Independent Study

» German Department I.S. Titles

It is not unusual for students who study and travel abroad to develop interests that are later explored in depth in their Independent Study (I.S.) projects. During the senior year, each German major, with the guidance of a faculty member, undertakes an I.S. research project that culminates in a thesis, normally written in German.

Living with a family in the former East during her junior year, Elizabeth Starr used the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a starting point for her I.S. on the problems of German reunification. Eric Jacobsen spent his junior year in Freiburg and wrote his I.S. on the Green Party in Germany. German and History double major Colleen McFarland wrote on German medicine and doctors in novels and films of the 1930s and 40s.

Jessica Riviere, a German/International Relations double major, spent a semester studying in Berlin and wrote her senior I.S. on the student movement in Germany.Women’s Studies and German major Leah Suter spent a semester abroad and visited women’s archives to write her I.S. on the possibility of lesbian writing. During her year in Berlin, Ashley Lackovich attended the Humboldt University and studied the work of minority authors, analyzing the poetry of minority writers in German in her I.S. Mollie Cardina translated texts of pop-author Rainald Goetz and reflected on his position in the history of contemporary German literature.