Courses Fall 2018*

Core Courses

IS101 Plato’s Republic and Its Interlocutors

AY/BA1/Bard1 Core Course

Module: Greek Civilization

Instructors: Ewa Atanassow, Tracy Colony, Paul Festa, Daniel Reeve, Hans Stauffacher, Aaron Tugendhaft, Michael Weinman

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30

Bard College Berlin's core curriculum begins with a semester-long engagement with Plato’s Republic in dialog with the main works and movements that shaped its cultural and intellectual context. Republic offers a unique point of entry into the epochal literary, philosophical, and political achievements of fifth and fourth century Athens. It depicts, and draws us into, a conversation about ethical, political, aesthetic, religious, epistemic, and literary questions that are fundamental to human life. Rather than a series of separate treatises, Republic treats these questions as the subject of a single investigation that transcends disciplinary boundaries as we have come to conceive them. And while it may be said to contain a “social contract” theory, a theory of psychology, a theology, a critique of mimetic art, a theory of education, and a typology of political regimes, it is reducible to none of these. This book, perhaps in a manner unlike any other written before or after, offers an illuminating starting point for any set of inquiries one might wish to pursue today. In this course we shall be particularly attentive to the dialogic character of Plato’s writing and to its exchanges with other authors, works, genres and modes of thought. We read Republic alongside Homer’s Iliad; Aristophanes’ Clouds; selections from Sappho; Hesiod’s Works and Days; selections from Parmenides; the architecture of the Parthenon, Euripides’ Bacchae and Plato’s Apology. Attending to the interlocutors with which Republic is engaged, we will strive to better understand and evaluate its arguments and drama. Reading and discussing the dialogue together, we aim to become informed and engaging interlocutors for Plato and for one another.
Syllabus

IS102 Renaissance Florence

BA2 Core Course

Module: Renaissance Art and Thought

Instructors: Ian Lawson, Geoff Lehman, Katalin Makkai, Laura Scuriatti

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15

In this course we examine the visual and intellectual culture of Renaissance Florence. A sustained engagement with a number of principal monuments in Florentine painting, sculpture, and architecture provides the basis for a consideration of key values within the development of Renaissance art that also shape, more broadly, the thought, cultural practices, and everyday experiences of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Renaissance could arguably be characterized as an historical period in which the visual arts played the leading role in the culture as a whole. Thus the focus on works of visual art, in a sustained dialogue with literary, philosophical, and political texts of the period, opens upon a consideration of trans-disciplinary problems such as the emergence of new models of subjectivity and objectivity, the relationship between religious and secular experiences, the framing of early modern political thought, and the origins of the scientific method.  The course is structured around four principal topics, each a defining value for the visual arts between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries that is also central to the development of Renaissance thought: self-reflexivity, perspective, harmony and grace, humanism. The direct experience, evaluation, and interpretation of individual works of art are a crucial part of the course, and with this in mind there will be several visits to Berlin museums – specifically, the Gemäldegalerie and the Bode Museum, with their extensive Renaissance collections – to encounter works of art firsthand.
Syllabus

IS303 Origins of Political Economy

BA3/4 Core Course

Module: Origins of Political Economy

Instructor: Irwin Collier, Boris Vormann, Michael Weinman

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
This course explores the intellectual history of the contemporary disciplines of economics, political science and sociology, by examining the historical origins of the discourse and practice known as “political economy”: the means and processes by which societies and populations provide for their own survival and development. It offers an introduction to the reach and implications of this endeavor, its relationship to questions of law, sovereignty and political representation. It equally addresses changing state-market relationships and normative discourses about the best ways to organize societies as they echo in the liberal and critical traditions of Western political thought. In keeping with its attention to the formative history of modern categories and disciplines of knowledge, the course also addresses the ways in which changes in the (understanding of) political economy have influenced literary texts and cultural exchange. It allows students to understand, draw upon and critique the historical formulation of contemporary problems and concerns such as inequality, the sources and circulation of wealth, and the connection and differentiation between the economic and political spheres.
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IS123 Academic Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences 

Module: Senior Core Colloquium

Instructor: Ulrike Wagner, Seraphine Maerz

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 9:00-12:15

This seminar is a training in the methods of academic research. Focusing on representative contemporary research in the humanities and the social sciences, it supports students in proceeding with their own individual research projects by focusing on the essential elements of independent scholarly work: the choice of a topic or object of study; the outline of the main components of an article or scholarly paper; finding, gathering, collating and interpreting the sources needed for the project; correct citation, attribution, and bibliographical documentation, and lastly, the effective presentation of the final work in structure and style, as well as peer review and constructive feedback. Including the participation of thesis supervisors and other faculty members, this course meets in fall term and in spring term.
Syllabus

Art and Aesthetics Foundational Modules

In addition to regular courses, a series of practicing arts workshops are offered in the fall semester (Oct. 29 until Nov 1, 2018). For more information click here>>

UB103 Reduce to the Max: Tiny Housing

Module: Art and Artists in Context 

Instructors: Wulf Böttger, Caroline Wolf

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Sat 11:00-15:00 fortnightly (exact times tbc)

The “housing question” is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. How to create affordable and adaptable spaces and sustainable neighbourhoods is a central theme in architectural practice that reaches far beyond questions of real estate politics and speculation, and revolves around concepts and visions of how we want to live now and in the future. Berlin has long been a field of experiment for housing - reaching from the world-heritage site Siedlungen (social housing estates) of the 1920s to the International Building Exhibitions of the 1950s to today’s small-scale Baugruppen (co-op housing) developments and radical minimalist concepts such as the Tiny House movement. Through excursions, lectures and exercises, this course aims to provide students with an introduction to architectural design. In a practical design brief, students will be required to design a tiny house of 2 x 3 metres for an urban nomad – based on their own ideas of what kind of space they want to inhabit. Over the course of the semester, students will develop the drawing/model-making skills and vocabulary essential to visualize and present their ideas – spatially and conceptually.
Syllabus

FA106 Beginners Black and White Photography Class: The Slow Photo

Module: Artistic Practice

Instructor: April Gertler

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue 9:00-12:15

This beginners’ black and white photography class will focus on learning how to use a manual camera and finding one’s way around an analogue darkroom. Students will also be exposed to the rich photographic history of Berlin through presentations, discussions and historical walks. We encounter now-canonical works by Berlin-based photographers from Helga Paris to Michael Schmidt, along with their concrete sources of inspiration. Assignments will mirror various photo techniques used in the examples discussed. Camera techniques and black and white printing are the fundamental basis of the class, which trains and cultivates the general attitude of mind and approach required for the successful production of black and white photographic images.
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TH208 Theater and the State in Germany Today: Aesthetics, Institutions, and Practice

Module: Approaching Arts Through Theory

Instructor: Julia Hart

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00

Theater necessarily has concrete preconditions and constraints, as is evident from an encounter with a theatrical production, however high or low-budget. What is less visible is the apparatus of institutions, organizational structures, and funding mechanisms that make theater possible within any given context. Germany has the largest state-funded theater system in the world. There are a total of 140 state, city, and country theaters, producing around 7,300 productions per year.  This course looks at how this state theater system really works and how theater is produced.  How does the wider institutional network (its history, funding, and interlinkage) shape the kind of productions and performances that are created? How do artists work within these parameters? First we will examine the evolution of the state theater system in Germany: the historical conditions and political pressures that brought about its existence. We then explore the approaches of individual artistic directors, dramaturges, actors, designers, and stage technicians. Practices specific to German state theater are considered, such as the "Bauprobe," where a mock-up of the set is built on-stage before rehearsals. Including visits backstage at Berlin state theater as well as performances, the seminar will track the steps that theatermakers take in rehearsal to produce a show. We will examine the German state theater from all angles, asking: how do its particular features shape identifiable kinds of aesthetic style or rival styles; what is its effect on artistic creativity as such?
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FM102 Freud and Jung go to the movies: Psychoanalysis and Film

Module: Approaching Arts Through Theory

Instructor: Matthias Hurst

Credits: 8 ECTS 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue 15:45-17:15; weekly film screening Tue 19:30-22:00

Contemporary with the rise of cinema, psychoanalysis has been both a method of interpretation in the understanding of film, and itself a subject of film representation. It has provided a model for cinematic form, through the idea of the dream as an articulation of repressed desire, and the unconscious as the source of its power and vividness. We will examine the fundamental concepts and structures of psychoanalysis, including the notions of latent and manifest content; the connections between the reality principle, pleasure principle, and death drive; the theory of the Oedipus complex, and of the structure of the psyche, divided into ego, id, and superego. Also addressed will be the concept of a collective or mass-cultural mental condition. We consider how the dramatization of psychoanalytic conflicts is staged in cinema, and how the nature and form of cinematic narrative can sometimes be explained in relationship to psychical phenomena. In the course of our analysis, we look at psychoanalysis as a running cinematic theme, with its founding figures (Freud, Jung, Sabina Spielrein) featuring as characters, and the process of therapeutic treatment constituting the plot. Films viewed will be Freud (1962, John Huston), Equus (1977, Sidney Lumet) and A Dangerous Method (2011, David Cronenberg), Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell), The Birds (1963, Alfred Hitchcock), Steppenwolf (1974, Fred Haines), Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch) and Enemy (2013, Denis Villeneuve).
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AR204 Art and Interpretation

Module: Art Objects and Experience 

Instructor: Geoff Lehman

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 14:00-15:30, Fri 14:00-17:15

Describing a painting, the art historian Leo Steinberg wrote: “The picture conducts itself the way a vital presence behaves. It creates an encounter.” In this course, we will encounter works of art to explore the specific dialogue each creates with a viewer and the range of interpretive possibilities it offers. More specifically, the course will examine various interpretive approaches to art, including formal analysis, iconography, social and historical contextualism, aestheticism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. Most importantly, we will engage interpretation in ways that are significant both within art historical discourse and in addressing larger questions of human experience and (self-)knowledge, considering the dialogue with the artwork in its affective (emotional) as well as its intellectual aspects. The course will be guided throughout by sustained discussion of a small number of individual artworks, with a focus on pictorial representation (painting, drawing, photography), although sculpture and installation art will also be considered. We will look at works from a range of different cultural traditions, and among the artists we will focus on are Xia Gui, Giorgione, Bruegel, Mirza Ali, Velázquez, Hokusai, Manet, Picasso, Man Ray, Martin, and Sherman. Readings will focus on texts in art history and theory but also include philosophical and psychoanalytic texts (Pater, Wölfflin, Freud, Merleau-Ponty, Barthes, Clark, and Krauss, among others). Visits to Berlin museums to experience works of art firsthand are an integral part of the course.
Syllabus

AH209 Radicalism of the Avant-Garde

Module: Art and Artists in Context 

Instructor: Susanne Märtens

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15

The term “avant-garde” has become a mainstay of art-historical description. But what does this term actually mean? How did the practices and movements classed in this manner alter the way art is conceived, produced, presented, and displayed? This course examines the transformation of art in the period between 1900 and 1930. We will look at how movements such as Expressionism, Dadaism, Constructivism, Bauhaus and Surrealism proposed completely new ideas of the artwork. A work came to be conceived as the result of any kind of practice serving the programmatic purpose of the artist. In his Triadisches Ballet Oskar Schlemmer combined dance and pictorial art, while Kurt Schwitters invented the dadaistic sound poem (Ursonate). Other innovations, from Bauhaus and Werkbund, aimed at eliminating the traditional distinction between the fine arts, design and crafts. Traditional boundaries and hierarchies between artistic fields and media were overcome; photography could be used in unusual ways (abstract photography) and new artistic techniques like collage and montage (John Heartfield, Hannah Höch) were invented. The significance of these developments will be analyzed in the context of the institutionally-sanctioned art produced around 1900, dominated by painters like Adolf Menzel, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt or Lovis Corinth. Our investigation of the avant-garde includes discussion of its manifestos, and of original works in museums, collections, and archives.
Syllabus

TH140 Practices of Making in the Performing Arts

Module: Artistic Practice/Approaching Arts Through Theory

Instructor: Eva Meyer-Keller

Credits: 8 ECTS 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:45

This course is about establishing and reflecting on practices of making, presenting, watching and responding in the field of performing arts. No previous experience is needed. The processes and practices of making are driven by the interests of each student. They can be inspired by topics that are brought in from other spheres (politics, the social etc.). They might also be generated by the works of other students or by other performance works that will be presented at the beginning of each class. The students will watch each other’s presentations with a focus on the workings of what they encounter, rather than on judging or evaluating. They are asked to describe what they see, including associations that are evoked by the showings. To facilitate this, different methods of giving feedback are introduced. The focus is on the accumulation of material and on finding (unexpected) connections. As part of the seminar, students will look at a broad range of examples from the performing arts - from body-based work, dance, storytelling, object-related performances, conceptual performance art, installation works, video performance - in order to get inspiration for their own performance work in class. In particular, we will discuss works by artists such as Martha Rossler, Bobby Baker, Trisha Brown, Meg Stuart, Erwin Wurm, Hito Steyerl, Fischli & Weiß, Ann Halprin, La Ribot and others. We will watch video excerpts, read scores, descriptions of the works, etc. This exposure serves as an inspiration and as reference material for regular feedback sessions.
Syllabus

Economics Foundational Modules

EC110 Principles of Economics

Module: Principles of Economics

Instructors: Martin Binder, Beatrice Farkas

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15

This course is an introduction to the essential ideas of economic analysis. It elaborates the basic model of consumer and firm behavior, including demand and supply, in the context of an idealized competitive market, and examines several ways in which the real world deviates from this model, including monopoly, minimum wages and other price controls, taxes, and government regulation. The assumptions concerning human behavior that underlie economics are presented and critiqued. The course is also concerned with the aggregate behavior of modern economies: growth and measurement of the economy, unemployment, interest rates, inflation, government spending and its impact, and international trade. Part of the course focuses on the government tools used to influence economic growth and individuals' behavior.
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MA151 Introduction to Statistics

Module: Statistics

Instructor: Seraphine Maerz

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30

The goal of this course is to introduce students to quantitative methods in political science and economics. The course covers the basics of descriptive and inferential statistics, including probability theory, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. To facilitate students’ ability to understand and critically engage with these methods, examples of quantitative social science research are discussed throughout the course. Classes are complemented with exercises to build students’ skills in applying the learned methods independently. Many of these exercises use data from public opinion surveys, which cover a wide range of social, economic, and political topics. Working with this survey data, students will also have the opportunity to explore research questions of their own. At the end of the course, students will be able to read and engage with the majority of modern quantitative research. They also will be well prepared to pursue a variety of more advanced quantitative research courses.
Syllabus

This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.

EC210 Microeconomics (Section A)

Module: Microeconomics

Instructor: Israel Waichman

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30

Microeconomics is the study of how individual economic units (households and firms) interact to determine outcomes (allocation of goods and services) in a market setting. This course further develops principles and analytical methods introduced by the Principles of Economics course. The first part of the course deals with consumer behavior, market demand and the extent to which a consumer’s decisions can be modeled as rational. The second part of the course deals with the theory of the firm and the positive and normative characteristics of alternative market structures—perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, pure monopoly, and, in resource markets, monopsony—are studied in depth. Finally, the efficiency of market outcomes is studied as well as conditions (e.g. the presence of externalities) under which markets are not efficient. Part of the course is devoted to problem solving, in which students present solutions to specific case studies.
Syllabus

EC210 Microeconomics (Section B)

Module: Microeconomics

Instructor: Israel Waichman

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30

Microeconomics is the study of how individual economic units (households and firms) interact to determine outcomes (allocation of goods and services) in a market setting. This course further develops principles and analytical methods introduced by the Principles of Economics course. The first part of the course deals with consumer behavior, market demand and the extent to which a consumer’s decisions can be modeled as rational. The second part of the course deals with the theory of the firm and the positive and normative characteristics of alternative market structures—perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, pure monopoly, and, in resource markets, monopsony—are studied in depth. Finally, the efficiency of market outcomes is studied as well as conditions (e.g. the presence of externalities) under which markets are not efficient. Part of the course is devoted to problem solving, in which students present solutions to specific case studies.
Syllabus

Ethics and Politics Foundational Modules

SO130 Introduction to Urban Research

Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies

Instructor: Stefania Animento

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30

The city is an increasingly complex social matrix. Urban researchers deploy all kinds of methods from social sciences in order to explore it. Excavating data is a crucial task for those who want to tackle the urban realities within which people live and interact. Social research, however, is not limited to describing social life; it also seeks to explain the mechanisms through which social groups and phenomena are connected. Far from being an automatic process, generating data requires constant reflection and the careful selection of methods that best fit the research questions. Furthermore, it is fundamental to understand the different logics behind qualitative and quantitative research. Finally, the spatial context always comes into play as a crucial variable. This course intends to awaken students’ sociological imagination, to help them formulate meaningful research questions and develop coherent research designs. Through the focus on urban social life, students will learn how to conduct social research in contemporary urban societies. In the first part, the course will provide an overview of crucial theoretical issues related to conducting urban research. In the second part, students will explore the practical tools required to conduct qualitative social research in the city. Self-reflexivity and self-positioning of the researcher will also be discussed. Selected qualitative methods, such as interviewing, ethnography, discourse analysis, visual sociology, etc. will be practiced with a learning-by-doing approach and through several excursions in Berlin neighborhoods. Students will be required to complete three assignments: conducting an interview, doing a field observation, and developing a research design.
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PT120 Introduction to Political Theory: State versus Nature

Module: History of Political Thought

Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15

This course offers an historical introduction to political theory through the contrast between the political human and its “natural” other. Philosophers continually appeal to this distinction, starting  with the difference between man and animal, to justify particular modes of power. We begin with Aristotle's definition of the human as the "political animal" and then move to Augustine's rejection of this term in favor of a peculiar theological citizenship. Entering the modern period, we contrast the uses that Hobbes and Rousseau make of the "state of nature" as the precondition of the social contract that assures legitimate authority. As industrialization conquers the modern world, Marx seeks to overcome alienation through a materialism that asserts that "nature is man's inorganic body." Finally, our approach to more recent political thought will be guided by Arendt's conception of world alienation, marked by an age in which humans "seek to make life also artificial." As we study these thinkers and others, we will see how the opposition between state and nature works both as a method of inclusion and exclusion as conceptions of rights and political participation expand. At the same time, we will consider how this powerful contrast helps us grasp the Faustian modern drive to remake the world and the potentially totalitarian consequences of this drive.
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PL208 Introduction to Existentialism

Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy

Instructor: Tracy Colony

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00

One of the most important philosophical movements of the 20th century is unquestionably Existentialism. The philosophy of existence developed by Jean-Paul Sartre can be seen as the clearest expression of this movement. In this course we will read selections from Sartre and other core representatives of French Existentialism. However, this reading will be prepared for by tracing through important philosophical lines of influence which the existentialists often acknowledged in the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. All texts will be read in translation, however, parallel readings in the original French or German will be supported and encouraged.
Syllabus

SO145 Legal and Illegal Migration in Germany Since World War II

Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies

Instructor: Marion Detjen

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15

This course is an introduction to post-War migration history in Germany, with a special focus on “legal” and “illegal” migration and the discourses, policies and concepts of legality that shaped this distinction. In the first half of the term, we will seek to understand why Germany finds it so difficult to conceive of itself as an immigration country. We also examine what kind of migration regimes the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic developed after the Second World War. As we will see, these regimes emerged within the framework of the division and subsequent unification of the two German states, and within a wider European and global context. What means of entry and exit were allowed in the period under examination? What kinds of status were accorded to migrants and refugees, and how did these alter under pressure from changing economic and political exigencies? In the second half of the course we will explore how the various parties involved dealt with the restrictions and the loopholes of the law, often combining “legal” with “illegal” means. We will compare the phenomenon of Fluchthelfer (“escape helpers,” dubbed Menschenhändler by the East German government) with people-smuggling at the European borders today, and we will discuss the connections between the fight against “organized immigration crime” and current negotiations for resettlement programs. The course offers insight into a broad range of methods of migration research and draws on both published and unpublished sources. We will interview experts on border crossings, work on a case study, and make excursions to the Berlin Wall Museum at Bernauer Straße and the NGO Flüchtlingspaten Syrien e.V. At the end of the term, you will be asked to present your own project in a visualised form, using presentation software like Prezi, or film, or collage. Your project can if you wish be continued next term in a “research-creation” class as a more elaborate work of art.
Syllabus

SC203 Bioethics and Biosciences

Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy 

Instructors: Ian Lawson

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Mon & Wed 9:00-10:30

How do we define death, and when does life begin? Do we own our bodies? Does our biological knowledge of animals conflict with their legal status? Contemporary advances in biology and biotechnology have the potential to radically alter the way we answer such questions, and confront ethical debates with complicated and context-sensitive procedures and theories. The first focus of this course will be on tracing the origins of common values and assumptions about life, and the aims of scientific interventions on biology. Second, the course will cover some details of biological theory and biomedical procedures, including recent developments in technologies such as genetic manipulation and stem cell research. These foci, the ethical and the scientific, will be explored through particular case studies in medicine and environmental science. Taking an evidence-based, history-of-science approach to these bioethical questions, students will analyze in a critical fashion the application of ethical reasoning to complex technoscientific issues. The course does not aim to provide definitive responses to ethical questions or to give an overview of historical ethical frameworks, but rather to develop an understanding of the complex relationship between knowledge and values, in the particular field of biology and medicine. Among the topics explored will be classic issues in medical ethics about the beginnings and ends of lives, the allocation of public resources, and the line between treatment and enhancement. The broader implications for local and global environments, and postcolonial concerns about biological research and medical intervention will also be addressed.
Syllabus

This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.

PS116 The Idea of the State

Module: History of Political Thought

Instructor: Stefania Maffeis

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30

In contemporary political thought, the state is perceived on the one hand as an outdated institution, controlled and governed by supra- or transnational economic, political and legal organizations. On the other, it is claimed that globalized orders can only be constituted and legitimized within local and national power relations.  In order to understand and intervene in these debates, it is helpful to first examine the idea of the national-state in its historical and geopolitical transformations. Following a brief introduction to its precursors, this course follows the development of this idea from the Early Modern period through the critique of the state in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy to contemporary debates on transnationality and cosmopolitanism. Central to our deliberations will be the questions of legitimacy, security, property, and representation that are the cornerstones of modern political thought. Most notable among the texts considered will be Machiavelli’s The Prince and the theories of the state elaborated by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Turning to the idealist transformation of the English outline of the state in German philosophy, we consider the Hegelian concept of the absolute state and its anti-capitalist critique by Marx and Marxism. The final section of the course examines contemporary analyses of the functioning of state power, such as the Althusserian theory of ideology, Poulanza’s relational approach, and de- postcolonial, postcolonial and feminist conceptions of the state. In conclusion, we turn to present-day debates on transnationality and cosmopolitanism.
Syllabus

The following courses are cross-listed with Politics:

PT150 Global Citizenship  

Module: Political Systems and Structures

Instructor: Kerry Bystrom

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

PS119 Introduction to Comparative Politics

Module: Political Systems and Structures

Instructor: Boris Vormann

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
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IN110 Globalization and International Relations  

Module: Political Systems and Structures

Instructor: Boris Vormann

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
Syllabus

Literature and Rhetoric Foundational Modules

LT111 Reading into Writing: A fiction workshop

Module: Written Arts

Instructor: Paul Festa 

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15

Every writer learns the craft by reading. This course, open to students of any level, focuses on that process of self-expression through analysis, criticism, absorption and invention. Each week students will read and write; they will also critique each other’s work. Readings from masters of short and long fiction, and of criticism, will inform exercises in plot and closure; character development, point of view and voice; figurative language, style and genre; action, atmosphere and description; the persistent alternative between showing and telling; and techniques of revision, excision and rewriting. Several online or in-person classroom visits by authors on the syllabus are planned. We’ll look at fiction and criticism by authors including Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Shirley Jackson, Hilary Mantel, Edward St. Aubyn, Paul La Farge, Alexander Chee, Karl Soehnlein, Andrew Sean Greer, Jennifer Egan, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Francine Prose. Texts on the art of writing include those by Prose and James Wood.
Syllabus 

LT102 The Contemporary Novel

Module: Close Reading

Instructor: James Harker

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15

The novel, by far the most widely read literary genre of the modern era, E.M. Forster reluctantly had to admit, “tells a story.” But the art of novel is not just in what the story is; it is in how the story is told. In this course we will learn how novels work through the key terms and concepts for the study of narrative fiction. We will become familiar with the fundamentals of formal realism, the story/discourse distinction, reliable and unreliable narration, focalization, storyworlds, natural and unnatural narrative, and ways of reporting speech and thought. We will see how these concepts illuminate literary works through an in-depth study of three contemporary novelists, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Zadie Smith, who both offer prime examples of novelistic conventions and break those conventions in interesting ways. Novels will include McEwan’s Atonement and Nutshell; Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Smith’s On Beauty. Theorists will include Henry James, Wayne Booth, Gerard Genette, Monika Fludernik, Brian Richardson, and others. The course will involve collaborative exchange with students in a linked course at Smolny College in St. Petersburg.
Syllabus

FM102 Freud and Jung go to the Movies: Psychoanalysis and Film

Module: Critical and Cultural Theory

Cross-listed with Art and Aesthetics

Instructor: Matthias Hurst

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15; weekly film screening Tue 19:30-22:00
Syllabus

LT118 Introduction to Critical and Cultural Theory

Module: Critical and Cultural Theory

Instructor: Hannah Proctor

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15

The course introduces the key texts, concepts and methodological approaches of different traditions of Cultural Studies and Critical Theory, including perspectives from feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism and black studies.  We consider these sources under four main headings: the question of human subjectivity and its social, institutional and political arrangement: how might different forms of writing or reading reflect, bolster or challenge power relations? How does the culture we inhabit inform how we read or write? Is there such thing as a stable and coherent subject? Our second theme will be the role of media, spectacle and mass culture in our efforts to understand the world: what does the analysis of seemingly trivial cultural phenomena, everyday commodities or popular culture tell us about the world? Where is meaning located and how is it produced in a world of commercialised mass media, pervasive advertising, globalised markets and rampant consumerism? We also consider the ways in which the technologies we use change our perception and cognition. Situating literature in technological and material contexts, we will explore the ways in which literature has reshaped and redefined itself across time.
Syllabus

LT122 The Politics & Practice of Cultural Production in the Modern Middle East & North Africa 

Module: Literary History

Instructor: Dina Ramadan

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30

The politics and practice of cultural production in the Middle East and North Africa can provide for a complicated and multifaceted understanding of the region. This course will draw upon a series of thematic case studies beginning with European colonialism in the late 19^th century to today’s contemporary ‘globalized’ context and the “Arab Spring”. These case studies will illustrate how cultural production—including novels, films, video artworks, performance, painting, television, blogs and tweets—can be read as a form of documentation, potential intervention or resistance to a range of prevailing narratives. In doing so, this course asks how the social, economic, and political conditions of the region bear upon the production and consumption of culture, and the ways in which cultural producers negotiate such conditions.
Syllabus

LT245 Writing the Self: Autobiography and/as Fiction?

Module: Literary History

Instructor: Laura Scuriatti

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30

What do we read when we read autobiographies, and why would we want to read them? The course focuses on the literary genre of the autobiography, exploring the way in which the self is constructed in literature and narrative form, asking questions about the relationship between truth and fiction in narrative, reflecting on problems specific to the genre, such as the working of memory and the tension between invention and disclosure. Starting from early examples of self-narrative, students will examine canonical texts, such as Saint-Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy, Rousseau's Confessions, Montaigne's Essays, Wordsworth’s Prelude, and modernist and contemporary autobiographies--including texts in which the boundary between autobiography and fiction is hard to draw--and will also reflect on the relationship between the texts and the historical moment in which they were produced.
Syllabus

Politics Foundational Modules

PT150 Global Citizenship  

Module: International Studies and Globalization

Instructor: Kerry Bystrom

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30

Citizenship is traditionally a concept associated with nation-states, and at base signifies the status of belonging to a bounded political order and the rights and duties this entails. Yet economic, legal and technological globalization increasingly calls state boundaries into question, and borderless problems such as climate change, forced migration, epidemics, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism require collective action on an equally global scale. In this context, global citizenship has been promoted as a sensibility and indeed as an emerging reality. This course explores the notion of “global citizenship” from the philosophical, cultural, and political perspectives and challenges students to think critically about what global citizenship can and should mean. We will explore the history of this concept, with its roots in ancient philosophy as well as in modern definitions of national borders and processes of globalization; critiques of it; and contemporary experiences and movements through which it might be forged.  The heart of the course will be in an interdisciplinary exploration of two of the borderless problems already noted above—climate change and forced migration—through readings and discussion of novels, film, social theory, social scientific research, and policy documents from international institutions like the UN. Texts will include essays by Kant, Martha Nussbaum and Craig Calhoun, Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior and Michael Winterbottom's In This World. An important part of the course will be exchange between students enrolling in this course in different locations across the Bard network (USA, Russia, Lithuania, Palestine, Kyrgyzstan).
Syllabus

PS119 Introduction to Comparative Politics

Module: Comparative Politics

Instructor: Boris Vormann

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00

Why and how do political systems differ from one another? Which processes have led to the formation of distinct political regimes? And how do these historical variations affect politics today? In addressing these questions in a wide set of contexts, this course provides an introduction to key theoretical approaches and concepts in the comparative study of politics. The focus will be on core topics in political development such as state and nation building, the role of the state in the economy, its relationship to civil society and processes of democratization. We will also look at different types of political regimes, electoral and party systems—and the ways in which they affect the structure, functioning, and social role of political institutions. We explore these topics from a comparative perspective in combining theoretical texts with case studies. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand important topics in domestic politics, grasp the diversity of political systems and regimes, and analyze current political developments.
Syllabus

IN110 Globalization and International Relations  

Module: International Studies and Globalization

Instructor: Boris Vormann

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15

In the social sciences, globalization is often defined as an increase in the mobility of various factors and actors. This definition includes heightened flows of finance capital, the rise of global production networks in expanding divisions of labor as well as the movement of people and ideas. This course uses standard international relations theories as a starting point to examine how growing networks of exchange and circulation have altered political calculation, economic geographies, and governmental arrangements. A particular focus will be placed on the political processes that have facilitated and increased mobility over time, from the emergence of the interstate system in the late nineteenth century, to the globalization of trade and interdependence in our own historical moment. We will explore new actor constellations and shifting power arrangements in more detail with regards to transnational environmental issues, asymmetric warfare, and humanitarian interventions. In so doing, we consider the ways in which the phenomena and levels of globalization challenge the traditional paradigms of the social sciences and prompt a new formulation of the field of international relations.
Syllabus

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis  

Module: Policy Analysis

Instructor: Agatha Siwale

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15

This course will introduce students to the definition of policy problems, the identification of alternative solutions to these, and the criteria governing the choice between these alternatives. Students are exposed to the various sources of evidence upon which assessment of alternatives is carried out as well as to the basis for considering policy impact. Through case studies, presentations and reviews of professionally-conducted policy analyses, students will receive a first-hand exposure to both the basic steps of this undertaking, and will have an opportunity to critique real-world policy decisions. Cases for analysis will include government policies on aging populations and social policies relating to housing and community development. The course will involve both individual and team work. Key outcomes will include an introductory knowledge of policy analysis, an ability to engage with policy problems and decide on the best policy solution. The courses fosters an ability to articulate policy recommendations both verbally and in writing.
Syllabus

The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics

Art and Aesthetics Advanced Modules

In addition to regular courses, a series of practicing arts workshops are offered in the fall semester (Oct. 29 until Nov 1, 2018). For more information click here.

AH235 Reframing Museum Collections

Module: Artists, Genres, Movements / Exhibition Culture and Public Space

Instructor: Jenny Dirksen

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00

Throughout the past two decades, a history of art hitherto defined by an almost exclusively North-Atlantic perspective has been slowly broadening its horizons. As a consequence, art-historical narratives are now being generated that are informed by critical theory and postcolonial studies. These new approaches move away from the Western canon toward a more global art history. Collection displays of museums have been resistant to such a development for a long time. How can a museum frame its holdings in such a way as to critically reflect upon the art narratives it presents? What special challenges might a museum of modern art face? How could radical changes in outlook affect not only the display of collections, but also an institution's understanding of art and of its own trajectory? The course addresses these questions by taking as an example the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and its 18th-21st century art collections. For more than two years, the institution has been working on the project “Hello World. Revising a Collection,” researching its own history and holdings. A preliminary visit to the exhibition of the same title is encouraged (28 April to 26 August, 2018, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin). The course includes off-campus visits to some of the displays and depots of the Alte Nationalgalerie, Neue Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin.
Syllabus

FA208 Photography is Magic

Module: Media, Practices, Techniques

Instructor: April Gertler

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00

This class focuses on alternative photographic processes, or alternative image-making and printing techniques. The processes addressed will include pin-hole photography, cyanotypes and large format printing. Prerequisites are a clear understanding of how to use a 35mm analogue film camera and work in the darkroom, as well as the ability to mix chemical preparations and print images. Each student must have his or her own camera. If a student has completed the beginner's photography course at either Bard College Berlin or their home institution they are qualified to take this course. The historical component of the class will introduce students to international artists and image makers who have worked with the different image-making processes with which we are concerned throughout the semester.
Syllabus

FM240 Frankenstein’s Heirs: Mary Shelley’s Novel and Film Adaptations

Module: Artists, Genres, Movements

Instructor: Matthias Hurst

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15; weekly screening Mon 19:30-22:00

This course is dedicated to Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) and its cultural repercussions, particularly as charted by the numerous adaptations of the book in film. The story of an ambitious scientist who, like God himself, creates life, but then fails to take responsibility for his creation, stands as a landmark in the tradition of Gothic fiction and is seen by many scholars as the first modern science fiction novel. The idea of the “mad scientist” and the human inclination to hubris, inspired by Frankenstein and his transgressive experiment, has become a pivotal motif in fantastic literature and film. As an imaginative (Romantic) response to the darker sides of enlightenment rationality, Shelley’s novel features ideas that are still relevant in our contemporary moment, namely the inherent potential dangers represented by human accomplishments in technology and the natural sciences as well as the need to conduct scientific research and experiments with due respect to ethical values. Seen from another perspective, the novel also presents the story of Frankenstein’s creature (the “monster") as a Bildungsroman: the existential drama of a sentient being left alone in a hostile world, a world deserted by God or any source of spiritual guidance. As well as bringing together and commenting upon a range of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment discourses, Frankenstein subsequently became the medium through which general cultural and social anxieties were expressed. In this course we examine not only the story and its legacy, but the way in which the generation of a powerful cultural myth can become the container and vehicle for highly diverse anxieties and preoccupations across time.
Syllabus

FA306 Ecologies of the Visit / Consumer Ecologies

Module: Media, Practices, Techniques 

Instructor: Richard Frater

Credits: 8 ECTS , 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15

This course addresses aesthetics of environmentalism from the perspective of visitors and consumers. We are consumers in a climate where purchase power is considered to be a political act. Studying the visual communication and political representation of NGOs, big energy, and clothing brands, can help us to juggle the persuasions of narrative, revealing limitations and possibilities for the conscionable consumer. From a local perspective, we are visitors to the site of BCB. What other visitors are present in this geography? The site is managed by a gardener and co-inhabited by non-human species that mingle with the learners. Should we think about climate change as if it was a brand? Global warming: Change we can believe in! This traces a capitalist idiom like, what is good for nature is ultimately good for consumerism too. The Madrid clothing brand Ecoalf promotes cleaner oceans by harvesting ocean plastic trash from fishing liners and transforming it back into raw nylon for their next season of urban wear. Climatol­­ogists, however, argue that in these instances of matter being redistributed for a political cause, expenditure has not been reduced. Refining existing plastics can expend as much energy as its “birth” production, contributing further to our climb up the carbon ladder. In this course we will visit these different perspectives on environmentalism, relating to practical activities like birding in Berlin city as well as to more ontological problems like humanity visiting earth. The course is graded on two practical outcomes. The participant selects an existing contemporary product and develops an essay, be it a photo or video or text about a contemporary product that openly displays environmental awareness. This will take the final form of an exhibition or a publication. Collectively, we develop an environmental work, like a garden, that will stay with Bard College Berlin.
Syllabus

FM316 “Tearjerks” and Feeling Real - A Visceral Video Process

Module: Media, Practices, Techniques

Instructor: Dafna Maimon

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00

Films known as “tearjerkers” are calculated to move their audiences to feel sympathy, sadness and indeed, even shed tears. As such, they are a form of emotional manipulation regardless of their makers underlying intentions: films may normalize and limit our expectations of life as much as they may liberate our fantasies and challenge us into new ways of thinking. In this class, we will explore the question of how moving image and film as media transmit emotions and generate authenticity, which can at once change, relay, and influence the audience’s own reality. While mainstream romantic comedies, for example, may follow formulaic approaches to manufacturing audience emotions, we will explore the creation of affect through a more visceral process. We will undergo a rigorous and challenging creative practice utilizing a multitude of techniques, through numerous assignments to find out what the emotion is that we want to convey, and how to do so, through a deeply personally-crafted language. Students joining this class should have experience in video making, be open-minded, and ready to experiment with methods like improvisation, role-playing, method-acting, somatic exercises, drawing, costume and set production, and be willing to get their hands dirty in the process. Alongside our own experimentations in video, we will analyze documentary and fiction works from filmmakers and video artists who place emotions and the production of affect in the center of their practices, as well as visit exhibitions and Berlin-based artists in their studios. Ultimately, the goal will be to create a short video work that will burst through the screen directly into the emotional and visceral reality of our viewers.
Syllabus

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

Module: Media, Practices, Techniques

Instructor: John Kleckner

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15

This advanced studio course is designed to connect the gamut of materials and techniques in contemporary painting with the development of an individual aesthetic style. Weekly sessions will expose students to a wide range of experimental paint applications with the aim of synchronizing chosen materials and methods with expression and content. Classes will feature demonstrations of techniques such as airbrushing, marbling, projection, masking, stamping, stencils, collage, and inkjet printing on canvas. Students will gain experience working with oil, acrylic, enamel, vinyl, and gouache paints. Material demonstrations will be augmented by readings, slideshows, gallery tours, and studio visits. The syllabus begins with group assignments that become increasingly directed toward personalized content and independent projects. The ideal student will have previous painting experience and be highly motivated to make a body of work. The semester will culminate in a student group exhibition. 

IMPORTANT: This course is NOT recommended for beginners. Students should have prior experience with painting materials & concepts. The professor requests that students interested in this course submit a portfolio of their work directly to [email protected]  Deadline for portfolio submission is one week before registration. Registration for this class can only happen with the permission of the instructor.
Syllabus

AH302 The Idea of the Aesthetic

Module: Aesthetics and Art Theory

Instructor: Katalin Makkai

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00

“Aesthetics” and “aesthetic” are terms that are often taken for granted inside as well as outside academic discourse. We speak of aesthetic experiences and judgments and qualities, and we employ “aesthetics” to designate the study of such matters. Although their root is taken from the Greek, the now-familiar terms (in their now-familiar usages) are, however, comparatively new. They are commonly regarded as having been introduced into the philosophical lexicon in the eighteenth century—a few hundred years ago. This course studies some of the texts that were key to the discovery, or perhaps the invention, of the “aesthetic”. What work was the idea meant to do? How did its evolution retain or reconfigure its original senses and purposes? Is the idea of the aesthetic problematic, ideological, or chimerical? Do we need such an idea to think about nature and our relation to it? Authors addressed include Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Coleridge, Bell, Beardsley, Bullough, Stolnitz, Isenberg, Dickie, Greenberg, Carroll, Bernstein, Rancière.Do we need an idea of the aesthetic to think about art? Authors include Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Clive Bell, George Dickie, Clement Greenberg, Susan Sontag, Danto, Adorno, Terry Eagleton, Rancière.
Syllabus

AH308 Art of Two German States – 1945-1989

Module: Artists, Genres, Movements / Exhibition Culture and Public Space

Instructor: Dorothea Schöne

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue 14:00-17:15

The two German states founded at the end of the Second World War pursued highly distinctive policies in respect to the development of the visual arts. Their respective strategies had a decisive impact on the history of modern art, and on the relationship between institutional art production and instances of critique and experiment. The GDR as a Communist republic under Russian influence endorsed the aesthetic of "socialist realism," which strongly influenced its public art and monuments. Artists were expected to belong to state-sponsored organizations and to serve the interests of the polity. At the same time, possibilities for dissent and independent innovation did exist, and found expression at pivotal moments in the GDR's lifespan. In West Germany, a capitalist liberal democracy, the picture was apparently very different. But here too, state policy shaped the kind of art thought favorable to the promotion of international alliances—in this case the strengthening of the link to the United States. The dominance of the styles associated with now-classic "modern art" can be directly attributed to this policy. As well as meeting immediate global and domestic political demands, art policy in the two German states affected the treatment (or encouraged repression) of the "German catastrophe" (the Nazi regime, the war, and the Holocaust) that was their common historical origin. This course examines the divergent policies of the two German states in respect to art-making, display, and promotion, and traces the consequences of policy for the work of individuals and groups. Artists whose careers began in the period under discussion will visit the class to discuss the degree to which German unification changed their practice.
Syllabus

FA210 MORE Than A Thousand Words: Experimental Picture-Making

Module: Media, Practices, Techniques 

Instructor: John von Bergen

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00

This course looks at what may be possible as picture-making / storytelling through unconventional materials and techniques. Any experimental process that students wish to explore and develop will be encouraged, be it sculptural, digital, performative, or with multi-media. The end results should involve “the picture”, and a personal journey to achieve these results that steps outside the boundaries of conventional two-dimensional image-making. The semester will begin with more conventional techniques to explore the basics of graphic solutions as part of the “sketch” phase (from charcoal drawing to photoshop) but will escalate soon into exploring techniques and discussing concepts that relate directly to one’s interest. We may at times develop, as a team, solutions for one another that could involve everything from “grinding steel” to “GPS tracking.” Kara Walker, Vik Muniz, Jonathan Lasker, Marcus Harvey, Sue Webster and Tim Noble are just some of the contemporary artists we will look at who continue to approach picture-making through some unique process. Please note: This is an intermediate class, and having had some basic drawing experience would be beneficial. Also please note that grading will depend on experimentation, so those students wishing to work mainly with conventional media (drawing / collage / painting) may want to consider this carefully before registering.
Syllabus

AR313 Contemporary Art in Berlin

Module: Exhibition Culture and Public Space

Instructor: Dorothea von Hantelmann

Credits: 8 ECTS , 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15

In the past 20 years Berlin has advanced to the status of a global arts capital. In this course we will explore the contemporary arts scenes of this city. We will go to galleries and exhibitions, visit theater performances, artist talks, concerts and theoretical conferences. These visits will be framed by classroom sessions, in which we will dive deeper into individual artistic practices, discourses and theories. The aim of this course is to not only provide an insight into various contemporary art practices, but to also understand their position within a city like Berlin that largely lives from its creative industries and thus in an exemplary way shows how politics, urbanism, economy and creativity are linked in the 21st century. Our discussions of this “creativity complex” will be accompanied by a reading of several chapters of Andreas Reckwitz’s seminal book “The invention of creativity” (2017).
Syllabus

AR320 Genealogies of Contemporary Art: From Work to Situation

Module: Aesthetics and Art Theory / Exhibition Culture and Public Space

Instructor: Dorothea von Hantelmann

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15

This is the first in a loose series of courses that explore histories and genealogies of contemporary art. Entitled “From Work to Situation” the course will trace concepts of art since the 1960s, with a particular focus on situational and performative practices that have emerged in the second half of the 20th century. We will discuss artistic phenomena such as Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, Performance Art and the Situationists, and read canonical art-historical texts by authors such as Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Benjamin Buchloh. In particular, our aim is to understand the relation between the critical and political impetus of these art forms (e.g. in the context of feminism) and their attempts to challenge the material substance of the artwork and its relation to the viewer. In the final part of the seminar, we will discuss Nicholas Bourriaud’s concept of “Relational Aesthetics” from 1998 and its critical reception in the first decade of the 21st century. Bourriaud’s text will be used as a basis for the discussion of hybridisations between object and situation in today’s art. About one third of the classes will take place in the framework of visits to museums and galleries in the city.
Syllabus

TH318 Contemporary Performance and Posthuman poet(h)ics

Module: Media, Practices, Techniques 

Instructor: Siegmar Zacharias

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Sat & Sun 14:00-20:00 on the following weekends: September 15 (Saturday only), September 22-23, October 13-14, November 10 (Saturday only), November 24 (Saturday only) 

At a time when a binary way of thinking about the world as split between nature and culture, human and non-human, living and non-living is becoming destabilised, performance art can be a learning ground for developing and enduring dynamic systems that are not predetermined, but generative and co-created by diverse agents in defiance of existing power dynamics. This course has both a theoretical and a practical dimension, and encourages an entanglement of theory and practice. Siegmar Zacharias is an artist and theorist who collaborates with humans and non-humans, researching intimacy and alienation as forces of a posthuman poet(h)ics. We will be reading texts by Rosi Braidotti, Elisabeth Povinelli, Timothy Morton, Laboria Cuboniks, looking at the relations between the posthuman turn, new materialist ontologies and an affirmative ethics of endurance. Reading and writing practices will be accompanied by an analysis of contemporary performance practices. We will be asking: How does performance make us think and experience differently than theory? What are artistic practices of endurance in relation to intimacy and alienation? We will engage in practicing alternative modes of knowledge production, including embodied thinking together, intimate microlectures, self experiments, collaboration with nonhumans, ongoing practical material exploration and creating a presentational format.
Syllabus

Economics Advanced Modules

EC315 Behavioral Economics

Module: Behavioral Economics

Instructor: Martin Binder

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00

While much of the core of economic theory is based on the rational choice model of human activity (i.e. the human being is seen as homo economicus, a hyper-rational and solely self-interested individual), research in psychology calls for a more realistic picture of human decision-making. Behavioral economics is the subdiscipline of economics that aims at modifying the rational choice model of behavior in the direction of a more realistic model that accounts for bounded rationality, the use of heuristics, and the analysis of how human decisions are driven by emotions, and distorted by various biases. This course familiarizes students with this new and fascinating approach to economics and presents economic models that take into account the rich psychological structure of human decision-making. We analyze the consequences of using such a nuanced behavioral model of decision-making, and of taking into account the existence of social preferences (such as other-regarding, altruistic preferences) and so forth. Courses also can deal with the implications human irrationality would have for economic policy-making as well as research into human subjective well being (“happiness”) and its economic correlates.
Syllabus

EC310 Global Economics

Module: Global Economic Systems

Instructor: Beatrice Farkas

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30

Dealing with advanced topics of macroeconomics, such as trade and financial aspects of open economic systems, this course addresses real flows of goods in international trade as well as the flow of assets and liabilities in international financial markets. Key theories of trade are discussed and evaluated along with the role played by money, credit, and banking within modern economies. The module also looks at economic systems and the organization of economic life within these systems: what are the key features of global capitalism? To what extent is economic planning relegated to the state or the market and how are these two entities distinguished? How viable are these systems and what sorts of institutions do they create?
Syllabus

EC320 Econometrics

Module: Econometrics

Instructor: Israel Waichman

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Tue & Wed 15:45-17:15

Economics is in many ways an applied science deeply anchored in real-world phenomena that can be measured and quantified. In order to answer important quantitative questions, the economist needs to collect data and assess the empirical relationships between objects of interest. Since much economic data is observational, a main task of the econometrician is trying to find out whether events that are correlated also stand in causal relationship with each other and in what order of priority. In order to answer such questions, the economist needs the toolkit of multivariate regression analysis as well as a number of sophisticated techniques that expand on the simple linear regression model (time series and panel data models, vector-autoregressive models, non- and semiparametric econometric techniques, and various methods to assess the degree to which such models fit). This course expands on the basic statistics course by applying and developing core statistical notions within an economic context. It develops literacy in applied economics, and capacity to assess claims made in that field through critique of methods of econometric analysis.
Syllabus

Ethics and Politics Advanced Modules

SO318 Down-to-Earth Knowledge in the Early Modern World

Module: Global Social Theory

Instructor: Maria Avxentevskaya

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15

What do we consider practical, useful knowledge, knowledge that is of service? We might consider a variety of skills highly convenient, like knowing how to cook or how to fix a bicycle, but we still encounter hierarchies in which practical skills are less prized than intellectual capacities. Writing the history of the early modern period was previously influenced by such a hierarchy between skill and intellect. However, new approaches have shown the tight intermingling between everyday know-how and theoretical insight, and the importance of considering actors’ active involvement in practical activities. This course explores the interaction between these two realms, and across a variety of contexts, such as the hold of the merchant ships, the workshop of the instrument maker, the meeting rooms of learned societies, the kitchens of the gentry, the grotto of the courtesan’s gardens. We will focus on understanding these sites, the physical objects found and processes staged within them, and the arguably distinctive bodies of knowledge – artisanal and humanist, empirical and bookish, popular and academic, feminine and masculine – that they established. We discover illuminating links between alchemical experiments and methodical ale brewing at country houses; between bureaucratic paper-shuffling and the evocation of new fauna in marine expeditions; between the legal protocols of a witch trial, and new rules for discourse about nature at the Royal Society in London. These practices of inquiry and invention informed techniques of observation and knowledge-acquisition and inscription, and created new knowledge concerning nature. The notion of expertise itself came as a result to be reevaluated, as did hierarchies determining unimportant or illegitimate sources or criteria of knowing –in definitive, what counted as “science”. Our course will include an examination of primary source material, and visits to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the library of the Max Planck Institute Berlin.
Syllabus

This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.

SO283 Urban Sounds and Migration

Module: Global Social Theory

Instructor: Agata Lisiak

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15

The dominant mode of apprehending society has been identified with seeing (Bull & Back 2003) and looking (Berger 1974), but everyday life is experienced in multisensory ways and so human experience can only be accounted for through what Joachim-Ernst Berendt called “a democracy of the senses”. While the visual continues to dominate the study of migration and cities, this class encourages students to listen – “with depth and humility” (Bull & Back 2003) – to the sounds of urban worlds. As migration contributes to linguistic diversity in contemporary cities, certain sounds and languages tend to be singled out as foreign and, as such, puzzling, threatening, unwanted. In the current political atmosphere, with the prevalent fear-mongering rhetoric against everything and everyone that seems foreign, critical engagement with urban sounds is not only academically exciting, it is politically urgent. The class aims at deepening students’ understanding of social experiences of migration and diversity in urban contexts and developing ways of addressing and countering exclusionary practices where they occur. In this workshop style class, students will learn and develop a range of methods including sensory ethnography, sound walks, sonic mappings, and sound-artist interventions and will document their progress (including sound samples) on a website especially designed for this class.
Syllabus

PL301 Heidegger’s Nietzsche

Module: Movements and Thinkers

Instructor: Jan Völker

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 17:30-20:45

This course focuses on a telling encounter in modern German philosophy: Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s radical revaluation of ethics and of the nature of European cultural history effected a late nineteenth-century transformation of thinking about religion, education, art, politics, and about historical progress itself. Heidegger’s work is principally known for its reintroduction of ontology into philosophy, and for its influence on the development of postwar Existentialism. Both philosophers have a fraught and compromising entanglement with politics: Nietzsche through the later use of his work in the National Socialist period (but also through the wider inspiration provided to fascism by some of his key ideas), and Heidegger through direct membership of and support for the Nazi movement, as well as the expression of anti-semitic views in his private writings. Our material is the series of seminars Heidegger led on Nietzsche during the 1930s, and the resulting voluminous book eventually published in 1961. We look at the way in which Heidegger “constructs” Nietzsche for his own purposes, as “the last metaphysician,” or the figure in whose work metaphysics reaches a crisis, expressed by the “death of God” and the emergence of nihilism amid the triumph of technology. For Heidegger, the symptom of crisis represented by Nietzsche needs to be lived through and experienced in its full destructive reality, in order for it to be possible to stage an overcoming of the absence of meaning. We look at the way in which this interpretative stance relates to Heidegger’s philosophy as a whole, and at its significance within twentieth-century thought and politics.
Syllabus 

PT320 Social Change and the German Public Sphere (in German)

Module: Law, Politics and Society / Social Commitment and the Public Sphere

Cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric

Instructor: Ulrike Wagner

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30

Continuing the German Public Sphere course from Spring 2018, this course examines the interconnections between today’s most pressing concerns in the German public discourse with organizations and institutions dedicated to actively intervening in and shaping social issues. We combine investigations of the crisis of democracy debates in German media and current research with visits to sites of civil society activism and community organizations as they have developed in past and present East and West Germany. And we engage with the topic of cultural pluralism in light of recent social, political, and religious tensions related to migration, not only in the seminar room but also through visits to local groups invested in contributing to resolving these tensions through various initiatives. Navigating a wide range of platforms for news and discussion, we look at how modern social media promotes civil movements from the political left and right, and ask what this pluralization of forms of communication means for Germany’s established public-media services. In addition to the study of current public debates and forms of civic engagement, the purpose of this course is to refine and advance your ability to articulate yourself verbally and in writing through constant vocabulary building. Students taking the class should have a C1 proficiency level.
Syllabus

LT218 Radical Theory 

Module: Global Social Theory

Instructor: James Harker

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30

This course examines some of the most influential and disruptive intellectual developments of the last century: the emergence and application of psychoanalytic theory (most notably in the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan); a rethinking of ideology and culture in the wake of Marxism (seen in the Frankfurt School, Louis Althusser, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri); the rise of structuralism (synthesized from the contributions of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, and Claude Lévi-Strauss); and the turn to post-structuralism (Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze), deconstruction (Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man), post-colonial theory (Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak), and gender and queer theory (Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler, Susan Stryker). The trajectory traced in this course is sometimes invoked by the one-word appellation, Theory, but is drawn from philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, political economy, psychology, and history. Despite the multidisciplinary origins, the epicenter of each of these approaches has been, and remains, the study of literature. This course will therefore attempt to answer an urgent question: What is it about literature that encourages and amplifies radical theorizing?
Syllabus

Literature and Rhetoric Advanced Modules

LT216 Fiction Writing Workshop 

Module: Producing Literature

Instructor: Tom Drury

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00

This course is designed to develop and enhance your capacity for imagination, empathy, and clarity and originality of written expression via the writing and reading of short fiction. As a workshop, we will be focusing primarily on your short fiction, supplemented by readings from the text Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers (ed. Joyce Carol Oates). Written requirements: 4 original short stories, 2500 words minimum, due on a rotating schedule over the course of the semester, to be collected in a portfolio at the end of the semester. In addition you will write short response papers (250 words or so) on assigned readings from the anthology. Participation requirements: Read all assigned works carefully and come to class prepared to discuss them in detail with regard to sentence structure, phrasing, narrative voice, images, dialogue, etc., and how these function as unifying elements. Analysis should be on a line-by-line, word-by-word level. Show precisely where and how a text is working (or could work better). Be creative, constructive, specific. For your fellow students' stories, I would urge you to write a one-page summary of your take and provide that to the writer along with your line-by-line notes after the story is workshopped. This exercise will help you (and, of course, the writer) to understand what you think about the work.
Syllabus

LT218 Radical Theory 

Module: Theories of Literature and Culture 

Instructor: James Harker

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30

This course examines some of the most influential and disruptive intellectual developments of the last century: the emergence and application of psychoanalytic theory (most notably in the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan); a rethinking of ideology and culture in the wake of Marxism (seen in the Frankfurt School, Louis Althusser, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri); the rise of structuralism (synthesized from the contributions of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, and Claude Lévi-Strauss); and the turn to post-structuralism (Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze), deconstruction (Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man), post-colonial theory (Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak), and gender and queer theory (Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler, Susan Stryker). The trajectory traced in this course is sometimes invoked by the one-word appellation, Theory, but is drawn from philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, political economy, psychology, and history. Despite the multidisciplinary origins, the epicenter of each of these approaches has been, and remains, the study of literature. This course will therefore attempt to answer an urgent question: What is it about literature that encourages and amplifies radical theorizing?
Syllabus

LT219 The Middle East in Berlin 

Module: Literary Movements and Forms / Writer and World

Instructor: Dina Ramadan

Credits 8 ECTS, 4 US credits

Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30

This course takes Berlin as a focal point for the study of the historical and contemporary transformations in the relationship between the Middle East and Europe. We begin with an examination of Edward Said’s omission of Germany from his seminal study Orientalism—citing German Orientalism’s “scholarly” rather than imperialistic nature—and trace how this omission has helped shape subsequent academic and public discourse. We then consider the contemporary realities of the relationship between Berlin and its Middle East. Through the examination of a broad range of cultural production, the course is structured around a series of case studies that expose students to questions surrounding the politics of representation. We will address the importance of the museological practices of Berlin’s key cultural institutions as well as the establishment of new and diverse sites of practice and exhibition that have reshaped the city as a hub of Middle Eastern cultural production.
Syllabus

SE230 Responding to Climate Change: Poetics, Politics, Participation

Module: Theories of Literature and Culture

Cross-listed with Politics

Instructor: Ramona Mosse

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
Syllabus

SO322 Critical Diversity and Decolonial Methodologies in the Liberal Arts Classroom

Module: Writer and World  

Instructor: Kathy-Ann Tan

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 12:30-15:45

In this class, we will combine theory and practice to develop a critical methodology that harnesses the potential of a Liberal Arts higher education in fostering antiracist, critical diversity and decolonial ways of thinking and doing. This is a methodology that draws on a growing body of intersectional research and scholarship from the fields of literary and cultural theory, as well as the cultural politics of education, in particular, decolonial and antiracist education. It engages with pedagogies of dissent, survival, and resistance, and provide one means of answering the question that postcolonial feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty asks, "What does it mean to think through, theorize, and engage in questions of difference and power?" The objective of this class is thus to address the conditions of cultural and knowledge production and dissemination in higher education, particularly in the Liberal Arts, the oldest program of higher education in Western history, while attuned to notions of accountability and social justice.
Syllabus

PT320 Social Change and the German Public Sphere (in German)

Module: Literary Movements and Forms

Cross-listed with Politics, and with Ethics and Politics

Instructor: Ulrike Wagner

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Tue 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

Politics Advanced Modules

PS392 Public Policy

Module: Public Policy

Instructor: Agatha Siwale

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00

The focus of this course will be the ways in which public policies are made and implemented and why policies fail or succeed. Case studies of policy processes and outcomes from various countries will be analyzed to provide students with a real-life exposure to public policies in both developed and developing-country contexts. Specific cases for analysis will include immigration policy and its impact on host and recipient countries, labour market policies, and rural and urban development policies. Students will also gain insights into the theoretical traditions that have shaped various policy approaches before analyzing how politics (political interests, institutions and political cultures) and past policies shape agenda setting and result in either policy change or stasis. The course will be designed to encourage students to engage with various policy challenges through a series of seminars and team activities that challenge them to devise, based on available evidence, viable policy solutions for problems they have identified (e.g. formulating a policy brief for submission to policy makers).
Syllabus

SE230 Responding to Climate Change: Poetics, Politics, Participation

Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice 

Cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric

Instructor: Ramona Mosse

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00

Climate change is a pressing global issue today that engages the natural sciences as much as politics, economics and contemporary culture at large. Still, the question of how to respond to climate change reveals a gap between the scientific data available and the social and political action taken. Drawing on the environmental humanities, this course examines how we respond or fail to respond to climate change by exploring how different cultural discourses on climate change shape both our imagination and our sense of political agency. We will focus on the role affect/empathy have in shaping concepts such as the Anthropocene and posthumanism, and in generating political participation/activism. Throughout, we will intertwine thinking critically about specific political, philosophical and cultural perspectives on climate change while also examining a select group of local and international institutions – e.g. the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), Berlin 21, The Guardian’s “Environmental Defenders Stories”– that offer sites of action on climate change. We will ourselves respond by creating our own radio podcast series that explores the diversity of possible actions on climate change in and beyond Berlin. Furthermore, our discussions in class will be supplemented by visits to local organizations and cultural events, as well as discussions with guest speakers.  The course materials draw on a range of genres from fiction to non-fiction and take into account film, radio, and online sources. Readings will include texts by Thoreau, Heidegger, Pope Francis, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ursula Heise, Naomi Klein, Margaret Atwood, and Duncan MacMillan among others.
Syllabus

Cross-listed with Ethics and Politics:

PL301 Heidegger’s Nietzsche

Module: Philosophy and Society 

Instructor: Jan Völker

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Wed 17:30-20:45
Syllabus

PT320 Social Change and the German Public Sphere (in German)

Module: Social Commitment and the Public Sphere

Instructor: Ulrike Wagner

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

Electives

TH239 Dance Lab: Approaches and Practice

Instructor: Eva Burghardt

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15

This course is designed as an introduction to contemporary dance and improvisation technique as well as providing space to explore theories and techniques of body-based performance work in a broader sense.  In the first half of the semester we will focus on movement and dance-based training, drawing from contemporary dance techniques and bodyworks, such as Release Technique and Body Mind Centering. Using gravity while moving into and out of the floor, finding inner and outer connections through the body and into the space will be explored. Adding to this foundational work, students will be introduced to dance improvisation and instant composition technique. While playing with different imageries and movement qualities, they will expand and develop their movement vocabulary. Rather than prescribing a specific aesthetic, the aim is to give a framework for individual exploration and expression. Listening to oneself as well as to the others will be an essential part.  The second half of the semester will shift the focus to compositional and choreographic aspects of dance. Creating solo as well as group sketches, different layers of composition such as use of space, timing, rhythm and dramaturgy will be explored. A final presentation of the resulting work, containing both improvised and set material, will be shown at the end of the semester. Throughout, the students will learn to analyze various aspects of dance and performance. An introduction to dance history, as well as excursions to dance performances in Berlin, including discussions and a written reflection afterwards, will be an integral part of the course.
Syllabus

IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar: Working Cultures, Urban Cultures

Bard in Berlin Program Course

Instructor: Florian Duijsens, Agata Lisiak

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits (in combination with an internship)

Course Times: Thu 14:00-15:30

Students enrolled in the Bard College Berlin Internship Program are required to complete the Berlin Internship Seminar, an interdisciplinary course designed to accompany the internship experience. We will meet on a weekly basis and discuss contemporary ways of living and working in Berlin and beyond: What do we mean when we talk about work? Do we need to love what we do? What renders work in/visible? How is work gendered and classed? How is work organized temporally and spatially and how does it, in turn, affect the city and its residents? What distinguishes the spaces in which we live and work today? Which new forms of work have recently emerged in Berlin? Which of them seem to thrive? How do Berlin’s art institutions and citizen-activist organizations operate? Besides in-class discussions, invited lectures, and off-campus visits, the seminar offers a platform for the exchange of observations, reflections, and comments on individual internships.
Syllabus

EL202 ESL Writing Intensive Seminar

Instructor: Ariane Simard

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00

This course is designed to develop the writing skills of non-native English speakers to prepare for academic work in American Standard English (ASE). Over the semester, students will review grammar, learn how to cite academic sources, as well as develop an effective and original academic writing voice. We will put into practice essential writing techniques such as drafting, research, critical reading skills, rewriting and workshop. Students will be graded on three short essays (2-3 pp) and one in-class essay. Upon successful completion of the class, students should be able to think critically, as well as construct compelling narratives and effective written academic arguments. In addition to some poems, short stories, and non-fiction, we will explore Berlin to help us examine ideas about identity in a rapidly changing city.
Syllabus

Language Courses

GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group A)

Instructor: Narges Roshan

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus

GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group B)

Instructor: Florian Becker

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus

GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group C)

Instructor: Christiane Bethke

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group D)

Instructor: Christiane Bethke

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Syllabus

GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group E)

Instructor: Narges Roshan

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus

GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group A)

Instructor: Christine Schott

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus

GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group B)

Instructor: Christine Schott

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group A)

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus

GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group B)

Instructor: Ulrike Harnisch

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group C)

Instructor: Ulrike Harnisch

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Syllabus

GM251 German Intermediate B2

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus

GM301 German Advanced C1

Instructor: Martin Widmann

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Syllabus

PT320 Social Change and the German Public Sphere (in German)

Module: Literary Movements and Forms / Social Commitment and the Public Sphere

Instructor: Ulrike Wagner

Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits 

Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
Syllabus

All Bard College Berlin language courses address the development of skills in reading and listening comprehension, conversation and writing within the context of the European Framework of Languages from level A1 through C2.

Beginner German A1

Emphasis on familiar vocabulary building, listening comprehension and speaking with gradual introduction to grammar and writing skills. 

Beginner German A2

Continued emphasis on listening comprehension and routine communication. Students read and write short, simple texts. 

Intermediate German B1 

Emphasis on communication skills including comprehension of standard speech and descriptive reading passages, topical conversation and simple, descriptive composition. 

Intermediate German B2 

Continued emphasis on communication skills including comprehension of extended speeches and lectures, reading of newspapers and general periodicals, spontaneous conversational interaction with native speakers and writing clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects. 

Advanced German Language C1

Development of listening and reading comprehension levels to include extended speech and some literary texts. Emphasis on conversational and writing skills to express ideas and opinions and present detailed descriptions expressing points of view. 

Advanced German Language C2 

Development of comprehension skills to allow for understanding of all forms of spoken language and written texts. Emphasis on communication skills for the fluent expression of ideas and argument both orally and in written form.