Mark W. Roche

Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Professor of German Language and Literature

Concurrent Professor of Philosophy

University of Notre Dame

Teaching

Current and Recent Teaching

In Fall 2023 Roche is on leave to complete a book with the tentative title Theories of Ugliness: An Unseemly Aesthetic History, which is contracted with Bloomsbury Press. He will return to teaching in Spring 2024.

In Spring 2023 Roche taught a College Seminar on "Faith, Doubt, and Reason" and the second semester of the year-long Humanities Seminar for first-year students in the Glynn Family Honors Program, "Great Works of Literature and Culture from Machiavelli to the Present." In Fall 2022, Roche ioffered the first semester of the Humanities Seminar, “Great Works of Literature and Culture from Homer to Dante.” Roche’s other fall course, “Philosophy and Film,” satisfied Notre Dame’s requirement for a second philosophy course. 
 
In Fall 2021 Roche taught “German 20202, German in the World,” which is the fourth-semester course in German, and “German Literary and Cultural Traditions,” which takes students from the Baroque era to 1945. In Spring 2022 he taught “Contemporary Germany” and “Challenges to Self, Society, and the Sacred: German Prose Masterpieces.”

During academic year 2000-21 Roche offered a year-long course for sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the Glynn Family Honors Program. The Fall course, The Cinematic World of Alfred Hitchcock, satisfied the University Requirement in the Arts. The Spring course, Faith, Doubt, and Reason, fulfilled the University Requirements in Second Philosophy and Catholicism and the Disciplines. In the Fall Roche had a one-course reduction for having undertaken an extensive project related to Catholic and mission hiring at Notre Dame. His second Spring course for 2021 was German 20202.

Other courses in recent years have included German seminars on Comedy, Satire, and Humor and Tragedy, Comedy, Identity.

Undergraduate Courses

Roche has taught undergraduate courses in German language, literature, and culture, as well as broader courses. Sample courses:

• Comedy, Jokes, and Satire in the German-Speaking World
• Great Questions and the Liberal Arts
• Faith, Doubt, and Reason
• Religious Themes in Modern German Literature and Thought
• Austrian Literature from Grillparzer to Handke
• Weimar and the Third Reich in German Literature and Film
• Modern German Literature in Cultural Context
• Introduction to German Drama

Graduate Courses

Roche’s graduate courses have focused on German literature and intellectual history. Sample courses:

• The Idea of God’s Dependence on Humanity in German Literature and Culture
• Objective Idealism and the Study of Literature
• German Intellectual History from Kant to the Present
• Literature in the Age of Technology
• Tragedy and the Philosophy of Tragedy from Lessing to Hochhuth
• German Comedy from Lessing to Brecht
• Narrative Theory and the Interpretation of Fictional Narratives
• Aspects of Poetics, Rhetoric, and Stylistics: An Introduction to the Formal Study of Literature

Additional Syllabi

• Evil, Power, and Art from Plato to Hitchcock (Spring 2014)
• Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland  (Fall 2014)
• German Narratives (Spring 2014)
• Literature and Contradiction (Fall 2013)
• Comedy, Jokes, and Satire in the German-speaking World (Spring 2011)
• Masterpieces of German Cinema (Fall 2010)
• Great Questions and the Liberal Arts (Spring 2008)

• Teaching
• Scholarship
• Digital Offprints
• Service
• Curriculum Vitae
• Contact

Selected Publications on Teaching

• Why Choose the Liberal Arts? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
• “Should Faculty Members Teach Virtues and Values? That is the Wrong Question.” Liberal Education: 95.3 (Summer 2009): 22-27.
• Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.
• The Intellectual Appeal of Catholicism and the Idea of a Catholic University. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
• “The Doctoral Colloquium as a Community of Learning and a Forum for Professional Development.” ADFL Bulletin30 (Fall 1998): 38-43.
• “Areas of Expertise, Proleptic Interpretation, Penultimate Drafts: Three Ideas for the Graduate Seminar in Literature.” Die Unterrichtspraxis 20 (1987): 261-68.