Frame and Preparation
Introduction
This module aims to explore anew German-language modernist cultures, histories, and scholarly narratives from the perspectives and voices of historically marginalized and overlooked groups and individuals across gender, sexuality, race, and migration status.
Informed by queer and feminist theories, it critically examines how language and sexual and gender categories inflect each other to produce meaning. Alongside content, this module also aims to train students in interpreting literature and visual media critically, against the grain, and comparatively, with a focus on formal aspects and style as well as key concepts and themes. By centering issues ‘otherness’ as both an analytic and object of study, students will make connections between their present and a past that now appears uncannily relevant for present-day debates around identity, community, the role of art in society, and sociopolitical transformation. This module’s goal is to instill in students the conviction that an education in German offers them the tools and knowledge for a rigorous education and for fulfilled lives in a diverse, globalized word.
Some of the questions we aim to explore in this module are:
- What was modernism? What is modernism today?
- Can we speak of a singular “modernism”? Or are there multiple modernisms in the plural? If so, what holds such a concept together?
- How can we delineate a sexual modernity? An Afro-German modernity? A Jewish modernity?
- What is the relationship between these markers of “otherness” and canonical concepts in modernist studies: language, representation, subjectivity, autonomy of art, experimentation, fragmentation, illegibility?
- Can we posit a relationship between form—style, tone, mood, syntax, grammar, textual tectonics—and different identities?
- How does modernist culture inform one’s identity? Can there be a “modernist” identity or subjectivity?
- What is the role of historically marginalized groups and individuals in postwar scholarly narratives of modernism?
This module includes an abbreviated syllabus with a list of suggested readings, cultural texts, and audiovisual material from this database, as well as discussion questions, lesson plans, activities, and assignments.
Materials
Here you will find suggested materials for a syllabus or thematic unit, for example, on the modernism in your classes. Some of these materials may have specific lesson plans attached to them; to find them, search the author’s name on this site.
Readings
- Anna Seghers, Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara (1928)
- Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Eine Frau zu sehen (1929)
- Else Lasker-Schüler, Der Malik (1919)
- Irmgard Keun, Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932)
- Marieluise Fleißer, Eine Zierde für den Verein: Roman vom Rauchen, Sporteln, Lieben und Verkaufen (1931)
- Marieluise Fleißer, Ein Pfund Orangen und neun andere Geschichten (1929)
- Til Brugman, Das vertippte Zebra (1920s)
- Alice Rühle-Gerstel, “Zurück zur guten alten Zeit?” (1933)
- Else Hermann, So ist die neue Frau (1929)
- Gina Kaus, “Die Frau in der modernen Literatur” (1929)
- Robert Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless (1906)
- Siegfried Kracauer, Georg (1934)
- Stefan Zweig, Verwirrung der Gefühle (1926)
- Thomas Mann, Der Tod in Venedig (1911)
- “Eros vor Gericht.” In: Kölnische Zeitung (April 23, 1924)
- Paul Celan, “Todesfuge” (1948)
- Joseph Roth, Radetzkymarsch (1932)
- Franz Kafka, “Vom jüdischen Theater” (1917)
Films
- Anders als die Andern (1919), dir. Richard Oswald
- Mädchen in Uniform (1931), dir. Leontine Sagan
Music
- “Das lila Lied”
- “Das Hirschfeld Lied”
Visual Art
- Jeanne Mammen
- Lotte Laserstein
- Hannah Höch
- Sebastian Droste
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp
- Helmut Kolle
- Sascha Schneider
- Lilly Reich
- Marianne Breslauer
- Marianne Brandt
- Käthe Kollwitz
- Paula Modersohn-Becker