Do Germans have feelings? The prevailing image of the cold German, characterized by emotional restraint and subdued industriousness, indicates significant changes since the Romantic era, when German was considered the language of passion, equally suited for expressing deeply felt personal convictions and nation-forging collective sentiments. Focusing on the pivotal transitional decades of the 20th century to today, a period stimulating conspicuously non-emotional, critical artistic-intellectual responses to ongoing political shifts and global crises, we turn to the cultural artifacts of this time as an archive of feelings (Ann Cvetkovich) to trace this development. Through close readings of literary and journalistic texts, works of visual art, performances, music, film, and theater in their cultural and political contexts, we explore if and how they negotiate and contribute to affective structures and strategies--an approach termed "reading for emotion" by Anna Parkinson. We examine methods of evading or sharing "authentic" emotions in recent literary expressions, including German Popliteratur, autofiction, and social media formats, dialectic tensions of pop-journalism that engages aspects of critical theory and cultural studies from an affirmative perspective, and Christoph Schlingensief's confrontational artistic interventions in response to a social and political landscape of repressed feelings. Course readings, discussions, and assignments will be in German. |