GMST 001 – First Semester Intensive German
GMST 005: German Conversation – Christopher Schnader
Practice conversing in German while engaging with films, various media, and current events. Students also have multiple opportunities to hone their presentation skills and explore self-selected topics in a low-pressure environment. This half-credit course is open to all who have either placed above our third-semester German course or are currently enrolled in GMST 003.
GMST 003 – Third Semester Intensive German
GMST 020: Introduction to German Studies. Topic Fall 22 – Literature and the Canon - Hansjakob Werlen
GMST 083: Crime Drama - Cross-listed as FMST 083/LITR 083 – Sunka Simon
This course looks at the history and format of the crime drama in film and on television.
More than other genres, crime dramas have reflected on societies' historical blind spots, taboos, and peripheries along with its reigning hierarchies of power, and they have debated foundational ethical parameters amidst ongoing struggles to deal with change, particularly in relation to childhood, gender, race, class, and sexuality. At the same time, shows like CSI have altered television aesthetics and spectatorship in dialogue with new forensic and media-specific technologies:
What has made the crime drama such a success in different media and mediascapes? How have its familiar stock characters, plot lines, settings, and recognizable styles adapted? What accounts for its ability to speak to audiences across different cultural backgrounds while emanating from and representing cultural, national, and regional specificities? How has the genre responded to social activism and debates over police brutality and the prison-industrial complex? How can we explain serial killer fandom in the convergence era? (see below)

GMST 091 "The Rhine - Stories and Histories."  Madalina Meirosu
This course invites you to take a virtual trip along the Rhine as we explore the history, legends, and literature associated with the river, while also looking at ecological and environmental issues specific to the Rhine. The Rhine is famous both for its beauty and picturesque castles, and for the role it has played in the political life of Germany. For example, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Rhine emerged as an important element in the construction of national identity in the literature and political discourse of the time. By contrast, the Rhine was also the site of the first democratic state in Germany, the short-lived Republic of Mainz in 1793.
The river has also been associated with the beginning of mass tourism in the early years of the nineteenth century, and we can still catch a glimpse, with the help of various travelogues, of something of the horror and indignation over the pollution left behind by picnicking tourists who came to admire the castles and scenery during the Romantic period. The Rhine is also known for an environmental disaster that occurred in 1986 at a production plant in Basel owned by the pharmaceutical company Sandoz.
For those who live in the area, the river is not only a source of life and nourishment, but also a source of pleasure with bicycle paths bordering its banks and a hiking trail of almost 200 miles stretching between Bonn and Koblenz. Throughout the course we will learn about important cities (such as Basel, Cologne, Koblenz, Worms, Mainz, Bingen, Bacharach, Düsseldorf, and Bonn) through the reading of literature and other texts.