Globalizing German Studies: A New Border Action

Abstract

Why should anyone study German or Germany in future? And if they are indeed interested, how should it be taught? These questions, for students in first case, and for teachers in second, seem most pressing (and interesting) as a century has come to a close in which Germany has had, to say least, a prominent role. These last hundred years have seen vicissitudes of German history and its subsequent place in European order of feet status of German in schools and universities. During World War I German was banned in many American schools, and seventy years later we celebrated with many Germans at reunification that seemed to be raising our enrollments, as well as our hopes for a successful united Germany Nothing needs to be said here about what happened in between those major events as to German's popularity in United States. Still, it is ironic that in later postwar period-the seventies, eighties, and nineties-courses on Nazi period, as well as Holocaust, seem to draw largest crowds. My very brief historical excursion is meant here to emphasize that political events, particularly in Germany, do indeed influence interest in things German, be they literature, culture, politics, history, economics, or language itself. The millennium itself may indeed have been prematurely initiated with fall of German Wall. Unfortunately, that peak of excitement has waned, and as language enrollments fall for all but Spanish, it is obviously important that we ascertain how to maintain curricular integrity (and FTEs) in our departments and in a university that is becoming increasingly corporatized and bureaucratized. The links between academic policy and marketplace are not to be forgotten, especially in integrated and convergent global markets. In last few years answer has been interdisciplinary German Studies, focusing precisely on various fields I mention above. Some universities have been fortunate enough, as Georgetown University, to have a of Excellence in German and European Studies that institutionally creates such intellectual opportunities for students and for faculty Even without such formal centers, most other universities and colleges have moved, at least in name, to a German Studies model that draws courses and faculty from multiple departments. The teaching of German language remains -properly so-a central support in such a program. The battles fought for many years against traditional Germanistik have, I hope, been settled, and while German Studies-if job descriptions are to be a gauge of our self definition-dominate German Departments today, literary critics and cultural studies practitioners have found an alliance in trying to save study of German and Germany And even latter, including myself, have become more critical about excesses of such approaches. Today, especially from my vantage point in Canada as Director of such a Centre of German and European Studies, landscapes of German Studies in particular and area studies in general have taken on a new contour. Perhaps it is unavoidably my view of our discipline, area studies, and international academic relations from a Center in what some would call the periphery. But in global processes traditional centers and peripheries rearrange themselves quite quickly, forcing us to reevaluate our own angles of vision, how they are constituted, and what they mean. This hermeneutics takes on a new urgency when German language and literature study is situated in interdisciplinary German Studies, in European Studies, and finally in an international studies that now needs to be globalized itself. Like Russian dolls that fit neatly one into next, these multiple parts can appear to glide in and out quite smoothly. But more often today, university policies are shaped by exigencies of global marketplace, making parts and wholes fit uneasily together, when they fit at all. …