Department of German - University of California, Berkeley

Thank you for visiting our website, designed to help current and prospective students, as well as visitors, navigate the wealth of opportunities in the field of German at the University of California, Berkeley.  

• The Department offers a major, double major, and minor, as well as a PhD in German.
• We offer instruction in the German language from beginning to advanced levels. We are proud of our distinguished language program and its instructors who have won prizes for excellence in teaching. For more on the philosophy behind our classroom language teaching, please go to Teaching & Pedagogy.
• We teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Germanic linguistics, ranging from Gothic to semiotics, from the history of the language to the study of its structural features.
• We offer English-taught upper-division courses in German literature, film, philosophy and cultural theory, many of which satisfy the General Education and Breadth Requirements.
• The Department is home to the Dutch Studies Program and the Yiddish Program. These programs offer courses in language, literature and cultural studies related to their respective languages.
• The Department of German is anchored in the College of Letters & Sciences, Division of Arts & Humanities at Berkeley. Our faculty and students have especially close ties to Comparative Literature, Film & Media, Medieval Studies, Jewish Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Critical Theory.
• We welcome international students, and frequently host doctoral and postdoctoral student researchers for a semester or a year. Please consult the guidelines for visiting student researchers.