GER 347 - Ecocinema

What new forms of indebtedness and devastation has the era of the Anthropocene ushered in? This seminar will address cinema’s contributions to the environmental humanities as a medium engaging with and reflecting on the transformations of our natural environs through human activity. The course considers how the constructing and reconstructing of the natural world in film pertains to questions of war, devastation, resource exploitation, colonialism, representations of the nonhuman, gender, race, and indigeneity, as well as ecological utopias and dystopias. The seminar will bring a number of landmark German films into dialog with representatives of North American and Asian cinema. Films by directors such as Fritz Lang, Leni Riefenstahl, Werner Herzog, Bong Joon-ho, Denis Villeneuve, Hayao Miyazaki, and Debra Granik, among others, will serve as case studies allowing us to explore key shifts in the Anthropocene and the complex intersection of environment, politics, and aesthetics in modern and contemporary history. Conducted in English. Students taking the course for German literature credit will meet in extra sessions.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): For German credit: GER 212 or equivalent
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): LIT 347
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).