Germany
Program Overview
Degree availability: B.A. in German Studies, B.A in German Studies (Cultural Studies option), Minor in German Studies/ Master’s Degree / Ph.D program
Years offered: 4 years
Contact: Jason Groves
Scholarships
Study Abroad
Internship
Course Information
Course Catalog
Culture Classes
- GERMAN 199 Supervised Study (1-10, max. 10)
- GERMAN 210 Classics of German Literature and Thought (5) A&H
- GERMAN 275 Crime Scenes: Investigating the Cinema and Its Cultures (5) A&H
- GERMAN 285 Representation and Diversity (5) SSc, DIV
- GERMAN 286 Cultures of Music: Germany and Beyond (5) A&H
- GERMAN 293 Introduction to Contemporary German Culture (5) A&H/SSc
- GERMAN 295 The Contributions of German Jews to German Culture (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
- GERMAN 298 Topics in Literature and Culture (5, max. 10) A&H
- GERMAN 322 Introduction to German Cultural Studies (5) A&H
- GERMAN 350 The German Drama in English (5) A&H
- GERMAN 353 Postwar Germany (5) A&H/SSc
- GERMAN 399 Foreign Studies in German Culture (1-6, max. 15) A&H/SSc
- GERMAN 411 Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture (5) A&H
- GERMAN 421 Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5) A&H
- GERMAN 422 Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5) A&H
- GERMAN 423 Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture: (5) A&H
- GERMAN 493 Special Topics in German Culture (5) A&H/SSc
- GERMAN 499 Studies in German Culture (1-6, max. 15)
- GERMAN 510 Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 511 Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 512 Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 514 Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 516 Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 590 Philosophical Issues in German Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 591 Studies in German Intellectual History (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 592 Cultural Studies (5, max. 15)
Special Topics
- GERMAN 371 Special Topics: German Cinema (5, max. 10) A&H
- GERMAN 411 Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture (5) A&H
- GERMAN 421 Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5) A&H
- GERMAN 422 Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5) A&H
- GERMAN 423 Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture: (5) A&H
- GERMAN 479 Special Topics in the Teaching of Foreign Languages (3, max. 9) A&H
- GERMAN 493 Special Topics in German Culture (5) A&H/SSc
- GERMAN 495 Proseminar in German Literature (5, max. 15) A&H
- GERMAN 504 Special Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 510 Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 511 Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 512 Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 514 Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 516 Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 529 Studies in Literature 1870-1920 (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 590 Philosophical Issues in German Culture (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 537 Studies in Literature 1770-1830 (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 591 Studies in German Intellectual History (5, max. 15)
- GERMAN 592 Cultural Studies (5, max. 15)
"I'm studying German, because it is a language that has a lot of literature in it. Like academic literature, and just writing and the university system in Germany is somewhere I might want to do. Maybe not PhD for the master's degree or study abroad for a period of time. "
Faculty Research
Publications
- Groves, Jason. “Low Tide, Black Shoals: Toward Offshore Formations in Celan Studies.” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 98.4 (2023): 447-461.
- Lozinski-Veach, Natalie, and Jason Groves. “Reading Celan Today.” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory. 98.4 (2023): 355-359.
- German Quarterly 96.2 (2023): Premodern German Studies. Ed. by CJ Jones and Annegret Oehme.
- Ellwood Wiggins, “The Latent Radicalism of Aristotle and J.M.R. Lenz,” German Life and Letters, 76.1 (2023): 150-172.
- Ellwood Wiggins and Martin Wagner. “Radical and Moderate Sturm und Drang.” Introduction to Special Issue of German Life and Letters, 76.1 (2023): 1-20.
- Annegret Oehme, “The Knight without Boundaries: Yiddish and German Arthurian Wigalois Adaptations”, Explorations in Medieval Culture, Volume: 17, Brill, 2021
- Schwartz, Martin. “Documenta Fifteen: Art and Antisemitism in Germany Today.” Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington. 9 Apr. 2025
- Schwartz, Martin. “Documenta Fifteen: Art and Antisemitism in Germany Today.” Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington. 9 Apr. 2025
- Ellwood Wiggins, “Enduring Myth: The Survival of the Unfit in Sophocles, Heiner Müller, Ursula Krechel, and Hans Blumenberg,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 95:2 (2020): 94-113.
- Oehme, Annegret. “A Franconian Knight at King Arthur’s Court: Regional Identity and Medieval Iconography in Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Glücksritters Wigalois (2011).” In German Quarterly (92.2): 229-245.
- Oehme, Annegret. “He Should Have Listened to His Wife.” The Construction of Women’s Roles in German and Yiddish Pre-modern Wigalois Adaptations. De Gruyter, 2019.
- Kristina Pilz. “Poetic Visibility: East German Poetry and Blackness in Farbe Bekennen (1986).” Third Generation Ost-USA, 26 August 2019, http://thirdgenerationost.com/poetic-visibility-east-german-poetry-and-blackness-in-farbe-bekennen-1986/.
- Huckauf, Jorma Timo and Netaya Lotze. “Daniel Dejica, Gyde Hansen, Peter Sandrini & Iulia Para. 2016. Language in the Digital Era. Challenges and Perspectives. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Open. 270 S.” Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft [Journal for Reviews in German Linguistic Studies], 10.1-2 (2018): 196-201.
- Wiggins, Ellwood. “Reflecting and Performing Selves: The Fate of Recognition in Kleist’s Penthesilea.” German Studies Review 41, no. 2 (2018): 253-74.
- Verena Kick. “Allegorien der Geschichte: Werner Herzogs Lektionen in Finsternis” In: Focus on German Studies 24 (2017): 1-18.
- Richard T. Gray, Ghostwriting: W. G. Sebald’s Poetics of History. New Directions in German Studies. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.
- “German Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities.” German Studies review 38 (2015): 635-52.
- https://www.brill.com/products/book/german-culture-and-modern-environmental-imagination
- Sabine Wilke. German Culture and the Modern Environmental Imagination. Brill Rodopi: 2015
- Joseph Voyles and Charles Barrack. A Structural History of the German Language. Lincom Europa: 2014.
- Krakenberg, Jasmin. “The Berlin School: Films from the Berliner Schule Edited by Rajendra Roy and Anke Leweke, Berlin School Glossary: An ABC of the New Wave in German Cinema Edited by Roger F. Cook, Lutz Koepnick, Kristin Kopp, and Brad Prager, The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School by Marco Abel.” Film Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Spring 2014), pp. 86-89
- Heilmann, Lena. “Performance, Fear, and the Female Body in Sophie Mereau-Brentano’s “Die Flucht nach der Hauptstadt” (1806) and Elise Bürger’s _Die antike Statue aus Florenz_ (1814).” Women in German Yearbook 29 (2013): 67-80.
- Sabine Wilke. “New Directions in German Studies.” From Kafka to Sebald: Modernism and Narrative Form. Continuum: 2012.
- Sabine Wilke. “How German Is the American West? The Legacy of Caspar David Friedrich’s Visual Poetics in American Landscape Painting.” Observation Points: The Visual Poetics of National Parks. Ed. by Thomas Patin. University of Minnesota Press: 2012.
- Katherine Hirt-St. John. When Machines Play Chopin: Musical Spirit and Automation in Nineteenth-Century German Literature. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.
- Eric Ames. “Spoofing Herzog and Herzog Spoofing.” Transit 6(1). TRANSIT, Department of German, UC Berkeley: 2010.
- Hellmut Ammerlahn, “The Marriage of Artist Novel and Bildungsroman. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister: A Paradigm in Disguise,” in: German Life and Letters 59/1 (2006), 25-46.
- Balling, J. Rafael. “Intimate Associations: Reading Community in Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Außer Sich (2017) and Else Lasker-Schüler’s Der Malik (1919).” Feminist German Studies 39, no. 1 (Spring, 2023): 99-124.
Student Success Story
More About German
Global
- Spoken by 134,040,290 (as L1: 76,086,380; as L2: 57,953,910)
- Germany is a leading global exporter, and its strong economy values German speakers in high-paying sectors like engineering, IT, finance, and healthcare.
Learning
- UW German Studies is one of the highest ranked programs offering advanced degrees in German in the United States.
Culture & Diplomacy
- Germany plays a key role in the EU, and understanding German provides insight into European affairs and politics.
Travel & Career
- Connects you with the world’s second-most spoken native language in Europe, essential for international careers.
Discover Why Learning German matters
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Hamburg, Speicherstadt, Channel image
Hamburg, Speicherstadt, Channel image
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Sunset in Oberbaum Bridge
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View of Bastion, Elbe sandstone mountains
Bastion, Elbe sandstone mountains, Sunrise image
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Europe, Countries, Map image
map of Europe