Fall Quarter 2025
- For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF Schedule or the class search tool https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm.
- For all courses not described here, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions: https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/ger
Jump to --> Language Courses | Lower-div | Upper-div | Graduate Courses
Not sure where to start with German?
Beginners: GER 001.
If you already know some German, you may be able to start with an intermediate class (020, 021, 022). Students with an AP exam in German and heritage speakers may be able to jump straight into upper division courses (100 numbers) and start working towards a minor or major. Take a placement exam and follow its suggestion unless it places you into 022 (the highest class the test knows): In this case, contact Language Program Coordinator Dr. Kirsten Harjes ([email protected]), because you might be ready for the upper division.
Placement exams: Olson Hall 53 (Davis Language Center), walk-ins during business hours, results available immediately. The test takes 20 minutes on the computer.
Lower division language program
GER 001, 002, 003: Elementary German. Introduction into German grammar and vocabulary in cultural contexts around the German speaking world. Classes are taught in German in student-centered small groups, emphasizing speaking, listening, and understanding grammatical concepts.
GER 020, 021, 022: Intermediate German. Classes ensure a review and further practice of first-year grammar with an increasing focus on expanding vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing. Introduction of longer fictional and non-fictional texts and practice of higher-level communicative strategies and presentational skills.
Undergraduate Courses
Language
GER 001 Elementary German
GER 020 Intermediate German
GER 045 Vampires & Other Horrors
Kirsten Harjes
Why are we fascinated by the vampiric Dracula, zombies, and Frankenstein? What are the questions to which these monsters are the answer? Social anxieties, forbidden desires, urgent questions about life and beyond: Vampires and other scary creatures have proven to be extremely adaptable lenses through which we face fears about political instability, gender relations, sexuality, race and racism, epidemics, religious and moral uncertainty, technology, and, above all, human mortality. The class explores these topics through cultural history, literature, and film.
Upper Division
GER 104 Translation
Kirsten Harjes
In this course, we will work mostly on German-to-English translations, using excerpts of a variety of literature and media from 1800 to the present as our source texts. Genres include prose, poetry, dramatic dialogue, movie subtitles, memes & humor, and song lyrics. You will learn how to address grammatical, semantic and cultural roadblocks in German-to-English translation while refining your German writing and reading skills. In addition to practicing different translation methods ourselves, we will read and discuss contributions to translation theory from the fields of literature, philosophy, and applied linguistics by authors such as J.W. Goethe, W. Humboldt, Novalis, A. Schopenhauer, W. Benjamin, F. Schleiermacher, O. Paz, V. Nabokov, M. Arnold, and N. Chomsky. Whether a translator works from scratch or employs GenAI, basic questions about the nature of translation remain as intricate as ever: Can one translate within a language, or only across languages? Is anything by nature untranslatable? What are acts of translation we perform every day in our effort to "translate" our internal cognitive and emotional world to others?
Prerequisites: GER 022 at UC Davis or consent of instructor
GE Credits: AH, OL, VL, WC, WE
GER 117 After the Catastrophe: Jews and Jewish Life in Post-1945 Germany
Sven-Erik Rose
This course considers the place of Jews and Jewish life and culture in Germany after 1945. The focus will not be primarily on representations of the Holocaust but rather on how Jews, and representations of Jews, have played a role in German culture, society, and politics after the Second World War. In no other country has history, memory, and the place of one minority – as well as the long history of collective hatred against that minority – played such an important role in the political and civic life of a nation. While most courses have focused on Jews up to and during the Holocaust, this course contends that many of the most important debates and controversies in and about postwar Germany and its status as a nation have intersected, in fundamental ways, with Germany’s long and complicated history with Jewish peoples. Likewise, Germany has had an outsized place in the cultural and political life of the global Jewish community.
We will examine these debates and controversies, including, among others, the migration of Jews to and through Germany after the war; the place of memoirs by Jewish authors in postwar German culture; the “Historians’ debate”; the lengthy debates about Holocaust memorialization in Germany; and the impact on the German Jewish community of the immigration of a large number of Jews from the former Soviet Union as well as a significant number of Jews from Israel. In the latter weeks of the course, we will explore how the place of Jews in Germany and the discourse on Jews in Germany has shifted in recent decades due to a number of factors including increased immigration to Germany from Muslim majority regions; Germany’s particular relationship to the state of Israel against the backdrop of the dire situation in Israel/Palestine; and the emergence of far right parties as a force to be reckoned with on the German political scene.
The course has considerable topical breadth. In foregrounding the relationship of a long history to recent culture and society, it examines not only literary and historical writings, but also the role of diverse media like photography, television, and film as well as new media.
GER 121 Medieval German
Carlee Arnett
Far off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise...forbidden love...Read fascinating literature from the German High Middle Ages and engage with the ideas of love, heroism, wealth, magic, fate and the blend of Christianity and paganism. Meet the knights of the Round Table, the Green Knight and Kudrun, the captured princess by reading Der arme Heinrich, Iwain, the Green Knight, Kudrun and other epic tales.
Graduate Courses
GER 297 Special Topics in German Literature
Sven-Erik Rose