Our cultural partners help make our teaching and research of German-language culture come alive.
Our research helps inform the work of our cultural partners, and our cultural partners enrich our teaching, by giving our students the chance to see the questions we study in class come alive in the city around them.
We work with a large range of London and global institutions, collaborating on academic conferences, exhibitions, film screenings, theatre productions, and publications. Many of these activities are also based in our involvement with Research Centres at King’s, including the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture, the Centre for Early Modern Studies, the Centre for Late Antiquity and Medieval Studies, and the London Shakespeare Centre. We also run the German Screen Studies Network, which embeds our teaching and research with the promotion of German cinema in the UK and around the world. Above all, our students benefit from direct interaction with authors, filmmakers, translators and curators, as well as the many performances and exhibitions on which we collaborate.
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The German Department regularly runs summer courses for secondary school students from Widening Participation backgrounds.
In June 2017, our ‘World Cultures, Global Futures’ summer school brought together 35 students from UK state schools, along with academics and students from King’s. They spent three days exploring globalisation, migration and multilingualism through a series of interactive workshops, talks, film screenings and outings. Highlights included hands-on archival research at The Women’s Library and a creative writing workshop with London-based Nigerian German writer Olumide Popoola. Participants had the chance to talk to current King’s students about university study and hear from former students about languages and careers.
The theme of next year’s summer school is ‘The Language of Politics’, and it will be open to Year 11 and 12 students at UK state schools. There will also be a parallel teachers’ workshops exploring new approaches to teaching cultural and political topics at GCSE and A-level.
For more information, please contact Dr Catherine Smale.
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Staff from the German Department are engaged in a lively programme of schools’ visits. We work with schools both in the London area and beyond, and we offer a range of talks and workshops for different age groups. Recent examples include careers workshops with Year 8 pupils, talks about studying languages at university with Year 11 and 12 students, and taster classes covering a variety of historical and cultural topics from the Middle Ages to the present day.
One of the most important dates in the calendar is the German play, which takes place each spring. Every year, we invite Sixth Form students and teachers to participate in an afternoon of talks and interactive workshops about a specific German play, which is followed by a live performance of that play by King’s students.
In recent years, we have staged key A-level and Pre-U set texts, such as Die Physiker and Der Besuch der Alten Dame by Dürrenmatt, as well as less well-known plays such as Krankheit der Jugend by Ferdinand Bruckner and Top Dogs by Urs Widmer. Participants often comment that the workshops and performance are both highly enjoyable and helpful in enabling them to develop their understanding of German culture.
My students were interested, challenged and entertained and it's not often one can say all of that of a German theatre evening (Teacher, 2018)