Undergraduate Program

The Department aims to enable students to become competent and culturally literate users of German who can employ the language in a range of intellectual and professional contexts and who can also draw from it personal enrichment and enjoyment. It does so by engaging students with diverse content areas within an integrated curriculum whose pedagogies reflect the best available knowledge regarding the multiple links among language, culture, and ways of knowing.

The German Department is a part of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics in the Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences and offers an undergraduate major leading to a BA in German. Students from across campus can also declare a minor in German.

German majors often also study another language. Students may minor or double major in another language (e.g., German and Japanese, German and French) or in any of the departmental disciplines offered by the College of Arts and Sciences (e.g., History, Psychology, Government, Theology). They have available to them a range of area studies, certificate programs (particularly the Certificate in European Studies), and a number of interdisciplinary minors, such as the Program on Justice and Peace, Social and Political Thought, and the Women’s Studies program. 

Students also may choose German as the language of concentration as part of the International Business, Language, and Culture degree, offered jointly by Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences and McDonough School of Business.

Majors are required and other students are strongly encouraged to have a significant study abroad experience during their studies either through the German Department’s Trier Summer Program or through one of the study abroad sites at a German-language university. Georgetown presently has formal arrangements with the Universities of Berlin, Munich, Tübingen, and Vienna.