Since 2005, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst/German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Max Kade Foundation have partnered with a leading university department to offer this special event for North American students who are considering graduate work in German Studies. The Graduate School Experience is aimed at outstanding German majors who have just completed their junior year. It offers an exciting week of advanced seminars for fifteen German majors from colleges and universities across the U.S. Students selected have their program expenses paid. The success of past seminars has been overwhelming: more than ninety percent of participants last summer commented that the Graduate School Experience would be an important factor in deciding whether or not they would pursue graduate studies.

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Ohio State is pleased to host the Graduate School Experience again in 2011 with the generous assistance of the DAAD and the Max Kade Foundation. This year’s seminar, directed by Professor Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, is entitled “An Exploration of German Studies”.  


This year’s program for the Graduate Experience will include research seminar sessions and workshops that represent recent trends in German Studies in the areas of Literary Culture, Film Studies, Intellectual History and Cultural Studies, and Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.  Each seminar session will have a different topic that introduces prospective graduate students to some of the dynamic and cutting edge research in the field.  For example, one of the seminars in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics will introduce students to the research on the recently developed language variation among German youth known as Kiezdeutsch.  A seminar on approaches in literary studies will introduce students to critical methods such as semiotics, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, intertextuality, and ecocriticism on the example of a few short pieces by Robert Walser.  Another Seminar will focus on film studies and discuss some literary aspects of Henckel von Donnersmarck's "Das Leben der Anderen".  

In addition, students will be introduced to the many resources available at a research university, as well as the vibrant urban setting of the capital city, home to nationally renowned institutions such as the Wexner Center for the Arts, COSI, and the Columbus Museum of Art, as well as a rich performing-arts landscape spanning classical and contemporary music, dance, and main-stream and experimental theaters.