LT 450 - Literature and the City: Berlin Perspectives

Berlin, with its turbulent history and striking contrasts, has inspired a broad range of poets, writers, and authors in Germany. From Alfred Döblin who depicted Berlin as a modernist and futuristic city in 1929, Christa Wolf imagining a city of romance during the Cold War, Emine Sevgi Özdamar showing us Berlin in the 1960s as both, a city of working class migrants and of intellectuals, to Helene Hegemann who sketches Berlin as a psychedelic landscape of techno sounds in the new millennium: This course will focus on authors who chose Berlin as a setting for their literary worlds, character developments, and dramatizations. We will ask how Berlin is constructed in their texts and what writing techniques are used to build an image of the city in literary spaces and genres. Students interested in German Literature, Berlin Studies and gendered literary spaces are very welcome to this class.

Course Information

Discipline(s):

Literature

Term(s) Offered:

Spring
Summer

Credits:

3

Language of instruction:

German

Contact Hours:

45

Prerequisites:

GR301

The World is Your Classroom

Take courses at our Centers abroad, directly enroll at a local partner university, or build a schedule with courses from both. Use the Course Finder to explore all the courses offered at our IES Abroad Centers. Additional course options at prestigious local universities are available on the program page and partner university websites.

Browse Our Courses