COMP 323
Reason, Unreason and Anti-Reason from the Enlightenment to the Third Reich
Last Offered Spring 2014
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed GERM 323
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

From its inception in the eighteenth century, modern German art and thought have probed the nature of human reason. At every turn, the celebration of rationality as triumphing over the irrational has brought with it a resistance to the rational: Lessing’s Enlightenment dramas find their counterpart in those of the Sturm und Drang movement; Kleist’s preoccupation with reliable justice and predictable happiness can’t hide an unblinking knowledge of life’s randomness; Freud’s search for ultimate knowledge is constantly shadowed by the unknowable; in the acts and “theories” of the Nazis, we see the ultimate horror of rationality reduced to rigid mechanics, in the service of the unthinkable. The course will involve reading closely and writing intensively about texts by, among others, Lessing, Goethe, Kleist, Büchner, Nietzsche, Freud, Kafka, and the Nazi propagandists.
Offered in English or German: Reading, discussion and writing will be in German for German-speakers, in English for non-German speakers.
The Class: Format: tutorial
Limit: 10
Expected: 10
Class#: 3276
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: two seminar meetings with the entire group; five 5-page papers, five 2-page critiques of the partner's papers
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis; not available for the fifth course option
Prerequisites: for students taking the tutorial in German: GERM 201 or the equivalent; for students taking the course in English: one college-level literature course
Enrollment Preferences: German or Comparative Literature majors
Distributions: Division I Writing Skills
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
GERM 323 Division I COMP 323 Division I

Class Grid

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