GERST 4140

Wanderlust

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.

From hikes and pilgrimages to city strolls and sleepwalking, travel by foot has been a vital source of imagination, revelation, revolution, and social critique. We will take Wanderlust (the desire to travel) as a point of departure to explore the reasons that set bodies in motion and the imaginative journeys that ensue. How does walking affect thinking and writing about the world? How does a walker's path connect world, self, and society? What makes walking different than other forms of travel, and why do we do it? When is it necessary, or forbidden? As we meander with itinerant figures from baroque to modern ages, we will use literary wanderers to inspire our own textual and actual perambulations (by ink and by foot). Through readings, oral journals, essays, projects, and presentations we will explore walking as a cultural practice and form of intellectual inquiry linking self, society, and landscape. Films and readings by Benjamin, Eichendorff, Grimmelshausen, Herzog, Honigmann, Karsch, Keun, Lubinetzki, Schiller, Seghers, Tawada, R. Walser, Wiene, and others.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: Any German course at the 3200-3499-level or equivalent, or placement by examination.

Distribution Category (ALC-AS)
Course Attribute (CU-ITL)
Language Requirement Satisfies Option 1.

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