The graduate program offers students the opportunity to pursue MA and PhD degrees in the study of the literatures and cultures of German speaking countries, from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Faculty research interests include Renaissance culture, the relationship between literature and philosophy, the time of Goethe, the history of consumer culture (fashion, architecture, and masculinity) in literature and philosophy, comparative modernism, psychoanalysis, and film and gender studies.

The program is designed to familiarize students with key theoretical approaches for analyzing culture and literature, as well as contemporary critical debates, such as the memory of the Holocaust, multiculturalism, religion, and reunified Germany’s relation to the former GDR.

Penn State's German department offers an intense scholarly environment that nurtures interdisciplinary research. Students in the MA and PhD program are grounded in German intellectual history and encouraged to write in global context. The German department works closely with Comparative Literature, Philosophy, History, Women’s Studies and the program in Science, Technology, and Society.

Dissertations include such diverse topics as Early Modern Brain Studies, German-Arab identity, Post-colonial feminism in nineteenth-century Marathi and Austrian literature Literatures of Reconciliation in unified Germany and post-Apartheid South Africa Nationalism and feminism in literature before the 1848 Revolution.

For more information about degree requirements,
click here.

If you have any questions, please contact our
Graduate Officer