly familiarise themselves with an aspect of German, Austrian or Swiss
cultural life/history and to present it well in both written and oral form. The topic
must be related to an area covered in any of the modules students chose either in
5Galway or during the Erasmus year. The focus of the essay should be one work or a
small number of works (literature, art, film, music etc.).
Students must discuss their choice of topic with, and have it approved by one of the
lecturers, listed above, at an early stage. Once the topic has been approved, a proposal
(not less than 400 words) is to be submitted. It must contain a provisional
bibliography including at least five sources which are not web pages. Three of them
should be written in German. Please submit the proposal (10% of total mark) by 23
October 2020 to Geraldine Smyth (Geraldine.smyth@nuigalway.ie).
Workshops: (Online-) Workshops will be organized at the start of term to offer
guidance and support to students. These will be announced via blackboard.
Attendance at these workshops is obligatory.
Important note: All essay must be in line with the rules and principles laid out in the
Guidelines of the Extended Essay, available on the German Discipline website.
Deadline for submission of the essay: 21 December 2020.
Enlightenment (1 hr. per week)
Lecturer: Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa
Course description: The 18th century was the age of Enlightenment. It was shaped by
philosophical ideas (René Descartes: “I think therefore I am”), the emergence of new
forms of critical thinking, the scientific revolution, a new interest in the individual,
the rise of modern psychology, new esthetical values and the political earthquake of
the French Revolution (“Liberté, égalité, fraternité”). In many respects, the
enlightenment laid the foundations for modernity. The first part of the course will
introduce students to the major ideas, concepts, and tendencies of the epoch, with a
focus on philosophy, anthropology, and literature. In the shorter second part we will
discuss the relevance of enlightenment and its tradition of critical thinking in the 20th
and 21st centuries.
Teaching and learning methods: The module requires regular and active student
participation. It will be lecture-based but also provide opportunities for discussions in
small groups.
Methods of assessment and examination: online assessment.
Core texts: Texts and excerpts by Johann Gottlieb Krüger, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
(Nathan der Weise), Karl Philip Moritz, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (Prometheus), Immanuel Kant (Was ist Aufklärung?), Theodor
W. Adorno (Dialektik der Aufklärung). All texts will be made available on
blackboard.
6GR338 German Cultural Studies II
DDR Literature (for third year students only) 100%
Ulrich Tukur (for fourth year students only) 100%
GDR-Literature (2 hrs. per week, for third year students only)
Lecturer: Pól Ó Dochartaigh
Course description: The GDR existed as a separate state for just over forty years in
the twentieth century. The aim of this course is to introduce students to some aspects
of GDR culture and politics, as illustrated in a small number of important short
literary and documentary texts that had a wider social impact. This will involve
considering three key themes: anti-Semitism, youth, and women, looking at these
themes in society and considering some texts that relate to these themes. The texts in
question all challenged political orthodoxy, and the course will discuss the parameters
of such challenges in what was politically a relatively homogeneous society.
Teaching and learning methods: The module requires regular and active student
participation.
Methods of assessment and examination: online assessment 70%; coursework 30%.
Core texts: 2 short stories (Fühmann & Bobrowski); 1 novel (Plenzdorf);
Documentary excerpts (Wander).
Ulrich Tukur, Der Ursprung der Welt (2 hrs. per week, for fourth year students
only)
Lecturer: Michael Shields
Course description: Ulrich Tukur is better known as a TV and film actor, starring
among other things as the police commissioner in the series Tatort. The plot of his
new book, published in 2019 and written in a detective-novel style, may be inspired
by films he has acted in. After finding a photo of ‘himself’ in an ancient photo album,
hero Paul Goullet suffers hundred-year flashbacks from his own world (2033) to that
of his alter ego in 1933: his evil earlier ancestor looks just like him but is a serial
killer… Tukur uses ample references to German cultural life and history in the 1930s,
as well as to his own family history, to explore an obsession with male desire,
memory and guilt, more specifically grandparents’ guilt for Nazi crimes. While we
are learning more about what happened in 1933, simultaneously in 2033 Goullet is
increasingly drawn into the resistance movement against a computer-based
surveillance dictatorship.
Tukur was born in the late 1950s, less than 15 years after 1945. While interpreting the
book and in the process uncovering its many intertextual references to 20th-century
7authors, artists and psychologists, we will try to decide what the author reveals about
his generation and himself.
Assessment: In-class assignment (10%), end-of-term essay (90%).
Core text: Ulrich Tukur, Der Ursprung der Welt, S. Fischer Verlag: Frankfurt/Main
2019.
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