HU Credits: 4

Degree/Cycle: 1st degree (Bachelor)

Responsible Department: theatre studies

Semester: Yearly

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Jeanette Malkin

Coordinator Email: jmalkin@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Wed. 14:15-15:00

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Jeanette Malkin

Course/Module description:
The Modernist genre, Expressionism, has a special connection to Germany and its history. Expressionist drama and theatre bloomed in the 1910s; expressionist film in the 1920s; expressionist dance from the turn of the 20th century until the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch. This Seminar will study the central characteristics of the Expressionist genre – that expresses angst, rebellion, utopian hopes – and their various developments in the 3 art forms. We will read and watch the central artistic creations of the genre and discuss their intimations of the history and state of mind of Germany during this period.

Course/Module aims:
To understand the point of view expressed by the Expressionist style, and to know the characteristics of its unique language – as found in the various artistic mediums

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
An understanding of the connection between the Expressionist style and the period in which it developed in Germany

Attendance requirements(%):
80%

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Short lectures, class reports by students, joint discussions. The condition for participation in this seminar is having read/watched the material being discussed in each class.

Course/Module Content:
(There may be changes)

Plays/Performances:
August Strindberg: To Damascus
Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening
Oskar Kokoschka: Murderer Hope of Womankind
Walter Hasenclever: The Son
Georg Kaiser: From Morn to Midnight
Ernst Toller: Transformation

Dance:
Performances by von Laban, Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss.

Films:
Caligari. Robert Wiene. 1920.

Nosferatu. Friedrich Murnau. 1922.

The Hands of Orlac. Robert Wiene. 1924.

Metropolis. Fritz Lang. 1926.

Required Reading:
The above plays and films are required reading/watching

Styan. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice Styan. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice 3: Expressionism and Epic Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1981. Chapters 1 “Expressionism in the Theatre,” and 5 “Early Expressionism in Germany” Murderer, The Hope of Women.
Renate Benson. German Expressionist Drama: Georg Kaiser: 92-116. Siegfried Kracauer. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1947. Introduction: 3-11; Chapter 5: Caligari 61-76.
Renate Benson. German Expressionist Drama: Ernst Toller: 10-38. Kellner, Douglas. “Expressionist Literature and the Dream of the ‘New Man’,” in Bronner, S.E. &D. Kellner (eds). Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist Heritage. New York, 1983: 166-181 + 189-193.

Additional Reading Material:
Ankum, Katharina von (ed). Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar
Culture. U. California Press, 1997.

Benson, Renate. German Expressionist Drama: Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser. New York, 1984.

Bronner, S.E. & D. Kellner (ed). Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist Heritage. New York, 1983.

Calandra, Denis. “Georg Kaiser’s From Morn to Midnight: the Nature of Expressionist
Performance,” in Theatre Quarterly 4/21 (1976): 45 54.

Coates, Paul. The Gorgon’s Gaze: German Cinema, Expressionism, and the Image of Horror.
Cambridge U. Press, 1991.

Cernuschi, Claude. “Pseudo-Science and Mythic Misogyny: Oskar Kokoschka’s Murderer, Hope
of Women,” in The Art Bulletin 81 (March 1999): 126-148.

Dahlstrom, C.E.W.L. Strindberg’s Dramatic Expressionism. New York, 1968.

Davies, Cecil. The Plays of Ernst Toller: A Revaluation. Harwood Academic Press, 1996.

Dove, Richard. Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller. New York, 1986.

Dove, Richard. He was a German: A Biography of Ernst Toller. London, 1990.

Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence
of Max Reinhardt. U. of California Press, 1965.

Furness, R.S. Expressionism, The Critical Idiom Series. Methuen, 1973.

Garten, H.F. Modern German Drama. New York, 1959. Chapter 4: “Expressionist Drama”.

Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York, 1968.

Gordon, Mel. “German Expressionist Acting,” in The Drama Review 19/3 (September 1975):
34 50. Also in Expressionist Texts: 7-22.

Gordon, Mel (ed). Expressionist Texts. New York: PAJ, 1986.

Graver, David. The Aesthetics of Disturbance: Anti-Art in Avant-Garde Drama. U. of Michigan
Press, 1995. (For discussion of avant-garde drama, and Oskar Kokoschka.)

Hales, Barbara. “Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Reactionary Modernism,” in New German Review 8
(1992): 18-30.

Isenberg, Noah. “Weimar Cinema, the City, and the Jew: Paul Wegener’s Der Golem: Wie er in
die Welt kam,” in his book Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish
Modernism. U. of Nebraska Press, 1999: 80-104.

Kaes, Anton. “Cinema and Modernity: On Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,” in High and Low Cultures:
German Attempts at Mediation. Eds. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand. U. of Wisconsin Press, 1994: 19-3.

Kellner, Douglas. “Expressionist Literature and the Dream of the ‘New Man’,” in Bronner and
Kellner (ed), Passion and Rebellion.

Kenworthy, B.J. Georg Kaiser. Oxford, 1957.

Knapp, Bettina. “Oskar Kokoschka’s Murderer Hope of Womankind: An Apocalyptic
Experience,” in Theatre Journal (May 1983): 179-194.

Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film.
Princeton U. Press, 1947.

Kuhns, David F. German Expressionist Theatre: The Actor and the Stage. Cambridge U.P, 1997.

Laqueur, Walter. Weimar: A Cultural History. London, 1974.

Murray, Bruce Arthur. Film and the German Left in the Weimar Republic: From Caligari to
Kuhle Wampe. U. of Texas Press, 1990.

Nicholls, Peter. “Sexuality and Structure: Tensions in Early Expressionist Drama,” in New
Theatre Quarterly 7/26 (May 1991): 160-170.

Ossar, Michael. Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller. State U. of New York Press, 1980.

Pam, Dorothy. “Murderer, the Women’s Hope,” in The Drama Review 19/3 (1975): 5-17.

Patterson, Michael. The Revolution in German Theatre 1900 1933. London, 1981.

Pittock, Malcolm. Ernst Toller. Boston, 1979.

Pollock, Della. “New Man to New Woman: Women in Brecht and Expressionism,” in Journal of
Dramatic Theory and Criticism 4/1 (Fall 1989).

Raabe, Paul (Ed.). The Era of German Expressionism. London, 1974.

Ritchie, J.M. German Expressionist Drama. Boston, 1976.

Rubenstein, Lenny. “Caligari and the Rise of the Expressionist Film,” in Bronner and
Kellner (ed), Passion and Rebellion: 363-373.

Rutsky, R.L. “The Mediation of Technology and Gender: Metropolis, Nazism, Modernism,” in New German Critique 60 (Fall 1993): 3-32.

Schürer, Ernst. Georg Kaiser. New York, 1971.

Schürer, Ernst (ed). German Expressionist Plays. New York, 1997.

Sokel, Walter H. The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth Century German
Literature. Stanford, 1959.

Sokel, Walter H. (ed). An Anthology of German Expressionist Drama: a Prelude to theAbsurd.
New York, 1963.

Spreizer, Christa. From Expressionism to Exile: The Works of Walter Hasenclever (1890-1940).
UK: Camden House, 1999.

Styan, J.L. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice 3: Expressionism and Epic Theatre.
Cambridge U. Press, 1981.

Styan, J.L. Max Reinhardt. Cambridge U. Press, 1982. Chapter 4: “Expressionist Experiment”.

Toller, Ernst. I Was a German: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary. New York, 1991.

טולר, ארנסט. נעורים בגרמניה. תרגום: צבי קדמי. הוצאת מרחביה: הקיבוץ המאוחד, 1943.

Valgemae, Mardi. Accelerated Grimace: Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920s.
Southern Illinois U. Press, 1972.

Wright, Barbara D. “‘New Man,’ Eternal Woman: Expressionist Responses to German
Feminism,” in The German Quarterly 60/4, (Fall 1987): 582-599.

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 40 %
Participation in Tutorials 20 %
Project work 0 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 40 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information: