The Grinnell College German Department offers a wide variety of opportunities and activities open to both majors and non-majors to help expand students' linguistic and intellectual horizons beyond the classroom.

A weekly dinner meeting in Cowles Dining Hall at the "Deutschtisch" gives students and faculty members an opportunity to speak German in an informal setting. Students from the intermediate to the advanced levels of instruction are encouraged to participate. This semester German Table takes place every Tuesday night at 6 in a Cowles PDR.

Students are encouraged to make the most of the department's fine collection of film, and in recent semesters several majors have taken the initiative to organize a weekly film series. Screened with English subtitles, these films have been well-attended by majors, nonmajors and the wider campus community. Past series have included one on New German Cinema (Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders) and one on film adaptations of literary masterpieces. See the current schedule of films for this semester.

Each year the department hosts a German writer-in-residence, who teaches a seven-week mini-course during the spring semester. Established in 1988, this course focuses on the current literary scene in Germany. Grinnell's German department is the only one of its size that offers such a program on an annual basis. Recent guests have included the East German writer Jens Sparschuh; Cologne specialist in film, theater and women's studies, Renate Moehrmann; and Berlin filmmaker Jochen Bruenow. We are lucky enough to have Oliver Schuette coming to join us this spring.

The faculty invite internationally known German speakers to campus to speak about topics of interest to German students. These guests talk with students in individual German classes as well as giving a public lecture on campus. Previous speakers have included poets Christoph Meckel, Arno Reinfrank; novelist Barbara Frischmuth; and modern Germanists Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Jost Hermand. With generous support from the German Marshall Fund and other visiting scholar programs, Grinnell has regularly featured speakers of particular interest to students exploring the connections between German culture and international relations. In the past year alone a prominent German economist and the mayor of Leipzig, Germany have visited Grinnell's campus.

Each year the department sponsors a different language assistant from Germany, usually from Freiburg or Berlin. The assistant is an older student who serves as an additional resource for students of German and depending on student interest, organizes extracurricular activities. The language assistant conducts German 212 (conversational practice) for intermediate and advanced students in addition to a conversation section ("German Lab") complementing the introductory language sequence.

Instruction at Grinnell is supported by the first Sony language lab in the nation. The department houses an extensive and growing film and laser disk collection of over 300 titles ranging from early cinema classics to contmporary documentaries. Classrooms are each equipped with a laser-disc/VCR/CD station. The College receives daily satellite broadcasts from Germany (Deutsche Welle), which are adapted for classroom use in some courses. Films, videos and music complement various courses in the language and literature sequence. Grinnell recently added a multimedia consultant to its staff specifically to aid foreign language faculty in integrating the latest technologies into their teaching.