This seminar is designed to introduce students to films and literary texts produced in the German language in the past few years. Because the materials we will read and watch are of recent vintage, they are not yet part of an established canon: What their significance is and how and why we should engage with them is far from settled. For this reason, this seminar will fulfill a twofold task: (1) It will critically engage with some of the most cutting-edge literary and filmic creative work currently being done in the German language; and (2) it will offer extensive opportunities to explore and critique how these texts deal with contemporary social issues such as the revival of nationalist, Islamophobic, and authoritarian politics, the European Union's crisis of legitimacy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, or the new "social question" arising from the dismantling of the welfare state and the growing "precarization" of work. |