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This
is the first question Professor Viktoria Harms asked
the students in her Contemporary German Culture
class at the University of Washington. The class
opened with a debate which has been hotly contested
in the Humanities for years: Does “culture”
only include the products of High Culture—opera,
Shakespeare, Baroque painting, etc.—or does
it also encompass those of low culture—sitcoms,
magazine advertisements, pop music, etc?
Harms
emphasized the terms of this debate to students
by putting the following question to them: Which
of the following would you use as an example of
American culture?
a)
the house you grew up in
b) Johnny Cash
c) Barbie dolls
d) The DaVinci Code
All
four options represent “low,” popular
culture, a barometer of people’s actual experience
of culture which academics increasingly use to analyze
society.
Popular culture and media issues are the primary
focus of Harms’ class. She has organized her
class around many of the issues of social debate
in Germany today—reforming the German education
system, dealing with Germany’s troubled history,
navigating the complexities of (re)unification,
and (re)defining German citizenship, among others.
These topics are literally ripped from the headlines
of German newspapers and magazines, and serve as
a compliment to the smattering of current events
the students—most of whom are studying German
simultaneously—get in their language classes.
Because of the contemporary subject matter and the
students’ background, the class naturally
becomes comparative. The parallels between the German
cultural issues in the syllabus and the conflicts
driving current US domestic politics are obvious,
particularly regarding the perception of falling
academic standards and the debates over multiculturalism.
The class also focuses on some of the more lighthearted
aspects of contemporary German culture, like the
stereotypical reputation Germans have in the United
States for being stern, aloof, humorless people.
The class discussed a reading comparing business
practices in the US and Germany such as the use
of small talk, familiarity with colleagues, professional
titles, political correctness, and other culturally-determined
aspects of business interaction. The students then
paired up and described—either from the perspective
of an American businessman in Germany or from a
German businessman in the United States—what
these different social expectations would mean in
practice.
Harms’ class combines aspects of all three
tracks within the UW’s Germanics Department.
Her course, which is taught in English and uses
many historical and sociological secondary sources
to focus the study of German films included in the
syllabus, fits into the German Cultural Studies
Program’s goals of teaching analysis of cultural
artifacts and social institutions. Pairing readings
like “Unification and Aftermath” with
films dealing with the same issues—Goodbye
Lenin and Das Versprechen —demonstrate how
the definition of pop culture as “culture”
allows people to use popular media to explore social
issues. Such exercises also help students learn
how to read media and understand the messages and
agendas which load it.
The course also includes readings from contemporary
literary works, incorporating the German Language
and Literature Program’s concentration on
literary analysis. Like the films she uses to illustrate
how contemporary German culture deals with its social
issues, Harms also employs short stories to incorporate
an introduction to the literary analysis which forms
the backbone of the Language and Literature Program.
Finally, the comparisons of customs and social practices
in the US and Germany work toward the Germanics
Department’s other aim of preparing students
for study and work in German-speaking countries.
The Department offers two classes—Business
German I and II—which prepare students for
two Goethe Institute tests of business German proficiency,
the Zertifikat Deutsch für den Beruf (Certificate
in Business German) and the Prüfung Wirtschaftsdeutsch
(Test of Business German).
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