Dear First-Year Mawrters,
I hope you are all getting settled into campus smoothly. My name is Ben Van Zee and I’ll be your professor for your Emily Balch Seminar on “Migration and the Making of Modern Germany.” I am excited about meeting you all on our first day of class on September 1st.
I am currently setting up our course Moodle page, where you’ll be able to find all the materials and information for our course.
You have two tasks to complete to prepare for our first day of class.
1. An Introductory Writing Assignment
To start off the semester, I would like you to compose a brief text introducing yourself. Feel free to write as much as you would like, but it must be at least one page (roughly 300 words). Please address most if not all of the questions below in paragraph form. Do not worry about structure or grammar. Feel free to use spell check, but please do not use Grammarly. Please either submit it on Moodle or email it to me at bvanzee@brynmawr.edu before 11:59pm on Monday, 1 September 2026.
Please include the following pieces of information:
· Your name
· How you like to be addressed (nicknamed, pronouns, etc.)
· Where you are from
· Possible major(s) and minor(s) at Bryn Mawr
· What do you think are your strengths as a writer?
· What are some areas where you think you may need to improve?
· What challenges have you encountered in previous classes you have taken and how have you managed them?
· What particular structures or practices best support or hinder your learning?
· What brought you to this Emily Balch Seminar in particular and what do you hope to get out of it?
· What would you like me to know about you?
2. Assigned Reading for our First Class
I have posted to our Moodle page 2 texts for our first day of class along with a set of questions to consider as you read. Please complete as much them as you can by our first class. We will continue discussing those texts and the related questions during our second session as well. You will find the assigned texts under Week 1 on our Moodle page. Please let me know if you are unable to access them, and I can email them. I highly suggest that you print out all readings for this course whenever possible.
Our guiding questions are “What is Germany?” and “Who is German?” and the assigned readings for the first day include:
Katja Hoyer, “Introduction,” Blood and Iron (2022), pp. 7-12.
David Blackbourn, “On the Move,” Germany in the World (2023), pp. 250-72, 296-309.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about any of this. I am also sending this information out over email to ensure that everyone receives it.
Good luck moving in and getting oriented! I look forward to getting to know you!
Best,
Ben Van Zee