German at Colby is a lively academic community with a great deal of interaction among faculty and students. Classes are small, approximately 15 students per class at the beginning and intermediate level, and 5-10 students at the upper-level literature and culture courses. Outside of class a variety of activities enhance the German program including guest lectures, film showings and the weekly German Table. Our language assistant, typically a native speaker from Germany, meets with students for informal conversation and is available for tutoring. He or she is also involved in the activities of the German Club and helps with organizing events such as the weekly language tables and a Spieleabend (evening of German board games).
Students of German enjoy the department’s location on the fourth floor of the Lovejoy building. Open doors of faculty offices, a beautiful seminar room, and a state-of the-art Language Resource Center provide an enticing setting for studying German and socializing with fellow students and the German faculty. There is also a designated room just for our German and Russian Majors and Minors!
The German program offers language instruction from the beginning to the advanced level as well as a range of German Studies courses with a dual focus on literature and culture. Recent courses have included “Mission Impossible: Multicultural German Literature and Film,” “Fin de Siecle Berlin and Vienna,” “Radio to Rave,” and “Sex, Madness, and Transgression in German Literature”. In light of Germany’s increasingly important economic and political role in Europe and the world, we encourage students to choose German to fulfill Colby’s three-semester language requirement. Students who have had one or more years of high school German must take a placement test administered during the orientation period before the beginning of the fall semester. Entering students who obtained a 4 or 5 on the German AP Exam or scored 600 or higher on the German SAT II are exempt from the language requirement and may enroll in upper-level German courses.