With a long tradition of leadership and widely-respected research, our Germanic Studies department has been ranked by the National Research Council as one of the top three German programs of this kind in the U.S. Our international reputation is built upon decades of excellent teaching and scholarship. We offer students strong academic programs, a broad range of courses, a culture of community engagement, and an exemplary faculty with diverse research interests.

There are currently 17 core faculty members in Germanic Studies, whose research and teaching covers the majority of the field, including culture, intellectual history, film, linguistics, literature, pedagogy, philology, and theater. We cover literature and culture from the medieval period to today. We teach the earliest Germanic languages (including Gothic, Icelandic, Old Norse, and Saxon), as well as Dutch, German, Norwegian, and Yiddish.

In addition to the core faculty members in Germanic Studies, we have a large network of adjunct professors in many departments and programs, including Art History, Comparative Literature, English, History, History and Philosophy of Science, Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, and Second Language Acquisition.