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Campus | Bryn Mawr |
Semester | Fall 2023 |
Registration ID | GERMB245001 |
Course Title | Approaches to Germ Lit/Culture-Scenes of Observation: |
Credit | 1.00 |
Department | German |
Instructor | Strair,Margaret |
Times and Days | TTh 02:25pm-03:45pm
|
Room Location | TAYSEM |
Additional Course Info | Class Number: 1051 This is a topics course. Taught in German. Course content varies. Previous topics include, Womens Narratives on Modern Migrancy, Exile, and Diasporas; Nation and Identity in Post-War Austria.; Current topic description: Scenes of Observation: Physicians, Scientists, and Experiments in German Literature. This course explores scenes of experimentation and medical observation in German literature from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, probing the nexus between literature, artistic practices, and the sciences. Figures of the scientist or the physician as observers of human behavior and natural phenomena often find themselves at the very threshold of knowledge, navigating structures of power that operate both socially and biologically. In the wake of the Age of Reason, they are both agents of order and originators of chaos, testing themselves, others, and cultural frameworks that give rise to their position and insights on the human condition. Disease, illness, gender, and disability become loci of investigation that unmoor the stability of scientific and medical observation. In the early twentieth century, scenes inside and outside of the clinic stage different dimensions of human life mediated through interactions with physicians, responding to new technological developments that begin to shift what it means to be human and to study the human. This course will feature works by Thomas Mann, among others, and writers who themselves were trained in the sciences or as physicians, including Gottfried Benn, Georg Büchner. Approach: Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC), Critical Interpretation (CI), Writing Attentive; Haverford: Humanities (HU) ( ) Enrollment Cap: 15. |
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