Aims

In consonance with the overall aims of degrees offered in the SML, this module aims to build on skills and knowledge gained at Stage 1, to introduce students to a topic-centred, in-depth study of modern German films, literature, and culture.

This module explores the ways in which murder has been represented in modern German literature and film, focusing on representations of murder created or set round about the first half of the 20th century. Murder, as the ultimate transgressive act, is shown to be a testing ground for questions about the legal framework of a given society, the integrative and normative force of such a framework, and the power relations played out in transgressions and restitutions of the law. Examples from both film and literature cover a range of differently motivated murders, ranging from social causes or economic pressures to killings born of ideological reasons, as well as to murders brought about by mental illness or psychological factors. By analysing these killings in their social and political contexts, the changing approaches to dealing with crime in modern German societies will emerge, which will allow for both a typology and a cultural & political historiography of extreme transgression.

The module will be partly taught in German, partly in English. The exam will be partly in German, partly in English. The essay will be in English.

This module is for Exchange students studying at Newcastle University for Semester 1 only.

Outline Of Syllabus

The module will take as its starting point the following questions: a) what can motivate criminal transgressions such as murders; b) how societies have been, and are responding, to such crimes and the people who committed them; c) what representations of serious crime in literature and film tell us about the values of society related to law, its transgression, justice and restitution of the social order disrupted by crime.

The films we will watch include: Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and, Peter Lorre’s Der Verlorene (1951).
The literary texts we will read include: Gerhart Hauptmann’s novella Bahnwärter Thiel (1888) and Franz Kafka’s story “In der Strafkolonie” (1919).

We will compare and contrast the representations of crime and their motivations in these films and texts, exploring similarities and differences over time and across different socio-political contexts.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The lectures will introduce students to legal and philosophical concepts to do with crime, law, and justice, as well as to the background of individual texts and films on the syllabus.
The seminars will provide the students with opportunities to practice critical engagement with the primary sources by focusing on the module’s key topic and by reading these primary sources with the help of analytical concepts gleaned from selected secondary sources.
Independent study activities will enable students to read primary and secondary sources in preparation for classroom activities and for assessment purposes.
The module will be partly taught in German, partly in English. This will ensure that students practice their German while English can function as a meta-language to enhance the intellectual quality of classroom discussions.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The exam will ask students to write a commentary, in German, on a selected passage from one of the literary texts or on a scene from one of the films. This will test students’ ability to read a primary source closely and to write about it in German.