German Studies

German Studies at Brown

The Department of German Studies is a vibrant intellectual community with strong ties to the full range of critical inquiry that characterizes the humanities at Brown.

The Department focuses its research and teaching on German-language literature, culture, and critical thought (from German Idealism and Romanticism to the Frankfurt School and beyond), with a comparative and transdisciplinary orientation.

It offers both the B.A. and the Ph.D. in German Studies, affording its students – from beginning language learner to advanced doctoral researcher – the opportunity to combine their interests in the literary, cultural, and intellectual production of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with a wide variety of complementary pursuits, including philosophy, aesthetics, history, music, cultural theory, psychoanalysis, and film, among others.

The Department encourages this approach through its flexible yet rigorous curriculum; intense research and teaching collaboration with faculty in related Brown departments and partner institutions in Europe; rich and varied course offerings in both German and English; as well as attractive study abroad opportunities in Berlin and Tübingen.

Letter from the Chair

The Department of German Studies at Brown University opens the doors to students who are interested in the language, literature, and culture of the German speaking areas of Central Europe.
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The Department of German Studies at Brown offers a Ph.D. program which both provides a coherent perspective on major developments in German literature, culture, and critical thought in the modern period (1517 to the present) and provides students with the opportunity to develop their own specialized interests in German Studies.
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The Department of German Studies offers a set of courses that covers the range from beginning language instruction to graduate seminars. Explore Undergraduate and Graduate course listing for Fall 2023.
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Upcoming Events

  • Under Analysis: On the History of Truth and the Subject of Science
    Presented by Joan Copjec and Kristina Mendicino

    December 12th 8:30am - 5:30pm Faculty Club, 1 Bannister St
    December 13th 8:30am - 5:30pm Faculty Club, 1 Bannister st
    December 14th 8:30am - 3:30pm Andrews House, 13 Brown Street, Room 110

    “Under Analysis: On the History of Truth and the Subject of Science” is an international conference concerning the thinking that will have been made possible through Martin Heidegger’s and Jacques Lacan’s radical interrogations of truth and critical expositions of the modern subject of science. Both thinkers, each in a different way, fundamentally challenge the supposition underlying much discourse in and beyond the sciences that ‘truth’ signifies the correspondence between a propositional judgment and a state of affairs, as judged by a cognizing consciousness. Upon this rare occasion for scholars of Heidegger and experts in Lacanian psychoanalysis to enter into dialogue, participants in the conference will pursue the ways in which engaging with these pathbreaking writers might open new inroads into their respective oeuvres, while preparing us better to question the shape that the world has taken in our current epoch of “post-truth” politics and unprecedented technological developments.

    Featuring Presentations by:
    Elizabeth Berman (Brown University)
    Kian Braulik (Brown University)
    Henrique Carvalho-Pereira (Brown University)
    Lorenzo Chiesa (Newcastle University)
    Ioannis Dimopulos (Brown University)
    Ana Furtado (Brown University)
    Kirsten Hyldgaard (Aarhus University)
    David Farrell Krell (Brown University/ DePaul University, emer.)
    Serena Lückhoff (Brown University)
    Kristina Mendicino (Brown University)
    Michele Moghrabi (Brown University)
    Ian Alexander Moore (Loyola Marymount University)
    Oleksii Shebanov (Brown University)
    Melanie Unger (Brown University)
    Dominik Zechner (Rutgers University)

    Register here

    Generously supported by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, the Department of German Studies, and The Charles K Colver Lectureships & Publications Fund and The Federal Republic of Germany through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

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