Course List Search

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

EC110 Principles of Economics (Group A)

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon & Wed 0900-1030
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Israel Waichman

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.

Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

EC212 Experimental Economics

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue 0900-1215
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Israel Waichman

Experimental economics is the application of experimental methods to economic questions. Experiments are used in economics to test the descriptive accuracy of economic models, to study behavior in cases where theory provides ambiguous predictions (or no predictions), and also to test the effectiveness of economic policies. The course aims to introduce experimental economics and its various applications in economics. We will conduct some of the experiments in the classroom, providing the participants in the course with first-hand experience of the economic situations that are being thought through. The course consists of three parts: In the first part: “the methodology of experimental economics,” we introduce experimental economics. We discuss the merits (and limits) of experiments, and the principles of conducting and analyzing an experiment. In the second part “Applications: Influential experiments in economics”, we survey some of the seminal research in experimental (and behavioral) economics (e.g. on markets, bargaining, biases and heuristics under uncertainty, guessing games and predictions, experiments related to the environment and to climate change, etc.). In the third (short) part, students will present their own pilot studies.

Prerequisites: Students must have completed Principles of Economics and Microeconomics
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

EC251 Industry Networks and Economic Development

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1730-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Thomas Eife

prerequisite: Macroeconomics, Microeconomics
This course addresses fundamentals of network analysis, exploring the intricate relationship between industry networks and economic development. It places a strong emphasis on the art of visualizing networks and fosters an intuitive command of the necessary technical skills. The initial part of the course covers the fundamentals of graphs and network theory. Students will learn how to analyze networks: How to recognize the key players in a network, how to assess the stability of a network and how to identify patterns, clusters, and other valuable information hidden within the network structure. Visualizing networks will take center stage in the course, and the required basics of linear algebra and the programming language Python will be provided. Prior knowledge of linear algebra or Python is not required to take the course. In the second part of the course, we apply our knowledge of network theory to study how industry networks shape countries’ export patterns and influence their economic development prospects. We study how information about industry networks is used to provide policy advice to governments in developing countries. The course closes with an evaluation of the possibilities of industrial policy to influence a country’s industrial structure and to raise people’s well-being.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

EC314 International Economics

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed & Fri 0900-1030
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Thomas Eife

This course explores the economic relationships between countries, covering both trade and monetary issues. We will review key concepts and theories and apply them to relevant real-world examples. Examples such as Brexit, the impact of Covid on international trade flows, the German unification, the war in Ukraine, the global financial crisis 2007-2009, and the Napoleonic wars early in the 19th century will serve as a basis to critically evaluate countries’ macroeconomic landscapes and to evaluate policy options available to governments around the world. In the first part of this course, we will look at why countries trade and how trade affects people’s welfare. We cover topics such as the Dutch disease, the gravity equation, Ricardian trade, Heckscher-Ohlin trade and trade due to increasing returns. We then look at the instruments of trade policy such as tariffs, subsidies and voluntary export restraints, and discuss the pros and cons of trade regulations. Part 1 closes with a discussion of the arguments for and against free trade. In the second part, we learn the key concepts of the balance of payments and national accounting. We then ask “What is money?” and discuss interest rates, exchange rates and optimum currency areas. We cover in-depth the main theories before turning to monetary policy where we discuss how central banks fix exchange rates in practice, how currency attacks may be avoided, and why currency reserves are important. After a historical overview of the international monetary system, we study significant historical events such as the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, and the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

EC320 Econometrics

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1545-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Israel Waichman

Prerequisites: Statistics and Microeconomics
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 and in particular assess the descriptiveness of economic theories, the economist needs to collect data and assess the empirical relationships between objects of interest. Since most economic data is non-experimental, 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 particular to test the accuracy of economic theories specifying a causal relationship between factors/events. This course expands on the basic statistics course by applying and developing core statistical notions within an economic context. In particular, we will learn how to estimate linear regressions and their requirements for causal inference. We will also learn how to deal with cases when the requirements are not fully met (e.g., the endogeneity problem, the binary outcome model, etc.). The course develops literacy in applied economics, and the capacity to analyze field data, as well as cultivating the ability to assess claims made in that field through critique of methods of econometric analysis. The course will introduce students to the statistical software package Stata, which will be used to analyze data applying the methods learned.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA156 Dance Lab: Body Space Image. Dance and Visual Arts

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Fri 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Eva Burghardt

In addition to ongoing movement training as an essential foundation, the focus of this course will be on exploring the crossover of dance and visual arts, looking at dance and choreography outside of its usual context, the theater space. Drawing from contemporary dance and improvisation techniques, students will train their body as an “instrument,” deepening its awareness, sense of presence and musicality, practicing listening to oneself as well as the others. Starting from this inner awareness, we bring attention to our surroundings, making connections to other bodies, objects, space and architecture. Weather permitting, we will leave the dance floor and take our explorations out into the neighborhood to work site-specifically. How can we refresh our eyes and reshape experiences of known places with our present body? How can the experience of the surroundings inspire, inform and bring form to the dances within us or create relationships with the environment we live in? How does our body relate to forms, lines, textures, colors, sounds, or the history or memories of a place? How does it change our experience of a place as a dancer or spectator? Open score improvisations and tasks will be given to be explored individually and with the group. A final presentation, including sketches, experiments and scores created by students will be shown at the end of the semester. Throughout the course, we will look at and discuss works from artists who had a big impact in widening the understanding of dance and choreography, crossing the borders between dance and visual arts. From postmodern artists Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Anna Halprin to contemporary artists such as Tino Sehgal, William Forsythe, Willi Dorner or Anne Imhoff.
Two off-site excursions to performances in Berlin, including discussions and a written reflection afterwards, will be an integral part of the course.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

HI109 Global History Lab - with a focus on the Global History of Berlin/Prussia/Brandenburg

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Marion Detjen

This course is part of a longer-term effort by Princeton University's "Global History Lab" to work toward an integrated, all-encompassing, and multi-faceted history of the world. It is taught across 22 locations simultaneously. The course provides a thorough overview of global historical developments from Chinggis Khan’s armies conquering China and Baghdad in the thirteenth century to the Obama years in the twenty first. You will explore models and concepts for explaining the cycles of world integration and disintegration, like the rise and fall of empires, colonialism, expansion, and the role of free trade. Do earlier modes of globalization help us to understand our own age? What explains European global expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? How have world wars and revolutions shaped the international system over time? What role have diseases and pandemics played? The course offers content, tools and techniques to situate any historical event, place or person in broader, globally relevant narratives. But we will also discuss the epistemological and methodological challenges to Global History from a postcolonial perspective, and we will work on case studies which combine the local and the global, through a focus on Berlin/Prussia/Brandenburg. These case studies take up questions of belonging, exclusion, and othering, of citizenship and statelessness, and try to answer them using historical constellations that left their traces in Berlin.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

HI130 Society, Culture and Identities in Modern Eastern Europe: Ukraine in Context

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS ; 4 US credits

Professor(s): Ostap Sereda

This course will explore selected key topics of modern Ukrainian history from comparative and transnational perspectives and offer historiographic and conceptual frameworks for analyzing historical transformations in a broader East European regional dimension. The course will start with critical reflection on the notion of an Eastern European borderland as a contested, polycentric, and culturally diverse space. The case studies on the regions that constitute Ukraine shall help go beyond either the teleological nation-state-centered paradigm or the reduction of borderlands to peripheries shaped by imperial centers. Instead, the local agency and responses to imperial policies, national inventions of tradition, both emancipatory and conservative intellectual agendas of the educated elites in Ukraine (especially the entanglement of nationalist and Marxist paradigms) will be the focus of the course. We will analyze how competing national projects addressed the challenges of modernity and shaped the public sphere that emerged in the nineteenth century and survived under various regimes throughout the twentieth century, and how the new cultural markers of modern identity were received and articulated with societal transformations and under changing political conditions. The course will also address the current debates on such topics as the mass violence launched by the Stalinist and Nazi regimes and employed by competing radical nationalist groups, conflicting consequences of Soviet modernization, relationship between nationhood and democracy, and the applicability of post-colonial approaches to contemporary Ukrainian society and culture.
The course shall help students to build expertise on the specificity of cultural and social processes in modern Eastern Europe in the late imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The course participants will critically reexamine several key concepts of modern East European history (intelligentsia and peasants, culture and identity, nation-building, narod, populism, borderland, imperialism).

Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Certificate in Human Rights, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar: Working Cultures, Urban Cultures

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1400-1530
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Agata Lisiak

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

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. Participation in this seminar depends on successful and timely application for the Internship Program.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT142 Writing Fiction

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Fri 1230-1545
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Clare Wigfall

With over seventeen years experience of teaching creative writing, British author and BBC National Short Story Award Winner Clare Wigfall has developed a method that guarantees to inspire your imagination. Whether you are a total beginner, or a writer with some prior experience keen to work on your craft in collaboration with other writers, her intention is to break down the barriers that inhibit so that the creative process can come naturally. Her maxim for teaching is that in creative writing there are no rules. You’ll be challenged to experiment with new writing techniques and different genres, such as dystopian fiction and reversioning fairytales, as well as exploring how to mine your own experience for inspiration. You’ll also be introduced to inspirational and thought-provoking fiction by established authors, from Roxane Gay to Vladimir Nabokov, and will have a chance to hone your critical skills through discussion of these texts. Encouragement and guidance will be given to help you with shaping your ideas into fully developed writing, and of course you’ll gain invaluable feedback from the group through sharing your work in class. This course will work you hard and provide challenges and surprises, but it also promises lots of laughter, as well as much stimulation and encouragement from the others in the group. As per tradition, Clare’s workshops always conclude with a lively public reading to which other BCB students and faculty are warmly invited, offering a chance for the group to share their new work with the world.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT168 Theories of the Body

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 0900-1030
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Clio Nicastro

The body has always attracted the interest of thinkers and researchers from different disciplines, from philosophy to critical theory to neuroscience. The crucial challenge is to overcome the dichotomy between mind and body, reason and feeling, that has affected Western culture especially from Descartes on. What does it mean to think through the body and what are its ‘dialectics’ (Lisa Yun Lee)? Is there such a thing as a ‘natural’ body or are bodies always constructed by class, race, gender, and our personal stories? This course introduces the main theories of literature and culture by looking at the body as an object of the “medical gaze” (Barbara Duden, Michel Foucault) and of political/gender persecutions (Silvia Federici) as well as a site of both active and passive resistance and expression. The experience of the body is often at the limit of the expressible and challenges the artistic and verbal forms we have available to articulate and give meaning to it. Furthermore, we will look at efforts to find a language to speak for/through the body, its desires, and its idiosyncrasies (Dodie Bellamy, Audre Lorde). What kinds of stories are mapped and inscribed in our physical bodies (Paul B. Preciado, Roxane Gay)? Does the body forget? And how are our bodies influenced by their narratives and representations?
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT314 Global Cold War Literatures

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed & Fri 1400-1530
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Kerry Bystrom

The Cold War is often remembered as a conflict between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with its quintessential literary genre being the spy thriller. This course explores the literature of the Cold War from a broader perspective. It looks at networks of political and cultural influence that developed between “First,” “Second” and “Third” worlds, and the different genres (socialist realist and postmodern novels, struggle poetry, etc.) and specific novels, poems, essays and films through which links of solidarity were fashioned. Building on Bard College Berlin's location in the buildings of former embassies to East Germany from Angola, Cuba and other countries in the Global South, we will focus on the Southern African theater of the Cold War, which included Angola, South Africa, Namibia, and the Congo, and drew in the USSR, the United States, Cuba, Argentina and Chile, along with East Germany and other nations in Eastern Europe. We will explore the promises of and the repression within "socialist friendship," as well as the outlines of and the violence wrought by Western anti-Communist "national security doctrine." We also explore the contemporary legacy of the global Cold War, thinking about how this history continues to shape the present and about how cultural objects and theories outlive the moment of their production. Authors to be considered include John Le Carré, Pablo Neruda, Che Guevara, Milan Kundera, Alicia Partnoy, Roberto Bolaño, and Ondjaki.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT326 Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Rebecca Rukeyser

This course is designed for students who want to continue honing their writing craft and are interested in working within the genre of fiction—although “genre” is a slippery concept and the definition of fiction is extremely malleable. As a workshop class, we’ll be focusing primarily on peer-written fiction, examining formal and structural components, and discussing creative writing craft elements like tone, character, point of view, temporality, dialogue, and scene. But we’ll also be reading widely from work by both canonical writers (e.g., James Baldwin, Katherine Mansfield, Yasunari Kawabata, J.G. Ballard) and contemporary writers (e.g., Carmen Maria Machado, Etgar Keret, Mariana Enriquez, Helen Oyeyemi). This class's written assignments include: writing and revising two short fiction pieces due on a rotating schedule over the course of the semester; completing short workshop letters as part of the peer review process. The class participation requirements include: reading all assigned works carefully and coming to class prepared to discuss them in detail, being an active and vocal participant in workshops, giving a short presentation on a work of fiction you recommend to your fellow participants, and attending a literary reading. All reading material will be supplied in both hard copy and PDF form.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT329 The Writing Life

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1045-1215
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Martin Widmann

Fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement

This course is designed for students who are interested in the various and multiple intersections of literary studies, creative writing and the publishing world. To find out how the literary scene works and develops in Berlin and elsewhere, we will examine lines of tradition and current trends in German writing, both literary and other. Students will learn to engage with literature beyond the page by exploring questions such as: how do manuscripts get published and/or become books? What role do journals and magazines play, both corporate and independent, in the literary scene? How do writers make a living and what are the functions of literary awards, fellowships etc.? Where do the German and international literary communities interact? And how do writers and publishers respond to the challenges of the digital era? Areas to be covered by the reading material include translation, non-fiction, graphic novel, audiobooks and the book market. In addition to seminar discussions there will be field trips to literary institutions, publishing houses, magazines and events, such as readings and talks during the internationales literaturfestival berlin (ilb) in September. Guest speakers will include professionals from the world of publishing: editors, translators, journalists and writers.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT352 Happy in Berlin?

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Fri 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Laura Scuriatti

In the interwar years, Berlin was a kind of myth - it embodied for a short while the idea of a radical modernity, which partly overshadowed its status as the capital of a state, Prussia, associated with an ethos of militarization. In the 1920s, it became a magnet for writers, artists and intellectuals from many countries, who arrived in the city with different goals: to live openly their non-normative sexualities, to enjoy and be inspired by the modernity of the entertainment industry and the freedom of the city's famed unconventional nightlife, to become acquainted with the more recent developments in the new disciplines of psychoanalysis and sexology, to be part of international artistic networks. How did writers and artists represent this experience? How did their social and cultural lives affect literary and artistic forms? How did the "myth of Berlin" relate to other versions of modernism and modernity? The course is based on the exhibition "Happy in Berlin?" (2021) organized by the GBZ (Grossbritannienzentrum) at Humboldt University, and will offer an interdisciplinary exploration of written and visual artworks about Berlin mainly by artists and writers (many of them British) who visited Berlin in the interwar years, such as Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, Sabahattin Ali, Bryher, Viktor Shklovsky. Students will read these texts in dialogue with contemporary works on architecture, cultural history, psychoanalysis, sexology, cinema, by, among others, Walter Benjamin, Franz Hessel, Magnus Hirschfeld, Irmgard Keun, Alfred Döblin, Georg Simmel, Else Lasker-Schüler. Students will also read critical and theoretical texts on modernism, psychoanalysis, cultural history and the history of modernity. The course will involve multiple excursions in the city.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT360 Trauma in Literature

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon & Wed 1545-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Larisa Muraveva

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

In response to the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, contemporary literature is increasingly characterized as a "literature of trauma." The literary trauma theory that emerged in the 1990s proposes that literary practices should be seen in Freud's terms as "sites of trauma," in which particular strategies are developed to speak of the unspeakable, to bear witness to the impossible, and to find ways of re-living experience through writing. Novelists often grapple with the challenge of adequately representing the impact of trauma by mimicking its forms and symptoms, resulting in narratives marked by collapsed temporality, disrupted continuity, and constant repetition. This course engages in a comprehensive exploration of diverse approaches to the study of trauma and its representation in literature. We will reflect on how collective and individual trauma can be represented, how a text can become a testimony, and how trauma interacts with memory and with oblivion. Students will develop analytical and interpretive skills, examining texts that depict traumatic experiences through the lenses of narrative theory, trauma studies, and reception theory. Problems of representation of traumatic experience will be considered in conjunction with related concepts of experience, empathy, and the sublime. The conceptualisation of trauma will be carried out with reference to the works by Freud, Caruth, Alexander, Ankersmit, LaCapra, Rothberg, Ricœur, and others. Special attention will be paid to contemporary autofiction focused on traumatic experiences and the search for ways to narrate them. The material for discussion in the course will be novels of the twentieth and twenty- first centuries that represent traumatic experiences.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PL115 Foundations of Political Theory

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed & Fri 1730-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Riaz Partha Khan

This course provides a broad survey of the main intellectual traditions of modern political thought. Our exploration of political theory will proceed from the close reading and analysis of seminal texts that are presented both conceptually and, for the most part, chronologically. The primary focus will be on examining the historical antecedents of some of the foundational concepts and practices that distinguish our political behavior and institutions today. While taking account of the historical complexities and stylistic conventions of each text, the course will highlight the recurrent themes that animate these influential writings and continue to shape our contemporary understanding of politics. In particular, the lectures and discussions will be geared towards tracing the conceptual underpinnings of current forms of political organization, such as republicanism, liberal democracy, the modern state, and nationalism, and their effects on the concerns of law, justice, and morality. Some of the critical issues to be discussed include the divergent views of human nature and ideal society, the structure of authority and sovereignty, the rise of political morality, the defense of liberty, equality and justice, and the models of democratic practice.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PL170 Falsafa: Introduction to Arabic Philosophy

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1000-1300
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Sinem Kilic

Throughout the history of Western philosophy, the importance of Arabic philosophy has been underestimated for a long time. For German
philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, for example, Arabic philosophy had “no content of any interest” whatsoever, and was therefore “not philosophy, but mere manner.” Although this view wouldn’t be considered tenable nowadays, most Western colleges or universities still do not offer any courses dedicated to Arabic philosophy, and therefore continue to leave this pivotal part of our West-Eastern intellectual history unaddressed.

In this course on Arabic philosophy (which means philosophy written in the Arabic language, regardless of the author’s origin), we will focus mainly on the period between the 9th and the 12th century—a time when Muslim, Christian, and Jewish philosophers composed their works in the Arabic language and transferred philosophical problems from the ancient Greek tradition into their falsafa (Arabic for ‘philosophy’).

We will read representative texts by major thinkers like al-Kindī, ar-Rāzī, al-Fārābī, Ibn Miskawayh, Rūmī, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), al-Ghazālī, Ibn Bājja (Avempace), Ibn Ṭufaīl, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides, but also modern intellectuals like Abdallah Laroui and Fatema Mernissi. By providing an overview of the multifaceted tradition of Arabic philosophy, this course aims to shed light on the rich heritage of falsafa as a vital component of intellectual tradition within the Islamicate world.

Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PL322 The Uncanny - Literature, Psychology, Philosophy and Technology

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Fri 1545-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Gilad Nir

The experience of the uncanny arises when the familiar and ordinary comes to appear mysterious and threatening. Nothing is as it appears; inanimate objects seem to come alive, and living beings seem like mere automata; everyday actions lose their meaningfulness, and the social roles we usually play come to seem pointless and absurd. The emergence of the uncanny as a topic in the literature of the 19^th century coincides with the growing sense of alienation, brought about by the industrial revolution and by the transition from traditional forms of life to modern, urban societies. Over the 20^th century, the uncanny became a key concept in psychology, literary studies and philosophy. And in the 21^st century, technological advancements in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer graphics are said to once again make the experience of the uncanny a pervasive feature of our lives. In this seminar we will first trace the depiction of the uncanny in literary texts (reading E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James), and then move on to consider how the phenomenon has been approached by psychologists and psychoanalysts (Jentsch, Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Lear), by sociologists (Gordon), by literary theorists and art critics (Shklovsky, Brecht, Todorov, Royle, Salvesen) by philosophers (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Camus, Sartre, Nagel, Cavell, Withy) and by theoreticians of new technologies (Mori, Hui).
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PL361 The American Revolution Revisited

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon & Wed 1730-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Ewa Atanassow

This is the first of a 2-course sequence exploring the two eighteenth century revolutions - the American and the French - that helped shape the norms and institutions of the modern world charting, in effect, a new vision of humanity. Chronologically first, the American revolution began as an independence struggle against one of the world's most powerful colonial empires, thus serving as a model and inspiration for anticolonial movements worldwide. And yet, while first proclaiming to the world the principles of universal human rights and political self-determination, the founding of the United States also led to the constitutionalization of slavery, mass-scale suppression and removal of native populations, and the entrenching of a racialized social order. In order to probe these profound paradoxes, in this course, we'll trace the historical arc of the American revolution from the run-up to independence to the constitutional founding, and familiarize ourselves with the sequence of events and key individual and collective actors. Situating the American revolution in its historical context, and in the social and political dilemmas that shaped its course, we’ll zoom in on the heated debates that produced the Revolution's two main artifacts: the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Striving to understand these debates on their own terms, we shall also take note of major historiographical interpretations including the 1619 project and its critics, and seek to pose larger questions about the meaning and purpose of the US founding, and its significance today. Note: this course can be taken independently of the French Revolution sequel.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PL380 Do We Need Government? An Introduction to Anarchism

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1730-2045
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Han Stauffacher

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

A notable consensus obtains across political philosophy and theory in the Western tradition: government is essential for maintaining peace and fostering prosperity. Chaos and violence would inevitably become rampant without established structures of authority and dominion. Left-wing and right-wing ideologies often concur on this fundamental premise. However, an alternative political viewpoint, from the tradition of ‘Anarchism’ contends that in historical reality, structures of authority and dominion have frequently failed to deliver on their promise, and instead produced violence, oppression, and poverty. Anarchist theories argue that the absence of such ruling structures could usher in a better society, founded on mutual assistance, non-violence, and cooperation. This course aims to explore the merits of anarchist political thought and practice in our current era of endemic crisis and capitalist hegemony. We discuss seminal anarchist positions articulated during the 19th and early 20th centuries (William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy, Max Stirner, Emma Goldman). Subsequently, we consider the history of anarchist movements during the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, we address contemporary (post-)anarchist viewpoints, particularly emphasizing the Occupy movement and intersections of anarchism and feminism.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group A)

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed & Fri 1545-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Gale Raj-Reichert

Prerequisites: Understanding Politics

Fulfills Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis requirement

This course introduces students to policy analysis and policy making. Public policies are courses of action undertaken by governments to solve societal problems by changing behavior. They include laws, regulations, incentives, and providing services, goods and information. It is important to remember that policies not only include what governments choose to do but also what they choose not to do. Policies by individual governments, groups of governments and intergovernmental organizations can impact outcomes for people, communities, industries, and the environment in different parts of the world. During the first part of the course, we will spend time learning about and discussing what characterizes and defines a public policy, and how such policies are formulated, implemented, and evaluated. In the second half, we will apply these foundational concepts by examining and discussing real-world policy case studies addressing current policy problems within a domestic and global context. With this course, students will gain an understanding of a holistic approach to public policy and policy analysis. Students will also learn how to communicate on the subject of policy problems, options and recommendations verbally, visually, and in writing.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group B)

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon & Wed 1400-1530
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Elisabeta Dinu

Prerequisites: Understanding Politics

Fulfills Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis requirement

This course introduces students to policy analysis and policy making. Public policies are courses of action undertaken by governments to solve societal problems by changing behavior. They include laws, regulations, incentives, and providing services, goods and information. It is important to remember that policies not only include what governments choose to do but also what they choose not to do. Policies by individual governments, groups of governments and intergovernmental organizations can impact outcomes for people, communities, industries, and the environment in different parts of the world. During the first part of the course, we will spend time learning about and discussing what characterizes and defines a public policy, and how such policies are formulated, implemented, and evaluated. In the second half, we will apply these foundational concepts by examining and discussing real-world policy case studies addressing current policy problems within a domestic and global context. With this course, students will gain an understanding of a holistic approach to public policy and policy analysis. Students will also learn how to communicate on the subject of policy problems, options and recommendations verbally, visually, and in writing.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PS271 US Foreign Policy

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon & Wed 1545-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Aaron Allen

This multidisciplinary course explores the structural evolution of the United States’ role in the world and the institutions shaping elite policy-making. Through an interactive approach, students will be able to contextualize contemporary American foreign policy challenges from their geographic, material, and ideational roots. Furthermore, course activities and assignments are tailored to assist students in becoming foreign policy practitioners fully capable of applying national security decision theories. The curriculum threads together historical cases, international relations scholarship, and security studies in order to provide a holistic understanding of all the constituent parts influencing America’s external posture. How did a nation once known for its relatively isolationist disposition become a global superpower and key enforcer of the liberal international order? What are the unique attributes of American-style foreign policy that have remained consistent across presidential administrations since the end of World War II? A critical appraisal of topics such as hard and soft power, alliances, globalization and multilateralism, bureaucratic politics, and the rise of the military industrial complex offers students the necessary tools to answer these core questions. The complementary emphasis on professional development will allow participants to garner practical skills through simulations, seminar debates, and presentations.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PS327 A Critical Appraisal of the Arab Spring: 2010-2023

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Usahma Darrah

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

This course deals with the mass protests that swept across the Arab World in the 2010s as part of a global series of democracy movements. To study this phenomenon, we will look at the historical emergence of modern Arab states within regional systems that share a common language, culture and public space. Students will learn to contextualize the broader Arab region using analytical tools such as the concepts of state formation, the role of geopolitical alignments, the workings of political economy and the social contract, the phenomenon of the rentier state, and the dynamics of the deep state. In examining the protest movements and violence in key Arab countries, students will develop answers to the following questions: How did Arab civil society try to bring about dignity and democracy? How was the counter-revolutionary repression by some Arab states supported by Iran and Russia? What challenges did the upheaval and protracted conflicts in the MENA and Gulf regions present for Western interests and policies? How has US policy, in particular, affected the perceptions and posture of key Arab actors in relationship to the West? Where does the Arab Spring represent a turning point toward a democratic trajectory, and where did it lead to failed statehood? Does the migration fallout from the Arab Spring mark the end of liberal politics in the EU?
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PT150 Global Citizenship

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1545-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Nassim Abi Ghanem

Fulfills Certificate in Civic Engagement and OSUN Certificate in Human Rights requirement

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 call state boundaries into question. Transnational challenges such as climate change, forced migration, epidemics, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism also require collective action on a global scale. In this context, global citizenship has been promoted both as a sensibility and as an emerging reality. This course explores the notion of "global citizenship" from its philosophical foundations. We also address cultural and political perspectives, thinking critically about what global citizenship can and should mean. Building on these investigations, we explore the contemporary experiences and movements through which a future idea or reality of global citizenship might be shaped. The heart of the course will be in an interdisciplinary exploration of two of the transnational problems already noted above – climate change and ethno-nationalist conflicts – through readings and discussion of novels, historical work, film, social theory, social scientific research, and policy documents. We present and compare rising political and social movements relevant to the definition of the category of the citizen across the globe. Texts will include essays by Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, Edward Said, Martha Nussbaum, Craig Calhoun, along with Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, Tayib Salih's Season of Migration to the North, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior and Michael Winterbottom's In This World.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PT160 Transnational Feminism is for Everybody

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 0900-1030
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Agata Lisiak

Fulfills Certificate in Civic Engagement and OSUN Certificate in Human Rights requirement

Named after bell hooks’ 2000 essay collection Feminism Is for Everybody, and with an essential transnational focus, this course offers an introduction to feminism as a political movement to end oppression across differences. Students will discuss, try out, and question various feminist theories and methodologies to critically examine a range of cultural, social, and economic issues across geographical and historical contexts. While acknowledging the importance of one’s personal experience in finding feminism and committing to it, this course also invites students to look beyond the personal and to focus on political projects that seek out solidarity-yielding connections. Among other topics, we will discuss the demands of socialist women’s rights activists, queer feminist formations in the Global South, theories and practices of reproductive justice, feminist responses to occupation, war, and land grabbing, sex workers’ struggles across borders, decolonial feminist interventions, and the connections between gender justice and environmental justice. Bringing together feminist contributions from sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, political science, activism, and more, the course will also serve as an introduction to the work of influential thinkers such as Sara Ahmed, Angela Davis, Silvia Federici, Audre Lorde, Rosa Luxemburg, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Françoise Vergès, among many others. The assignments for this course are designed to acknowledge the importance of process as much as the final outcome, and to carefully probe the opportunities and challenges of collaborative thinking.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PT325 The European Union: Institutions, Policies, Procedures

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Thur 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Berit Ebert

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

The institutions and political processes of the European Union (EU), summed up in the concept of supranationality, offer a unique construct of international collaboration that was developed with clear goals by founding members. This course will analyze the institutions that have developed over the more than 70-year history of the Union: the European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank, the Committee of the Regions, as well as the European Economic and Social Committee. We will also compare the institutions’ supranational characteristics with those of the nation-state and of international organizations. Major cases tried in the European Court of Justice and key legal principles that have shaped the Union’s political advances will be interpreted. We will discuss some of the European Union’s current political developments, among them the European electoral-law reform, the reform of the judicial system in Poland, the rule-of-law mechanism, gender equality, as well as migration and asylum regulations. For the latter, we will be joined by Deborah Amos, Ferris Professor in Residence at Princeton University and her students taking a trip to Berlin in October. Students will engage with original EU policy documents to acquire the skills of analyzing and interpreting them. At the end of the seminar, they will have a solid knowledge of the functioning of the Union’s institutions, and the capacity to evaluate legal texts, treaty provisions, and policy approaches, enabling a clearer judgement regarding the future of the European project.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

PT355 International Organizations and Human Rights Advocacy

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Berit Ebert, Danya Jaber (al-Quds Bard)

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and Human Rights Certificate requirements

This seminar exposes students to the practical work of human rights actors in the context of securing and advocating for human rights through inter- and supranational organizations. It is divided into two sections. The course begins by giving students a general overview of the role of key players in creating and implementing human rights. It then delves into the processes, institutions and material factors that influence inter- and supranational behaviors vis-à-vis human rights obligations. Lectures look in-depth at the role of individuals and collectivities in campaigning for human rights and addressing specific violations. This will culminate in the analysis of cases that have been key in shaping the international human rights regime. Students will present these cases at a joint conference. The second part of the course familiarizes students with the practical skills needed to run human rights advocacy campaigns. Through guest lecturers, students will be introduced to insights and expertise on lobbying, campaigning, as well as research, monitoring and reporting. These campaigns will be centered around particular cases involving the lobbying of specific inter- or supranational organizations, and include a possible two-day training with Amnesty International in Berlin. Finally, students will develop human rights-based approaches and strategies to create their own advocacy campaign. At the end of the semester, all students of the seminar will meet in Berlin and visit organizations such as the representative office of the European Union, as well as meeting with experts from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. They will receive a two-day training course with Amnesty International and work for the organization’s Digital Verification Corps. Their findings will be used by Amnesty to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

SC250 Science Communication

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed 1545-1900 (Online)
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Maria Avxentevskaya

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

This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

Making sense of scientific information has become part of our daily lives. Whether it be questions about digital data, vaccination, or the environment, all of them involve interpreting scientific materials. At the same time, scientists in a variety of fields also need to get their insights across to the public and policymakers. 'Science communication' occurs when society and science meet on common ground. However, that often requires a willingness to consider uncomfortable questions that may arise in democratic debates about specific policies. How to bring society and science into a dialogue for the benefit of mankind? This course will discuss science communication as a process that produces shared evidence and mechanisms of persuasion. We will look at how metaphors help bring astounding discoveries to whole new audiences, how rhetoric can foster and shatter scientific expertise, and how scientific debates help cultural minorities achieve their social and political goals. We will explore contentious socio-scientific issues in genetics, AI automation, and space exploration in a series of case studies that will begin with early modernity and reach into the future of how science communication may help make a difference in people’s lives. We will learn how to craft science stories, create science podcasts, and collaborate with artists to improve mutual understanding between science and society. These skills are also part of the job of a professional in science communication, which has grown in popularity as a branch of public relations. The students will complete their own mini-research projects and work towards online publications in science communication.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

TH134 Introduction to Playwriting

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Cory Tamler

(In collaboration with TH180: Rethinking Regie: An Introduction to Directing)

In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of writing for text-based theater. The course has a two-fold structure: First, writing exercises both within and outside of class, as well as readings from recent published play scripts by contemporary German playwrights, will introduce students to the basics of crafting dialogue, pacing, building dramatic tension, and the particular challenges and opportunities of storytelling for the stage. Students will learn about and try out different possibilities for the role of the playwright in the contemporary theater-making process, from solitary author to co-writer, from collaborator in a development process to interpreter of research material and beyond. Reading and responding to one another's work will provide students with a glimpse into how performers and directors might approach a playwright's text, strengthening their ability to write for performance. Second, students in this course will work together throughout the semester with students in the "Introduction to Directing'' seminar, instructed by Julia Hart. In a workshop setting, students will form teams of directors, playwrights and actors to explore different forms of collaboration in the rehearsal room. Students will work on staged readings and short scenes that will culminate in a theater- presentation in the Factory at the end of the semester.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Art History, Culture and Society

AH207 Feminist Art in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries

Fall 2024
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Tue 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Christina Landbrecht

This seminar introduces the work of female artists in Germany and the US. Starting with artists who were educated around the turn of the century, the seminar will trace the development of feminist art throughout the 20th century, ending with recent figures in feminist art discourse. Among the artists whose works will be discussed are Julie Wolfthorn, Georgia O’Keeffe, Meret Oppenheim, Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Alice Neel, Judy Chicago, Adrian Piper, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lygia Clark, Nicole Eisenman, Rosemarie Trockel, Margaret Raspé, Cindy Sherman, Sharon Hayes or Mary-Audrey Ramirez. Furthermore, a selection of seminal texts by prominent scholars such as Linda Nochlin, Lucy Lippard, and bell hooks will be discussed throughout the course. The main idea of the seminar is to focus on the work of female artists who not only questioned the established art canon but contributed to changing and expanding it. A particular focus will be themes such as “Body, Sexuality, and the Image of the Woman”, “Female Materiality and Crafts”, “Politics of Race and Gender” and “Care and Maintenance as Artistic Practices”. This way we will not only have the chance to get to know a multitude of diverse female artists and artistic practices, but to establish their connection to a wide critical discourse. Excursions to museum exhibitions, visits by art professionals, and a studio visit are planned as well.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Theory, History, Art Forms

AH219 Landscape, Land Art, and the City

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Wed 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Geoff Lehman

This course will examine landscape art as a mode of representation, of experience, and of site-specific intervention, through close readings of a small number of major works. In the first part of the course, we will focus on European landscape paintings, from the Renaissance to modernism (where landscape plays a foundational role), as well as exploring the landscape tradition of Song dynasty China. In the second part of the course, we will turn our attention to land art, an artistic practice in which the engagement with landscape becomes a direct intervention in, and experience of, the actual physical landscape, and consider its relationship to landscape painting as well as its place within the transition from modernism to postmodernism. Topics for the course include: nature and human experience; landscape painting as expression of (scientific) curiosity or invitation to (religious) contemplation; subjectivity and the aesthetics of landscape; the materiality of the art object and the “post-medium condition” in site-specific work; art, ecology, and environmentalism; and the relationship of land art to the experience of urban space. Among the artists whose works will be our focus are Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fan Kuan, Xia Gui, Caspar David Friedrich, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Claude Monet, Mary Miss, Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, and Agnes Denes. Readings will include art historical, philosophical, and literary texts. Visits to sites in Berlin to experience works of land art firsthand are an integral part of the course.

Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Art History, Culture and Society

AH236 Critical Perspectives on Berlin's new Cultural Venue, the Humboldt Forum

Fall 2024
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Thur 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Aya Soika, Tarek Ibrahim (Stiftung Humboldt Forum)

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

Hardly any project has been more controversial than the rebuilding of Berlin’s City Palace. Ever since its opening in 2021, the Humboldt Forum has brought in more than 2.5 million visitors, constituting one of the centerpieces of the capital’s New Mitte. Yet, the newly opened cultural venue – which gathers five institutions under its roof – is still very much in the process of considering how to address the challenges that arise from the contradictions between its form (a hybrid of Baroque and modern) and its contents (serving as a home to and meeting place for the cultures of the world). Most delicate is its role as the new home of the Ethnological Museum (previously housed in Berlin-Dahlem) with collection histories that are often inextricably linked to European colonialism. The seminar provides an introduction to the history and current operation of the Humboldt Forum and to the various institutions and collections that it accommodates on more than 16.000 square meters. Furthermore, as a collaborative project with the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, the class seeks to give students insights into the conceptualization and planning of cultural events, exhibition projects and educational outreach. Members of the Humboldt Forum's team will introduce students to not only the building and its collections, but also to their day-to-day tasks and overall aims.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

AH302 Ideas of the Aesthetic

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed 1000-1300
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Katalin Makkai, Michel Chaouli (University of Indiana)

“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

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Modules: Art, Institutions and Engagement, Theory, History, Art Forms

AH315 Beyond Crisis: South American Memory Politics and Art

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Wed 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Haley Stewart

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

In this course, we will explore some of the roles historical memory and memory politics have played in artistic production in Chile and Bolivia and in the wider Andean and Southern Cone regions of South America since the 1970s. The aim of the course is to introduce students to the way in which art in these regions has sought to respond to ongoing crises such as those caused by the legacy of violent Southern Cone dictatorships, economic exploitation and environmental degradation by extractivist industries, and the consequences of colonial violence against indigenous and Afrodescendant populations. Central to our study are these questions: How does art invoke, remember and critique the historical past? How does it offer alternatives to this past and envision possibilities of healing, repair and growth beyond crisis? How do different artistic and cultural media like painting, sculpture, land art, performance art and film, as well as indigenous forms of making (i.e., textiles, quipus) reflect and develop different concepts of historical memory, often in productive tensions with terms like aesthetics or art? Each week, we’ll discuss specific works from artists, artistic groups and movements like Cecilia Vicuña, Daniela Catrilea Cordero, Luis Bernardo Oyarzún, Elvira Espejo, Gastón Ugalde, Raúl Zurita, and the CADA and avanzada movements in Chile, with the help of readings providing necessary context, critical perspectives and theory. When possible, the readings will privilege the writings of critics and scholars from these regions, such as Nelly Richard and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Modules: Art, Institutions and Engagement, Cultures of Knowledge Production, Theory, History, Art Forms

AR360 Contemporary Art and the Politics of Exhibition Culture: the Venice Biennial

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Mon 1400-1600 and during Fall break
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Dorothea von Hantelmann

The highlight of this course will be the trip to a major international art exhibition: the Venice Art Biennial. The Biennale di Venezia is the oldest world exhibition of visual art: founded in 1895, it figures as a model (and counter-model) for many of the 200 international biennials and triennials that exist today. The 2024 edition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the first Latin American to curate the International Exhibition, in fact the first one based in the Southern Hemisphere. Titled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere”, the central themes of the exhibition are migration and decolonization. As indigenous artists will have a particular prominence, a focus of the course will be on indigenous art, more specifically on the work of Jeffrey Gibson, a Bard artist-in-residence, who will represent the United States at this year’s Biennial. Our trip to Venice will include attending a workshop on indigenous art, organized by Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies. The excursion to Venice will be supplemented by pre- and post-sessions in Berlin. During these we will address the history, conceptual agenda and framework of the exhibition, and consider individual artists as well as artworks.

The trip to Venice will take place from October 20-27. The costs for travel, accommodation and entrance fees amount to approximately 800 Euro per student. Thanks to a grant from the Center for Indigenous Studies at BARD we can offer financial support between 300 and 500 Euro (depending on financial need). For registration, please send a brief statement of interest to Dorothea von Hantelmann [email protected]
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Artistic Practice

FA103 Found Fragments and Layered Lines: mixed-media techniques for drawing and collage

Fall 2024
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Thur 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): John Kleckner

This studio art course explores contemporary and historical approaches to drawing and collage. Suitable for all levels of artistic ability, the goal is to enhance aesthetic comprehension and personal expression through the creation of mixed-media drawings and collages. We begin by transcribing embodied experience into visual compositions, attending to our perceptual awareness to strengthen the coordination of mind, eyes, and hands. Course activities will ask students to: make analytical drawings of figure / object arrangements, develop conceptual methods of composing, make abstractions from nature by working outdoors, gather materials from Berlin's famous Flohmärkte (flea markets) to use in collages and assemblages, work collaboratively on large-scale drawings, and experiment with innovative combinations of text and imagery. A core theme will be exploring the potential to generate new and surprising content from the juxtaposition of found printed fragments and hand-drawn lines. Of special interest for our class discussions will be works created by current and historical Berliners, such as Dada artist Hannah Höch. The majority of classes are studio work sessions. There will also be several group critiques, slideshow presentations, and artist studio / gallery visits. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios” exhibition at the BCB Factory and a printed publication of student artworks. Students are expected to be self-motivated, open to exploring new ways of working, and comfortable sharing their artworks during class discussions.

Studio work is the priority, so this course will require a significant amount of time working outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email their questions to the professor directly at: j.kleckner at berlin.bard.edu
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Artistic Practice

FA109 Painting Fundamentals

Fall 2024
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Mon 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): John Kleckner

This course is an introduction to materials, techniques, and concepts of painting; it establishes the foundation for studio practice using oil and water-based paints. From practical demonstrations, students will learn the specific qualities of various paints, how to stretch canvases, prepare painting surfaces, and apply paint using traditional and experimental techniques. Assignments will cultivate an understanding of color mixing, hue, value, chroma, warm/cool temperature, composition building, perspectival space, mark-making, surface texture, and shadow/light. Students will work from direct observation, use photographic references, and develop abstractions. Studio work will be supported by readings, discussions, and slide presentations that engage relevant themes in contemporary painting discourse. Special attention will be given in classroom discussions to painters (past and present) with strong connections to the city of Berlin.
Class size is limited to ensure each student has adequate studio space and time with the professor for individual feedback and support. Evaluations and critiques occur at midterm and at the end of the term. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios” exhibition at the BCB Factory and a printed publication of student artworks.
Studio work is the priority, so this course will require a significant amount of time working outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email their questions to the professor directly at: j.kleckner at berlin.bard.edu
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Modules: Advanced Artistic Practice, Cultures of Knowledge Production

FA230 Archives of Sound

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Fri 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Noam Brusilovsky, Lotta Beckers

In this practicing arts course students will be introduced to artistic practices of archival sonic research. From the 19th century onward, technological strides have made the recording (and archiving) of sounds possible – music, human voice, and natural phenomena can be recorded and played back. Sounds have since then been collected and stored, preserved and archived (both by individuals and by institutions). Archival sound recordings have been studied not only by anthropologists, historians and scholars, but also by artists from different fields who have made use of them in their artistic work. During the course, the participants will gain access to the radio archives of Germany’s international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. DW’s television, radio and digital content is available across the world in more than 30 different languages. Following an introduction to the history of DW and its archives the participants will be able to conduct their own research at the historic archives, and collect material that will be examined and discussed in class. Later on, these materials will be incorporated into the participants’ own artistic projects, presented by the end of the course. Students will have the opportunity to meet artists who use archival sonic material in different ways in their own practice and will gain hands-on experience in recording and editing sound.
This course is a cooperation between Bard College Berlin and Deutsche Welle. Some of the classes will be held at the DW studios in Wedding.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Advanced Artistic Practice

FA294 Queering the Capitalocene: (Eco-)feminist Film and Video Art for Earthly Survival

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Thur 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Angela Anderson

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with … It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” - Donna Haraway, from Staying With The Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

In the face of the multiple human-induced social and ecological crises unfolding across the globe, who is telling what story? How is the story being told, and to whom? These critical questions will frame and guide this theory and practice-based course which will engage with historical and contemporary positions in queer (eco)feminist moving image production in the expanded field between art and cinema. Starting from the assumption that there is an intimate connection between audiovisual media, the production of subjectivity, and the apprehension of the world, how can creative aesthetic practices foster inter-species and inter-material solidarity? How can they proactively intervene in monological narratives which reproduce destructive patriarchal value systems based on competition, hierarchy and exploitation? Through close readings of texts situated in film and media, gender, decolonial, postcolonial, and indigenous studies, as well as film screenings, artist talks, and exhibition visits, students will be introduced to a wide range of queer (eco)feminist voices and artistic strategies. Through exercises in listening, writing and filming, students will develop their own filmic projects over the course of the semester. While experience in working with audio-visual media is helpful for this course, it is not a requirement.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Advanced Artistic Practice

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): John Kleckner

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 range of traditional and experimental painting techniques with the aim of synchronizing materials and methods with style and content. From traditional linseed oil through to iridescent
color-shifting acrylic additives, students will learn to make, mix, and use paint more effectively, making the medium integral to the subject and content of their art. Past topics of exploration include: making paint from pigments, customizing paint consistency, airbrushing, scumbling, paint marbling, masking, frottage, stamping, stencils, collage, drying oils, mineral spirits, iridescent pigments, preparing grounds, varnishing, encaustic wax, modeling (molding) pastes, alkyd resins, vinyl Flashé, gouache, and inkjet printing on canvas. Material demonstrations will be augmented by readings, slideshows, and contemporary art gallery tours. The syllabus begins with directed projects that become increasingly independent as the semester proceeds. Students are expected to have prior painting experience, a willingness to experiment, and be highly motivated to make and discuss art. Class size is limited to ensure each student has adequate studio space and time with the professor for individual feedback and support. Evaluations and critiques occur at midterm and at the end of the term. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios” exhibition at Monopol and a printed publication of student artworks.

Studio work is the priority, so this course requires a significant investment of time outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email inquiries to the professor directly at: [email protected]
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Advanced Artistic Practice

FA325 The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): April Gertler

The concept of a “Zine” (pronounced ‘zeen') refers to small-circulation (typically an edition of 100 or less), self-published works of original or appropriated images and texts, often reproduced using a copy machine / printer / duplicator. Zines, or ‘fanzines' can be traced back to the 1940s. They emerged from science fiction literature initially, created by fans who generated small self-published magazines about the stories they loved. Zines famously played a significant role in the punk movement of the 1970s and continue to be found in many subcultures. They often embrace a "do-it-yourself" ethos, challenging established norms of professional design and publishing. Zines offer an alternative, confident, and self-aware mode of expression. Photography is an essential component of most Zines. The Zine functions as a space for visual storytelling, but can also be used to create a preview of an ongoing photographic project. Historically, the kind of photography used in Zines is highly diverse, ranging from personal photographs made specifically for the Zine, to found images from any source. This class will work with printers, copy machines and a RISO duplicator to explore the joys of the limited-edition Photo Zine and how it can become an important mode of self-expression. We will work with image and text, using found images and also found text to create photographs and text specific to the formats we will explore. The class will visit Schikkimikki - a Zine library that has Zines from all over the world in their collection. At the end of this class, each student will leave the class with a small library consisting of their own Photo Zines and those made by the other students in the class.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Art, Science and Ecology

SC215 Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound)

Fall 2024
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Wed 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Francisca Rocha Gonçalves

In light of the serious impact of human activities on the environment, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and noise pollution, we must rethink our relationship with the natural world. A significant barrier to this reimagining is the long-lasting division between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ in Western thought. Through a cross-disciplinary approach that includes acoustic ecology, the arts, environmental artistic activism, and natural history, this foundational course reflects on recent and ongoing efforts to dismantle this divide, providing students with a blend of theoretical and practical knowledge. Students will critically examine the reasons behind the societal separation of nature and culture and how this division has shaped our environmental perceptions and actions. They will develop a deeper appreciation of the interconnectedness of all life forms and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in addressing complex ecological issues. Approaches include investigating how soundscapes and acoustic ecology can challenge conventional boundaries of the nature-culture divide, reflecting on the potential of creative expression to re-connect culture and nature, examining the role of environmental artistic activism in addressing noise pollution and ecosystem impact, and engaging in hands-on practical activities and fieldwork to connect theory with real-world experiences. Alongside the practical activities, students will engage with critical theoretical readings by thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and Jane Bennett, as well as composers and sound ecologists such as Murray Schafer and Hildegard Westerkamp. These readings will offer insights into the historical separation of nature and culture, the contemporary efforts to overcome this divide, the broader implications of the Anthropocene, and how artists work to create awareness of the environmental crisis.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Module: Artistic Practice

TH155 Mind turners – Practices of Making in the Performing Arts

Fall 2024
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Wed 0900-1215
Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Eva Meyer Keller

“Your idea about the world says as much about you as it does about the world.”

“Your brain does not detect features in the world and body, it constructs features to create meaning. ... As an adult you have the capacity to challenge those meanings and even change them.”

Lisa Feldmann Barrett

In this seminar, choreographer and artist Eva Meyer Keller will share insights into her ongoing performative practice and artistic research on the natural sciences, particularly on cell biology and neuroscience. Based on her work on the nervous system and active processes of perception, performative exercises and tasks will be developed for the class. These serve as a starting point for each student to embark on developing their own performance projects guided by their own interest and research project. Each student will develop their own short performances, cultivating curiosity rather than confidence. Furthermore, works of performative and visual artists such as Uta Eisenreich, Sofia Hulten, Ilya Noé and Agata Siniarska will be discussed, the latter will also be joining the class for a workshop session. We will also discuss influential historical artistic positions including Yvonne Rainers’ “No Manifesto“ (1965), Sol LeWitts’ “Conceptual Art Manifesto“ (1968), and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ “Manifesto for Maintenance Art” (1969), as these transformed how art is conceived and defined. Moreover, we will seek inspiration in other fields, looking, for example, at neuroscientific ideas about the mind as articulated by Lisa Feldmann Barrett, and at Buddhist practices.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Modules: Advanced Artistic Practice, Art, Institutions and Engagement

TH325 Bodies in the City

Fall 2024
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Week 1-2: Fri 1400-1715; Week 2-End of term: Fri 1400-1830
Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Daniel Belasco Rogers

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

What is it that cities allow us to do with our bodies? What is possible in public space now? This seminar explores how cities accommodate and resist human (and non-human) bodies. There are many factors that influence and determine how and where we spend time. From a city government deciding to play high pitched sound to drive young people away from certain central urban locations to the unintentionally uncomfortable wind corridors created by empty plazas in front of tall buildings, cities shape human behavior in more or less obvious and intended ways. Feeling safe or endangered in different spaces is also greatly influenced by the way race and gender are dealt with in our societies, having deep effects on our cities. How can we use artistic and creative strategies to explore, reflect upon, critique and perhaps push the envelopes of these urban and social affordances and prohibitions? Through a mixture of performative assignments in the city, group discussions, and examples of artists’ works, we will explore methods of examining, exploring and augmenting the role of the body in the city. We will consider artistic strategies such as psychogeography, Situationism, algorithmic walking and urban intervention. We will be walking, sharing, tracing, map-making, playing and developing strategies to see the city anew. Through set tasks inspired by the work of other artists, we will be working to find modes of being in, reflecting on and performing the city.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Core
Concentration: Core
Module: Greek Civilization

IS101 Plato's Republic and Its Interlocuters

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Groups A-F: Tue & Thur 1400-1530; Group G (Gilad Nir): Tue & Fri 1400-1530
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Ewa Atanassow, Tracy Colony, David Hayes, Hans Stauffacher, Gilad Nir, Sinem Kilic, Giulia Clabassi

Bard College Berlin's core curriculum begins with a semester-long reading of Plato’s Republic in dialogue with the main works and movements that shaped its cultural and intellectual context. The Republic offers a unique point of entry into the epochal philosophical, political, and literary achievements of fifth and fourth-century Athens. Through its depiction of Socrates in conversation, it draws us into a conversation about ethical, political, aesthetic, and epistemic questions that are fundamental to human life. Rather than being a series of separate treatises, the Republic addresses its themes as a dynamic and open 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. In its aspiration and scope, the Republic offers an illuminating starting point for the endeavor of liberal education. Moreover, as an exemplar of open and critical inquiry, both in Plato’s time and beyond, the figure of Socrates is a vital resource for our own engagements with the contemporary world.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Core
Concentration: Core
Module: Renaissance Art and Thought

IS102 Renaissance Florence

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1045-1215
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Geoff Lehman, Clio Nicastro, Laura Scuriatti, Giulia Clabassi, Maria Chernysheva

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 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 dialogue with literary, philosophical, and political texts of the period, opens 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

Programs: BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis, Core
Concentration: Core
Module: Origins of Political Economy

IS303 Origins of Political Economy

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Groups A-D: Wed & Fri 1045-1215; Group E (Kai Koddenbrock): Wed 1045-1215 & Thur 0900-1030
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Aysuda Kölemen, Kai Koddenbrock, Gale Raj-Reichert, Boris Vormann, Riaz Partha-Khan

Fulfills Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis requirement

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 led to disciplinary specializations and certain blind spots in linking development and underdevelopment, enlightenment and exclusion. It allows students to understand, draw upon and critique the historical formulation of contemporary problems and concerns such as the foundations of political freedom, the nature of markets, the sources and circulation of wealth, the social impact of inequality and racism, and the connection and differentiation between the economic and political spheres

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

AH207 Feminist Art in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Christina Landbrecht

This seminar introduces the work of female artists in Germany and the US. Starting with artists who were educated around the turn of the century, the seminar will trace the development of feminist art throughout the 20th century, ending with recent figures in feminist art discourse. Among the artists whose works will be discussed are Julie Wolfthorn, Georgia O’Keeffe, Meret Oppenheim, Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Alice Neel, Judy Chicago, Adrian Piper, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lygia Clark, Nicole Eisenman, Rosemarie Trockel, Margaret Raspé, Cindy Sherman, Sharon Hayes or Mary-Audrey Ramirez. Furthermore, a selection of seminal texts by prominent scholars such as Linda Nochlin, Lucy Lippard, and bell hooks will be discussed throughout the course. The main idea of the seminar is to focus on the work of female artists who not only questioned the established art canon but contributed to changing and expanding it. A particular focus will be themes such as “Body, Sexuality, and the Image of the Woman”, “Female Materiality and Crafts”, “Politics of Race and Gender” and “Care and Maintenance as Artistic Practices”. This way we will not only have the chance to get to know a multitude of diverse female artists and artistic practices, but to establish their connection to a wide critical discourse. Excursions to museum exhibitions, visits by art professionals, and a studio visit are planned as well.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

AH236 Critical Perspectives on Berlin's new Cultural Venue, the Humboldt Forum

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Aya Soika, Tarek Ibrahim (Stiftung Humboldt Forum)

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

Hardly any project has been more controversial than the rebuilding of Berlin’s City Palace. Ever since its opening in 2021, the Humboldt Forum has brought in more than 2.5 million visitors, constituting one of the centerpieces of the capital’s New Mitte. Yet, the newly opened cultural venue – which gathers five institutions under its roof – is still very much in the process of considering how to address the challenges that arise from the contradictions between its form (a hybrid of Baroque and modern) and its contents (serving as a home to and meeting place for the cultures of the world). Most delicate is its role as the new home of the Ethnological Museum (previously housed in Berlin-Dahlem) with collection histories that are often inextricably linked to European colonialism. The seminar provides an introduction to the history and current operation of the Humboldt Forum and to the various institutions and collections that it accommodates on more than 16.000 square meters. Furthermore, as a collaborative project with the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, the class seeks to give students insights into the conceptualization and planning of cultural events, exhibition projects and educational outreach. Members of the Humboldt Forum's team will introduce students to not only the building and its collections, but also to their day-to-day tasks and overall aims.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

AH315 Beyond Crisis: South American Memory Politics and Art

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Haley Stewart

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

In this course, we will explore some of the roles historical memory and memory politics have played in artistic production in Chile and Bolivia and in the wider Andean and Southern Cone regions of South America since the 1970s. The aim of the course is to introduce students to the way in which art in these regions has sought to respond to ongoing crises such as those caused by the legacy of violent Southern Cone dictatorships, economic exploitation and environmental degradation by extractivist industries, and the consequences of colonial violence against indigenous and Afrodescendant populations. Central to our study are these questions: How does art invoke, remember and critique the historical past? How does it offer alternatives to this past and envision possibilities of healing, repair and growth beyond crisis? How do different artistic and cultural media like painting, sculpture, land art, performance art and film, as well as indigenous forms of making (i.e., textiles, quipus) reflect and develop different concepts of historical memory, often in productive tensions with terms like aesthetics or art? Each week, we’ll discuss specific works from artists, artistic groups and movements like Cecilia Vicuña, Daniela Catrilea Cordero, Luis Bernardo Oyarzún, Elvira Espejo, Gastón Ugalde, Raúl Zurita, and the CADA and avanzada movements in Chile, with the help of readings providing necessary context, critical perspectives and theory. When possible, the readings will privilege the writings of critics and scholars from these regions, such as Nelly Richard and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

AR360 Contemporary Art and the Politics of Exhibition Culture: the Venice Biennial

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon 1400-1600 and during Fall break
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Dorothea von Hantelmann

The highlight of this course will be the trip to a major international art exhibition: the Venice Art Biennial. The Biennale di Venezia is the oldest world exhibition of visual art: founded in 1895, it figures as a model (and counter-model) for many of the 200 international biennials and triennials that exist today. The 2024 edition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the first Latin American to curate the International Exhibition, in fact the first one based in the Southern Hemisphere. Titled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere”, the central themes of the exhibition are migration and decolonization. As indigenous artists will have a particular prominence, a focus of the course will be on indigenous art, more specifically on the work of Jeffrey Gibson, a Bard artist-in-residence, who will represent the United States at this year’s Biennial. Our trip to Venice will include attending a workshop on indigenous art, organized by Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies. The excursion to Venice will be supplemented by pre- and post-sessions in Berlin. During these we will address the history, conceptual agenda and framework of the exhibition, and consider individual artists as well as artworks.

The trip to Venice will take place from October 20-27. The costs for travel, accommodation and entrance fees amount to approximately 800 Euro per student. Thanks to a grant from the Center for Indigenous Studies at BARD we can offer financial support between 300 and 500 Euro (depending on financial need). For registration, please send a brief statement of interest to Dorothea von Hantelmann [email protected]
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA103 Found Fragments and Layered Lines: mixed-media techniques for drawing and collage

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): John Kleckner

This studio art course explores contemporary and historical approaches to drawing and collage. Suitable for all levels of artistic ability, the goal is to enhance aesthetic comprehension and personal expression through the creation of mixed-media drawings and collages. We begin by transcribing embodied experience into visual compositions, attending to our perceptual awareness to strengthen the coordination of mind, eyes, and hands. Course activities will ask students to: make analytical drawings of figure / object arrangements, develop conceptual methods of composing, make abstractions from nature by working outdoors, gather materials from Berlin's famous Flohmärkte (flea markets) to use in collages and assemblages, work collaboratively on large-scale drawings, and experiment with innovative combinations of text and imagery. A core theme will be exploring the potential to generate new and surprising content from the juxtaposition of found printed fragments and hand-drawn lines. Of special interest for our class discussions will be works created by current and historical Berliners, such as Dada artist Hannah Höch. The majority of classes are studio work sessions. There will also be several group critiques, slideshow presentations, and artist studio / gallery visits. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios” exhibition at the BCB Factory and a printed publication of student artworks. Students are expected to be self-motivated, open to exploring new ways of working, and comfortable sharing their artworks during class discussions.

Studio work is the priority, so this course will require a significant amount of time working outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email their questions to the professor directly at: j.kleckner at berlin.bard.edu
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA109 Painting Fundamentals

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): John Kleckner

This course is an introduction to materials, techniques, and concepts of painting; it establishes the foundation for studio practice using oil and water-based paints. From practical demonstrations, students will learn the specific qualities of various paints, how to stretch canvases, prepare painting surfaces, and apply paint using traditional and experimental techniques. Assignments will cultivate an understanding of color mixing, hue, value, chroma, warm/cool temperature, composition building, perspectival space, mark-making, surface texture, and shadow/light. Students will work from direct observation, use photographic references, and develop abstractions. Studio work will be supported by readings, discussions, and slide presentations that engage relevant themes in contemporary painting discourse. Special attention will be given in classroom discussions to painters (past and present) with strong connections to the city of Berlin.
Class size is limited to ensure each student has adequate studio space and time with the professor for individual feedback and support. Evaluations and critiques occur at midterm and at the end of the term. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios” exhibition at the BCB Factory and a printed publication of student artworks.
Studio work is the priority, so this course will require a significant amount of time working outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email their questions to the professor directly at: j.kleckner at berlin.bard.edu
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA112 Marble Stone Sculpture

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Fri 1000-1300
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Raphael Beil, Tobia Silvotti

This seminar introduces students to basic techniques of working stone by hand, using simple, traditional tools such as hammers and various chisels. The aim is to create our own marble sculpture. Along the way, we learn how to handle tools for the first rough work, the differentiation and finally the partial grinding and polishing of the marble. We learn the basics of three-dimensional form, proportion and structure. In order to create our own work of art, we also discuss where the sources of creativity can lie, how to access inspiration and imagination to create a very individual sculpture. The seminar will conclude with a presentation of all sculptures and a joint analysis of the diversity of and differences between artistic languages present in the works. The workshops will be accompanied by lectures on the works and public sculpture projects of Raphael Beil and other contemporary sculptors. Weather permitting, our workshops will take place in a sheltered beautiful garden in Reinickendorf on the grounds of Monopol. Tools, possibly light machinery and work tables as well as work protection will be provided. No previous experience is necessary to participate in the course.
Please note there is a fee of €40 for participation in this course to cover material expenses.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA230 Archives of Sound

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Fri 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Noam Brusilovsky, Lotta Beckers

In this practicing arts course students will be introduced to artistic practices of archival sonic research. From the 19th century onward, technological strides have made the recording (and archiving) of sounds possible – music, human voice, and natural phenomena can be recorded and played back. Sounds have since then been collected and stored, preserved and archived (both by individuals and by institutions). Archival sound recordings have been studied not only by anthropologists, historians and scholars, but also by artists from different fields who have made use of them in their artistic work. During the course, the participants will gain access to the radio archives of Germany’s international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. DW’s television, radio and digital content is available across the world in more than 30 different languages. Following an introduction to the history of DW and its archives the participants will be able to conduct their own research at the historic archives, and collect material that will be examined and discussed in class. Later on, these materials will be incorporated into the participants’ own artistic projects, presented by the end of the course. Students will have the opportunity to meet artists who use archival sonic material in different ways in their own practice and will gain hands-on experience in recording and editing sound.
This course is a cooperation between Bard College Berlin and Deutsche Welle. Some of the classes will be held at the DW studios in Wedding.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): John Kleckner

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 range of traditional and experimental painting techniques with the aim of synchronizing materials and methods with style and content. From traditional linseed oil through to iridescent
color-shifting acrylic additives, students will learn to make, mix, and use paint more effectively, making the medium integral to the subject and content of their art. Past topics of exploration include: making paint from pigments, customizing paint consistency, airbrushing, scumbling, paint marbling, masking, frottage, stamping, stencils, collage, drying oils, mineral spirits, iridescent pigments, preparing grounds, varnishing, encaustic wax, modeling (molding) pastes, alkyd resins, vinyl Flashé, gouache, and inkjet printing on canvas. Material demonstrations will be augmented by readings, slideshows, and contemporary art gallery tours. The syllabus begins with directed projects that become increasingly independent as the semester proceeds. Students are expected to have prior painting experience, a willingness to experiment, and be highly motivated to make and discuss art. Class size is limited to ensure each student has adequate studio space and time with the professor for individual feedback and support. Evaluations and critiques occur at midterm and at the end of the term. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios” exhibition at Monopol and a printed publication of student artworks.

Studio work is the priority, so this course requires a significant investment of time outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email inquiries to the professor directly at: [email protected]

Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA319 Advanced Drawing: Process and Experimentation

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Fri 0930-1245
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Lotte Leerschool

This advanced drawing course, taught by Bard MFA alumn Lotte Leerschool, emphasizes process-based and experimental drawing. Through prompts, students will deepen their understanding of different relationships that open up when drawing: the interplay between the agency of materials and the manipulation of these through the use of tools, the connection of drawing to the (moving) body, as well as the limitation of and interaction with the boundaries of a page and the surrounding space. In the latter part of the course, the focus will shift towards reflecting on and editing (elements of) the drawings. This will be coupled with the exploration of different ways of installing drawing in space, considering the relationship to the viewer. Overall, this course embraces personal experiences, prioritizing making over the final image. The objective is to build toward an embodied knowledge that will serve as the foundation for individual and group conversations. The conversations will be supplemented with visual examples and artists' writings on the given subject. Students should have prior drawing experience, curiosity, and a willingness to un- and relearn. By the end of the semester, each student will have the opportunity to present their drawings through a self-curated presentation or an installation at Monopol during the BCB Open Studios.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FA325 The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Tue 1400-1715
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): April Gertler

The concept of a “Zine” (pronounced ‘zeen') refers to small-circulation (typically an edition of 100 or less), self-published works of original or appropriated images and texts, often reproduced using a copy machine / printer / duplicator. Zines, or ‘fanzines' can be traced back to the 1940s. They emerged from science fiction literature initially, created by fans who generated small self-published magazines about the stories they loved. Zines famously played a significant role in the punk movement of the 1970s and continue to be found in many subcultures. They often embrace a "do-it-yourself" ethos, challenging established norms of professional design and publishing. Zines offer an alternative, confident, and self-aware mode of expression. Photography is an essential component of most Zines. The Zine functions as a space for visual storytelling, but can also be used to create a preview of an ongoing photographic project. Historically, the kind of photography used in Zines is highly diverse, ranging from personal photographs made specifically for the Zine, to found images from any source. This class will work with printers, copy machines and a RISO duplicator to explore the joys of the limited-edition Photo Zine and how it can become an important mode of self-expression. We will work with image and text, using found images and also found text to create photographs and text specific to the formats we will explore. The class will visit Schikkimikki - a Zine library that has Zines from all over the world in their collection. At the end of this class, each student will leave the class with a small library consisting of their own Photo Zines and those made by the other students in the class.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

FM323 The Number of the Beast: (D)evil on Screen

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Mon 1930-2200 & Tue 1730-2045
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Matthias Hurst

In this course we explore the concept of evil and filmic incarnations of evil (rooted in or inspired by Christian mythology of the fallen angel and related demons). Numerous modern commentators have remarked on the decline of traditional ideas and embodiments of evil: the “death of Satan,” the “disappearance of hell,” and the general decline of medieval notions of supernatural malignity in favor of a materialist, secular consciousness. Film history, however, shows the persistence of longstanding iconographies of evil in the visual language of this quintessentially modern medium, especially in the genre of fantastic films – for instance, Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Angel Heart (1987), The Devil‘s Advocate (1997), or The Witch (2015). We explore the way in which film revives or alters much older images of Christian mythology. At the same time, the language of film often avoids direct embodiment of what it still considers to be an independent, menacing metaphysical force, evoking evil in other and sometimes equally menacing ways. Finally, we ask whether film produces secular ways of portraying or thinking about evil. Can we speak of a modern, non-embodied idea of this deeply disturbing and disruptive quality?
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

TH155 Mind turners – Practices of Making in the Performing Arts

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Wed 0900-1215
Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Eva Meyer Keller

“Your idea about the world says as much about you as it does about the world.”

“Your brain does not detect features in the world and body, it constructs features to create meaning. ... As an adult you have the capacity to challenge those meanings and even change them.”

Lisa Feldmann Barrett

In this seminar, choreographer and artist Eva Meyer Keller will share insights into her ongoing performative practice and artistic research on the natural sciences, particularly on cell biology and neuroscience. Based on her work on the nervous system and active processes of perception, performative exercises and tasks will be developed for the class. These serve as a starting point for each student to embark on developing their own performance projects guided by their own interest and research project. Each student will develop their own short performances, cultivating curiosity rather than confidence. Furthermore, works of performative and visual artists such as Uta Eisenreich, Sofia Hulten, Ilya Noé and Agata Siniarska will be discussed, the latter will also be joining the class for a workshop session. We will also discuss influential historical artistic positions including Yvonne Rainers’ “No Manifesto“ (1965), Sol LeWitts’ “Conceptual Art Manifesto“ (1968), and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ “Manifesto for Maintenance Art” (1969), as these transformed how art is conceived and defined. Moreover, we will seek inspiration in other fields, looking, for example, at neuroscientific ideas about the mind as articulated by Lisa Feldmann Barrett, and at Buddhist practices.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

TH180 Rethinking Regie: An Introduction to Directing

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900
Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Julia Hart

(In collaboration with TH134: Introduction to Playwriting)

This course will introduce students to the basics of directing theater in the context of contemporary German theater. The course has a two-fold structure: First, students will study different theater aesthetics and styles by looking at the work of directors currently working in Berlin, and discuss the various definitions of the controversial term Regietheater or “director’s theater.” What does directing look like in Germany today and what is the role of the director in the rehearsal? Students will be introduced to basic directing techniques in class and learn exercises for staging text-based material. What are the steps a director in Germany typically goes through when directing a play? What are different ways of developing a conceptual approach to a piece and how can this affect your work with actors? Second, students in this course will work together throughout the semester with students in the "Introduction to Playwriting" seminar, instructed by Cory Tamler. In a workshop setting, students will form teams of directors, playwrights and actors to explore different forms of collaboration in the rehearsal room. We will work on staged readings and short scenes that culminate in a theater presentation in the Factory at the end of the semester.
Syllabus

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

TH325 Bodies in the City

Fall 2024

Day/Time: Week 1-2: Fri 1400-1715; Week 2-End of term: Fri 1400-1830
Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Daniel Belasco Rogers

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

What is it that cities allow us to do with our bodies? What is possible in public space now? This seminar explores how cities accommodate and resist human (and non-human) bodies. There are many factors that influence and determine how and where we spend time. From a city government deciding to play high pitched sound to drive young people away from certain central urban locations to the unintentionally uncomfortable wind corridors created by empty plazas in front of tall buildings, cities shape human behavior in more or less obvious and intended ways. Feeling safe or endangered in different spaces is also greatly influenced by the way race and gender are dealt with in our societies, having deep effects on our cities. How can we use artistic and creative strategies to explore, reflect upon, critique and perhaps push the envelopes of these urban and social affordances and prohibitions? Through a mixture of performative assignments in the city, group discussions, and examples of artists’ works, we will explore methods of examining, exploring and augmenting the role of the body in the city. We will consider artistic strategies such as psychogeography, Situationism, algorithmic walking and urban intervention. We will be walking, sharing, tracing, map-making, playing and developing strategies to see the city anew. Through set tasks inspired by the work of other artists, we will be working to find modes of being in, reflecting on and performing the city.
Syllabus

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EC110 Principles of Economics (Group A)

EC110 Principles of Economics (Group B)

EC212 Experimental Economics

EC251 Industry Networks and Economic Development

EC275 From Barter to Bitcoin: Philosophy and History of Money

EC314 International Economics

EC320 Econometrics

FA107 Ceramics

FA113 Introduction to Glass Making

FA156 Dance Lab: Body Space Image. Dance and Visual Arts

HI109 Global History Lab - with a focus on the Global History of Berlin/Prussia/Brandenburg

HI130 Society, Culture and Identities in Modern Eastern Europe: Ukraine in Context

IN110 Globalization and International Relations

IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar: Working Cultures, Urban Cultures

LT142 Writing Fiction

LT145 Tragedy

LT168 Theories of the Body

LT265 Concepts of the Person

LT314 Global Cold War Literatures

LT326 Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop

LT329 The Writing Life

LT352 Happy in Berlin?

LT360 Trauma in Literature

PL105 Introduction to Ethics

PL115 Foundations of Political Theory

PL170 Falsafa: Introduction to Arabic Philosophy

PL322 The Uncanny - Literature, Psychology, Philosophy and Technology

PL346 Conceptions of Nature in Classical German Philosophy

PL361 The American Revolution Revisited

PL380 Do We Need Government? An Introduction to Anarchism

PS129 Understanding Politics

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group A)

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group B)

PS271 US Foreign Policy

PS327 A Critical Appraisal of the Arab Spring: 2010-2023

PS388 Contemporary Political Polarization and How to Address it

PT150 Global Citizenship

PT160 Transnational Feminism is for Everybody

PT325 The European Union: Institutions, Policies, Procedures

PT355 International Organizations and Human Rights Advocacy

SC250 Science Communication

SE301 Making the Case: Human Rights Research and Reporting

SO203 Qualitative Methods in Social Sciences

TH103 Acting Workshop

TH134 Introduction to Playwriting

AH207 Feminist Art in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries

AH219 Landscape, Land Art, and the City

AH236 Critical Perspectives on Berlin's new Cultural Venue, the Humboldt Forum

AH302 Ideas of the Aesthetic

AH315 Beyond Crisis: South American Memory Politics and Art

AR360 Contemporary Art and the Politics of Exhibition Culture: the Venice Biennial

FA103 Found Fragments and Layered Lines: mixed-media techniques for drawing and collage

FA106 Beginners Black and White Photography Class: The Slow Photo

FA108 Beginners in Digital Photography - Your own point of view

FA109 Painting Fundamentals

FA112 Marble Stone Sculpture

FA188 The Art of Making Videos

FA230 Archives of Sound

FA270 The Political Image

FA294 Queering the Capitalocene: (Eco-)feminist Film and Video Art for Earthly Survival

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

FA319 Advanced Drawing: Process and Experimentation

FA325 The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon

FM245 From Caligari to Hitler? German Cinema in the Weimar Republic

FM323 The Number of the Beast: (D)evil on Screen

LT345 Intersectional Feminisms and Contemporary Literature

MA120 Mathematics for Economics

MA151 Introduction to Statistics

MU171 Berlin: City of Music

PL346 Conceptions of Nature in Classical German Philosophy

SC215 Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound)

TH155 Mind turners – Practices of Making in the Performing Arts

TH180 Rethinking Regie: An Introduction to Directing

TH325 Bodies in the City

IS101 Plato's Republic and Its Interlocuters

IS102 Renaissance Florence

IS123 Academic Research in the Social Sciences