Youth and Age: Generations in German Fiction and Film (MLG2003)

15 credits

What does it mean to be young or old in a country that is prosperous and diverse today but that experienced two dictatorships within living memory? How is the family used in fiction and cinema to explore ideas of ‘Germanness’? The module addresses one of the key concepts for understanding German national identity: generations. Through an analysis of inter-generational relationships in recent fiction and film, you will learn how ‘generation’ intersects with other identity markers such as class, gender, and ethnicity to position individuals in relation to the dominant experiences of their own generation and the dominant generations within their society.