The Department of German Studies prepares its graduating majors and minors to do the following:

• demonstrate German-language competencies in writing, reading, and speaking about a wide range of topics of cultural, literary and linguistic interest and in a wide range of registers, from day-to-day to academic;
• recognize the pivotal questions and issues that have shaped Germanophone cultures and societies through time and be able to think critically about them;
• distinguish between genres and mediums in theory and in practice; build a shared vocabulary for discussing these genres' and mediums' aesthetic and social functions;
• place Germanophone cultures in broader contexts, including political integration, diasporic networks, and translation networks.