The Senior Program

The Senior Program is a culminating intellectual experience in which students draw on and integrate the knowledge, research and language skills gained in the first three years. The core of the program is the senior project, a research paper of approximately 30 page that can be written in either German or English, but must incorporate German language sources. The project is independent work that is closely supervised by a faculty member in the German program in consultation with colleagues from other departments. Majors may also seek departmental honors through distinguished achievement in the classroom and on the senior project.

Recent projects in German studies include:

• “Unter die Tischdecke gucken”: Constructing GDR Social Criticism in Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W
• Remembrance and Reconciliation: “Working through the Past” with Adorno and Hensel
• “Am Rand meines Blickfeldes”: Migration, Identity, and Waste Imagery in Yoko Tawada’s Überseezungen
• Representing Identity Crisis: Collage and Repetition in Herta Müller’s Reisende auf einem Bein
• Language, History, and Space in Yoko Tawada’s Überseezungen
• Conflicting Confrontation: East German Identity After the Berlin Wall in Jana Hensel’s Zonenkinder
• The image of the Wall in German Literature
• Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg
• Questions of identity in Max Frisch’s works
• Günter Grass' “My Century” as Autobiography
• Heinrich Böll
• Anna Seghers’ View of the World
• Austrian Women Authors in the 19th Century