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| Campus | Bryn Mawr |
| Semester | Fall 2024 |
| Registration ID | GERMB223001 |
| Course Title | Topics in German Cultural Stud-Gender and Artificial Life |
| Credit | 1.00 |
| Department | German |
| Instructor | Strair,Margaret |
| Times and Days | TTh 02:40pm-04:00pm
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| Room Location | DAL10 |
| Additional Course Info | Class Number: 2661 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English.; Current topic description: Gender and Artificial Life: Monsters, Machines, Lovers and Others: Beginning with Pygmalion's animated sculpture, the creation of artificial life from dead matter stages a gendered dynamic between the creator and creation--a dynamic that was renegotiated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continues to be revisited today. Whereas Cartesian thought celebrates the perfectibility of automata and anthropomorphic machines, Romantic stories featuring animated dolls of women and Doppelgängers reveal a deep skepticism toward artificial life, bound to key aesthetic and philosophical questions that intersect with conceptions of the feminine at the time. Early film at the turn of the century both deploy and upend these characterizations, uncovering an aesthetic anxiety in the face of technological innovations and the quickly evolving life in the Metropolis--depicting Others along racialized and gendered lines. In the present day, recent blockbusters such as the Barbie movie feature created life and simulacra and extend these questions beyond those of mere human autonomy to the very nature of visuality and representation. This course will feature works by Ovid, ETA Hoffmann, Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud, Eichendorff, Goethe, the Grimms, as well as expressionist and recent films. Approach: Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC), Critical Interpretation (CI), Writing Attentive; Haverford: Humanities (HU) ( ) Enrollment Cap: 15. If the course exceeds the enrollment cap the following criteria will be used for the lottery: Majors and minors by class (seniors then juniors), then seniors |
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