William Donahue, professor and chair of Germanic languages and literature, and Martin Kagel, head of the department of Germanic and Slavic studies at the University of Georgia, discussed the national decline of German studies in academia in an article titled “Saving German Studies, via Europe.” Published earlier this month in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Donahue and Kagel proposed the establishment of an umbrella program called “transnational European studies” to integrate language and culture programs with other disciplines that focus substantially on Germany and Europe. The Chronicle’s Shucao Mo spoke with Donahue about his take on German studies.
The Chronicle: What makes Germany a key player in the current political arena?
William Donahue: There is a course within the Duke in Berlin [program] called “Germany Today: A European Superpower?” The question mark is a kind of false humility because of the Nazi period—reflecting the fear at the time of unification that Germany would be seen as too powerful. [But Germany] is clearly a European superpower. In the entire euro crisis, the big player is Germany. Its solution will have to [work] with Germany and the German economy. Some people have gone so far as to say that [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel holds the fate of American politics in her hands. The European Union has realized that they have to combine and integrate monetary and fiscal policy—and the economy that is the strongest is Germany’s.
TC: Why are German studies especially significant in higher education?
WD: There is a great cultural tradition in Germany—in literature, philosophy and music. Germany, for example, has the most theaters per capita than any other country. It is also a “book culture” in the sense that it publishes more books per capita than any other nation. Students should come to Germany because of its cultural importance [and] to gain access firsthand to some of the greatest thinkers that have shaped the modern age. At a top tier university like Duke, in which many students will be involved business after college, [learning German] would benefit them greatly. As a tourist, you can have a good time in Germany with English only, but our goal has always been to make students “cultural insiders”—so that if you have completed a rigorous intermediate course at Duke and are willing to brush up your German on the way to a business assignment, you will be able to catch the gist of a newspaper, take in some German theater and not just sit in your hotel room limited to CNN. You don’t have to be a German major to profit from linguistic proficiency. Relatedly, business partners are much more engaged if you can speak German.
TC: How does Duke structure its German studies department?
WD: The German program at Duke is a small gem, which has been enhanced by the recent merger at the graduate level, forming the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies—now one of the country’s highest rated programs. The undergraduate program is small, but the advantage is that we have a better teacher-to-student ratio, and students can always meet with faculty to work on course work and individual projects. With regard to other institutions, growth in language programs has been very ad hoc. Some have nervously opted to expand to other languages without consolidating the success of their current programs. Duke has not made this mistake. I don’t think we should play any language off another, but if we do expand our offerings, we have to expect smaller classes overall in certain language programs.
TC: What is a “transnational European studies” program? Why do you propose that model?
WD: My colleague Martin Kagel coined the term. We think that German language departments that are currently doing well should continue as they are. What we are really worried about are those smaller programs with one or two positions, that unfortunately appear to some administrators to be expendable. There is a mistaken assumption that if you teach language, your main connection to other scholars is linguistics. In fact, it is the object of study—German culture—that brings together philosophers, theologians, historians and Germanists. All the courses you take in which experts teach, for example, about Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Adorno, Habermas, etc. were once students in German language and culture programs. So we need to be sure that this “seamless garment” remains whole—that we don’t pull up the ladder behind us, so to speak. Grouping language departments together that have no—or little—intellectual common ground is simply not optimal. Cutting German programs—as is happening at a number of institutions we name in The Chronicle of Higher Education article—is deeply troublesome. It can become a self-perpetuating downward cycle. Americans get the idea of the importance of Europe. The attraction of Europe as a whole is something Americans will always be fascinated by. If we are able to include those vulnerable language programs under the European umbrella, they will have a better chance of thriving. In the case of Germany, one can promote German culture, policy and diplomacy without sending a culturally chauvinistic message because it is done within the context of European Union. The EU itself wants to provide funds to all academic enterprises that treat Europe and has already done so at the University of North Carolina. Globalization is often equated with, for example, an interest in China such that older, very successful programs in Europe could be forgotten. We have to find our way to build success on our successes and expand judiciously. Any reconstruction—such as we propose in the Chronicle article—has to go slowly, respect local needs and be carefully thought out. We want students and scholars to be grouped together who have common interests. Europe itself, as the debates about membership in the EU reflect, is fluid and not a static concept. This transnational aspect of our proposal tries to respect this fact.
TC: What does this institutional change have to do with globalization?
WD: Globalization is not a reversal of colonization—it is just another way of continuing it. Too often it means teaching about other cultures in English only without the depth that only intimate knowledge of language and culture can provide. The field of German studies has itself become interdisciplinary, and what we now call “German studies” is no longer limited to the literary classics. What we are proposing is to take the next logical step to make the institutional organization line up with the direction that our field is taking anyway.
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