Course Credits (3)
This course explores how fantasy, the fantastic, and the supernatural function as a site of cultural and aesthetic critique in German literature and thought from the Enlightenment to the early twentieth century. Readings include immensely creative and influential masterpieces of world literature, read in tandem with selections from philosophy and aesthetic theory. Emphasis placed on developing critical reading and writing skills.
About Professor Helfer
Martha Helfer is a Professor in the Department of German, Russian, and East European Languages and Literatures, School of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD from Stanford University. Her interests lie in: Literature of the Age of Goethe, Romantic aesthetic and philosophical theories, German intellectual history (18th-20th-century), questions of gender and the construction of subjectivity, philosophical approaches to literature, German Jewish Studies. At Rutgers, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses.
Graduate Courses:
Enchanted Worlds
Romantic Realisms
History of Literary Criticism-The Romantic Period
Romanticism and Gender Studies
Undergraduate Courses:
Fairy Tales Then and Now
Introduction to German Studies
Enchanted Worlds
Civilization and Its Discontents (Honors)