There is a need for a continued focus on language learning in advanced language classes beyond the foundations that are formed in the beginning and intermediate levels. Despite this need, little work exists on how to implement language-focused instruction in upper-level courses. As one possible solution, this paper outlines a functional,…

Fairy tales often occupy only a superficial role in German language classrooms, used to check a culture box and teach the simple past tense. However, teaching fairy tales can engage students' analytical faculties and expose them to the culturally and linguistically embedded nature of folktales, leading them to a deeper appreciation of language,…

Responding to Donato and Brooks's (2004) call for undergraduate students to have more opportunities to engage in discourse at the advanced proficiency level, collaborative dialogues provide students with a situation conducive to language production and learning (Swain, 1997). As most of the research on collaborative dialogues has focused on the…

Writers and literature enjoy a prominent position in the culture and society of the German-speaking world. Today, German-speaking authors actively cultivate an online presence through publishers' websites, personal webpages, blogs, and online forums. In this way, the Internet has transformed the literary reading experience of yore into a…

Given that societies across the globe are increasingly multicultural and multilingual, the notion of communicative competence grounded in constricting definitions of national cultures and languages reflects neither our instructional realities nor the sociolinguistic reality of the languages and cultures we teach. To foster students' development of…

In offering an account of teaching and performing Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje's "Verrücktes Blut" (2010) with advanced German students, this article reflects on the theme of cultural identity, particularly with regard to current issues related to migrant populations. As a play that showcases theater as a transitional space where…

"Fairy Tales and the Transmission of Prejudice" is a unit in a lecture course on fairy tales that draws on research on anti-Semitism in 18th- and 19th-century German literature and culture, mapping questions raised in 18th- and 19th-century tales onto contemporary issues: The unit traces a trajectory from the Enlightenment to the…

In the interest of fostering a socially critical and inclusive German Studies, this article urges instructors to pursue curricular reforms to diversify and decolonize German curricula at colleges and universities. While the literary canon's centrality to the German major has tended to leave monolithic impressions of "Germany" and…

This article describes strategies that the author employed to make a general education course titled "Fairy Tales and Folklore" more diverse and inclusive. Students read primary texts and secondary articles as part of ongoing debates, then form their own arguments within the debate, thus coming to understand how fairy tales are embedded…

Where are German Studies heading? To answer this, a look backward into the development of German Studies might be useful. Starting with a brief overview, from the establishment of the first chair in 1776 to selected discussions of the curriculum of German Studies in English-speaking countries from the 19th century on, a number of -- at times…

Recent debates about the future of academia have focused primarily on teaching the STEM subjects. This is certainly a valuable call for action, but it also threatens to ignore the significant contributions of the humanities and other fields. This article presents a workable alternative by way of looking at more technical writings by 18th-century…

Units and classes dedicated to multiculturalism in Germany have predominantly focused on Turkish-German literature and culture. Afro-Germans have been a minority whose culture and literature have only marginally been included in German classes, even though Afro-Germans have been a part of Germany for centuries and have undergone efforts at…

This article argues that vital resources for teaching the relationship of German and the global to advanced undergraduate language students can be found in a critical approach to the rich tradition of cosmopolitanism in canonical German-language texts. One especially rich vein of this tradition is the historical depiction of relationships between…

More than ever, faculty need to ensure that undergraduate curricula not only provide students with tools to gain linguistic proficiency but also teach them to analyze both written and visual information to attain historical literacy. Developing both intercultural proficiency and insights into various historical memorialization processes ensures…

This article examines the phenomenon of graphic novels generally, and in particular, their utility in second-language contexts via the example of the graphic adaptation of Klaus Kordoris "Der erste Fruhling." This text lends itself especially to bridging thematic gaps in 20th-century German literature courses, as well as the "language/literature…