The German program offers a full array of courses in German language, as well as courses on German literature, film, and culture. We offer three different opportunities for declaring German as your major field of study: the German Literature Major, the German Area Studies Major, and the Modern Languages Major with German as your first language. Minoring in German is possible by declaring it your second language within the Modern Languages Major. German majors at Kenyon have developed compelling projects for their Senior Exercise. Among the topics in recent years were the cinema of Wim Wenders; a comparison between the poets Louise Glück and R. M. Rilke; Jazz as Americanization in the Germany of the 1920s, the history of the Berlin Wall, the life and work of the dancer Mary Wigman.

Not all German courses at Kenyon require knowledge of the German language. The German faculty teach at least one course a year in English. These courses can be taken by students of all levels. Such courses often focus on masterpieces of literature written in German, central notions of German thought, culture, and literature, or German film. German courses taught in English in the past semesters have included "Uncanny Lovestories," "Myth of a Nation: German Cinema from Caligari to Hitler and Beyond," "Brecht: Theater and Theory," "German Families in Literature and Film," and "Faust and Faust Legends."

Studying German at Kenyon opens up exciting possibilities for studying abroad. In the past years, Kenyon students in German have participated in study broad programs in Berlin, Vienna, Tübingen, Freiburg, and Munich.

As in all languages taught in Kenyon's Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, German offers you the opportunity to gain teaching experience as an Apprentice Teacher (AT) in the Kenyon Intensive Language Method (KILM). Former ATs in German have been very successful in applying for Fulbright teaching grants: for the year 2003/04, Sharon Lipovsky '03 and Sarah McGavran '03 won Fulbright fellowships in Germany, and Kristina Cushing '03 and Anne Popiel '03 in Austria.