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About German & Scandinavian Studies at UMass Amherst

ISCO-GÖTTINGEN Lens Photo by Daveblog CC, some rights reserved

German & Scandinavian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is proud of our long tradition as a distinguished center of research and teaching at the graduate (M.A. and Ph.D.) and undergraduate levels.

The twenty Amherst Colloquia, held here from 1967 to 1999, and published as a book series, give a sense of our historic strengths in German literary and cultural studies.

In recent years, feminist studies, film studies, and Black German studies have become central aspects of our program as we have retained our historic and linguistic depth in medieval studies and Germanic philology. We are home to the DEFA Film Library, an archive and study center. Our modern foreign language program encompasses German, Swedish, and Finnish.

PICT7078 Photo by Dr. Yuri Andreievich Zhivago CC, some rights reserved

Yiddish is also taught at UMass Amherst and the outstanding resources of the Five Colleges area include the National Yiddish Book Center. Recent additions to our faculty have solidified our close ties with History and with Judaic and Near East Studies; we expect our interdisciplinary affiliations to expand even further in the years to come.

Our graduates include many prominent scholars and teachers worldwide (click here for a list of recent placements and here for recent dissertations).

Photo Attribution

Cologne Nightshot on front page: Nightshots German Colony by Johnk85
Chairs on front page: Farblehre - Farbleere? by Juergen Kurlvink
Frankfurt skyline on front page: Frankfurt, Germany by coda
Photo Banner on other pages: Rushing Past German History, Stuck in Customs

CC, some rights reserved