Core modules
Building on the strong interdisciplinary links between German and Film and Television Studies, this degree combines in-depth study of cinema in German culture with the opportunity to explore wider aspects of film and other cinematic cultures.
In your first year, you will take language classes designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of written and spoken German. To complement your language skills, you will follow a programme focussing on contemporary German society and the origins of modern German culture in the late eighteenth century. This provides an excellent and comprehensive foundation for studying further aspects of German literary, visual and political culture in the later stages of your degree. You will also study two core Film Studies modules, which will introduce you to key concepts and landmarks from film history and develop your familiarity with methods for film analysis.
In your intermediate and final years, you will take modules that further develop your German language skills and cultural expertise. Alongside the core language module, you will have an opportunity to develop your own particular interests by choosing from a wide selection of modules offered by German specialists that cover a broad range of subjects in German culture, society, literature, politics, philosophy, film, history, and business, as well as translation and transnationalism. You can also opt to study some of our interdisciplinary cross-School modules.
You will continue to spend a quarter of your time on Film Studies. Core modules in World Cinemas and Hollywood Cinemas in intermediate year will build on the foundations of the first year to help you apply theories and analysis methods to films from different national contexts. In final year, you will be able to select from a range of optional modules that develop your own specialist interest in areas such as ‘Queer Cinema’, ‘The Art of Animation’, ‘Transnational Action Cinema’, and ‘Contemporary Latin American Cinema’.
You can choose to spend your year abroad studying at a university in a German-speaking country, or on a British Council Assistantship or a work placement.
Year One
You will choose one of the following modules:
Over the year you will have four sessions in German language per week. These consist of (a) a weekly Translation class covering translation from and into German, and (b) a small language class working on Grammar. You will also have (c) one weekly Conversation and Comprehension class taught by our native-speaker LektorInnen and (d) one weekly Writing class which will introduce you to the German media, to different genres and writing styles and help you hone your own writing skills in German. In addition, you will be expected to work through exercises in the paper-based Hammer Grammar and its online version, which will be demonstrated at the first Translation Class in Week 2. You are also encouraged to explore other online and paper-based materials as directed by your tutors. In the spring term you will work in pairs on a German language topic (Media project) under the supervision of your Writing class tutor.
As a beginner in the acquisition of the German language, you will cover the main linguistic skills in speaking, listening, writing and reading. You will focus on gaining grammatical accuracy as well and communicative fluency and competence. By the end of the year, you will be expected to be able to sustain everyday conversations in German, read authentic texts such as newspaper articles, follow the gist of TV extracts and be able to write an intermediate range of texts in German. You will also work on basic translations to and from German as a means of consolidating your knowledge.
This module introduces landmarks in the history of modern Germany, which emerged as a nation out of a confederation of provinces and principalities in the 19th century. You will touch on the political turmoil, conflicts, and violence that at times made Imperial Germany, the Third Reich and the post-1945 Germanies pariah states in the eyes of the international community. You will also reflect on the developments that led to contemporary Germany's emergence as a cultural, political and economic powerhouse, shaping global trends in film, literature, theatre and music. The module focuses on the media and representations through which many of us first encounter German-language culture: fairy-tales and their afterlives; performance, visual and screen culture; music and sound. In other words, students will sample the works and ideas that have put Germany and the German language on the world map.
We will engage with a number of key questions. How did German literature, film, art, and music transform the status of the German language? How did German-speaking artists shape the cultural genres that we consume today? How does engaging with these works give us a more differentiated understanding of the positive and negative aspects of Germany's history and its global influence?
The module will help you develop skills that will be essential for the rest of your degree and your life after Warwick: critical reading; clear and concise argumentation; excellent written and oral communication skills; independent thinking and research.
This module enables you to spend some time developing your independent working and in particular to build research skills for the later stages of your undergraduate degree. The module comprises a series of skills sessions on undertaking undergraduate research, tutorials with the module leader, along with a set of supervisory meetings with the project supervisor. In addition to producing work in a range of formats in the course of the year, linked to an aspect of the culture of your chosen language and the study of modern languages at university level, you will be supported to produce an end product related to their specific area of interest and linked to the curriculum for your other first-year cultural module. The end product will be an appropriate piece of work such as a mini dissertation.
Two modules from Film Studies:
This module will focus on film and history, exploring the various ways film texts have been analysed as reflecting social and cultural historical moments, filmmaking movements of particular eras, and how films have historicised individuals and events. There are many ways to ‘do’ film history and this term will not be an exhaustive survey of the history of cinema. Instead, it will offer some key contexts, methodologies, and traditions that have formed the wide-ranging study of film and history.
This module is concerned with the close reading and interpretation of film texts through close textual analysis. Over the course of the module, you will acquire the skills and vocabulary necessary to analyse the ways in which meaning is conveyed through the formal properties of film. This module is also concerned with the broader applications of close textual analysis. By the end of the module and you should be confident in applying your skills of textual analysis in order to interrogate the political dimension of audio-visual texts.
Intermediate Year
In this second-year module, you will increase your general and specialised vocabulary in German through translation into English and German, essay-writing in German, spoken and listening comprehension, and work on business-related materials. In pursuit of these aims, you will learn to identify and rectify grammatical errors, and gain increased sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style in particular. You will also gain important language research skills, including correct use of dictionaries.
Two Film Studies modules:
This core module will build on what students have learned about Hollywood in first year modules by expanding their knowledge about Hollywood in what has been deemed its ‘classic’ period. The module will illustrate important aspects about the industrial system that dominated Hollywood filmmaking from the late 1920s to the early 1960s, including style, genre, and stars. By first focusing on Hollywood as an industry, examining the practices and cultures of film production, the module will then consider its ideological influence by promoting specific American values and traditions through political issues, such as race and ethnicity.
The category of ‘world cinema’ represents a point of convergence for both the flattening impulses of a universalizing neoliberalism and the more radical bents of internationalist coalition-building. In other words, such cinema figures large in affective negotiations of global culture, world community and international human rights. This module looks at the wide range of fictional feature films, including the work of Deepa Metha, Akira Kurosawa, Samira Makhmalbaf and Satyajit Ray, among others. This course addresses several specific topics, including: transnational marketing, the touristic gaze, the politics of dubbing/subtitling, and the slow cinema debates.
This module reassesses ‘world cinema’ in light of globalization and global crises. Since the term ‘world cinema’ has always simultaneously invoked industrial, generic and aesthetic categories, our reckoning of the field hopes to expose otherwise unseen geopolitical fault lines. We investigate the historical and current contexts for the widening distribution of non-Hollywood films. We also examine the renaissance of international art cinema practices in recent decades, including new waves from East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
What you might watch? Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998); Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972); Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974); Good Bye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003); The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel, 2008); Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa 1949); Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954); Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953); Crazed Fruit (Ko Nakahira, 1956); Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966); Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998); My Neighbour Totoro (Hiyao Miyazaki, 1988); Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008); Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955); Riso Amaro / Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1949); Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950); De cierta manera / One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1977); The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998); What Time Is It There? (Tsai, 2001); Fire (Deepa Metha, 1996); Lan Yu (Stanley Kwan, 2001); Peking Opera Blues (Tsui, 1986)
A selection of optional modules in German Studies and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, including translation and cross-School thematic modules (30-60 credits); an approved outside option (0-15 credits)
Optional modules in Theatre and Performance Studies (60 credits)
Final Year
In this third-year module, you will use vocabulary of increasing sophistication in both general and specialised fields, and improve your skills in spoken and written German and translation. You will improve your listening and reading comprehension skills, and learn to identify and rectify grammatical errors. An important aim of the course is to cultivate sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style.
Two Film Studies modules:
Film Aesthetics approaches film first and foremost as art, and lets you grapple with the fascinating questions raised by doing so. The module considers how key, longstanding problems in the philosophy and sociology of art might apply to the medium of film, as well as aesthetic issues that seem to be raised by audiovisual media in particular.
Film Aesthetics approaches film first and foremost as art, and lets you grapple with the fascinating questions raised by doing so. The module considers how key, longstanding problems in the philosophy and sociology of art might apply to the medium of film, as well as aesthetic issues that seem to be raised by audiovisual media in particular.
A selection of optional modules in German Studies and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, including translation and cross-School thematic modules (30-60 credits); an approved outside option (0-15 credits)
Optional modules
