Charged emotionalism, authentic expressionism, and uncompromising realism are among the common clichés describing German Gothic sculpture. Do these expressions, however, reflect the cultural milieu in which the sculptures were created? This course will examine how individual identity was formulated in Gothic sculpture as a simulacrum of appearance and emotion. It will discuss the images from two perspectives: medieval representation theory, which defined the simulacrum as an empty sign, a sculpted image based on nature but founded on deception; and post-modern theory, in which the simulacrum substitutes the real. From these approaches, we will explore the medieval sign theory and the sculpted identity in German Gothic.