Required Outcomes for this Goal

(list below)

Relevant Course/Institutional Components (refer specifically to course syllabus)

Specific Assessment Method for Outcome

Understand major movements,               themes, and values in one or more cultures as revealed in literature

Reading discussion and           comprehension questions during units on Enlightenment (Gellert’s Fables and Tales, Lessing’s Emilie Galotti), Storm and Stress (Goethe’s Urfaust), and Romanticism (Tieck’s Der blonde Eckbert), demonstrate the cultural development of Germany during the 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

Students prepare brief lectures on the authors, take hour exams and quizzes on the content of the readings and literary theory as treated in lectures, and discuss the effects of literature on German society.

Tracking and reporting overall student performance: Mean score on relevant test items.

Analyze particular literary texts as reflections of cultural movements, themes, and values.

Students will analyze texts from the German Enlightenment with their strong emphasis on morals and belief in reason and compare them with works on Storm and Stress with an emphasis on irrational behavior and belief in the absolute power of genius. Students will also compare the form of works from the classical period with works from both the Enlightenment and the Romantic period.

Students analyze literary texts through essays, short quizzes on selected passages from the texts read, and class discussions.

Specific questions: How is the family  threatened from within and without in Lessing’s Emilie Galotti?

Tracking: Percentage of students in the class who receive 70% or above on the above essay.

Required Outcomes for this Goal

(list below)

Relevant Course/Institutional Components (refer specifically to course syllabus)

Specific Assessment Method for Outcome

Develop and defend interpretations of literary texts through written discourse.

After reading and analyzing works on the Enlightenment, students will write a paper interpreting these works. After completing the readings on Romanticism, students will take an examination which will include questions requiring comparison of the texts.

Students must display knowledge of the literary periods demonstrated by the works read and make connections between the works and describe the development of literary movements. Students will write an essay comparing various works of the Enlightenment and Storm and Stress. Students will take hour exams and a final which will include questions requiring a comparison of the texts and a knowledge of the literary development during the Age of Goethe.

Reporting:  percentage of students who receive a passing grade of 70% or above on the comparative essay.

General Education Criteria

Relevant Course Components (refer specifically to course syllabus)

1. Teach a disciplinary mode of inquiry and provide students with practice in applying inquiry, critical thinking, problem solving

Students will learn the theory of literary movements and apply these theories to the various stages of literary development in Germany from 1740-1840. They will learn what questions to ask when discussing the various periods and use them in analyzing poems, plays, and narratives in German.

2. Provide examples of how disciplinary knowledge changes through creative applications of the chosen mode of inquiry

After analyzing Lessing’s Emilie Galotti and Goethe’s Urfaust, students will examine the elements which resulted in the next literary movement in Germany, i.e. Classicism.

3. Consider questions of ethical values

Should genius be given priority over societal decorum? What would be the results of such a tenet? Students will explore the conflict between the needs of the individual and the needs of society.

General Education Criteria

Relevant Course Components (refer specifically to course syllabus)

4. Explore past, current, and future implications of disciplinary knowledge

After reading the fables of Gellert with their rules of morality and learning how these rules neglected a vital aspect of human nature, namely, emotion, students will examine how the Germans sought to unite both aspects of human nature in the Romantic movement and in Classicism and how these movements came together in the future to result in the movement known as Poetic Realism.

5. Encourage consideration of course content from diverse perspectives

Students will learn how music and art influenced the authors of the Romantic movement. They will understand how societal changes brought about by the industrialization of Europe became mirrored in the works of the late romantics.

6. Provide opportunities for students to increase information literacy through contemporary techniques of gathering, manipulating, and analyzing information and data

Students will use the library, databases available on-line (MLA Bibliography), and the Internet in finding and evaluating sources for their papers and oral reports

General Education Criteria

Relevant Course Components (refer specifically to course syllabus)

7. Require at least one substantive written paper, oral report, or course journal and also require students to articulate information or ideas in their own words on tests and exams

Students will write two lengthy papers and make at least one oral report. They will articulate information and ideas in their own words.

8. Foster awareness of the common elements among disciplines and the interconnectedness of disciplines

Students consider the links among literature, history, politics, art, and psychology. They relate the claims and themes of literary texts to the historical, political, artistic, and psychological circumstances of their period. For example, the Grimm fairy tales reflect a keen understanding of child psychology, Goethe’s Urfaust treats the tensions between reason and emotion, Brentano’s Kasperl und Annerl, deals with social pressures and their destructive effects.

9. Provide a rationale as to why knowledge of this discipline is important to the development of an educated citizen

The universal values and experiences of an educated citizens is developed through a knowledge of literature and of the techniques and vocabulary of literary analysis. Through literary texts, students can explore the particular social and cultural perspectives and practices of both the past and the present, to analyze and interpret the subtleties of human emotions and relationships as represented in literary texts and to study the aesthetic and stylistic uses of language.