GRM 259-01 - Criminals, Outcasts, and (con) Artists

4 credits (Spring)

Cross-listed as: GLS 259-01. This course will focus on the portrayal of perpetrators, ranging from petty thieves to mass murderers in German language literature and film. We’ll begin with the Storm and Stress era (a precursor to German Romanticism), reading Schiller’s play The Robbers, and H.L. Wagner’s The Child Murderess to explore authority and freedom, as well as punishment and redemption. We turn then to the Naturalists, who understood crime as a symptom of an unjust society. The course concludes with the question of criminal regimes, and when dissent becomes the necessary route to justice. Taught in English.

Prerequisite: Second-year standing.
Instructor: Reynolds