Department of German
UW-Madison
College of Letters & Science

645:De Lage landen, (im/e)migratie, 3-4 cr.

Taylor, MWF 2:25+ discussion R 9:55 AM  (may be moved by mutual consent to accommodate student schedules).

Meets with German 245 3 hours a week + 1 hr. discussion section in Dutch .

Prerequisites: Open to freshmen.

Readings and written work in Dutch.

Immigration is a topic of great import in Europe (and the United States) in our time. This course will offer a sense of perspective by looking at the record of immigration (and emigration) in the Low Countries throughout the ages, including migration and cultural contact in the times of the Germanic Tribes, the Romans, the Burgundian Period, the migrations of the Eighty-Years' War and the Golden Age, the colonial period, the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and up to the present, with its extensive political, cultural and religious implications. Immigration has been a great boon at times, and immigration and recent measures against it have also caused great cultural anxiety, political upheaval, and the two first successful “political” assassinations in the Netherlands since the late 16th century.

Approaches and learning outcomes:

We will look at migration from multiple points of view: its causes, the way immigrants were received, to what extent they assimilated, what factors tended to help them assimilate - and what factors made them easier for the local population to accept. The approach will be multi-disciplinary: the course will consider evidence from (social) history, literature, art history, linguistics (dialect, new developments), archaeology, film, and others. Each student will select a project from any of a range of topics that relate to immigration to—or emigration from—the Low Countries. In other words, students will be given an opportunity to practice their critical thinking skills and their oral and written communication skills in addition to learning about the culture of the Low Countries. This course also functions, where needed, as an introduction to some “ways of knowing”  that belong to the traditions of the Humanities.

In addition to the textbooks ordered by the bookstores, additional material will be available (reader, web material, multi-media).

for questions: jvtaylor@wisc.edu