The Department of Germanic Studies is one of the largest and most diverse departments in the country, combining traditional coverage and breadth with new interdisciplinary and theoretical approaches. Our undergraduate and graduate students receive a comprehensive introduction to the languages, literatures, and cultures of the Germanic-speaking countries and to the increasingly multicultural, transnational, and global contexts that define these cultures today. The department is committed to providing all students--those who fulfill their language requirement in our courses, undergraduate majors, and graduate students--with a deeper understanding of languages and the importance of cultural literacy in an increasingly global world.In an age when many departments are shrinking or specializing, we maintain our commitment to the idea of a core curriculum and emphasize the historical dimension of cultural studies and the interrelatedness of linguistic competency and cultural literacy. In addition to the traditional focus on national literatures and cultures, the Department successfully pursues interdisciplinary projects with programs such as Digital Humanities, Women and Gender Studies, European Studies, Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies, Foreign Language Education, and Medieval Studies. Individual faculty members are affiliated with other departments such as Linguistics and Radio, Television, and Film. In our course offerings and research, we cover all periods of literary, cultural, and intellectual history as well as a range of interdisciplinary specializations that include linguistics, applied linguistics, foreign language pedagogy, film studies, gender studies, intellectual history, cultural theory, German-Jewish studies, and Scandinavian studies.
