Course List Search

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Aesthetics and Art Theory

AH205 The Black female figure in Western Art from the 17th century to Present: From Object to Subject

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Enuma Okoro

The course examines the representation of the Black female figure in Western art from the 17th century to the present. With considerations of historical contexts, visual literacy and how representation of race and gender shape and influence the development of art, visual culture, and cultural narratives, this course will analyze a selection of art works and how these portrayals reflect and influence agency, societal attitudes and cultural narratives at the time of production. Students will also consider the impact of such works on art and society in the ensuing years and generations. In addition to research and reports, students will be expected to read and synthesize perspectives from art history, feminist theory and cultural studies to assess cultural narratives. Students should also be prepared to engage in creative reflection, writing and class presentation as part of the investigation and consideration of these art works. Museum visits, where possible, will be part of the course.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Modules: Approaching Arts Through Theory, Art Objects and Experience

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Fri 0900-1215
Credits: 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 and 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. Particular attention will be dedicated to themes such as “Body, Sexuality, and the Image of the Woman” and “Female Materiality and Crafts”, “Politics of Race and Gender” and “Care and Maintenance as Artistic Practices.” Through such topics, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Art and Artists in Context

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

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

Hardly any project has been more controversial than the rebuilding of Berlin’s City Palace. 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 recently 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Artists, Genres, and Movements

AH314 Las Meninas and the Pictorial Encounter

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Geoff Lehman

In this course, Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas will serve as a focal point and framework for the exploration of a number of key issues related to the theory and practice of painting, looking at a diverse range of artworks. Major topics for the course include: portraiture and the gaze; perspective as pictorial structure and as depiction of (room) space; the intersection of chronos (the representation of narrative or historical time) and kairos (the plenitude of the depicted moment); self-reflexivity: the way pictures explicitly raise questions about artistic practice, the artist, and art itself; the phenomenology of the encounter with paintings; psychoanalytic interpretations of pictures; and “the anxiety of influence:” considering the vast range of artworks that have been created in response to Las Meninas, especially since Picasso’s Las Meninas series in the 1950s. Discussing these different aspects of the encounter with painting and its interpretation, we will engage Velázquez’s complex painting in depth through close reading, sustained attention, and open-ended interpretation. Beyond this, we will have a chance to explore the topics above through consideration of selected artworks from the Renaissance up to the contemporary moment. Artists whose works we study will include Van Eyck, Mantegna, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Picasso, Sargent, Dalí, Witkin, Weems, and Sussman. Readings will be from Steinberg, Foucault, Calderón, Jung, Freud, Lispector, Woolf, Riegl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and others. Visits to museums to encounter works of art in person will be an integral part of the course.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Artists, Genres, and Movements

AH315 Beyond Crisis: South American Memory Politics and Art

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Haley Stewart

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

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 extractive industries, and the consequences of colonial violence against Indigenous and Afro-descendant 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.

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

EC212 Experimental Economics

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 0900-1030
Credits: 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

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

EC295 Making Value and Using Resources

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Anthony Quickel

Critical to the study and history of economics are theories about value. This course will look at how value has been “made” historically, and how it is currently theorized. Drawing on anthropological theory and economic histories, we will examine the ways in which value was constructed, and explore other, related issues like debt and credit. The course will also connect with issues in the histories of resource use and management, monetary history and numismatic studies, as well as land-use and taxation. Resources especially—metals, minerals, and other raw materials—will be an important topic, alongside issues of currency, trade, and taxation. The course offers an historical background to the development of critical concepts that inform our contemporary understandings of life and the economy. Furthermore, in examining the ways in which other societies—past and present, especially in the Global South and in indigenous communities—understand issues of value, the course will offer alternative perspectives allowing students to question and rethink current prevailing paradigms. With the transformations of the present moment, from digitization to the AI-revolution, students will also be offered an opportunity to consider how knowledge, data, and labor are commodified and valued in the present, and then situate this moment in the context of formations from the past.

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

EC320 Econometrics

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1045-1215
Credits: 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.

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

EC330 Rethinking Development Economics: Money, Finance, and Trade

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo

At the heart of development economics are the questions: “Why do countries have different levels of income?” and “How can we achieve greater parity”? Some developing and emerging economies have appeared to break out of stagnation and transformed their economies into industrial hubs. China and the Asian tigers (Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) are notable examples. By contrast, the struggle for economic transformation remains intractable for most African, South Asian and Latin American economies. Why have decades of analysis and policy prescriptions failed to transform these economies? In this seminar, we contend that the dominant theorization and conceptualization of the development problem and its solutions have largely failed. Development economics requires a rethink, not only to account for the realities of the African and Latin American contexts but the complexity of the 21st-century global political economy. One approach is to ground development policy on an understanding of the interconnectedness between the real economy of production and the financial sector, as well as of the constraints and opportunities of the international capitalist system. This political economy of money, finance and production or trade can only emerge from a critical reexamination of the fundamental economic concepts that inform policymaking in the global south with a particular focus on Africa.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Modules: Art Objects and Experience, Artistic Practice

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Mon 0930-1245
Credits: 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 visual perception to strengthen the coordination of mind, eyes, and hands. Course activities will ask students to: make analytical drawings of figures and/or 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, weekly slideshow presentations, and contemporary art gallery visits. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios'' exhibition in the BCB arts building at Monopol Berlin. Students are expected to be self-motivated, open to exploring new ways of working, and comfortable sharing their artworks in class.
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

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Artistic Practice

FA110 Beginning Sculpture

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1000-1200
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Eddy Steinhauer

Taught by international Berlin-based artist and curator Eddy Steinhauer, this course introduces a studio experience in sculpture with an emphasis on materials and methods. Eddy Steinhauer’s 3-dimensional artistic practice is guided by formal, material and contextual concerns and influenced by (natural) history, theories of evolution and identity, and processes of community building. Students in the course will be exposed to diverse media and a range of techniques. We will explore ideas circulating in contemporary culture, and use them as inspiration for making objects or installations that speak to the critical issues facing our society. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of a variety of materials—including clay, plaster, wood, and acrylics—and acquire a fundamental knowledge of the principles of sculpture: addition, subtraction, substitution, and multiplicity. Moreover, students will develop essential skills in using basic hand and power tools, along with the approaches needed for realizing their artistic aims. Class lectures, presentations, discussions, and critiques will offer insights into central developments in the medium of sculpture, while selected readings will complement the projects and studio sessions. The objective of the class is to guide students in creating a cohesive portfolio while refining the skills required to present their results professionally to the public.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Artistic Practice

FA115 Introduction to Digital Photography: Identity Construction and Representation

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Carla Åhlander

This course is designed for beginners who are interested in exploring digital photography through both basic technical skills and creative expression. Students will learn the fundamentals of the camera, including exposure, composition, and lighting. Alongside mastering technical skills, students will engage in picture analysis, examining how images communicate meaning and emotion. Throughout the course, students will complete a series of assignments and longer projects that emphasize creative exploration. The course structure is based on regular in-class critiques and discussions. A key focus will be on different kinds of portrait photography, approached from multiple perspectives to explore the construction of identity and memory. Themes such as family, gender, history, class, stereotypes, and representation will guide the creative process. Students will be allowed to experiment with controlled lighting, while lectures and discussions will provide inspiration from a range of photo artists who have dealt with similar themes in various ways, from Jo Spence to Juan Pablo Echeverri. In addition, students will reflect on photography's role in shaping societal clichés, while considering the balance between uniqueness and originality in their own work.
By the end of the course, students will not only gain confidence in their technical abilities but also deepen their understanding of photography as a powerful medium for self-expression and social commentary.

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 2025

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

Professor(s): Eva Burghardt

In addition to ongoing movement training as an essential foundation, this course explores the crossover between 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 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 assigned individually and to 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 the works of those artists who widened the understanding of dance and choreography, crossing the borders between dance and visual media, e.g., postmodernists Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Anna Halprin and contemporary figures 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. Two off-site excursions to performances in Berlin, including discussions and a written reflection afterwards, will be an integral part of the course.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Art Objects and Experience

FA250 Immersive Spatial Experiences

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Magdalena Emmerig

In this practicing arts seminar, students will learn about various forms of spatial design. The idea is to create immersive spaces. In the context of theater, immersion describes an experience in which the division between stage and audience is non-existent and the visitor becomes part of the play. It can also describe a spatial experience in which the visitor encounters a closed, artificial world. The course aims to convey an artistic exploration of architecture and an introduction to spatial design. What narratives does a space contain and how can the experience of the space be designed? In the seminar we will explore different artistic approaches. We will look at architectural works by visual artist Gregor Schneider, stage designs by Anna Viebrock and the artist duo Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller. We will visit theater performances and exhibitions to encounter and reflect on spatial experiences. During the semester, students will collect visual material from which mood boards will be developed. They will learn to elaborate a conceptual approach for their own spatial setting and explore different modes of visualization, from drawing/painting to model building. In the second half of the semester, the focus will be on working with the model to create different kinds of atmosphere, for example through spatial changes and lighting design. In addition, we will do a workshop on theater lighting to become familiar with varieties of lighting materials. At the end of the semester, each student presents their own spatial design.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Media, Practices, and Techniques

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Thur 0930-1245
Credits: 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: jkleckner at berlin.bard.edu

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Media, Practices, and Techniques

FA325 The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue 1400-1715
Credits: 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 create Photo Zines and 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 creating 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Media, Practices, and Techniques

FA340 How Long Is Now? – A Photographic Portrait of Berlin

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Hannah Goldstein

The history of Berlin is exciting, tumultuous, horrifying, inspiring, and fascinating all at the same time. Like every large city, Berlin is constantly changing. This class captures the stories of Berlin through the camera. The phrase “how long is now?”, was a famous text on the facade of the legendary art squat Tacheles, which no longer exists. It begs us to ask the question how long is now? How long is Berlin, Berlin? What is Berlin right now? And what does that mean? Through photographic walks this class will explore the city and its history from the early 1900s until today. The class will visit different neighborhoods and as we walk through the city, we will learn what, how and who shaped Berlin to make it the city it is at the present moment. We will learn the history of the areas, what art and political movements took place there and what important people lived there. We will draw upon this historical knowledge to ask through our photography how Berlin is transforming, and to express in artistic format the changes and currents of present-day Berlin. The first class will start with an in-depth lecture about Berlin photographers and photography. Each subsequent other class meets either on campus, or in a new part of the city. Participants will be asked to respond photographically to a given district, its history and stories, all of which will be explored that week. We will make studio visits to two Berlin photographers to see how they have portrayed Berlin. At the end of the semester, each student will have a project of images that constitutes their own portrait of Berlin. These can be portraits of the city’s architecture and infrastructure, as well as of the people who live here, looking at how we shape the city and how the city shapes us.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Artists, Genres, and Movements

FM324 How the West Was Lost: Revisionist and Post-Western Films

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Mon 1930-2200 (Film Screening) AND Tue 1545-1900 (Lecture)
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Matthias Hurst

The Western Film genre, “the American film par excellence” (André Bazin), though dealing with historical topics such as the nineteenth-century expansion of colonization and capitalist forms of exchange, also alluded in the 1960s and 1970s to changes then taking place in American society. Questions of race and gender underwent critical scrutiny in revisionist versions of the Western film, while ideological concepts like the “frontier” and “manifest destiny” were challenged from the perspective of a postwar critique of American foreign policy. Notions of civilization and progress too became surrounded with unease and skepticism. Environmental questions attained a new importance, with some films imagining “a dystopian present so bad that any future at all is unimaginable.” (David Lusted). The revisionist and dystopian Western films also influenced another subgenre, the so called Post-Western, which set out to explore the “psycho-geographical space” (Neil Campbell) of the American West, exploring nation’s modern self-image under the influence of a new globalized culture. We read revisionist Western and Post-Western films in relation to the latest ruptures in US-American culture and society. Among the films discussed are Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, John Sturges), Lonely Are The Brave (1962, David Miller), Little Big Man (1970, Arthur Penn), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, Sam Peckinpah), Heaven’s Gate (1980, Michael Cimino), Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005, Tommy Lee Jones), No Country for Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen), The Homesman (2014, Tommy Lee Jones) and The Sisters Brothers (2018, Jacques Audiard).

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
Module: Elective

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

Fall 2025

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

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 2025

Day/Time: Thur 1400-1530
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits (in combination with an internship)

Professor(s): Agata Lisiak, Florian Duijsens, Clio Nicastro

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.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT142 Writing Fiction

Fall 2025

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

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT171 Speculative Fiction

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Sladja Blazan

Speculative fiction has been defined as exploring things that really could happen but haven’t (quite) yet (Margaret Atwood), or postulating an as-yet-unknown future (Jewell Gomez). This focus gives the speculative mode a special resonance at the moment. We live in a world of shifting foundations, facing threats posed by political instability and environmental disaster, not to mention our experience of a frequently predicted but still incredible event: a global pandemic. It is no surprise that the hypothetical explorations of contemporary literature are expressed in the language of, among other genres, science fiction, fantasy, or horror. This seminar examines how post-millennial Anglo-American film and literature use speculative fiction to address the question of the human impact on nature. We will identify the narrative strategies artists have deployed to register their protest against those visions of tomorrow that are generated by relentlessly profit-oriented industries. As Daniel Heath Justice puts it: “we can’t possibly live otherwise until we first imagine otherwise.” For example, we will explore the attention given to the possibility of nonhuman sentience inscribed in landscapes endowed with intelligence, consciousness, and agency, all marks of the potential for communication and cooperation, as well as for feeling, needing, and plotting. We will learn about Afrofuturism, Indigenous Speculative Fiction, Climate Fiction, and Cyberculture. Primarily, we will discuss why speculative fiction came to matter at this historical juncture: the crossroads of colonization, decolonization, globalization, capitalism, and change. This seminar will include excursions to readings and performances.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT224 Forms of Life Writing: From the Confession to the Personal Essay

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Laura Scuriatti

What do we read when we read autobiographies, confessions, memoirs, personal criticism, autofiction and personal essays? Why would we want to read them? Do we want to know more about ourselves, the authors, the world, or do we behave like voyeurs? Do we treat these forms as literature, or as documents, or both? Is the reader’s interest in life-writing a form of consumerism and exploitation? In the last two decades, life-writing and autobiography have become dominant modes, structuring social media platforms and seeping into all literary genres and journalism; self-presentation and autobiographical modes of reading have become an almost unavoidable ingredient of literature and criticism. Life-writing however, constitutes, in its different forms, a fundamental form in literary history, starting with the genres of the confession and evolving into the structuring principle of the emerging genre of the novel in the eighteenth century. The course presents a host of different texts and forms in chronological order. It focuses on some of the fundamental questions: the relationship between truth and fiction in narrative, the shape of self in different forms, the work of memory, the consequences of narrative intimacy, the tension between invention and disclosure, the relationship between literary style and representation of self and mind, and between life-writing and the novel as instruments to represent and understand the world. Starting from early examples of life-writings, students will examine canonical texts, such as Augustine's Confessions, Rousseau's Confessions, Montaigne's Essays, modernist and contemporary autobiographies, works of autofiction, and personal essays, including texts by Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, Frederick Douglass, Annie Ernaux, Clarice Lispector, Edward Said, and Jia Tolentino. Students will also engage with critical works on the genre and reflect on the ideological and historical meaning of autobiographical forms.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT226 Tutors of History: Narrating South Asia in Fiction

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Saskya Jain

This course introduces the multi-layered postcolonial histories of South Asia through its recent literature, moving beyond the names of the few well-known figures from these literatures typically familiar to a Western readership. Through fiction, we will explore key moments such as Partition and its aftermath in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, the civil wars in Nepal and Sri Lanka, the insurgency in India’s Northeast, the displacement of indigenous populations and the Naxalite movement in India, and the migration of labor from South India to the Middle East. Making sense of this world through stories, we will read our way into the region’s own modernity—made even more complex by economic shifts, climate change and urbanization—which brings with it a new understanding of global dynamics. The reading list will include texts (written originally in English or translated from South Asian languages) by writers such as Geetanjali Shree, Akhtaruzzaman Elias, Manjushree Thapa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Aruni Kashyap, Mohammad Hanif and Sheela Tomy. We will consider how these authors offer an intimate access to individual and collective experience through close reading and attention to elements of literary form and style, such as structure, character, narrative voice, dialogue, sentences and paragraphs, profluence, etc. Concomitantly, this course also introduces students to the vibrant world of publishing, with a special focus on South Asia and translation, by exploring the dynamics of publishing and circulation, as well as the formats, forums and opportunities available (or not) to aspiring writers.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT286 Rewriting a Politics of Belonging

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Kathy-Ann Tan

We often hear claims that the United States is riven by intractable divisions of race, class, and gender. The literature of the country has long reflected the conflicts and questions arising from such divisions, and has much to teach us about their historical foundations and development. Above all, literature succeeds in staging a process of recognition, empowerment, and critique. Proponents of the reform and protest movements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America were aware that the “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” announced by the Declaration of Independence had not from the beginning been envisaged for all Americans, but for a white, propertied, male ruling class. In this seminar, we will read a selection of texts from contemporary American literature that propose a struggle with this uneasy foundation, manifesting kinds of social, psychological, and stylistic predicaments imposed by exclusion and persecution. Our central question will concern the ways in which authors reestablish a sense of belonging and collectivity through the act of writing. We will also look at the way in which contemporary literature connects with and revises a sense of tradition, and generates new traditions and affiliations. Above all, our goal will be to understand the fraught, creative dynamics of “belonging” in America, a country that, as Herman Melville once contended “contradicts all prior notions of human things.”This course will center the writings of Black and brown feminists that speak to the importance of differentiating between the lived experiences – and hence social realities – of women of color and white (and white-passing) women. In the first half of the course, we will discuss the works of Audre Lorde, bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldúa, whose writings and collaborative literary projects (such as the Combahee River Collective and the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press) continue to be highly influential on the work of writers today who seek to engage in a practice of intersectional and transformative justice. In the second half of the course, we will turn to contemporary works of poetry, essayistic writing and fiction that develop, queer and expand on the practice of intersectional feminism(s) in the literary realm. Texts will include works by bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Sara Ahmed, Angela Davis, Danez Smith, Warsan Shire, Ocean Vuong, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Kai Cheng Thom.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT329 The Writing Life

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Martin Widmann

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.

NB: Reading material and discussions will be both in German and English; students should therefore have B2 level competence of German.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT338 Why Borges? Fiction and Writing as Cultural Reflection

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Luis Miguel Isava

This course offers a new approach to the oeuvre of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Setting out from his first three books of essays Inquisitions (1925), The Size of my Hope (1926), and The Language of the Argentinians (1928) –later excluded from his Complete Works– we will explore the degree to which these writings are informed by new philosophical ideas that were gaining currency in Europe from the 1920s onwards (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Mauthner, Vaihinger) and, at the same time, establish his “peripheral” positioning as a writer in regard to those “cultural fields” (Bourdieu). Taking into account this double character, we proceed to read his later books of essays and short stories –focusing mainly on Discussion (1932), Fictions (1944), The Aleph (1949), Other Inquisitions (1952)– as complex “cultural artifacts,” i.e. verbal artifacts that question the traditional understanding of notions such as genre, literature, philosophy, and culture through a transgression of their alleged limits and definitions. With this approach we intend to show how his texts, resorting to this insistent “hybridization” (García Canclini), stage a performative form of thought through literature that proposes the possibility of generating new meanings while setting in motion a complex set of procedures that allow us to rethink the notions of language, thought and culture.

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, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Ethics and Politics, Politics
Module: Elective

LT360 Trauma and Literature

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Larisa Muraveva

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

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 as "sites of trauma" (S. Freud) in which particular strategies are developed to speak of the unspeakable, to bear witness to the impossible, and to find particular ways of reliving 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, the sublime. The conceptualisation of trauma will be carried out with reference to the works by S. Freud, C. Caruth, J. C. Alexander, R. Barthes, D. LaCapra, M. Rothberg, P. Ricœur, and others. Special attention will be paid to contemporary autofiction focused on traumatic experiences ("founding fault", according to A. Genon) 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.

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, Politics
Module: Elective

LT365 Longform Journalism: Crafting Investigative and Narrative Stories

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Channing Joseph

In this course, students have the unique opportunity to work with an award-winning journalist dedicated to longform storytelling and investigative reporting. Channing Gerard Joseph has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and other major publications. His reporting explores issues of power, identity, and representation, blending rigorous research with narrative storytelling. The class examines the craft of longform journalism—a style of in-depth, narrative-driven reporting that allows journalists to move beyond breaking news and produce deeply researched, immersive stories. From investigative exposés to literary nonfiction, longform journalism is one of the most powerful forms of public storytelling. But what makes a longform piece compelling? How do journalists balance fact and narrative? What ethical dilemmas arise when writing about real people’s lives? Students will analyze major works of longform journalism, studying how reporters structure complex stories, build compelling characters, and use storytelling techniques borrowed from literature. Readings will include standout pieces from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The New York Times Magazine. Berlin offers a dynamic backdrop for this work. Students will develop their own longform projects, selecting a topic of public interest and conducting field reporting, interviews, and archival research. The course will include discussions on media ethics, representation, and bias, asking how journalists shape public perception through their choices in framing, sourcing, and storytelling This course combines media analysis with hands-on reporting.

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
Module: Elective

PL115 Foundations of Political Theory

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Wed & Fri 1730-1900
Credits: 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 placed 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.

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
Module: Elective

PL216 Introduction to Chinese Philosophy

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Ruizhi Ma (Humboldt University)

In Kant’s view, China—and the entire East—was a barren land for philosophy. This kind of misjudgment persist in our time and hinders many from appreciating Non-Western philosophies. This course will help participants break through these obstacles, stepping into
the grand hall of Chinese philosophy to draw wisdom from its breadth and depth. We will focus on the elements of pre-Han Chinese philosophy, a period often regarded as the classical era. Known as the Time of the Hundred Schools of Thought, this period exemplifies the remarkable diversity and intellectual vitality of Chinese philosophy. The course aims to provide a broad overview of the philosophical landscape of pre-Han China, while at the same time delving into the theoretical frameworks and intellectual debates of three major schools: Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. It will also explore contributions from other schools, including the School of Names, Legalism, and the Yangism. In the last two sessions, participants will be introduced to two major post-Han philosophical traditions: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties, which can reveal the open horizons and continuous intellectual reinvigoration of Chinese philosophy. The primary focus of this course, in terms of areas it covers, lies in ethics and political philosophy, followed by epistemology, philosophy of mind, and logic. Metaphysics and philosophy of religion will also be touched upon throughout the discussions. Chinese philosophy does not exist in isolation. Throughout the course, we will draw comparisons with other philosophical traditions, enriching our understanding of its universal philosophical concerns. Particular attention will be paid to topics such as Aristotelian virtue ethics vis-à-vis Confucian ethics, Stoic logic compared to Mohist logic, and Daoism
alongside Sufism, etc. By situating Chinese philosophy in dialogue with global traditions, participants will gain a more expansive and inclusive perspective on philosophy as a shared intellectual heritage of humanity.

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

PL250 Ethics and Aesthetics in the face of Ecological Crisis

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Manuel Gebhardt

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The debate about climate change and the resulting contemporary ecological crisis has brought into prominent focus the relation between humankind and the environment. Over the past decades, artists and thinkers in the field of environmental ethics have developed various ways of determining ethical forms of human action in relation to nature. In order to grasp and evaluate these positions, we will – in a first step – study traditional ethical theories (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics). We will discuss their premises and the conclusions they suggest in regard to moral commitments. Building on this foundation, we will evaluate the soundness and validity of contemporary artistic and theoretical approaches to the field of environmental ethics. The seminar aims for students to acquire the competence to develop their own ethical stances and to advocate for their moral judgments. On our way, we will analyze the implication of anthropocentric and physiocentric arguments (caring for nature for the sake of humankind or for the sake of nature itself?), touching on the realms of human rights, animal rights, (global) justice, sustainability, ecopolitics (e.g. sumac kawsay, a concept of the “good life” alongside nature), ecofeminism and moral psychology (how can we bridge the gap between knowing what is right and doing what is right?). Readings will include Immanuel Kant, David Hume, J.S. Mill, and Martha Nussbaum (part I) as well as Donna Haraway, Vittorio Hösle, Hans Jonas, Christine Korsgaard, Angelika Krebs, Bruno Latour, Catriona McKinnon, Peter Singer, and Val Plumwood (part II).

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, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PL265 Interpreting the French Revolution

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Ewa Atanassow

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The French Revolution of 1789 was a source of inspiration and horror beyond the country of its unfolding and long after the time of its actual occurrence. The principles associated with the Revolution — human rights and popular sovereignty – marked a radical departure from a political system based on divine-right, royal absolutism and feudal hierarchy. Yet within a few years, revolutionary change gave way to factional conflict, Terror and - as France was a global Empire - warfare on a planetary scale. Often considered as the birth date of political modernity, 1789 and its aftershocks were also the crucible in which modern political thinking was forged. Along with fashioning a global vocabulary that inspired revolutionary struggles worldwide, The Revolution catalized the emergence of ideological currents – liberalism, conservatism, socialism, anticolonialism - that continue to shape modern politics. In this course, we shall learn about the main events, personages and structures that constituted the French Revolution, and we'll trace the historical controversies surrounding its interpretation. We will look into sources that were produced in the middle of revolutionary turmoil and read some of its major theorists in order to think with them about the meaning of this cataclysm today.
Note: The course will feature guest seminars and a lecture by the historian of the French Revolution Prof. Dr. Daniel Schönpflug (Freie Universität Berlin/Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).

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: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PL348 Education and Liberation

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Hans Stauffacher

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

Beliefs about education have always been closely associated with ideas of freedom and liberation. From Antiquity to the present, education has been conceptualized as the high road to the liberation from personal, social, political, economic, intellectual, and spiritual limitations, as a decisive factor in struggles against oppression, as a prerequisite for political participation, and as an essential precondition for a better life of the individual as well as a better society. But at the same time, particular frameworks and institutions of education have often led to oppression, exclusion, discrimination, and limitation. Just think of the way “the uneducated” are talked about in today’s media landscape or of the selective, standardizing, prescriptive, and exclusive character of schools and universities. In this course, we will read and discuss seminal philosophical texts and educational manifestos from antiquity to the 21st Century that conceptualize the correlation between education and liberation in diverse and often contradictory ways. We will use these texts to ask ourselves what education means for us and our society; whether, how, and to what extent education can indeed lead to liberation, or whether education, on the contrary, requires conformity and constraint. Given that the “liberal education” BCB strives for carries the notions of freedom and education in its name, this also means that we will critically reflect on what we are doing in courses like this one.

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

PL353 Language and Power

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Gilad Nir

Language is a means of communication and a vehicle of mutual understanding. Yet the use of language also involves an exercise of power, and language is a central battleground in the struggle for social justice and representation. Our aim in this seminar is to develop an understanding of the variety of mechanisms that are at work in language and which enable it to convey, reinforce and alter the power relations that shape our lives. The seminar will lead up to the discussion of these political and ethical issues by first inquiring into two sets of preliminary questions. First, we will ask how language fits into the natural-historical and social dimensions of human life. How is human language different from animal communication? Which aspects of language are innate, and which aspects must be acquired? How does language affect cognition? Do differences between languages entail differences between their speakers’ ways of thinking? Are all languages mutually translatable? Or must something get lost in translation? Second, we will attempt to isolate the purely descriptive functions of language. How do words reach out to the world, and enable us to make claims about it, which can then count as true or as false? Does the structure of language reflect the structure of the world? What difference does the use of synonyms and metaphors make to the meaning of a descriptive claim? Are there limits to what can be meaningfully said? Finally, turning to the pragmatic and performative dimensions of language use, we will consider the idea of free speech and the various ways in which speech may be repressed and silenced. We will analyze the phenomena of insinuation, implicature, and dog whistles; distinguish between hermeneutic and testimonial injustice; and ask how ideology is perpetuated by means of generalizations, slurs and hate speech. Readings include texts by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, Chomsky, Pinker, Hurford, Langton, Leslie, Fricker, Stanley, Haslanger, Kukla, Tirell, Hornsby, Saul, Nowak and Maitra.

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
Module: Elective

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group A)

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Gale Raj

Prerequisites: Understanding Politics

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, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group B)

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Gale Raj

Prerequisites: Understanding Politics

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, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PS271 US Foreign Policy

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1400-1530
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 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.

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, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PS355 Building Sustainable Peace

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Nassim Abi Ghanem

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

How is peace sustained? Why does peace last in some contexts and break down in others? Armed conflict and state repression continue to dominate contemporary affairs, while systematic challenges hinder processes of just and sustainable peace. In parallel to these developments, a complex range of initiatives arising from civil society and social movements, in search of sustainable peace, have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners. The aims of this course are, firstly, to introduce the various causes of direct and structural violence. Secondly, we look at the conditions under which peace can be achieved, and the obstacles faced in securing peace in the short- and long-term; while also highlighting the different strategies that can be designed. Thirdly, the course delves into a wide range of armed conflict case studies and examines the peace processes and movements promoting nonviolent social change. In so doing, we reflect on applying theory to current global and local events involving reconciliation processes. Lastly, we examine contemporary debates on the various post-conflict tools - such as power-sharing systems, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), and security sector reforms (SSR) - analyzing their relevance to creating reconciliation between adversaries, along with reconstruction, and a sustainable and durable peace.

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: Art and Aesthetics, Artistic Practice, Economics, Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Elective

PT160 Transnational Feminism Is for Everybody

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Agata Lisiak

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate 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 focus on political projects that seek out solidarity-yielding connections. Among other topics, we will discuss the demands of early socialist women’s rights activists, queer feminist formations in the Global South, transfeminist activism in Latin America and beyond, feminist responses to occupation, war, and land grabbing, sex workers’ struggles across borders, decolonial feminist interventions in Europe, 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, Alexandra Kollontai, Audre Lorde, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Approaching Arts Through Theory

SC215 Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound)

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Wed 1400-1715
Credits: 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 such a 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.

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
Module: Elective

SC250 Science Communication

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900 (Online)
Credits: 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.

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 Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Art and Aesthetics
Module: Artistic Practice

TH245 From Street to Stage: Experimenting with Rimini Protokoll's Approach to Documentary Theater

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Daniel Wetzel

This course introduces the theater practice of Rimini Protokoll, the award-winning and internationally renowned Berlin-based group celebrated for its groundbreaking documentary approaches. For over 20 years, Rimini Protokoll has been redefining the boundaries of theater. Taught by Daniel Wetzel, a member of Rimini Protokoll, this course invites students to use specific urban infrastructures and their communities as a springboard for artistic research and performance practice. Potential starting-points could include the fast-food stand at the bus station or the cinema across the street from Rewe. These locations will serve as catalysts for encounters, research, drafting performative scenes, try-outs, and, ultimately, the development of a project. Urban spaces will become laboratories for experimental exploration, delving into the biographies and perspectives of individuals who grant us a glimpse into their worlds. In addition to developing concrete techniques for translating these experiences into performative works, the course will emphasize the concept of projections—not merely as visual images on a screen but as a method for sharing thoughts, stories, and perspectives. This course also introduces the art of forging unexpected social connections as a foundation for creativity while exploring how theater can unite people to share meaningful experiences. Regular and reliable participation, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to working between sessions will be essential for a dynamic artistic process and a rewarding outcome.

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 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Fri 0900-1215
Credits: 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 and 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. Particular attention will be dedicated to themes such as “Body, Sexuality, and the Image of the Woman” and “Female Materiality and Crafts”, “Politics of Race and Gender” and “Care and Maintenance as Artistic Practices.” Through such topics, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, Study Abroad
Concentration: Artistic Practice
Modules: Art History, Culture and Society, Methods in Social and Historical Studies

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

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

Hardly any project has been more controversial than the rebuilding of Berlin’s City Palace. 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 recently 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.

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

AH314 Las Meninas and the Pictorial Encounter

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Geoff Lehman

In this course, Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas will serve as a focal point and framework for the exploration of a number of key issues related to the theory and practice of painting, looking at a diverse range of artworks. Major topics for the course include: portraiture and the gaze; perspective as pictorial structure and as depiction of (room) space; the intersection of chronos (the representation of narrative or historical time) and kairos (the plenitude of the depicted moment); self-reflexivity: the way pictures explicitly raise questions about artistic practice, the artist, and art itself; the phenomenology of the encounter with paintings; psychoanalytic interpretations of pictures; and “the anxiety of influence:” considering the vast range of artworks that have been created in response to Las Meninas, especially since Picasso’s Las Meninas series in the 1950s. Discussing these different aspects of the encounter with painting and its interpretation, we will engage Velázquez’s complex painting in depth through close reading, sustained attention, and open-ended interpretation. Beyond this, we will have a chance to explore the topics above through consideration of selected artworks from the Renaissance up to the contemporary moment. Artists whose works we study will include Van Eyck, Mantegna, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Picasso, Sargent, Dalí, Witkin, Weems, and Sussman. Readings will be from Steinberg, Foucault, Calderón, Jung, Freud, Lispector, Woolf, Riegl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and others. Visits to museums to encounter works of art in person will be an integral part of the course.

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 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Haley Stewart

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

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 extractive industries, and the consequences of colonial violence against Indigenous and Afro-descendant 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.

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 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Mon 0930-1245
Credits: 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 visual perception to strengthen the coordination of mind, eyes, and hands. Course activities will ask students to: make analytical drawings of figures and/or 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, weekly slideshow presentations, and contemporary art gallery visits. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios'' exhibition in the BCB arts building at Monopol Berlin. Students are expected to be self-motivated, open to exploring new ways of working, and comfortable sharing their artworks in class.
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

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

FA110 Beginning Sculpture

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1000-1200
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Eddy Steinhauer

Taught by international Berlin-based artist and curator Eddy Steinhauer, this course introduces a studio experience in sculpture with an emphasis on materials and methods. Eddy Steinhauer’s 3-dimensional artistic practice is guided by formal, material and contextual concerns and influenced by (natural) history, theories of evolution and identity, and processes of community building. Students in the course will be exposed to diverse media and a range of techniques. We will explore ideas circulating in contemporary culture, and use them as inspiration for making objects or installations that speak to the critical issues facing our society. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of a variety of materials—including clay, plaster, wood, and acrylics—and acquire a fundamental knowledge of the principles of sculpture: addition, subtraction, substitution, and multiplicity. Moreover, students will develop essential skills in using basic hand and power tools, along with the approaches needed for realizing their artistic aims. Class lectures, presentations, discussions, and critiques will offer insights into central developments in the medium of sculpture, while selected readings will complement the projects and studio sessions. The objective of the class is to guide students in creating a cohesive portfolio while refining the skills required to present their results professionally to the public.

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

FA115 Introduction to Digital Photography: Identity Construction and Representation

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Carla Åhlander

This course is designed for beginners who are interested in exploring digital photography through both basic technical skills and creative expression. Students will learn the fundamentals of the camera, including exposure, composition, and lighting. Alongside mastering technical skills, students will engage in picture analysis, examining how images communicate meaning and emotion. Throughout the course, students will complete a series of assignments and longer projects that emphasize creative exploration. The course structure is based on regular in-class critiques and discussions. A key focus will be on different kinds of portrait photography, approached from multiple perspectives to explore the construction of identity and memory. Themes such as family, gender, history, class, stereotypes, and representation will guide the creative process. Students will be allowed to experiment with controlled lighting, while lectures and discussions will provide inspiration from a range of photo artists who have dealt with similar themes in various ways, from Jo Spence to Juan Pablo Echeverri. In addition, students will reflect on photography's role in shaping societal clichés, while considering the balance between uniqueness and originality in their own work.
By the end of the course, students will not only gain confidence in their technical abilities but also deepen their understanding of photography as a powerful medium for self-expression and social commentary.

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

FA250 Immersive Spatial Experiences

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Magdalena Emmerig

In this practicing arts seminar, students will learn about various forms of spatial design. The idea is to create immersive spaces. In the context of theater, immersion describes an experience in which the division between stage and audience is non-existent and the visitor becomes part of the play. It can also describe a spatial experience in which the visitor encounters a closed, artificial world. The course aims to convey an artistic exploration of architecture and an introduction to spatial design. What narratives does a space contain and how can the experience of the space be designed? In the seminar we will explore different artistic approaches. We will look at architectural works by visual artist Gregor Schneider, stage designs by Anna Viebrock and the artist duo Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller. We will visit theater performances and exhibitions to encounter and reflect on spatial experiences. During the semester, students will collect visual material from which mood boards will be developed. They will learn to elaborate a conceptual approach for their own spatial setting and explore different modes of visualization, from drawing/painting to model building. In the second half of the semester, the focus will be on working with the model to create different kinds of atmosphere, for example through spatial changes and lighting design. In addition, we will do a workshop on theater lighting to become familiar with varieties of lighting materials. At the end of the semester, each student presents their own spatial design.

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 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Thur 0930-1245
Credits: 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: jkleckner at berlin.bard.edu

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 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue 1400-1715
Credits: 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 create Photo Zines and 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 creating 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.

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

FA340 How Long Is Now? – A Photographic Portrait of Berlin

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Hannah Goldstein

The history of Berlin is exciting, tumultuous, horrifying, inspiring, and fascinating all at the same time. Like every large city, Berlin is constantly changing. This class captures the stories of Berlin through the camera. The phrase “how long is now?”, was a famous text on the facade of the legendary art squat Tacheles, which no longer exists. It begs us to ask the question how long is now? How long is Berlin, Berlin? What is Berlin right now? And what does that mean? Through photographic walks this class will explore the city and its history from the early 1900s until today. The class will visit different neighborhoods and as we walk through the city, we will learn what, how and who shaped Berlin to make it the city it is at the present moment. We will learn the history of the areas, what art and political movements took place there and what important people lived there. We will draw upon this historical knowledge to ask through our photography how Berlin is transforming, and to express in artistic format the changes and currents of present-day Berlin. The first class will start with an in-depth lecture about Berlin photographers and photography. Each subsequent other class meets either on campus, or in a new part of the city. Participants will be asked to respond photographically to a given district, its history and stories, all of which will be explored that week. We will make studio visits to two Berlin photographers to see how they have portrayed Berlin. At the end of the semester, each student will have a project of images that constitutes their own portrait of Berlin. These can be portraits of the city’s architecture and infrastructure, as well as of the people who live here, looking at how we shape the city and how the city shapes us.

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

FM324 How the West Was Lost: Revisionist and Post-Western Films

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Mon 1930-2200 (Film Screening) AND Tue 1545-1900 (Lecture)
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Matthias Hurst

The Western Film genre, “the American film par excellence” (André Bazin), though dealing with historical topics such as the nineteenth-century expansion of colonization and capitalist forms of exchange, also alluded in the 1960s and 1970s to changes then taking place in American society. Questions of race and gender underwent critical scrutiny in revisionist versions of the Western film, while ideological concepts like the “frontier” and “manifest destiny” were challenged from the perspective of a postwar critique of American foreign policy. Notions of civilization and progress too became surrounded with unease and skepticism. Environmental questions attained a new importance, with some films imagining “a dystopian present so bad that any future at all is unimaginable.” (David Lusted). The revisionist and dystopian Western films also influenced another subgenre, the so called Post-Western, which set out to explore the “psycho-geographical space” (Neil Campbell) of the American West, exploring nation’s modern self-image under the influence of a new globalized culture. We read revisionist Western and Post-Western films in relation to the latest ruptures in US-American culture and society. Among the films discussed are Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, John Sturges), Lonely Are The Brave (1962, David Miller), Little Big Man (1970, Arthur Penn), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, Sam Peckinpah), Heaven’s Gate (1980, Michael Cimino), Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005, Tommy Lee Jones), No Country for Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen), The Homesman (2014, Tommy Lee Jones) and The Sisters Brothers (2018, Jacques Audiard).

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

PL250 Ethics and Aesthetics in the face of Ecological Crisis

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Manuel Gebhardt

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The debate about climate change and the resulting contemporary ecological crisis has brought into prominent focus the relation between humankind and the environment. Over the past decades, artists and thinkers in the field of environmental ethics have developed various ways of determining ethical forms of human action in relation to nature. In order to grasp and evaluate these positions, we will – in a first step – study traditional ethical theories (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics). We will discuss their premises and the conclusions they suggest in regard to moral commitments. Building on this foundation, we will evaluate the soundness and validity of contemporary artistic and theoretical approaches to the field of environmental ethics. The seminar aims for students to acquire the competence to develop their own ethical stances and to advocate for their moral judgments. On our way, we will analyze the implication of anthropocentric and physiocentric arguments (caring for nature for the sake of humankind or for the sake of nature itself?), touching on the realms of human rights, animal rights, (global) justice, sustainability, ecopolitics (e.g. sumac kawsay, a concept of the “good life” alongside nature), ecofeminism and moral psychology (how can we bridge the gap between knowing what is right and doing what is right?). Readings will include Immanuel Kant, David Hume, J.S. Mill, and Martha Nussbaum (part I) as well as Donna Haraway, Vittorio Hösle, Hans Jonas, Christine Korsgaard, Angelika Krebs, Bruno Latour, Catriona McKinnon, Peter Singer, and Val Plumwood (part II).

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 2025
Level: Foundational

Day/Time: Wed 1400-1715
Credits: 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 such a 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.

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

TH245 From Street to Stage: Experimenting with Rimini Protokoll's Approach to Documentary Theater

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Daniel Wetzel

This course introduces the theater practice of Rimini Protokoll, the award-winning and internationally renowned Berlin-based group celebrated for its groundbreaking documentary approaches. For over 20 years, Rimini Protokoll has been redefining the boundaries of theater. Taught by Daniel Wetzel, a member of Rimini Protokoll, this course invites students to use specific urban infrastructures and their communities as a springboard for artistic research and performance practice. Potential starting-points could include the fast-food stand at the bus station or the cinema across the street from Rewe. These locations will serve as catalysts for encounters, research, drafting performative scenes, try-outs, and, ultimately, the development of a project. Urban spaces will become laboratories for experimental exploration, delving into the biographies and perspectives of individuals who grant us a glimpse into their worlds. In addition to developing concrete techniques for translating these experiences into performative works, the course will emphasize the concept of projections—not merely as visual images on a screen but as a method for sharing thoughts, stories, and perspectives. This course also introduces the art of forging unexpected social connections as a foundation for creativity while exploring how theater can unite people to share meaningful experiences. Regular and reliable participation, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to working between sessions will be essential for a dynamic artistic process and a rewarding outcome.

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 Interlocutors

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1045-1215 OR Tue & Thur 1400-1530 OR Tue & Fri 1400-1530
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

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

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.

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 2025

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1045-1215 OR Tue & Thur 1400-1530
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Giulia Clabassi, Geoff Lehman, Clio Nicastro, Laura Scuriatti, Katalin Makkai

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.

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: Origins of Political Economy

IS303 Origins of Political Economy

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Kai Koddenbrock, Aysuda Kölemen, Boris Vormann, Riaz Partha Khan

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 Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Electives, Study Abroad
Concentrations: Economics, Ethics and Politics, Literature and Rhetoric, Politics
Module: Elective

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

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Fri 0900-1215
Credits: 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 and 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. Particular attention will be dedicated to themes such as “Body, Sexuality, and the Image of the Woman” and “Female Materiality and Crafts”, “Politics of Race and Gender” and “Care and Maintenance as Artistic Practices.” Through such topics, 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.

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

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

Fall 2025

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

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

Hardly any project has been more controversial than the rebuilding of Berlin’s City Palace. 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 recently 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.

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

AH314 Las Meninas and the Pictorial Encounter

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Geoff Lehman

In this course, Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas will serve as a focal point and framework for the exploration of a number of key issues related to the theory and practice of painting, looking at a diverse range of artworks. Major topics for the course include: portraiture and the gaze; perspective as pictorial structure and as depiction of (room) space; the intersection of chronos (the representation of narrative or historical time) and kairos (the plenitude of the depicted moment); self-reflexivity: the way pictures explicitly raise questions about artistic practice, the artist, and art itself; the phenomenology of the encounter with paintings; psychoanalytic interpretations of pictures; and “the anxiety of influence:” considering the vast range of artworks that have been created in response to Las Meninas, especially since Picasso’s Las Meninas series in the 1950s. Discussing these different aspects of the encounter with painting and its interpretation, we will engage Velázquez’s complex painting in depth through close reading, sustained attention, and open-ended interpretation. Beyond this, we will have a chance to explore the topics above through consideration of selected artworks from the Renaissance up to the contemporary moment. Artists whose works we study will include Van Eyck, Mantegna, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Picasso, Sargent, Dalí, Witkin, Weems, and Sussman. Readings will be from Steinberg, Foucault, Calderón, Jung, Freud, Lispector, Woolf, Riegl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and others. Visits to museums to encounter works of art in person will be an integral part of the course.

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

AH315 Beyond Crisis: South American Memory Politics and Art

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Haley Stewart

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

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 extractive industries, and the consequences of colonial violence against Indigenous and Afro-descendant 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Economics
Module: Ethics and Economic Analysis

EC295 Making Value and Using Resources

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Anthony Quickel

Critical to the study and history of economics are theories about value. This course will look at how value has been “made” historically, and how it is currently theorized. Drawing on anthropological theory and economic histories, we will examine the ways in which value was constructed, and explore other, related issues like debt and credit. The course will also connect with issues in the histories of resource use and management, monetary history and numismatic studies, as well as land-use and taxation. Resources especially—metals, minerals, and other raw materials—will be an important topic, alongside issues of currency, trade, and taxation. The course offers an historical background to the development of critical concepts that inform our contemporary understandings of life and the economy. Furthermore, in examining the ways in which other societies—past and present, especially in the Global South and in indigenous communities—understand issues of value, the course will offer alternative perspectives allowing students to question and rethink current prevailing paradigms. With the transformations of the present moment, from digitization to the AI-revolution, students will also be offered an opportunity to consider how knowledge, data, and labor are commodified and valued in the present, and then situate this moment in the context of formations from the past.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Economics
Module: Econometrics

EC320 Econometrics

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1045-1215
Credits: 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Economics
Module: Elective

EC330 Rethinking Development Economics: Money, Finance, and Trade

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo

At the heart of development economics are the questions: “Why do countries have different levels of income?” and “How can we achieve greater parity”? Some developing and emerging economies have appeared to break out of stagnation and transformed their economies into industrial hubs. China and the Asian tigers (Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) are notable examples. By contrast, the struggle for economic transformation remains intractable for most African, South Asian and Latin American economies. Why have decades of analysis and policy prescriptions failed to transform these economies? In this seminar, we contend that the dominant theorization and conceptualization of the development problem and its solutions have largely failed. Development economics requires a rethink, not only to account for the realities of the African and Latin American contexts but the complexity of the 21st-century global political economy. One approach is to ground development policy on an understanding of the interconnectedness between the real economy of production and the financial sector, as well as of the constraints and opportunities of the international capitalist system. This political economy of money, finance and production or trade can only emerge from a critical reexamination of the fundamental economic concepts that inform policymaking in the global south with a particular focus on Africa.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Electives, 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 2025

Day/Time: Mon 0930-1245
Credits: 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 visual perception to strengthen the coordination of mind, eyes, and hands. Course activities will ask students to: make analytical drawings of figures and/or 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, weekly slideshow presentations, and contemporary art gallery visits. The semester culminates in the “Open Studios'' exhibition in the BCB arts building at Monopol Berlin. Students are expected to be self-motivated, open to exploring new ways of working, and comfortable sharing their artworks in class.
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

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

FA110 Beginning Sculpture

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1000-1200
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits

Professor(s): Eddy Steinhauer

Taught by international Berlin-based artist and curator Eddy Steinhauer, this course introduces a studio experience in sculpture with an emphasis on materials and methods. Eddy Steinhauer’s 3-dimensional artistic practice is guided by formal, material and contextual concerns and influenced by (natural) history, theories of evolution and identity, and processes of community building. Students in the course will be exposed to diverse media and a range of techniques. We will explore ideas circulating in contemporary culture, and use them as inspiration for making objects or installations that speak to the critical issues facing our society. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of a variety of materials—including clay, plaster, wood, and acrylics—and acquire a fundamental knowledge of the principles of sculpture: addition, subtraction, substitution, and multiplicity. Moreover, students will develop essential skills in using basic hand and power tools, along with the approaches needed for realizing their artistic aims. Class lectures, presentations, discussions, and critiques will offer insights into central developments in the medium of sculpture, while selected readings will complement the projects and studio sessions. The objective of the class is to guide students in creating a cohesive portfolio while refining the skills required to present their results professionally to the public.

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

FA115 Introduction to Digital Photography: Identity Construction and Representation

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Carla Åhlander

This course is designed for beginners who are interested in exploring digital photography through both basic technical skills and creative expression. Students will learn the fundamentals of the camera, including exposure, composition, and lighting. Alongside mastering technical skills, students will engage in picture analysis, examining how images communicate meaning and emotion. Throughout the course, students will complete a series of assignments and longer projects that emphasize creative exploration. The course structure is based on regular in-class critiques and discussions. A key focus will be on different kinds of portrait photography, approached from multiple perspectives to explore the construction of identity and memory. Themes such as family, gender, history, class, stereotypes, and representation will guide the creative process. Students will be allowed to experiment with controlled lighting, while lectures and discussions will provide inspiration from a range of photo artists who have dealt with similar themes in various ways, from Jo Spence to Juan Pablo Echeverri. In addition, students will reflect on photography's role in shaping societal clichés, while considering the balance between uniqueness and originality in their own work.
By the end of the course, students will not only gain confidence in their technical abilities but also deepen their understanding of photography as a powerful medium for self-expression and social commentary.

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

FA250 Immersive Spatial Experiences

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Magdalena Emmerig

In this practicing arts seminar, students will learn about various forms of spatial design. The idea is to create immersive spaces. In the context of theater, immersion describes an experience in which the division between stage and audience is non-existent and the visitor becomes part of the play. It can also describe a spatial experience in which the visitor encounters a closed, artificial world. The course aims to convey an artistic exploration of architecture and an introduction to spatial design. What narratives does a space contain and how can the experience of the space be designed? In the seminar we will explore different artistic approaches. We will look at architectural works by visual artist Gregor Schneider, stage designs by Anna Viebrock and the artist duo Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller. We will visit theater performances and exhibitions to encounter and reflect on spatial experiences. During the semester, students will collect visual material from which mood boards will be developed. They will learn to elaborate a conceptual approach for their own spatial setting and explore different modes of visualization, from drawing/painting to model building. In the second half of the semester, the focus will be on working with the model to create different kinds of atmosphere, for example through spatial changes and lighting design. In addition, we will do a workshop on theater lighting to become familiar with varieties of lighting materials. At the end of the semester, each student presents their own spatial design.

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

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Thur 0930-1245
Credits: 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: jkleckner at berlin.bard.edu

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

FA325 The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Tue 1400-1715
Credits: 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 create Photo Zines and 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 creating 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.

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

FA335 In the Archives - Film Production

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Janina Schabig

This is an OSUN Network collaborative film production course taught simultaneously on six campuses: Al-Quds Bard College (Jerusalem, Palestine), AUCA (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan), Bard College (Annandale, New York, US), Bard College Berlin (Berlin, Germany), BRAC University (Dhaka, Bangladesh) and European University of the Humanities (Vilnius, Lithuania). Students explore the concept of "the archive" in its many forms—personal, family, community, local, national, original and found footage—to examine, challenge, and reimagine how narratives are constructed and understood. In addition to analyzing how archival materials reveal hidden histories, shape collective memory, and question the nature of truth in storytelling, students will also create films that emerge from archival and found footage whether material or otherwise. The course will balance creative experimentation with technical skill-building, encouraging students to critically engage with how archives and documentation influence our perception of space, time, and identity, both in the past and present. By the end of the course, students will have utilized both newly recorded and archival footage to cra complex narratives rooted in their localities, producing short documentary projects that challenge conventional storytelling and push the boundaries of the genre.

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

FA340 How Long Is Now? – A Photographic Portrait of Berlin

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Hannah Goldstein

The history of Berlin is exciting, tumultuous, horrifying, inspiring, and fascinating all at the same time. Like every large city, Berlin is constantly changing. This class captures the stories of Berlin through the camera. The phrase “how long is now?”, was a famous text on the facade of the legendary art squat Tacheles, which no longer exists. It begs us to ask the question how long is now? How long is Berlin, Berlin? What is Berlin right now? And what does that mean? Through photographic walks this class will explore the city and its history from the early 1900s until today. The class will visit different neighborhoods and as we walk through the city, we will learn what, how and who shaped Berlin to make it the city it is at the present moment. We will learn the history of the areas, what art and political movements took place there and what important people lived there. We will draw upon this historical knowledge to ask through our photography how Berlin is transforming, and to express in artistic format the changes and currents of present-day Berlin. The first class will start with an in-depth lecture about Berlin photographers and photography. Each subsequent other class meets either on campus, or in a new part of the city. Participants will be asked to respond photographically to a given district, its history and stories, all of which will be explored that week. We will make studio visits to two Berlin photographers to see how they have portrayed Berlin. At the end of the semester, each student will have a project of images that constitutes their own portrait of Berlin. These can be portraits of the city’s architecture and infrastructure, as well as of the people who live here, looking at how we shape the city and how the city shapes us.

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

FM324 How the West Was Lost: Revisionist and Post-Western Films

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Mon 1930-2200 (Film Screening) AND Tue 1545-1900 (Lecture)
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits

Professor(s): Matthias Hurst

The Western Film genre, “the American film par excellence” (André Bazin), though dealing with historical topics such as the nineteenth-century expansion of colonization and capitalist forms of exchange, also alluded in the 1960s and 1970s to changes then taking place in American society. Questions of race and gender underwent critical scrutiny in revisionist versions of the Western film, while ideological concepts like the “frontier” and “manifest destiny” were challenged from the perspective of a postwar critique of American foreign policy. Notions of civilization and progress too became surrounded with unease and skepticism. Environmental questions attained a new importance, with some films imagining “a dystopian present so bad that any future at all is unimaginable.” (David Lusted). The revisionist and dystopian Western films also influenced another subgenre, the so called Post-Western, which set out to explore the “psycho-geographical space” (Neil Campbell) of the American West, exploring nation’s modern self-image under the influence of a new globalized culture. We read revisionist Western and Post-Western films in relation to the latest ruptures in US-American culture and society. Among the films discussed are Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, John Sturges), Lonely Are The Brave (1962, David Miller), Little Big Man (1970, Arthur Penn), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, Sam Peckinpah), Heaven’s Gate (1980, Michael Cimino), Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005, Tommy Lee Jones), No Country for Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen), The Homesman (2014, Tommy Lee Jones) and The Sisters Brothers (2018, Jacques Audiard).

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

SC215 Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound)

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Wed 1400-1715
Credits: 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 such a 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.

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

TH245 From Street to Stage: Experimenting with Rimini Protokoll's Approach to Documentary Theater

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Daniel Wetzel

This course introduces the theater practice of Rimini Protokoll, the award-winning and internationally renowned Berlin-based group celebrated for its groundbreaking documentary approaches. For over 20 years, Rimini Protokoll has been redefining the boundaries of theater. Taught by Daniel Wetzel, a member of Rimini Protokoll, this course invites students to use specific urban infrastructures and their communities as a springboard for artistic research and performance practice. Potential starting-points could include the fast-food stand at the bus station or the cinema across the street from Rewe. These locations will serve as catalysts for encounters, research, drafting performative scenes, try-outs, and, ultimately, the development of a project. Urban spaces will become laboratories for experimental exploration, delving into the biographies and perspectives of individuals who grant us a glimpse into their worlds. In addition to developing concrete techniques for translating these experiences into performative works, the course will emphasize the concept of projections—not merely as visual images on a screen but as a method for sharing thoughts, stories, and perspectives. This course also introduces the art of forging unexpected social connections as a foundation for creativity while exploring how theater can unite people to share meaningful experiences. Regular and reliable participation, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to working between sessions will be essential for a dynamic artistic process and a rewarding outcome.

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

TH261 Performance and Digital Culture

Fall 2025

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

Professor(s): Nina Tecklenburg

How does performance art and theater relate to digital culture? Traditionally understood as live embodied practice and communal encounter, theater’s relationship to digital formats and techniques has been described as complex, challenging, even subversive. This course investigates various intersections of the performing arts and digital culture to rethink and re-do theater in the digital era: students will explore new theatrical formats such as hybrid performances, immersive VR-experiences, social media theater, glitch art, or the potential and limits of integrating Artificial Intelligence systems into performance making. While embracing practical theatrical experiments with digital technology, we will bring a critical lens to the study of digital culture and its inherent biases and politics of accessibility, as well as considering the problem of data surveillance and commodification. In collaboration with students at other institutions, we will aim to investigate the relation between performance and digital culture from a global perspective and co-create performances across geographic distances and distinctive cultures. For some sessions, we connect with parallel classes at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg (South Africa), and Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá (Colombia).

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

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

Hardly any project has been more controversial than the rebuilding of Berlin’s City Palace. 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 recently 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy

PL216 Introduction to Chinese Philosophy

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Ruizhi Ma (Humboldt University)

In Kant’s view, China—and the entire East—was a barren land for philosophy. This kind of misjudgment persist in our time and hinders many from appreciating Non-Western philosophies. This course will help participants break through these obstacles, stepping into
the grand hall of Chinese philosophy to draw wisdom from its breadth and depth. We will focus on the elements of pre-Han Chinese philosophy, a period often regarded as the classical era. Known as the Time of the Hundred Schools of Thought, this period exemplifies the remarkable diversity and intellectual vitality of Chinese philosophy. The course aims to provide a broad overview of the philosophical landscape of pre-Han China, while at the same time delving into the theoretical frameworks and intellectual debates of three major schools: Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. It will also explore contributions from other schools, including the School of Names, Legalism, and the Yangism. In the last two sessions, participants will be introduced to two major post-Han philosophical traditions: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties, which can reveal the open horizons and continuous intellectual reinvigoration of Chinese philosophy. The primary focus of this course, in terms of areas it covers, lies in ethics and political philosophy, followed by epistemology, philosophy of mind, and logic. Metaphysics and philosophy of religion will also be touched upon throughout the discussions. Chinese philosophy does not exist in isolation. Throughout the course, we will draw comparisons with other philosophical traditions, enriching our understanding of its universal philosophical concerns. Particular attention will be paid to topics such as Aristotelian virtue ethics vis-à-vis Confucian ethics, Stoic logic compared to Mohist logic, and Daoism
alongside Sufism, etc. By situating Chinese philosophy in dialogue with global traditions, participants will gain a more expansive and inclusive perspective on philosophy as a shared intellectual heritage of humanity.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy

PL250 Ethics and Aesthetics in the face of Ecological Crisis

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Manuel Gebhardt

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The debate about climate change and the resulting contemporary ecological crisis has brought into prominent focus the relation between humankind and the environment. Over the past decades, artists and thinkers in the field of environmental ethics have developed various ways of determining ethical forms of human action in relation to nature. In order to grasp and evaluate these positions, we will – in a first step – study traditional ethical theories (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics). We will discuss their premises and the conclusions they suggest in regard to moral commitments. Building on this foundation, we will evaluate the soundness and validity of contemporary artistic and theoretical approaches to the field of environmental ethics. The seminar aims for students to acquire the competence to develop their own ethical stances and to advocate for their moral judgments. On our way, we will analyze the implication of anthropocentric and physiocentric arguments (caring for nature for the sake of humankind or for the sake of nature itself?), touching on the realms of human rights, animal rights, (global) justice, sustainability, ecopolitics (e.g. sumac kawsay, a concept of the “good life” alongside nature), ecofeminism and moral psychology (how can we bridge the gap between knowing what is right and doing what is right?). Readings will include Immanuel Kant, David Hume, J.S. Mill, and Martha Nussbaum (part I) as well as Donna Haraway, Vittorio Hösle, Hans Jonas, Christine Korsgaard, Angelika Krebs, Bruno Latour, Catriona McKinnon, Peter Singer, and Val Plumwood (part II).

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Modules: History of Political Thought, Methods in Social and Historical Studies

PL265 Interpreting the French Revolution

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Ewa Atanassow

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The French Revolution of 1789 was a source of inspiration and horror beyond the country of its unfolding and long after the time of its actual occurrence. The principles associated with the Revolution — human rights and popular sovereignty – marked a radical departure from a political system based on divine-right, royal absolutism and feudal hierarchy. Yet within a few years, revolutionary change gave way to factional conflict, Terror and - as France was a global Empire - warfare on a planetary scale. Often considered as the birth date of political modernity, 1789 and its aftershocks were also the crucible in which modern political thinking was forged. Along with fashioning a global vocabulary that inspired revolutionary struggles worldwide, The Revolution catalized the emergence of ideological currents – liberalism, conservatism, socialism, anticolonialism - that continue to shape modern politics. In this course, we shall learn about the main events, personages and structures that constituted the French Revolution, and we'll trace the historical controversies surrounding its interpretation. We will look into sources that were produced in the middle of revolutionary turmoil and read some of its major theorists in order to think with them about the meaning of this cataclysm today.
Note: The course will feature guest seminars and a lecture by the historian of the French Revolution Prof. Dr. Daniel Schönpflug (Freie Universität Berlin/Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Movements and Thinkers

PL348 Education and Liberation

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Hans Stauffacher

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

Beliefs about education have always been closely associated with ideas of freedom and liberation. From Antiquity to the present, education has been conceptualized as the high road to the liberation from personal, social, political, economic, intellectual, and spiritual limitations, as a decisive factor in struggles against oppression, as a prerequisite for political participation, and as an essential precondition for a better life of the individual as well as a better society. But at the same time, particular frameworks and institutions of education have often led to oppression, exclusion, discrimination, and limitation. Just think of the way “the uneducated” are talked about in today’s media landscape or of the selective, standardizing, prescriptive, and exclusive character of schools and universities. In this course, we will read and discuss seminal philosophical texts and educational manifestos from antiquity to the 21st Century that conceptualize the correlation between education and liberation in diverse and often contradictory ways. We will use these texts to ask ourselves what education means for us and our society; whether, how, and to what extent education can indeed lead to liberation, or whether education, on the contrary, requires conformity and constraint. Given that the “liberal education” BCB strives for carries the notions of freedom and education in its name, this also means that we will critically reflect on what we are doing in courses like this one.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Movements and Thinkers

PL353 Language and Power

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Gilad Nir

Language is a means of communication and a vehicle of mutual understanding. Yet the use of language also involves an exercise of power, and language is a central battleground in the struggle for social justice and representation. Our aim in this seminar is to develop an understanding of the variety of mechanisms that are at work in language and which enable it to convey, reinforce and alter the power relations that shape our lives. The seminar will lead up to the discussion of these political and ethical issues by first inquiring into two sets of preliminary questions. First, we will ask how language fits into the natural-historical and social dimensions of human life. How is human language different from animal communication? Which aspects of language are innate, and which aspects must be acquired? How does language affect cognition? Do differences between languages entail differences between their speakers’ ways of thinking? Are all languages mutually translatable? Or must something get lost in translation? Second, we will attempt to isolate the purely descriptive functions of language. How do words reach out to the world, and enable us to make claims about it, which can then count as true or as false? Does the structure of language reflect the structure of the world? What difference does the use of synonyms and metaphors make to the meaning of a descriptive claim? Are there limits to what can be meaningfully said? Finally, turning to the pragmatic and performative dimensions of language use, we will consider the idea of free speech and the various ways in which speech may be repressed and silenced. We will analyze the phenomena of insinuation, implicature, and dog whistles; distinguish between hermeneutic and testimonial injustice; and ask how ideology is perpetuated by means of generalizations, slurs and hate speech. Readings include texts by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, Chomsky, Pinker, Hurford, Langton, Leslie, Fricker, Stanley, Haslanger, Kukla, Tirell, Hornsby, Saul, Nowak and Maitra.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Law, Politics, and Society

PS271 US Foreign Policy

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1400-1530
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Law, Politics, and Society

PS355 Building Sustainable Peace

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Nassim Abi Ghanem

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

How is peace sustained? Why does peace last in some contexts and break down in others? Armed conflict and state repression continue to dominate contemporary affairs, while systematic challenges hinder processes of just and sustainable peace. In parallel to these developments, a complex range of initiatives arising from civil society and social movements, in search of sustainable peace, have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners. The aims of this course are, firstly, to introduce the various causes of direct and structural violence. Secondly, we look at the conditions under which peace can be achieved, and the obstacles faced in securing peace in the short- and long-term; while also highlighting the different strategies that can be designed. Thirdly, the course delves into a wide range of armed conflict case studies and examines the peace processes and movements promoting nonviolent social change. In so doing, we reflect on applying theory to current global and local events involving reconciliation processes. Lastly, we examine contemporary debates on the various post-conflict tools - such as power-sharing systems, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), and security sector reforms (SSR) - analyzing their relevance to creating reconciliation between adversaries, along with reconstruction, and a sustainable and durable peace.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy

PT160 Transnational Feminism Is for Everybody

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Agata Lisiak

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate 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 focus on political projects that seek out solidarity-yielding connections. Among other topics, we will discuss the demands of early socialist women’s rights activists, queer feminist formations in the Global South, transfeminist activism in Latin America and beyond, feminist responses to occupation, war, and land grabbing, sex workers’ struggles across borders, decolonial feminist interventions in Europe, 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, Alexandra Kollontai, Audre Lorde, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Ethics and Politics
Modules: Global Social Theory, Movements and Thinkers

SC250 Science Communication

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900 (Online)
Credits: 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.

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 Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Written Arts

LT142 Writing Fiction

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Modules: Close Reading, Literary History

LT171 Speculative Fiction

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Sladja Blazan

Speculative fiction has been defined as exploring things that really could happen but haven’t (quite) yet (Margaret Atwood), or postulating an as-yet-unknown future (Jewell Gomez). This focus gives the speculative mode a special resonance at the moment. We live in a world of shifting foundations, facing threats posed by political instability and environmental disaster, not to mention our experience of a frequently predicted but still incredible event: a global pandemic. It is no surprise that the hypothetical explorations of contemporary literature are expressed in the language of, among other genres, science fiction, fantasy, or horror. This seminar examines how post-millennial Anglo-American film and literature use speculative fiction to address the question of the human impact on nature. We will identify the narrative strategies artists have deployed to register their protest against those visions of tomorrow that are generated by relentlessly profit-oriented industries. As Daniel Heath Justice puts it: “we can’t possibly live otherwise until we first imagine otherwise.” For example, we will explore the attention given to the possibility of nonhuman sentience inscribed in landscapes endowed with intelligence, consciousness, and agency, all marks of the potential for communication and cooperation, as well as for feeling, needing, and plotting. We will learn about Afrofuturism, Indigenous Speculative Fiction, Climate Fiction, and Cyberculture. Primarily, we will discuss why speculative fiction came to matter at this historical juncture: the crossroads of colonization, decolonization, globalization, capitalism, and change. This seminar will include excursions to readings and performances.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Modules: Literary Movements and Forms, Theories of Literature and Culture

LT224 Forms of Life Writing: From the Confession to the Personal Essay

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Laura Scuriatti

What do we read when we read autobiographies, confessions, memoirs, personal criticism, autofiction and personal essays? Why would we want to read them? Do we want to know more about ourselves, the authors, the world, or do we behave like voyeurs? Do we treat these forms as literature, or as documents, or both? Is the reader’s interest in life-writing a form of consumerism and exploitation? In the last two decades, life-writing and autobiography have become dominant modes, structuring social media platforms and seeping into all literary genres and journalism; self-presentation and autobiographical modes of reading have become an almost unavoidable ingredient of literature and criticism. Life-writing however, constitutes, in its different forms, a fundamental form in literary history, starting with the genres of the confession and evolving into the structuring principle of the emerging genre of the novel in the eighteenth century. The course presents a host of different texts and forms in chronological order. It focuses on some of the fundamental questions: the relationship between truth and fiction in narrative, the shape of self in different forms, the work of memory, the consequences of narrative intimacy, the tension between invention and disclosure, the relationship between literary style and representation of self and mind, and between life-writing and the novel as instruments to represent and understand the world. Starting from early examples of life-writings, students will examine canonical texts, such as Augustine's Confessions, Rousseau's Confessions, Montaigne's Essays, modernist and contemporary autobiographies, works of autofiction, and personal essays, including texts by Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, Frederick Douglass, Annie Ernaux, Clarice Lispector, Edward Said, and Jia Tolentino. Students will also engage with critical works on the genre and reflect on the ideological and historical meaning of autobiographical forms.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Literary History

LT226 Tutors of History: Narrating South Asia in Fiction

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Saskya Jain

This course introduces the multi-layered postcolonial histories of South Asia through its recent literature, moving beyond the names of the few well-known figures from these literatures typically familiar to a Western readership. Through fiction, we will explore key moments such as Partition and its aftermath in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, the civil wars in Nepal and Sri Lanka, the insurgency in India’s Northeast, the displacement of indigenous populations and the Naxalite movement in India, and the migration of labor from South India to the Middle East. Making sense of this world through stories, we will read our way into the region’s own modernity—made even more complex by economic shifts, climate change and urbanization—which brings with it a new understanding of global dynamics. The reading list will include texts (written originally in English or translated from South Asian languages) by writers such as Geetanjali Shree, Akhtaruzzaman Elias, Manjushree Thapa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Aruni Kashyap, Mohammad Hanif and Sheela Tomy. We will consider how these authors offer an intimate access to individual and collective experience through close reading and attention to elements of literary form and style, such as structure, character, narrative voice, dialogue, sentences and paragraphs, profluence, etc. Concomitantly, this course also introduces students to the vibrant world of publishing, with a special focus on South Asia and translation, by exploring the dynamics of publishing and circulation, as well as the formats, forums and opportunities available (or not) to aspiring writers.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture

LT286 Rewriting a Politics of Belonging

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Kathy-Ann Tan

We often hear claims that the United States is riven by intractable divisions of race, class, and gender. The literature of the country has long reflected the conflicts and questions arising from such divisions, and has much to teach us about their historical foundations and development. Above all, literature succeeds in staging a process of recognition, empowerment, and critique. Proponents of the reform and protest movements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America were aware that the “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” announced by the Declaration of Independence had not from the beginning been envisaged for all Americans, but for a white, propertied, male ruling class. In this seminar, we will read a selection of texts from contemporary American literature that propose a struggle with this uneasy foundation, manifesting kinds of social, psychological, and stylistic predicaments imposed by exclusion and persecution. Our central question will concern the ways in which authors reestablish a sense of belonging and collectivity through the act of writing. We will also look at the way in which contemporary literature connects with and revises a sense of tradition, and generates new traditions and affiliations. Above all, our goal will be to understand the fraught, creative dynamics of “belonging” in America, a country that, as Herman Melville once contended “contradicts all prior notions of human things.”This course will center the writings of Black and brown feminists that speak to the importance of differentiating between the lived experiences – and hence social realities – of women of color and white (and white-passing) women. In the first half of the course, we will discuss the works of Audre Lorde, bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldúa, whose writings and collaborative literary projects (such as the Combahee River Collective and the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press) continue to be highly influential on the work of writers today who seek to engage in a practice of intersectional and transformative justice. In the second half of the course, we will turn to contemporary works of poetry, essayistic writing and fiction that develop, queer and expand on the practice of intersectional feminism(s) in the literary realm. Texts will include works by bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Sara Ahmed, Angela Davis, Danez Smith, Warsan Shire, Ocean Vuong, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Kai Cheng Thom.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Artistic Practice and Society, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Modules: Producing Literature, Writer and World

LT329 The Writing Life

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Martin Widmann

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.

NB: Reading material and discussions will be both in German and English; students should therefore have B2 level competence of German.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Writer and World

LT338 Why Borges? Fiction and Writing as Cultural Reflection

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Luis Miguel Isava

This course offers a new approach to the oeuvre of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Setting out from his first three books of essays Inquisitions (1925), The Size of my Hope (1926), and The Language of the Argentinians (1928) –later excluded from his Complete Works– we will explore the degree to which these writings are informed by new philosophical ideas that were gaining currency in Europe from the 1920s onwards (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Mauthner, Vaihinger) and, at the same time, establish his “peripheral” positioning as a writer in regard to those “cultural fields” (Bourdieu). Taking into account this double character, we proceed to read his later books of essays and short stories –focusing mainly on Discussion (1932), Fictions (1944), The Aleph (1949), Other Inquisitions (1952)– as complex “cultural artifacts,” i.e. verbal artifacts that question the traditional understanding of notions such as genre, literature, philosophy, and culture through a transgression of their alleged limits and definitions. With this approach we intend to show how his texts, resorting to this insistent “hybridization” (García Canclini), stage a performative form of thought through literature that proposes the possibility of generating new meanings while setting in motion a complex set of procedures that allow us to rethink the notions of language, thought and culture.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Modules: Literary Movements and Forms, Writer and World

LT360 Trauma and Literature

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Larisa Muraveva

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

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 as "sites of trauma" (S. Freud) in which particular strategies are developed to speak of the unspeakable, to bear witness to the impossible, and to find particular ways of reliving 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, the sublime. The conceptualisation of trauma will be carried out with reference to the works by S. Freud, C. Caruth, J. C. Alexander, R. Barthes, D. LaCapra, M. Rothberg, P. Ricœur, and others. Special attention will be paid to contemporary autofiction focused on traumatic experiences ("founding fault", according to A. Genon) 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Literature and Rhetoric
Module: Producing Literature

LT365 Longform Journalism: Crafting Investigative and Narrative Stories

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Channing Joseph

In this course, students have the unique opportunity to work with an award-winning journalist dedicated to longform storytelling and investigative reporting. Channing Gerard Joseph has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and other major publications. His reporting explores issues of power, identity, and representation, blending rigorous research with narrative storytelling. The class examines the craft of longform journalism—a style of in-depth, narrative-driven reporting that allows journalists to move beyond breaking news and produce deeply researched, immersive stories. From investigative exposés to literary nonfiction, longform journalism is one of the most powerful forms of public storytelling. But what makes a longform piece compelling? How do journalists balance fact and narrative? What ethical dilemmas arise when writing about real people’s lives? Students will analyze major works of longform journalism, studying how reporters structure complex stories, build compelling characters, and use storytelling techniques borrowed from literature. Readings will include standout pieces from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The New York Times Magazine. Berlin offers a dynamic backdrop for this work. Students will develop their own longform projects, selecting a topic of public interest and conducting field reporting, interviews, and archival research. The course will include discussions on media ethics, representation, and bias, asking how journalists shape public perception through their choices in framing, sourcing, and storytelling This course combines media analysis with hands-on reporting.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Module: Mathematics and Science Requirement

SC250 Science Communication

Fall 2025

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900 (Online)
Credits: 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.

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 Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Module: Elective

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

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Module: Elective

PL216 Introduction to Chinese Philosophy

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Ruizhi Ma (Humboldt University)

In Kant’s view, China—and the entire East—was a barren land for philosophy. This kind of misjudgment persist in our time and hinders many from appreciating Non-Western philosophies. This course will help participants break through these obstacles, stepping into
the grand hall of Chinese philosophy to draw wisdom from its breadth and depth. We will focus on the elements of pre-Han Chinese philosophy, a period often regarded as the classical era. Known as the Time of the Hundred Schools of Thought, this period exemplifies the remarkable diversity and intellectual vitality of Chinese philosophy. The course aims to provide a broad overview of the philosophical landscape of pre-Han China, while at the same time delving into the theoretical frameworks and intellectual debates of three major schools: Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. It will also explore contributions from other schools, including the School of Names, Legalism, and the Yangism. In the last two sessions, participants will be introduced to two major post-Han philosophical traditions: Chinese Buddhist philosophy and Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties, which can reveal the open horizons and continuous intellectual reinvigoration of Chinese philosophy. The primary focus of this course, in terms of areas it covers, lies in ethics and political philosophy, followed by epistemology, philosophy of mind, and logic. Metaphysics and philosophy of religion will also be touched upon throughout the discussions. Chinese philosophy does not exist in isolation. Throughout the course, we will draw comparisons with other philosophical traditions, enriching our understanding of its universal philosophical concerns. Particular attention will be paid to topics such as Aristotelian virtue ethics vis-à-vis Confucian ethics, Stoic logic compared to Mohist logic, and Daoism
alongside Sufism, etc. By situating Chinese philosophy in dialogue with global traditions, participants will gain a more expansive and inclusive perspective on philosophy as a shared intellectual heritage of humanity.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Module: Moral and Political Thought

PL250 Ethics and Aesthetics in the face of Ecological Crisis

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Manuel Gebhardt

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The debate about climate change and the resulting contemporary ecological crisis has brought into prominent focus the relation between humankind and the environment. Over the past decades, artists and thinkers in the field of environmental ethics have developed various ways of determining ethical forms of human action in relation to nature. In order to grasp and evaluate these positions, we will – in a first step – study traditional ethical theories (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics). We will discuss their premises and the conclusions they suggest in regard to moral commitments. Building on this foundation, we will evaluate the soundness and validity of contemporary artistic and theoretical approaches to the field of environmental ethics. The seminar aims for students to acquire the competence to develop their own ethical stances and to advocate for their moral judgments. On our way, we will analyze the implication of anthropocentric and physiocentric arguments (caring for nature for the sake of humankind or for the sake of nature itself?), touching on the realms of human rights, animal rights, (global) justice, sustainability, ecopolitics (e.g. sumac kawsay, a concept of the “good life” alongside nature), ecofeminism and moral psychology (how can we bridge the gap between knowing what is right and doing what is right?). Readings will include Immanuel Kant, David Hume, J.S. Mill, and Martha Nussbaum (part I) as well as Donna Haraway, Vittorio Hösle, Hans Jonas, Christine Korsgaard, Angelika Krebs, Bruno Latour, Catriona McKinnon, Peter Singer, and Val Plumwood (part II).

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Module: Elective

PL265 Interpreting the French Revolution

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Ewa Atanassow

Fulfills OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirement

The French Revolution of 1789 was a source of inspiration and horror beyond the country of its unfolding and long after the time of its actual occurrence. The principles associated with the Revolution — human rights and popular sovereignty – marked a radical departure from a political system based on divine-right, royal absolutism and feudal hierarchy. Yet within a few years, revolutionary change gave way to factional conflict, Terror and - as France was a global Empire - warfare on a planetary scale. Often considered as the birth date of political modernity, 1789 and its aftershocks were also the crucible in which modern political thinking was forged. Along with fashioning a global vocabulary that inspired revolutionary struggles worldwide, The Revolution catalized the emergence of ideological currents – liberalism, conservatism, socialism, anticolonialism - that continue to shape modern politics. In this course, we shall learn about the main events, personages and structures that constituted the French Revolution, and we'll trace the historical controversies surrounding its interpretation. We will look into sources that were produced in the middle of revolutionary turmoil and read some of its major theorists in order to think with them about the meaning of this cataclysm today.
Note: The course will feature guest seminars and a lecture by the historian of the French Revolution Prof. Dr. Daniel Schönpflug (Freie Universität Berlin/Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Modules: Elective, Philosophy and Society

PL348 Education and Liberation

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Hans Stauffacher

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement

Beliefs about education have always been closely associated with ideas of freedom and liberation. From Antiquity to the present, education has been conceptualized as the high road to the liberation from personal, social, political, economic, intellectual, and spiritual limitations, as a decisive factor in struggles against oppression, as a prerequisite for political participation, and as an essential precondition for a better life of the individual as well as a better society. But at the same time, particular frameworks and institutions of education have often led to oppression, exclusion, discrimination, and limitation. Just think of the way “the uneducated” are talked about in today’s media landscape or of the selective, standardizing, prescriptive, and exclusive character of schools and universities. In this course, we will read and discuss seminal philosophical texts and educational manifestos from antiquity to the 21st Century that conceptualize the correlation between education and liberation in diverse and often contradictory ways. We will use these texts to ask ourselves what education means for us and our society; whether, how, and to what extent education can indeed lead to liberation, or whether education, on the contrary, requires conformity and constraint. Given that the “liberal education” BCB strives for carries the notions of freedom and education in its name, this also means that we will critically reflect on what we are doing in courses like this one.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Modules: Elective, Philosophy and Society

PL353 Language and Power

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Gilad Nir

Language is a means of communication and a vehicle of mutual understanding. Yet the use of language also involves an exercise of power, and language is a central battleground in the struggle for social justice and representation. Our aim in this seminar is to develop an understanding of the variety of mechanisms that are at work in language and which enable it to convey, reinforce and alter the power relations that shape our lives. The seminar will lead up to the discussion of these political and ethical issues by first inquiring into two sets of preliminary questions. First, we will ask how language fits into the natural-historical and social dimensions of human life. How is human language different from animal communication? Which aspects of language are innate, and which aspects must be acquired? How does language affect cognition? Do differences between languages entail differences between their speakers’ ways of thinking? Are all languages mutually translatable? Or must something get lost in translation? Second, we will attempt to isolate the purely descriptive functions of language. How do words reach out to the world, and enable us to make claims about it, which can then count as true or as false? Does the structure of language reflect the structure of the world? What difference does the use of synonyms and metaphors make to the meaning of a descriptive claim? Are there limits to what can be meaningfully said? Finally, turning to the pragmatic and performative dimensions of language use, we will consider the idea of free speech and the various ways in which speech may be repressed and silenced. We will analyze the phenomena of insinuation, implicature, and dog whistles; distinguish between hermeneutic and testimonial injustice; and ask how ideology is perpetuated by means of generalizations, slurs and hate speech. Readings include texts by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, Chomsky, Pinker, Hurford, Langton, Leslie, Fricker, Stanley, Haslanger, Kukla, Tirell, Hornsby, Saul, Nowak and Maitra.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Modules: Global Social Theory, Public Policy

PS271 US Foreign Policy

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Tue & Thur 1400-1530
Credits: Credits: 8 ECTS credits, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Certificate in Human Rights, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics

PS355 Building Sustainable Peace

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

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

Professor(s): Nassim Abi Ghanem

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and OSUN Human Rights Certificate requirements

How is peace sustained? Why does peace last in some contexts and break down in others? Armed conflict and state repression continue to dominate contemporary affairs, while systematic challenges hinder processes of just and sustainable peace. In parallel to these developments, a complex range of initiatives arising from civil society and social movements, in search of sustainable peace, have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners. The aims of this course are, firstly, to introduce the various causes of direct and structural violence. Secondly, we look at the conditions under which peace can be achieved, and the obstacles faced in securing peace in the short- and long-term; while also highlighting the different strategies that can be designed. Thirdly, the course delves into a wide range of armed conflict case studies and examines the peace processes and movements promoting nonviolent social change. In so doing, we reflect on applying theory to current global and local events involving reconciliation processes. Lastly, we examine contemporary debates on the various post-conflict tools - such as power-sharing systems, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), and security sector reforms (SSR) - analyzing their relevance to creating reconciliation between adversaries, along with reconstruction, and a sustainable and durable peace.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Certificate in Civic Engagement, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Module: Elective

PT160 Transnational Feminism Is for Everybody

Fall 2025
Level: Foundational

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

Professor(s): Agata Lisiak

Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate 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 focus on political projects that seek out solidarity-yielding connections. Among other topics, we will discuss the demands of early socialist women’s rights activists, queer feminist formations in the Global South, transfeminist activism in Latin America and beyond, feminist responses to occupation, war, and land grabbing, sex workers’ struggles across borders, decolonial feminist interventions in Europe, 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, Alexandra Kollontai, Audre Lorde, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 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.

Programs: Academy Year, BA in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought, Study Abroad
Concentration: Politics
Modules: Elective, Philosophy and Society

SC250 Science Communication

Fall 2025
Level: Advanced

Day/Time: Thur 1545-1900 (Online)
Credits: 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.

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.

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AH205 The Black female figure in Western Art from the 17th century to Present: From Object to Subject

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

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

AH314 Las Meninas and the Pictorial Encounter

AH315 Beyond Crisis: South American Memory Politics and Art

EC110 Principles of Economics (Group A)

EC110 Principles of Economics (Group B)

EC212 Experimental Economics

EC275 From Barter to Bitcoin: Philosophy and History of Money

EC295 Making Value and Using Resources

EC320 Econometrics

EC327 Development Economics

EC330 Rethinking Development Economics: Money, Finance, and Trade

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

FA107 Ceramics

FA110 Beginning Sculpture

FA112 Marble Stone Sculpture

FA113 Introduction to Glassmaking

FA114 Beginning Painting

FA115 Introduction to Digital Photography: Identity Construction and Representation

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

FA190 Digital Filmmaking I: Idea & Form

FA250 Immersive Spatial Experiences

FA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After

FA319 Advanced Drawing: Drawing and Installation

FA320 Advanced Photography: Analog 4eva

FA325 The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon

FA335 In the Archives - Film Production

FA340 How Long Is Now? – A Photographic Portrait of Berlin

FM211 Master of Suspense: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock

FM324 How the West Was Lost: Revisionist and Post-Western Films

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

HI131 Ukraine Since 1986: A History of Post-Communist Transformation

IN110 Globalization and International Relations

IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar: Working Cultures, Urban Cultures

LT142 Writing Fiction

LT148 Poetry and Poetics

LT171 Speculative Fiction

LT205 Theory and Literature

LT224 Forms of Life Writing: From the Confession to the Personal Essay

LT226 Tutors of History: Narrating South Asia in Fiction

LT286 Rewriting a Politics of Belonging

LT329 The Writing Life

LT338 Why Borges? Fiction and Writing as Cultural Reflection

LT360 Trauma and Literature

LT365 Longform Journalism: Crafting Investigative and Narrative Stories

MA120 Mathematics for Economics

MA120 Mathematics for Economics

MA151 Introduction to Statistics

MA151 Introduction to Statistics

MU171 Berlin: City of Music

PL115 Foundations of Political Theory

PL203 Seeing and Being Seen

PL216 Introduction to Chinese Philosophy

PL250 Ethics and Aesthetics in the face of Ecological Crisis

PL265 Interpreting the French Revolution

PL320 Nietzsche: Philosophy at the Limit

PL348 Education and Liberation

PL353 Language and Power

PL356 Thinking Machines: Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence

PS129 Understanding Politics

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group A)

PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis (Group B)

PS215 Arab Politics

PS271 US Foreign Policy

PS355 Building Sustainable Peace

PS388 Contemporary Political Polarization and How to Address it

PS393 Labor Movements and Public Policy

PT160 Transnational Feminism Is for Everybody

PT175 What’s So Funny? The Politics and Philosophy of Laughter

SC215 Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound)

SC250 Science Communication

SE301 Making the Case: Human Rights Research and Reporting

SO203 Qualitative Methods in Social Sciences

TH245 From Street to Stage: Experimenting with Rimini Protokoll's Approach to Documentary Theater

TH261 Performance and Digital Culture

TH310 Bertolt Brecht: The Study and Staging of Epic Theater