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:

• 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
• Politics and Literature in Christa Wolf’s Works
• Ingeborg Bachmann’s Lost Utopia
• Feminism, Love and Sexuality in Elfriede Jelinek and Verena Stefan
• The Figure of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust: First Part of the Tragedy
• Christa Wolf’s “Blichwechsel” — Discussion and Translation
• Faust: Goethe’s Denial of Superstition and the Acceptance of Pure Christianity
• Hesse’s Search for Unity: Parallels with Siddhartha
• Grosz and Brecht in Pandemonium Land: Two Views of the Weimar Republic
• The Image of America in Current German Literature
• German Exile Literature after Hitler's Grab for Power: The Shattered World of Safety
• Freedom and the Middle-Class Daughter in 18th-Century Tragedy
• Tieck’s Inner Organization, Journeys and Crises: Der blonde Eckbert and Der Runenberg
• Christa Reinig’s Muessiggang ist aller Liebe Anfang: An Attempt to Determine Identity
• Emancipation Strategies: Christa Wolf and Women’s Autobiography
• Opinions of Christa Wolf before and after the Wende
• The Short Story in the Wirtschaftswunder: Rolf Schneider's Metamorphosis
• Criticism of War and Society: Remarque and Borchert
• The Relationship between Naturalism and Socialism