An apocryphal joke supposedly originating from Mark Twain goes something along the lines of: “I have known many a student who would rather decline two German beers than one German adjective.” Many students today would rather, or so it seems, decline to study German at all. German and many other modern languages have seen a declining trend in class enrollment, majors, and minors. A recent interview with Professor of German Studies Karolina Hicke in the modern languages and literatures department at Swarthmore shines some light on the subject and reveals the challenges that German studies faces and the potential ways forward.
Hicke is a strong advocate for a holistic liberal arts education. Growing up in Poland, she knew she wanted to be a doctor. When she first got to Gettysburg College, she decided to major in health sciences. After taking several German classes and loving them, Hicke was encouraged by her advisor to double major. In her junior year of college, she studied abroad and found out that her interest in language and literature was something she wanted to pursue further, and so she applied to graduate programs in German studies. She credits a liberal arts education for encouraging her to pursue her interests. She warns students against coming into college with a set plan and never deviating from it.
“Students come already with a preconceived notion, they need to study STEM, business, or health careers because they’re told that this will make them successful. And they’re often discouraged from exploring other subjects outside of this path.”
To this end, Hicke promotes the value of language learning as a way to better understand other cultures and their perspectives on science, politics, education, and so on.
“We don’t really achieve [fostering informed and contributing global citizens] through a monolingual education, where everything happens in English, and then we see that sometimes in the later stages of their careers, scholars have to learn languages because they realize, ‘in order to collaborate, to conduct research, I need to speak that language because not every scientist speaks English.’”
Alongside promoting an emphasis on language instruction in a liberal arts education, Hicke also advocates for expanding language and cultural teaching to accommodate the diverse needs and learning modalities of the students. In addition to interdisciplinary collaboration, a focus on decolonization and environmental humanities has already been a trend in the field of German studies for many years.
“I believe that the future of any undergraduate education is interdisciplinarity. And you cannot really achieve that if you consider interdisciplinarity to be, for example, studying biochem. Yes, those are two different subjects. But you’re not really expanding your worldviews.”
To this end, Hicke discusses her work in incorporating minority discourses as part of Swarthmore’s German Studies course offerings. Last semester, Hicke led a seminar that focused on the “interpolations of Turkish German, German Jewish, and Black German narratives in various genres, from literature, film, and music to podcasts and vlogs.” Minority studies, she adds, helps us understand that Germany today “is not only white, Christian, and monolithic, but very diverse.” Hicke believes that reflecting the present reality of German-speaking societies is also the future of German studies as a discipline.
Studying minority discourses is gaining traction in German departments across the country. Swarthmore’s German program has been an interdisciplinary endeavor since 2010 thanks to the curricular changes introduced by Sunka Simon, professor of German and chair of film and media studies. Unlike Swarthmore, some institutions have been reluctant to fully embrace this approach.
“I think there’s always this fear that when we focus on the contemporary and on minoritized communities, we might forget the contributions of the big names, but it’s all about a balance between incorporating more diverse views and still teaching the traditional curriculum. I’m not trying to negate the fact that canonical authors are worth studying and that other historical periods are crucial; they informed the contemporary view. I study Germany today from a long historical lens because the developments that are happening right now did not occur in a vacuum.”
As for the road forward for German studies, Hicke says that there are “a lot of students who come with a thorough academic background in disciplines like philosophy, history, and even classics, and they are interested in earlier historical periods, oftentimes from this interdisciplinary kind of perspective, but they really like to look at the earlier developments, you know, what was the Enlightenment like, and the idea of Germany as a new nation.”
Hicke believes that decolonizing approaches are able to attract attention by providing the tools for students to explore their interests through the interdisciplinary lens of German Studies. The second strategy to bolster flagging enrollment in German classes involves catering to students’ interests outside of German literature and history.
At many larger universities, in order to combat declining enrollment, there is a push to open up German studies to STEM fields. So they, for example, offer technical language classes for science majors and they create internship opportunities with German companies, which are known to be global leaders in industries like engineering and renewable energy.”
This approach aims to get students into German classes who are interested in learning the language to expand their research potential.
“It’s a way to market language study to those students who might otherwise not have found their way into German Studies. I think that both approaches work.”
At the same time, however, some language departments have anxieties about relying on heavily “marketing” their language classes to non-language students since merely teaching scientists foreign languages adds little value to an interdisciplinary liberal arts education. However, Hicke hopes that introductory language courses can help get “students into language classes who might then continue to study the content: literature, culture, music, and film.” This benefits not only the department, but also the students because it “makes them stand out, it shows that they have something beyond just having As in chemistry, but that they can potentially collaborate with a lab in Europe, and that they have this intercultural understanding and strong communications skills. It really pays off in terms of different work opportunities.”
One particular challenge that Hicke has observed at Swarthmore is engaging students outside of the classroom.
“Swarthmore is very unique…there’s a lot going on. And I can tell that the students are pulled in many different directions. I was used to a much stronger engagement with German outside the classroom [at a large public university].”
To this end, Hicke has worked to revive the German Club and the German studies newsletter at Swarthmore to inform the broader campus community about happenings in the German program. The German Club meets weekly on Thursday nights for various cultural events such as film screenings, cooking evenings, and board games. Hicke believes the German Club is “a great tool …to get students interested in what’s happening [in German studies]. And it actually works best from the ground up; if you find friends who are doing something interesting and fun, you want to join and maybe take a class with a professor [you got to know at one of the events].”
With interdisciplinary engagement, expanding German course offerings to serve a more diverse student population, and building a robust German engagement outside of the classroom, the future of German studies looks bright.
