About Us

Welcome to the homepage of Germanic Languages at UCLA. We are a tight-knit and highly collaborative department focused on the contribution our discipline can make to pressing intellectual debates here in the United States. In recent years we have come to serve as a theoretical center within the humanities and our students are required to work across disciplines. Our graduate students all pass through a common theoretical training that emphasizes critical close-reading.

We are a full service department offering courses and research possibilities in all the fields of Germanic languages and literatures, including a wide range of historical periods within German Studies from the Middle Ages to Modernity, as well as Linguistics, Dutch and Afrikaans, Jewish Studies, and Old Norse. Within this model of broad disciplinary coverage, specific areas of strength are reflected in the teaching and research of faculty and in the work of our graduate students. Currently, we enjoy a particular strength in the following areas: Literary and cultural studies from 1890-1940, Philosophy and Literary Theory, Gender and Sexuality, and Film and Media Theory.