German Studies, for Example

Abstract

In the famous chapter “Sense-Certainty” of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel expends a great deal of dialectical energy to show that we make contradictory use of examples (Beispiele): on the one hand, we invoke the concreteness and distinctiveness of a singular datum; on the other, we imply that it has general significance. Examples confuse our thinking because they claim to be valid for a larger set of instances (thus approaching the validity of a concept), but unlike concepts they do not let us understand how this claim can be substantiated. I begin my contribution to the conversation “The Changing Face(s) of Graduate Studies” with this reference to Hegel for the obvious reason that our experiences with a new PhD program in German studies at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder cannot readily be generalized. We had the fortune of being able to start, in 2013, with a clean slate and very few restrictions as far as the intellectual profile and the administrative format of the program were concerned. Not only were we able to think about what kind of interdisciplinary collaborations could be built into its design, what kind of students we wanted to attract, and what we could offer these students as a significant advantage over other existing programs; we could more fundamentally ask ourselves – and would be asked by the various committees through which we had to shepherd the proposal – why a university in the United States needed a PhD program in German in the first place. The way this question was, and often still is, answered is the less obvious reason why I began with the trite and pointless reference to Hegel. It goes something like this: German philosophical aesthetics is foundational for all literary theory; literary studies without this foundation are blind. The question why a university in the United States needs a German Department must be stood on its head: without a German Department, other literature departments do not fully understand what they are doing. The first time I was involved in building a PhD program in German, almost a quarter of a century ago, that was the rationale with which we were able to convince administrators in a university without a strong tradition in the humanities. We also had the backing of faculty in other literature programs, who were relieved to send students interested in Derridean and de Manian deconstruction our way. It was already then a slightly embarrassing argument, for on the one hand it embraced the most hackneyed trope of German literary and cultural (not to mention musical) superiority, while on the other hand insinuating to administrators that universities could save money by letting one department do all the