Spring 2004

Dr. Catherine Grimm

Tuesday/Thursday 2:10-3:30

Vulgamore 202

E-mail: cgrimm@albion.edu

Phone: 629-0269

Office: Vulgamore 107

Office hours: MWF 11-12:00

Homepage

Class Schedule:

updated:02/17/04

Sites of interest

Welcome/Willkommen to what I hope will be a fun and exciting exploration of a number of different, but related, issues and themes. The guiding themes of the class will be the crucial role of the “femme fatale" archetype in (primarily) German cinema, and the pivotal and sometimes contentious role female German directors have played in the history of German film-making. To this end we will watch, discuss and analyze a number of German and German/American films. The language of in-class discussion and of the written work you turn in will be German. Our readings will be both in German and English.

Requirements:

Regular attendance and participation are key!

The basic requirement for the course is that you come to class prepared and ready to share your thoughts, ideas and insights, which you will have gathered from a variety of sources (motion pictures, documentaries, academic articles, websites etc).. I will assign each of you a √+, √ or – after every discussion class, based on the quantity and quality of your oral contributions. I do not expect grammatical perfection, so please don’t hold back. If you cannot think of a word in German, say it in English and the class will contemplate what the word would be in German. Attendance and participation will make up 30% of your final grade.

Here are the other requirements for the course:

· Kommentare (33%). You will write 11 one-page, typed Kommentare about the movies (and/or) the assigned readings. (Sie werden diese Kommentare auf Deutsch schreiben.) Here too I will not expect grammatical perfection, but rather to see you developing critical insights about what you are viewing/reading, in German.

· Referat (15%). Instead of a final, but at the time our final would take place, I would like all of you to present one additional film you choose, that relates to the issues of the class, to the rest of us. You may show excerpts, provide a plot-synopsis and explain in what way it speaks to the themes and issues raised in the class: although your presentation will be in German, the film you decide to present to us, does not have to be German, it just has to fit the other themes of the class.

· Aufsätze (22%). For this class you will also write two versions of two short papers, about 3-4 pages long. These papers will be your chance to explore some of the more technical aspects of movies we’re watching, and also to work on improving your ability to express yourself in written German.

Films and Texts:

Please buy Louis Giannetti’s Understanding Movies (9^th Edition New Jersey: Prentice-Hall 2001) at the bookstore, which will be our guide to the technical aspects of the movies. Thanks to Dr.Valerie Weinstein, a German professor at the University of Nevada at Reno, we will have access to the high-lighted terms in Giannetti in German. This will make class discussion a lot easier! We are all responsible for learning the German equivalents of the terms in English listed for each chapter. I may give the occasional vocab-test, just to see how you are doing memorizing the new vocab. The other book I am asking you to buy at the bookstore is a concise German biography of Marlene Dietrich: Linde Salber, Marlene Dietrich, Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 2001.
All other readings will be made available to you, at a small charge. Some of the readings and all the movies we watch will be available on reserve. We will watch a number of movies in class, but I strongly urge you to watch all of the movies a second time at your own convenience.

Additional movies the Albion College library owns:

Use this list to find additional movies that relate to our class topics: you can choose from these for your final project – I’ll be happy to offer you advice on which ones you might find interesting or, you can use them to become more familiar with the figures we are dealing with in class. I have put the Dietrich movies on reserve, and will put the rest of them on reserve asap!

Schedule