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This seminar will give you an opportunity to study perceptions and stereotypes of Germany and German people in English texts. We shall look at early visitors from the British isles travelling to our part of the world in the seventeenth century, German monarchs on the British throne in the eighteenth century, more German and German-speaking monarchs in the Victorian period (i.e. Queen Victoria, whose mother was German, and her husband Prince Albert, who was very German), German immigrants in London, nineteenth-century English tourists exploring the Rhine, the impact of the first and the second World War on ideas about Germany and much more, up to how the perception of Germany has been developing in the Post-Brexit period (just think about British journalists reporting on chaotic inefficiency of public transport during the 2024 during the UEFA 2025 European football championship). There will be productive digressions taking in various topics and media (Germany in British movies, the weird and wonderful Monty Python “Holzfällerlied”, Germany in the visual arts, for instance in caricatures, and the idea of Bavaria as the Scotland of Germany).
The material to be studied will be made available in a Moodle room. Requirements: thorough preparation for each session, active participation. As always: think, enjoy (!), annotate, and look things up if necessary.
Just in case your application is rejected by the LSF system: If you want to do this course because you are genuinely interested, you will be most welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please get in touch with claudia.hausmann@uni-due.de who will enrol you manually. The worst that might happen to you is that you cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if you lack the formal requirements. |
