German

Related Student Organizations

German Club

Study Abroad

German majors and minors are urged to participate in a program of study abroad approved by Bucknell's German studies program. These include programs in Hamburg, Berlin, or Munich that are administered through other universities or the Institute for International Education of Students.

Student Distinctions

• Fulbright Research Grant
• Fulbright Teaching Assistantship
• Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals
• Bundestag Internship Program

Undergraduate Research

German majors interact closely with faculty members on independent research projects. Selected students may enroll in the Honors Program in German, through which they undertake a special research project in their senior year. Recent project titles include:

• Literary Representation, Environmental Consciousness and the Future of Democracy: A Comparison between the USA and Germany

Career Paths

Bucknell's German majors, including those with second majors in other disciplines, are prepared for a wide variety of careers, from business and industry to education, non-profit work, science and technology and health care. Recent alumni of the German program have secured the following positions:

• Benefits Coordinator, Four Seasons Hotels
• Chemical Engineer, Eastern Research Group, Incorporated
• German Teacher, Troy Area School District
• Operations Analyst, Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Internships

Students majoring or minoring in German have been successful in competing for national fellowships or internships such as the Fulbright or the German Parliament Internship Program. Recently, German students have interned at the following organizations and companies:

• Agentur Artmos4 (Offenbach)
• CDS International Carl Duisberg Society
• Checkpoint-Charlie-Foundation (Berlin)
• CNN
• Coca-Cola (Vienna)
• Hamburg Institute of International Economics (Hamburg)
• UBS
• IALANA (International Association Of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms - Deutsche Sektion)
• VDW (Vereinigung Deutscher Wissenschaftler)

Graduate and Professional School

German majors often find careers in international business or law or continue studies in graduate programs. Recently, graduates have gone on to:

• St. John's University
• SUNY-Syracuse
• University of Arizona
• University of Colorado
• University of Hamburg
• A special program, the Bucknell-Heidelberg Exchange, grants one student majoring in German a fellowship to study at the University of Heidelberg following graduation.

Program Details

• Most German courses at Bucknell are taught in German.
• We emphasize active and communicative learning, role-playing, debates, group and partner work and computer-aided instruction as key elements in studying German language, culture and literature.
• German students interact with and learn from a native language teaching assistant from Germany each year.
• German majors and minors are encouraged to supplement their study with work in other languages as well as European history, history of art, music, philosophy or work in European political science and economics.
• We offer a minor in German and a minor in German for engineers and natural scientists.
• German majors and minors are urged to study abroad through approved programs including those in Hamburg, Berlin or Munich.
• Recognizing that many students are interested in careers in international business or with government agencies, the program offers courses in business German at the intermediate level. These courses focus on practical and theoretical aspects of the German economic system.
• Students planning to teach German at the secondary level should consult with faculty in the German studies program and Bucknell's Department of Education.

Faculty

Bucknell’s German faculty members, who are internationally known in their fields of research, develop close personal relationships with their students and often involve them in their scholarly endeavors.

Bastian Heinsohn, Assistant Professor of German
Ph.D. University of California - Davis
Teaches German language and culture courses, including cinema, history, and contemporary German culture. Interests also include world cinema, street art, urban spaces, postwar architecture in East and West Germany, photography, music, and critical theory. Recent publications on East German cinema in the 1950s and on Berlin literature after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Helen G. Morris-Keitel, Associate Professor of German Studies
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin - Madison
Interests include the relationship between gender, class, and national identity in the 19th century, fictional representations of science and technology, contemporary juvenile literature, language for special purposes such as Business German, and foreign language pedagogy including instructional technology.

Peter Morris-Keitel, Professor of German Studies
Program Director
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin - Madison
Teaches and publishes on many aspects of 19th- and 20th-century history with a special emphasis on sociological and ecological thought.

Faculty Distinctions

Peter Morris-Keitel, Co-editor of the series Nature, Literature, Ecology

Selected Faculty Publications

Bucknell's German faculty members' scholarship has recently appeared in the following publications:

Bastian Heinsohn, "21 June And 30 August 1957: Jonas and Berlin - Ecke Schönhauser Link Urban Reconstruction to National Cinema in Both West and East" in: A New History of German Cinema, eds. Michael Richardson and Jennifer Kapczynski. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. 365-371.

Bastian Heinsohn, "Protesting against the New Berlin: The Local as Counterspace in Recent Berlin Literature," Spatial Turns: Space, Place, and Mobility in German Literature and Visual Culture, eds. J. Fisher & B. Mennel, Rodopi, 2008.

Bastian Heinsohn, "Gerhard Klein's Berlin - Ecke Schönhauser (1957): The Role of the Urban Setting in East Germany's Quest for a New Identity," German and Scandinavian Studies in Context, eds. F. Feiereisen & K. Frackman, Newcastle, 2007.

 

Helen Morris-Keitel, "Der wissende Mensch - Das Bildungskonzept Bertha von Suttners." Sinn und Form 3 (2007).

Helen Morris-Keitel, Identity in Transition: The Images of Working-Class Women in Social Prose of the Vormärz (1840-1848). North American Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature, ed. Jeffrey L. Sammons. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1995.

 

Peter Morris-Keitel, Noch ist Deutschland nicht verloren. Ökologische Wunsch- und
Warnschriften seit dem späten 18. Jahrhundert. (ed. w/J. Hermand) Berlin: Weidler, 2006.

Peter Morris-Keitel, Ökologie und Literatur. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. 215 pp. (ed. with M. Niedermeier)

Courses Offered

Achtung Kamera: Introduction to German Film Studies
Advanced German Composition
Advanced Seminar in Selected Cultural Topics
Advanced Seminar in Selected Literary Topics
Antifascism in 20th-century German Culture
Beyond the Wall: GDR and Post-Unification Culture
The Bourgeois Era: 19th-century Germany
Building Proficiency in German
The Cold War in Germany
Communicating in Context
Dancing on the Volcano
Doing Business in Germany
Enlightenment and Early Romantic Literature 1750-1815
Everyday Life in Germany: Elementary Level II
Exploring Your World: Elementary Level I
German Capstone
German Conversation and Composition
The German Economic System
German for Engineers and Natural Scientists
German for Reading Knowledge
Independent Projects in German Studies
Intensive Elementary German
Intermediate German Parts A and B
Introduction to German Literature
Leitmotifs in 19th-century German Culture
Modern German Culture
Nazi Culture
Reading German Literature
Reflections of Science and Technology in German Culture
Strategies in Speaking German
Topics in German Studies
Weimar Republic to the Present-day Literature 1918 - Present

Facilities & Resources

• German students have access to a fully equipped state-of-the-art multimedia language learning facility.
• Faculty offer web-based courses.
• Bucknell’s German studies program offers computer-aided instruction at all language levels.

Quick Facts

Number of full-time faculty: 3

Average number of majors per class year: 6