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     - [EECS 482, Intro to OS](w24_482.md)
     - [EECS 373, Intro to Embedded System Design](w24_373.md)
     - [EECS 311, Analog Circuits](w24_311.md)
+    - [GERMAN 386, Fairy Tales](w24_fairy.md)
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+# Winter 2024 Course Review: GERMAN 386
+
+2024-05-07
+
+Course Title: Fairy Tales
+
+Rating: 3.5/5
+
+## Instructor (Laura Okkema)
+
+I took her [GERMAN 103 last semester](f23_wrapup.md#german-103), and wrote
+a review there.
+
+I align with a lot of her opinions, including the appeal of physical
+books, the danger of generative AI, and how the culinary value of the
+rich. (Last semester when I asked her what the plural of "der Reiche" is,
+she replied "die Reichen. Essen Sie sie.")
+
+This semester I needed a 300-level humanities course, so I looked up the
+catalog and bang, Laura's teaching this one. Instant yes.
+
+## None of this is proven (a rant on humanities)
+
+Up front, I will state the problem I have with this course and most of
+humanities. The things we learn are very often factoids and theories, not
+laws and axioms. And it's impossible to get to the latter; otherwise it
+would not be humanities. So, for the majority of the course you'll see us:
+
+- Read fairy tales A, B, and C
+- Read some work some guy wrote in the year of our lord X
+- The guy argues that a common thing in A, B, and C is someone did Y, and
+  they argue it's because of Z
+- We are now expected to know that Some Guy said Z causes Y on the test
+
+Is it true that Z caues Y? No one cares! Except those who make the test,
+those who take the test, and both of those scholars who still study this
+topic.
+
+(One of these people is Jack Zipes, who wrote our textbook. Less of
+a textbook than an English translation of KHM. The book is _The Complete
+Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm_, 3rd edition, Bantam 2003.)
+
+Of course, I take all ideas with a grain of salt, and mentally I always
+preface the knowledge with a "Some Guy said" tag, no matter how likely it
+is true. And when I tell it to a friend on a party, I'll always make sure
+to make it clear that it's a _theory_, not a known fact like someone dug
+the Grimms' graves and interviewed them.
+
+One exception, though, is obvious differences in the multiple versions of
+the KHM. The changes are certainly intentional. But the reasons behind
+them are subject to speculation.
+
+Sometimes we see contradicting takes on a certain topic, and that's cool
+because an unsettled debate means someone's out there in the depths of
+JSTOR looking for evidence and hopefully will keep their job for a while.
+(I sometimes wonder why we as a society set out a place for academia in
+the humanities, other than "cultural heritage" and other buzzwords. Then
+I remind myself that CEOs exist, and I find it pretty easy to justify.)
+
+## Course topics
+
+When I told my family I wanted to take this course, they thought I was
+joking. A university? Teaching nursery rhymes?
+
+This is not a "hey children sit down and I'll read you a bedtime story"
+type of course (although Laura did this type of thing on GERMAN 103). It's
+an academic approach to primary sources, including Grimm's fairy tales
+(_Kinder- und Hausmärchen_, or KHM), and analytical articles, by a handful
+of people who study (studied) them. And it's certainly not for children.
+
+We first discussed what everyone knew was coming.
+
+- Origin of the KHM (it's hard to pin down what the Grimms actually did)
+- Ownership of fairy tales (spoiler: no one owns them) and different
+  versions of the same tale
+- Sex, violence, eroticism, and pedagogy of fear (yes we get to learn this
+  sort of shit on the second lecture)
+
+Then things got tense.
+
+- Antisemitism, racism and colonialism (wow 19th century Germany was
+  racist? who knew)
+
+Here are some guys' ideas that may or may not make sense just read it and
+remember what they said
+
+- Propps's morphology (the idea that all fairy tales are built on a subset
+  of these 32 functions)
+- Freudian and Jungian psychology (to Freud, a pen is what he thinks a pen
+  is)
+- Walter Benjamin's idea of fairy tales providing "good counsel"
+- And whatever Bruno Bettelheim has to say about "Hansel and Gretel".
+  I made the best joke of the semester on the discussion session:
+
+> They had dinner. It's on the house.
+
+And we're back on coherent theories I understand.
+
+- The "liminal stage", rites of passage, and the "hero's journey"
+- Overthrowing tyrants, and how one single tale hints socialism
+- Spinning and a "woman's job"
+- The "angel woman" and "monster woman"
+
+And finally we extended beyond the corpus of Grimms' works.
+
+- Modern adaptations of "Bluebeard" and "Snow White" (where everything
+  goes wrong)
+- Romanticism, e.g. "The Sandman" by ETA Hoffmann
+- Kunstmärchen, by e.g. HC Andersen 
+- Animation by e.g. Lotte Reiniger, Tex Avery and Walt Disney's team
+
+Let me expand on some of the more interesting ones.
+
+(Disclaimer: what I write below is what I remember two weeks after the
+course is over, on a 15-hour flight and I don't wanna cite sources I don't
+know at the top of my head. If you're reading this as a student, please do
+NOT use it as an exam guide. Just imagine a huge [citation needed] hanging
+on the end of the page.)
+
+### Who wrote the KHM?
+
+Nobody.
+
+The Grimms, Jacob and Wilhelm, set out to collect German folktales to
+preserve German culture just as printing press was hitting the market. So
+they went ahead and collected tales from the Volk — before Hitler
+destroyed that word — to tap into that authentic Volkspoesie. Except it
+was not the Volk and some of it was not German.
+
+Linda Dégh says the Grimms collected tales from middle-class women they
+knew, such as KD Viehmann, who had French ancestry. So the Grimms did not
+create the tales from scratch.
+
+The 1812 edition is geared toward fellow scholars like themselves, and was
+intended to be an archive of some sort. But it was massively popular (by
+19th century standards), unexpectedly among children, whose guardians had
+one criticism about the book: it was too profane. Not the violent type of
+profane (in fact, the Grimms added more of it), but the mentions of:
+
+- premarital pregnancy
+- incest
+- evil biological mothers (hence the abundance of evil _stepmothers_)
+- and anything that goes against the Catholic patriachy
+
+So the Grimms did it faithfully — faithfully betraying their original
+intention to stay authentic. Now in their 1857 edition, they had these
+somewhat family-friendly, somewhat authentic tales, and they were
+criticized by both parties.
+
+I would hate to be in their shoes. Partly cause it's hard to hit
+a compromise between the public and academia, and partly cause _have you
+tried 1800's shoes?? They're not good_.
+
+So, to put it down, for the KHM we ought to credit the Grimms, the
+Germans, the French, the other European people who happened to live near
+the Grimms, and angry Karens.
+
+### Assorted racism
+
+It was one of the more uneasy lectures, as you people get tense and Laura
+herself becomes visibly uncomfortable as we described what today we would
+call the Fucking Nazis.
+
+KHM was banned in Germany in the years following Moustache Massacre Man's
+death, who used it for propaganda. The Grimms regained their reputation
+a few decades later, but these tales were… still racist.
+
+Some publishers (not Bantam) received complaints about the depiction of
+Jews in the KHM, so what they did is `s/Jew/miser/g`. Familiar? The Grimms
+edited complaints into their 1857 edition. Now publishers are doing the
+same thing.
+
+Of course, they did it out of good intentions, and honestly what's the
+alternative? Expose unsuspecting children to antisemitic stories and
+embarrass guardians who never knew there was racist stories in KHM? Delete
+these tales and deny racism? Both sound horrible. I believe we should
+quarantine these tales — don't let children read them unsupervised, but
+let scholars read them all they will.
+
+The status quo in 1800s Germany was Christians hated Jews, because they're
+"obsessed with money" and stuff while Christians wrote themselves a Bible
+that forbade them from the banking industry. So they did shit like blood
+libel and wrote some horrible stories that stereotyped the Jews to the
+extreme. There was one tale ("The Clear Sun Will Bring It To Light") that
+wasn't actively antisemitic, but was "anti-antisemitic" at best.
+
+I was cautious not to assume that every single soul was racist, so in
+a discussion post I defended the author of "The Clear Sun" — hey, what if
+they were innocent? We do not have enough evidence to get a small enough
+p value, so we cannot reject the hypothesis that they're racist. However,
+racist or not the author may be, the society was.
+
+Apparently the German hated Black people as well. Except there were
+practically no Black people in Europe at that moment. So the Europeans
+were just clinging on to their own beauty standards: white == beautiful
+because they look like us, black == ugly because they don't.
+
+There were tales where the hero tries to "save" some women who were
+"cursed" to be covered in black skin. He fails and the women are stuck
+with half-white, half-black skin, and they blame him for not completing
+their transformation. They shouted my favorite sentence of this course
+(to the best of my memory):
+
+> You cursed dog, our blood shall cry in vengeance!
+
+The German for "you cursed dog", "du verfluchter Hund", will forever be
+stuck in my head.
+
+This is kinda similar to how Christian missionaries went to Africa, tried
+to convert locals to the religion of the Fish And Bread Man, but were met
+with resistance.
+
+### Propp's "Morphology of the Folktale"
+
+Vladimir Propp studied hundreds of Russian fairy tales, and extracted 31
+"functions" (32 if you count 8 and 8a as different ones), which are
+surprisingly similar to a mathematical function in that they map
+characters to a plot.
+
+An example: the 7th function is "The victim submits to deception and
+thereby unwittingly helps his enemy." It could be modeled as a function
+with four arguments, `victim, villain, deception, help`. You can fill in
+the blanks and make part of your own fairy tale!
+
+What Propp argues, is that if you take a subset of these 32 functions, in
+the order they appear, and piece them together with your own characters,
+premises and events, you can reconstruct every fairy tale in existence!
+
+Now, what's the problem?
+
+The problem is I think it's bullshit. I mean, some fairy tales have a lot
+of in common, yes. And I respect Propp for bringing forth his reductionist
+theory. But it's like somebody left a mathematician in the literature
+department. And I can defeat his argument with math.
+
+First, his argument implies that there is a finite amount of fairy tales
+that could exist before you run out of ideas. In this case, the upper
+bound would be 2^32, or around 4 billion. But keep in mind there's
+a substantial difference between infinite and 4 billion. We thought
+4 billion was enough; now we have the 2038 problem.
+
+Consider if someone found an unpublished book of fairy tales in their
+basement. Inside of the book is a fairy tale where something happens that
+doesn't easily fit in any of the 32 functions (which, if you look at
+today's bookstore, is pretty likely). What does Propp do?
+
+Does he:
+
+1. disqualify the tale from being a "fairy tale"? (i.e. gatekeeping fairy
+   tales)
+2. loosen one of the 32 functions?
+3. add a 33rd function?
+
+If he does any of 2 and 3, then by induction, if you give him a 34th
+function, he'll have no choice but to do it again, and by induction,
+eventually the list will either be infinitely long, or just a vague list
+that applies to every story ever.
+
+So, if I were to add one function and one function only, it would be "none
+of the above".
+
+### The Hero's Journey
+
+Campbell wrote about how every great story goes the same way: someone goes
+on a quest in an unfamiliar realm, does something (e.g. defeats a dragon),
+gets something (e.g. chests of gold) , and brings it back where they came
+from, and everyone's happy, forming a cycle. The interesting part is the
+how the hero navigates the unknown, growing up in the process.
+
+Sounds familiar? It's just like Propp's morphology idea, but better. But
+at least it makes sense to me. Instead of insisting that _every_ tale is
+built upon these functions, what Campbell says is all _good_ tales follow
+the hero's journey. That's why pretty much every Disney movie is like
+that.
+
+### Angel woman and monster woman
+
+Gilbert and Gubar wrote that, in a patriarchy, woman fight against each
+other for men's attention. The angel woman is a beautiful virgin, sought
+for by all men. The monster woman is jealous and tries to sabotage the
+angel woman's ascension to power.
+
+In "Snow White", the titular character is an angel woman and the queen is
+the monster woman. Contrary to popular opinion, G&G argue that the monster
+woman, namely the queen, was the more interesting of the two, precisely
+because her evilness propels the plot. It was not the passive doll as is
+Snow White. If you count the things Snow did, she:
+
+- was born beautiful af and made queen jealous af
+- was sentenced dead by the queen but spared by the hunter
+- did some housework for the dwarves
+- was deceived by the queen a few times, but saved by dwarves
+- finally ate an apple and went comatose
+- was laid in a coffin
+- was kissed by a prince
+- married the prince
+
+Not many of these were in active voice. I think it is an interesting way
+to look at how 1800s Germany treated genders. Would make an awesome dating
+show, "Angel or Monster".
+
+### Modern adaptations
+
+KHM has been in the public for a long time, and it's as well known as
+cheese. As such, it's an open door for parody writers and serious writers
+to reinterpret them.
+
+What Coover did in "The Dead Queen" is to imagine that it was Snow White
+who ordered the queen to dance to death in hot iron shoes, and after the
+queen's death she becomes the monster woman, while being in an angel
+woman's body who will perpetually remain a virgin ("hymen intact"),
+despite a night with the prince and the seven dwarves (a… ninesome??)
+
+Just… read it for yourself.
+
+### Romanticism
+
+Laura reveals Romanticism to be one of her favorite topics, because of how
+much she relates to the idea of melancholy, alienation, and human emotion
+in general. The texts we read both involved people in disturbed mental
+states, or the Nachtseite, like depression and childhood trauma. The
+depressed guy got a girlfriend at the end and was healed; the PTSD guy
+leapt off a tower and killed himself.
+
+On the discussion session, Laura shared her experience of being alienated
+at a gathering at her in-law's. "I wanted to talk about books and music,
+and I really don't care how Aunt Sue is doing." (paraphrased)
+
+Would be awesome if a whole family was into RATM though.
+
+What I did not expect though was to experience first-hand symptoms of the
+Nachtseite just that evening. For more, read
+[2024-04-05](../random/2024-04-05.md#the-nachtseite).
+
+### Animation
+
+Lotte Reiniger was coerced to make a few paper cutout animations for the
+Nazis. If you look at that, it's completely understandable why Hitler
+didn't get into the art school. She set the bar so high.
+
+Tex Avery made cartoon shorts like "Swing Shift Cinderella", who is
+actually a grown up Little Red Riding Hood and drives a Cinderella-mobile
+in that the magic disappears when the clock strikes twelve. It's about how
+the wolf (from "Little Red") flirts with Red but attracts her granny
+instead. So you see him wooing Red and getting hit by granny with a hammer
+conveniently stowed in her purse. Red rushes home by twelve and boards
+a shuttle bus to "Lockweed". The bus is full of wolves.
+
+Help did Tex Avery invent furries?
+
+Walt Disney was another one to tap into the oil rig. But Zipes argues he's
+pretty egoistic and refused to credit his team initially. It's just
+a giant "Walt Disney Presents", no one else. Like bruh. I credit all my
+teammates and instructors on my PCB. I enjoy giving people the credit they
+deserve. It's not like they'll take my cut or anything.
+
+## Assignments
+
+Lots of reading. Prepare for 50 pages per week, and most of them isn't
+even fairy tales, but secondary texts by Some Guy. You can skim them, but
+there's either a quiz or a discussion on Canvas for each of the lectures.
+They're pretty easy though. Some PDFs are scans of physical books and OCR
+may or may not work, so "I'll open the quiz and just Ctrl+F" is a bad
+idea.
+
+Heaviest assignment is an essay, which requires you to choose a topic,
+make an argument, and find evidence in KHM that supports it. You cannot
+make speculations ("it seems to me that…"), because it's a closed reading,
+meaning deductions can only be based on the original text. You can also
+cite secondary sources to make it stronger. The requirements are
+>1400 words.
+
+In my essay I defended violence in KHM. At one point, I mentioned how Red
+in "Little Red" was complicit in the wolf's death by carrying stones to
+the hunter. That's how closed the closed reading is.
+
+If that's the kind of job a humanities student does, I'm glad I'm in
+engineering. At least we can look at an oscilloscope and go "yup, that's
+a sine".
+
+## Verdict
+
+Really extensive, but comes at the cost of superficiality. I knew
+everything and knew nothing. But at least I might be more fun at parties.
+Or less boring. Either way helps.
+
+I like it when a course changes the way I look at the world. The lectures
+on racism and sexism made me better informed whenever I am involved in
+such discourse. However, in the face of fascists, try punching.
+
+The last time I did humanities was in academic writing in 2021. this
+course brought back that memory of going through papers without graphs or
+tables in search of noteworthy sentences that's not there for the page
+limit.
+
+The course probably adds two to three hours of workload per week, except
+the week the essay's due.
+
+I grew up in a culture not dominated by KHM and managed the course, so you
+can take it regardless of how much you know about KHM.
diff --git a/docs/umich/w24_wrapup.md b/docs/umich/w24_wrapup.md
index 386f374..0f20d0f 100644
--- a/docs/umich/w24_wrapup.md
+++ b/docs/umich/w24_wrapup.md
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ them up into individual articles, listed below.
 - [EECS 482, Intro to OS](w24_482.md)
 - [EECS 373, Intro to Embedded System Design](w24_373.md)
 - [EECS 311, Analog Circuits](w24_311.md)
+- [GERMAN 386, Fairy Tales](w24_fairy.md)
 - Other courses WIP
 
 ## Notable material gains