Core Courses
IS104 Forms of Love
AY/BA1/Begin in Berlin Core Course
Module: Medieval Literatures and Cultures
Instructors: Tracy Colony, Geoff Lehman, Daniel Reeve, Katalin Makkai, Hans Stauffacher
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
"Love" is a word whose meanings seem to be known to all of us. It names a feeling, an experience, and a value whose importance appears incontestable. But did "love" always mean what we might consider it to mean today? How recent are ideals of romantic or sexual love? What kinds of prototypes did they have in earlier historical periods? To what extent is our word "love" equivalent to the terms used for it in the languages and cultures that have shaped European and so-called "Western" culture? This course explores the other meanings for the word "love" that contributed to our contemporary perspective or apparently diverge markedly from it. We focus on texts and ideas from the place and time that was foundational for the development of European societies, and yet seems distant and strange now: medieval Christendom. We look at the change that took place in the use of Ancient philosophical terms for love in Christian texts, and at the consequences (literary and doctrinal) of the condemnatory view of sexual and erotic love taken by Christian theology. Above all, we examine the ramifications of the primacy of the category of love in Christendom: how could this category become so all-important, and yet at the same time express such a hostility to the erotic and the sensual? The course looks at the norms, rituals and rhetoric that organized the idea of love in the medieval world, attending also to the relationship between Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
IS212 Early Modern Science (a cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
BA2 Core Course
Module: Early Modern Science
Instructors: Michael Weinman, Ian Lawson, Aaron Tugendhaft
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 09:00-10:30 (Groups A, B and C); Tue & Thu 10:45:-12:15 (Groups D, E and F)
The course seeks to introduce the scientific advances of the early modern period (with particular focus on the seventeenth century): the developments that defined the principles, methods and frameworks of modern natural science as it exists today. We not only explore the philosophical basis and conclusions of this historical development, but its experimental procedures, and come to an understanding of their practical form and the meaning of their results. In the first section, we concentrate on the new understanding of space, matter and motion deriving from the cosmologies and mechanical theories of this era (the basis of modern physics). In the second, we consider the remarkable advances in the life sciences at this period (examining anatomical and medical texts), and finally, attend to the emergence of what came to be called "chemistry" out of the mystical practice of alchemy. Included in the course are visits to exhibitions and collections in Berlin, which will help us to reflect on the way in which scientific practices and their discoveries have been historicized, and why we ought to enhance our critical awareness of such historicizing.
IS322 Joyce's Ulysses: A Modernist Epic
BA3-4/PY Core Course
Module: Modernism
Instructors: Laura Scuriatti, James Harker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 09:00-10:30 (Group A); Tue & Thu 10:45:-12:15 (Groups B, C)
Modernism is generally thought of as a period characterized in literature and art by radical experimentation, by the invention and re-invention of new forms, and an aesthetic that privileged the present, the modern, the new. It was, in fact, a complex constellation of phenomena that saw close interaction between the arts, literature, politics, philosophy, science and economics, and which saw the questioning of the most basic categories of aesthetic, political and philosophical thought, leading also to extreme political conflict. The course explores a wide range of aspects of modernism, attempting to understand the period in relation to the broader terms “modernity” and “modernization.” The course will focus on James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), considered an exemplary, canonical, and yet idiosyncratic “masterpiece.” Ulysses is not only a fundamental text of modernism but also a kind of re-writing of a foundational text of Greek civilization, Homer's Odyssey. Returning to the origins of BCB's core courses, we will read Joyce's novel in full, in dialogue with contemporary texts. We will explore questions concerning its historical context as a novel produced in a colonized country, its allegedly totalizing form based on extreme expansion, and its style and defamiliarizing use of language and traditions. Concluding the course, we will read Derek Walcott’s postmodern epic poem Omeros (1990), a postcolonial re-writing of Homer set largely in the Caribbean.
IS123 Academic Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Module: Senior Core Colloquium
Coordinator: Ulrike Wagner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 09:00-12:15
This seminar is a training in the methods of academic research. Focusing on representative contemporary research in the humanities and the social sciences, it supports students in proceeding with their own individual research projects by focusing on the essential elements of independent scholarly work: the choice of a topic or object of study; the outline of the main components of an article or scholarly paper; finding, gathering, collating and interpreting the sources needed for the project; correct citation, attribution, and bibliographical documentation, and lastly, the effective presentation of the final work in structure and style, as well as peer review and constructive feedback. Including the participation of thesis supervisors and other faculty members, this course accompanies the first semester of preparation for the thesis project.
Art and Aesthetics Foundational Modules
FA106 Beginners Black and White Photography Class: The Slow Photo
Module: Artistic Practice
Instructor: April Gertler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 09:00-12:15
This beginners’ black and white photography class will focus on learning how to use a manual camera and finding one’s way around an analogue darkroom. Students will also be exposed to the rich photographic history of Berlin through presentations, discussions and historical walks. We encounter now-canonical works by Berlin-based photographers from Helga Paris to Michael Schmidt, along with their concrete sources of inspiration. Assignments will mirror various photo techniques used in the examples discussed. Camera techniques and black and white printing are the fundamental basis of the class, which trains and cultivates the general attitude of mind and approach required for the successful production of black and white photographic images.
TH133 Elfriede Jelinek: A Study of Postdramatic Playwriting, Directing, and Acting
Module: Artistic Practice
Instructor: Julia Hart
Credits: 8ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
No female playwright has so strongly influenced the contemporary theatre in Germany as the Austrian Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek. Last fall, she was awarded the prestigious Faust prize for her relentless, searing observations and analysis of social phenomena. She focuses on three targets in her playwriting: capitalist consumer society, the remnants of Austria’s fascist past in public and private life, and the systematic exploitation and oppression of women in a capitalist-patriarchal society. Her work is highly controversial.
How has Elfriede Jelinek’s writing affected theatre-making in Germany? How can her writing be considered postdramatic? Theatre scholar Karen Jürs-Mundby writes that Jelinek and other postdramatic playwrights “produce what could be called ‘open’ or ‘writerly’ texts for performance, in the sense that they require the spectators to become active co-writers of the performance text. The spectators are no longer just filling in the predictable gaps in a dramatic narrative but are asked to become active witnesses who reflect on their own meaning-making.” Language is not necessarily the speech of characters- if there are definable character at all! In this seminar, we will read, discuss, and rehearse scenes from the most recent plays of Elfriede Jelinek as directors, actors, and dramaturgs. This course will explore concrete ways of directing and acting when working with postdramatic theatre texts. We will also attend performances of Jelinek’s plays at theaters in Berlin.
AH113 Introduction to Aesthetics
Module: Approaching Arts Through Theory
Instructor: Thomas Hilgers
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
According to its most general conception, aesthetics is a discipline that investigates the nature of sensory experience and cognition. According to a more narrow conception, it investigates the nature of aesthetic experience and judgment. Finally, aesthetics is often conceived of as an enquiry concerning the nature and value of art, or rather of the fine arts. In this course, students will become familiar with aesthetics according to all three of these conceptions. That is, we will discuss questions such as: what is sensibility? What is beauty? What is an aesthetic experience? Do we need to have aesthetic experiences in order to live a good life? Do we need to have them in order to criticize society and initiate political change? What is an artwork? Are our judgments about art always subjective? Is taste always a tool for social distinction and possibly oppression? Can (or must) art be politically relevant? What could it mean to call a work “modern,” “postmodern,” or “contemporary”? In order to find answers to these questions, we will discuss texts by Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Heidegger, Arendt, Wittgenstein, Adorno, Greenberg, Danto, Dickie, Bourdieu, Foucault, Lyotard, Butler, Rancière, Shusterman, Nehamas, and Carroll.
FA103 Found Fragments & Layered Lines: mixed-media techniques for drawing and collage
Module: Artistic Practice
Instructor: John Kleckner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
This is a hands-on studio art course exploring contemporary and historical approaches to drawing and collage. The class projects are designed to exercise each student's skills in visual thinking through the creation of drawings on paper and collages of found printed fragments. Students will gather printed materials from Berlin's famous Flohmärkte (flea markets) to use in creating original collages; students will also draw dynamic object arrangements, make abstractions from nature by working outdoors, work collaboratively on large-scale drawings, develop their own systematic approach for generating compositions, and experiment with the expressive possibilities of combining text and imagery. A central focus will be examining the potential to create new and surprising meanings and contexts resulting from the juxtaposition and layering of image fragments together. The semester culminates in the creation of a body of original artwork that will be shown in a class exhibition. The majority of classes are studio sessions. There will also be a number of group critiques, image presentations, and several artist studio / gallery visits. The ideal student will be highly motivated, with a strong interest in studying and producing art, and must be comfortable with presenting their artistic creations to peers in class discussions.
FM201 Introduction to Film Studies: The Films of Stanley Kubrick
Module: Approaching Arts Through Theory
Instructor: Matthias Hurst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30; weekly film screening Mon 19:30-22:00
Through the films of the extraordinary director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), this course provides an introduction to film history, aesthetics, and interpretation. Kubrick is unlike any director in creating with each film a new aesthetic to suit the character of his material, which was often drawn from literary sources. His films also create a powerfully uncanny and disturbing effect, and have left signature imprints not only on the development of cinema, but on the wider cultural imagination. Among the films discussed are The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Throughout the course, we focus on cultivating the knowledge and vocabulary needed for recognizing the influence of previous works on the forging of Kubrick’s styles and strategies; the generic classification (or novelty) of each of his works, and the social and political commentary they might contain. The course provides participants with the fundamental tools of film analysis and awareness of film history, by means of a journey through the works of this unique director.
AH114 American Art since 1945
Module: Art and Artists in Context
Instructor: Susanne Märtens
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
This course will focus on the development of new concepts of art between the late 1950s and the 1990s: Pop Art, Minimal Art Conceptual Art, Land Art, Pictures Generation, Appropriation Art and Institutional Critique, along with the critical discourses they generated. Central aspects of all these movements can be understood as critical reactions to key concepts of an earlier phase of modernism. American art of the post-war era was initially dominated by a clear concept of what art is and what rules it had to follow. Medium specificity, self-referentiality and the avoidance of any kind of illusionism are key terms of late modernist art theory as developed by the influential critic Clement Greenberg in the context of Abstract Expressionist Painting (Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning). From the 1950s onwards, these ideas were questioned by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns. In their works, seriality challenges traditional concepts of artistic originality, different artistic media are intermixed or, by incorporating objects from everyday life into art works (ready-made), questions of the relationship between art and reality arise in a completely new way. The theoretical debates such innovations provoked were an important inspiration to subsequent generations. We will trace the development of these new concepts of art, studying the works in museums and collections, and reading texts by, among others, Clement Greenberg, Arthur Danto, Benjamin Buchloh, Rosalind Krauss and Douglas Crimp.
FA202 (IL)LEGAL: New Artistic and Curatorial Approaches to the History of Migration in Germany
Cross-listed with Ethics and Politics
Module: Artistic Practice / Art and Artists in Context
Instructors: Marion Detjen / Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
This class is a continuation of the Fall 2018 seminar “„Illegal“ and „legal“ migration in Germany since World War II”, but can also be taken by newcomers. It takes Abdelmalek Sayad's concept of „unruly thinking“ („to follow the migrant is to transgress all borders“) onto the field of the history of juridification of migration in Germany, by developing and curating individual artistic projects on questions of legality and illegality of migration. On the basis of interdisciplinary research, each student will create an artistic project, in a medium of choice (film, music, poetry/text, performance, painting, collage, etc.). The production of the individual projects will be accompanied by mentoring sessions with invited contemporary artists. Deploying artistic modes of expression to advance and enhance our previously collected research knowledge should help us to accommodate and to make productive the ambivalences and contingencies of the illegalisation and criminalisation processes connected with unwanted migration. In the first half of the semester we will work on the concepts and artistic potentials of the projects, meet with artists, go to exhibitions and discuss formats and modalities of presentation for the projects. The second half will be spent with the realisation and completion of the art works and with exhibiting/presenting them to the public.
Economics Foundational Modules
MA120 Mathematics for Economics
Module: Mathematics for Economics
Instructors: Martin Binder
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
This course focuses on the mathematical tools important for the study of economics: analytic geometry, functions of a single variable, functions of two variables, calculus, integrals and linear algebra (matrices, determinants, systems of linear equations and methods for solving them). A large part of the course will deal with optimization in one or more variables and its corresponding applications in economics (e.g. utility and profit maximization problems). The course will also be of interest for any student with a general interest in mathematics, or who does not intend advanced specialization in economics, but wishes to become informed regarding the essential mathematical building blocks of economics as a discipline.
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students
MA120 Mathematics for Social Sciences
Module: Mathematics for Economics
Instructors: Israel WaichmanCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
This course focuses on the (basic) tools important for the study of political science and economics: analytic geometry, functions of a single variable, and calculus. The course will also be of interest for any student with a general interest in mathematics, or who does not intend advanced specialization in economics. This course is highly recommended for students who want to specialize in Economics, but do not have a strong background in mathematics. After successfully completing this course they will have to take (the more advanced) Mathematics for Economics course.
Syllabus
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students
EC211 Macroeconomics
Module: Macroeconomics
Coordinator: Irwin Collier
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 9:00-10:30 (Group A) or 10:45-12:15 (Group B)
This course familiarizes students with the main models that macroeconomists use to analyze the way economies behave. The module begins by examining theories that seek to explain money and banking. We then focus our attention on investigating economic theories that explain short run business cycles, the periods of recession and boom that occur on a regular basis. An important part of the course is to investigate the role of governments in affecting the long and short-term economic prospects of their countries. We apply this theoretical knowledge to a range of current economic issues, including budget deficits and national debt, loans and private sector debt, the current account, and the role of institutions.
MA151 Introduction to Statistics
Module: Statistics
Instructor: Seraphine März
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00
The goal of this course is to introduce students to quantitative methods in political science and economics. The course covers the basics of descriptive and inferential statistics, including probability theory, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. To facilitate students’ ability to understand and critically engage with these methods, examples of quantitative social science research are discussed throughout the course. Classes are complemented with exercises to build students’ skills in applying the learned methods independently. Many of these exercises use data from public opinion surveys, which cover a wide range of social, economic, and political topics. Working with this survey data, students will also have the opportunity to explore research questions of their own. At the end of the course, students will be able to read and engage with the majority of modern quantitative research. They also will be well prepared to pursue a variety of more advanced quantitative research courses.
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students
Ethics and Politics Foundational Modules
PT219 Concepts of the Political
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
This course offers a historical introduction to political theory as it struggles to appropriately model common action and political representation. We begin with Aristotle on the polis (Greek city-state) as the place of collaboration with a view to the good life, and the different constitutional forms this takes. Next, we examine how Augustine responds to a new challenge to worldly authority in Christianity by reconciling the divine and human city. As the basis of modern political theory's focus on legitimacy, we then study the roots of the social contract tradition in Hobbes and Rousseau. We conclude with thinkers from the 19th century to the present who inject the momentum of history into the core of their critiques of power (such as Marx, Arendt, Fanon, and Spivak).
PL105 In Search of the Good: An Introduction to Ethics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Tracy Colony
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
What is the basis for ethical action? Since its beginnings, philosophy has confronted this question. In this course we will read some of the central texts in Western philosophy that have attempted to come to terms with it. Starting with Socrates and focusing on the works of Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Emerson, and Nietzsche we will trace a tradition which has sought to understand and elaborate the possible grounds and scope of ethical action. The approach of the course will be predominantly chronological and we will engage in close readings of these seminal texts with an eye to their historical context and reception. However, we will also approach their concepts and vocabularies as possible starting points or references for conceiving of and reflecting on our own ethical responses to our circumstances and wider historical situation.
PL130 Ethics and Authenticity
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Katalin Makkai
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
Ethics has traditionally been understood to concern the broad question of how one should live. In an oft-quoted remark, Oscar Wilde suggests a reply to such a question: “‘Know Thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be Thyself’ shall be written.” The new dictum points in the direction of an ideal of “authenticity.” Over the past few centuries, arguably, “authenticity” has become a prominent value, occluding or replacing others, such as autonomy. In fact, ours has been called “the age of authenticity.” This course examines the ideal of authenticity historically as well as analytically. We consider the various ways in which an ideal of authenticity has been articulated and the critiques to which it leaves itself open. What does it mean to be true to one’s individual self? How could one fail to be true to oneself? Authors include Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Kierkegaard, Emerson, Beauvoir, Charles Taylor, Appiah.
SO102 Methods in Social Studies
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies
Instructor: Agatha Siwale
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
This course introduces undergraduate students to a variety of qualitative research methods used in the social sciences and to the epistemological and ontological foundations that undergird them. The goal of the class is to equip students to formulate good research questions and then devise appropriate research plans. Students will learn the “hows” and “whys” of writing literature reviews, generating hypotheses, selecting cases for investigation, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting findings. This will be accomplished through a series of seminars and research exercises carried out individually as well as in teams, involving application of various components in qualitative research (e.g. carrying out focus-group discussions, role-playing the interview process and analyzing data through enVivo software). Students will then be required to submit a mini-thesis at the end of the course. Another important aim of the course is to train students to become critical consumers of research generated by others through evaluating the sources of evidence, and the methods and conclusions proposed by others. At the end of the course, students should be able both to conduct and to critique research.
PT181 Doing “Justice” after Atrocity
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Kerry Bystrom
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
What does it mean to do “justice” after state terrorism, civil war, or the longstanding oppression of groups within society? How can parties on different sides of a conflict be brought together to work towards a common future? Is there any adequate way to repair the lives of victims, and what role should such reparations play in broader peace-building efforts? This class will grapple with such questions as it explores the development of a field known as “transitional justice” from the 1980s into the present. The course will have at its heart a multi-disciplinary exploration of a set of case studies from Latin America, Africa, Europe and the United States, which explore responses to (among other topics) military dictatorship, apartheid and slavery. To frame these cases we will critically examine conceptions of justice that have developed historically across different intellectual and religious traditions and which shape current policy options—crystallizing in the 1990s, for instance, into a particular “tool-kit” that includes truth commissions, trials, and symbolic and financial reparations. The course will end with a project imagining what “justice” might look like in Syria or another site of on-going conflict. Readings will cross between philosophy, political science, anthropology, law, and imaginative literature (drama, fiction, film).
Please note that this course is part of a cooperation with Kiron Open Higher Education, in which current Bard students and non-enrolled displaced students can study together topics of common interest. It will focus not only on building a collective knowledge base about the possibilities and ethics of post-conflict settlements, but also on helping individual students improve their close reading, critical thinking and academic writing capacities. Students should expect to write multiple drafts of papers and to engage in peer-review processes.
FA202 (IL)LEGAL: New Artistic and Curatorial Approaches to the History of Migration in Germany
Cross-listed with Art and Aesthetics
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies
Instructors: Marion Detjen / Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
The following courses are cross-listed with Politics
PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis
Module: Political Systems and Structures
Instructor: Agatha Siwale
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
PS119 Introduction to Comparative Politics
Module: Political Systems and Structures
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
PT121 Theories of Liberal Democracy
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Christian Woehst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Literature and Rhetoric Foundational Modules
LT140 Close Reading
Module: Close Reading
Instructor: Paul Festa
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00
This course will approach poetry from many angles. First, what does poetry do? And what makes poetic language distinct? As we look for answers to these questions, we will think about poetry's relationship to philosophy, rhetoric, prose, and everyday speech. Second, how do we analyze poetry? Throughout the course, we will learn to identify verse forms, meters, and figures and to speak with fluency using the technical language of prosody. The goal is more than that of learning a "technical" vocabulary: it is to learn to discover more in the poetry that we read. Finally, how has poetry changed over time? The course offers a survey of English-language poetry from the English Renaissance to the present day. We will be able to trace the rise and fall—and periodic return—of poetic forms as well as the influence that certain major figures and movements have exerted on succeeding poets. We will also each memorize a sonnet and even try writing in some of the poetic forms we study. All of these approaches are intended to make every phase in the history of poetry more alive, exciting, and relevant.
LT141 Virginia Woolf and the New Century
Module: Literary History
Instructor: Laura Scuriatti
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
Virginia Woolf (1822-1941) famously invented a description for the atmosphere of the “modern”: “on or about December 1910, human character changed.” In this course, we examine the relationship between Woolf’s writings and her historical moment: the last phase of European high bourgeois culture and its collapse in the wake of the First World War. Although modernist literature is often considered removed from politics and from a mass public, Woolf was a writer who engaged closely with the practical, material pressures of her day. Working across a variety of forms—the novel, lyric prose, pamphlet, short story, essay—and producing new versions of each of them, Woolf sought to create as well as represent the consciousness that she heralded as typical of the new age. As a publisher and associate of many of the leading figures of modernism, Woolf stood, despite her reculsive life, at the center of a movement, and embodies the crucial role of collaboration, as well as of a complex dynamics of inspiration, in the production of art. The course links Woolf’s style with the historical changes she confronted, and connects her oeuvre with the wider developments of modernism.
LT142 Fiction Writing Workshop
Module: Written Arts
Instructor: Clare Wigfall
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 12:30-15:45
British Faber & Faber author and BBC National Short Story Award winner Clare Wigfall offers a fiction writing workshop that guarantees to inspire your imagination. Whether you are an experienced writer or a total beginner, her intention is to break down the barriers that inhibit, so that the creative process can come naturally. You’ll be challenged to experiment with new writing techniques and different genres, such as dystopian fiction and writing in a historical context, 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.
Interested students are invited to write a short statement on why they are keen to be accepted on to this course.
TH133 Elfriede Jelinek: A Study of Postdramatic Playwriting, Directing, and Acting
Cross-listed with Art and Aesthetics
Module: Literary History
Instructor: Julia Hart
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
Politics Foundational Modules
PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis
Module: Policy Analysis
Instructor: Agatha Siwale
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
This course will introduce students to the definition of policy problems, the identification of alternative solutions to these, and the criteria governing the choice between these alternatives. Students are exposed to the various sources of evidence upon which assessment of alternatives is carried out as well as to the basis for considering policy impact. Through case studies, presentations and reviews of professionally-conducted policy analyses, students will receive a first-hand exposure to both the basic steps of this undertaking, and will have an opportunity to critique real-world policy decisions. Cases for analysis will include government policies on aging populations and social policies relating to housing and community development. The course will involve both individual and team work. Key outcomes will include an introductory knowledge of policy analysis, an ability to engage with policy problems and to decide on the best policy solution.
PS119 Introduction to Comparative Politics
Module: Introduction to Comparative Politics
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
Why do political systems differ from one another? Which processes have led to the formation of distinct political regimes? And how do these historical variations affect politics today? In addressing these questions in a wide set of contexts, this course provides an introduction to key theoretical approaches and concepts in the comparative study of politics. The focus will be on core topics in political development such as state and nation-building, the role of the state in the economy, its relationship to civil society and processes of democratization. We will also look at different types of political regimes, electoral and party systems—and the ways in which they affect the structure, functioning, and social role of political institutions. We explore these topics from a comparative perspective in combining theoretical texts with case studies. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand important topics in domestic politics, grasp the diversity of political systems and regimes, and analyze current political developments.
PT121 Theories of Liberal Democracy
Module: Moral and Political Thought
Instructor: Christian Woehst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
It is considered to be self-evident that we live in a democratic age: political regimes and societies of all different kinds describe themselves as liberal democracies. But what is a liberal democracy and how should we understand the ideas of freedom and equality on which it is based? To answer this question, this course will offer an introduction to central accounts of democracy from the ancient Greeks to the present time. It is structured in three parts: first, we will trace the evolution of the idea of democracy and uncover those intellectual traditions that have shaped our contemporary understanding of it. One of our findings will be that democracies are fragile forms of government and that a commitment to democracy is a very recent phenomenon. Therefore, the second part of the course will be devoted to grasping the challenges faced by the democratic order today. These challenges can be generated by tensions within democracies themselves (e.g. populism), or they can come from outside, in the shape of forces unleashed by globalization. In the final part, we will discuss how such pressures can be addressed in light of our discoveries concerning the origins of liberal democracy.
The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics
PL105 In Search of the Good: An Introduction to Ethics
Module: Moral and Political Thought
Instructor: Tracy Colony
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
PT219 Concepts of the Political
Module: Moral and Political Thought
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
PL130 Ethics and Authenticity
Module: Moral and Political Thought
Instructor: Katalin Makkai
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
PT181 Doing “Justice” after Atrocity
Module: Moral and Political Thought
Instructor: Kerry Bystrom
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
Art and Aesthetics Advanced Modules
FA305 Imagined Geographies-Redefining Nationhood through Artistic Practice
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Heba Amin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
This hybrid studio/seminar course examines the wide range of artistic projects that propose new political imaginings of political geographies. Artists have founded micronations, proposed the colonization of outer space, even attempted to drain the Mediterranean Sea. The class will examine the role that technology has played in altering our relation to landscape, and how it can be used as a tool to rethink and reconfigure the global frameworks of nationhood. Through creative projects, readings, class exercises and field visits, we will explore alternative possibilities of belonging in the era of digitization. The class will reframe conventional parameters of citizenry within the construct of borders and migration. Can critical geography be used as a method to find alternative ways of organizing current political arrangements? We will explore "imagined geographies" as an opportunity to rethink these political configurations and pose the question: what comes after the nation?
FA207 Advanced Photography: Exploring the Photographic Series
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: April Gertler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
This is an advanced level photography class focusing on the development of one body of work over the course of the semester. Students will create a portfolio that includes a minimum of 15 images and a written text that explores the process and concepts behind the work. This is a critique-based class with regular check-ins on the development of work, some involving the feedback of guest photography curators. The class will also involve readings and multiple short written assignments related to the central photographic series. Prerequisites for the class are (for BCB students) an Introduction to Photography as well as an Intermediate level Photography course. Students from other institutions must submit 5 Black and White photographic prints showing that they know how to use a B/W darkroom. Each student must have his or her own camera, digital or other.
FM308 How The West Was Won: The Western Film
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements
Instructor: Matthias Hurst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
The influential French film critic André Bazin described the Western as the quintessential American film. Establishing “myth” as its “profound reality” the genre follows “the ethics of the epic.” At once creating (in its best examples) a complex vision of the moral and legal foundations of the United States, the genre is also known for its construction of enduring popular, even stereotypical images of the figures, groups, and forces integral to the shaping of America’s geopolitical and social landscape. This course examines the modern mythology of the Western, looking at the categories and ideologies that shaped it: the frontier (Frederick Jackson Turner), manifest destiny (John L. O’Sullivan) and the belief in “regeneration through violence” (Richard Slotkin). We explore the way in which Western films stage and narrate the pivotal processes and catastrophes of US history—genocide, colonial expansion, migration, environmental destruction—as well as the effort to establish communities, ideals of justice and style, and law-governed societies. Our focus will be the classical period of the Western, between 1939 and 1962, and we will explore the political and cultural significance of the films for the postwar twentieth century.
AH313 Photography and Modernity
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Geoff Lehman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-10:30 & Fri 9:00-12:15
Invented in the early nineteenth century, the new medium of photography has since then occupied a crucial place within visual culture. This course considers photography in terms of the conditions and concerns specific to its medium, as well as in its relationship to painting, to the origins of cinema, to key aspects of modernism and postmodernism, and to broader categories of experience (affective, social, scientific, oneiric). Major topics for the course include: photography’s theoretical and technical origins in Renaissance perspective and the camera obscura; memory, presence, and affective response, with a particular focus on portraiture; the “reality effect,” documentation, and social criticism; originality and replication in relation both to avant-garde practices and to mass culture. Special attention will be given to the early history of photography and to photography within the broader context of modernism. The course will also involve a sustained dialogue between photography and painting (Renaissance portraiture, Goya, the Pre-Raphaelites, Impressionism, Surrealism). Recent developments in digital photographic practice, especially in relation to online replication and dissemination, will be a topic towards the end of the term. We will be guided throughout by close reading of individual works by photographers such as Daguerre, Talbot, Nadar, Cameron, Atget, Man Ray, Lange, Arbus, Sherman, and Lawler, among others. Visits to galleries, museums, and installation sites to experience works of art firsthand are an integral part of the course.
FM317 Embodying Practices of Confession
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Josefin Arnell
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00
Walking the line between self-expression and universalist ideas of the subject, the course will explore how to use the autobiographical as a starting point for creating fictional or documentary work. We will study radical strategies and practices from feminist and queer artists who use their private life, bodies and environments as a tool to negotiate political positions. We look at iconic figures of whom were shaped by the political landscape of their time, as well as contemporary artists who use modern technology and tools to forge new identities and challenge patriarchal structures. Through the mode of "play," prepare to encounter new configurations and methods that will take you out of your comfort zone. Students applying for this course should already have experience in filming and editing, and be interested in exploring a multitude of roles within video art production including: collective and individual filmmaking, directing, acting, editing, script writing, character development, set production, sound recording and costume design. The focus of this course will not be on technical instruction but rather on conceptualization, development and execution of ideas that embrace our most subversive obsessions, and which can address complex topics, feelings, and frustrations about contemporary life.
TH319 Performance between Poetics and Politics
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Lina Majdalanie
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
Focusing on the contemporary artistic scene in Lebanon and the Arab world more widely, as well as its links with other spaces, this theater / performance course confronts several interconnected dilemmas: how can art be political without becoming subsumed by militancy and activism, or by gestures of denunciation? How can it be understand itself as "engaged" but still in a state of perpetual questioning? We align the poetic with the political, the political and the philosophical. One of our key questions will be the issue of how art can be "local" but not self-identical; local but not restricted by governing laws and regulations, or by prior conception and invention. In other words, how do we go beyond the risks of universalist abstraction and of a narrowness in thrall to the enduring stereotypes of cultural relativism? Our task will be to explore the relation between the personal, the private or intimate spheres, and communal life. We ask how to make biography out of history, and History out of biography. This question presupposes a reconsideration of both of those categories, as well as of the borderlines that divide and classify the world into hermetic dichotomies. We might cite here the examples East/West, Fiction / Real. Using appropriation, intermixture and other forms of détournement (a Situationist term signaling a kind of forcible redirection or rerouting) in our histories, we bring together what is different and render the familiar strange or even foreign.
TH321 What is Togetherness?
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques / Exhibition Culture and Public Space
Instructors: Sophia New, Daniel Belasco Rogers
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 9:00-12:15
“[…] Scenius is the intelligence of a whole operation or group of people. […] Let’s forget the idea of ‘genius’ for a little while, let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work."
Brian Eno, opening the Luminous Sydney festival in 2009
What does it really mean to make art together? How can we find ways to be and make things together within art practices? What kinds of gathering and interaction are taking place when we say we made something together? How does such a working methodology survive in a market that privileges the lone genius? How does one communicate collective authorship in a culture that only tends to understand individuality? In this course we will draw together, walk together, write together, move together and dream together. Taught by the performance duo plan b (Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers), the class will also look at the work of other artists who have had long-term collaborations. We will examine groups from the independent theater scene like Gob Squad, She She Pop, Forced Entertainment, as well as fine art collectives such as Jan Family, Guerrilla Girls, and the Critical Art Ensemble. While practicing collective work, wider political issues will arise and be examined, such as: what structures can be developed that respect everyone’s wishes and needs? What is consensus? What are the strategies for making sure that confident people do not dominate less confident people? What place is there for dissent in collaborative practice? How familiar should we be in dealing with each other? Is there a crisis of togetherness and what kind of togetherness are we participating in through our connected devices?
FA307 Artistic Practices
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Sandra Schäfer
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Sat 10:30-13:45 on 02.02 and 02.03; Sat 10:30-16:30 on 16.02, 16.03, 30.03, 13.04, 27.04, and 11.05Even as I look and even as I see, I am changing what is there (Sally Potter, Gold Diggers)
In this seminar, we will focus on the different expressions of violence in our societies and the role media productions and architecture play in these violent acts. How can we become sensitized to someone else’s grief? This encompasses the question of whose life is regarded as “grievable” and whose is not. What role do memories play? Transitory and ever-changing memories differ from the mortifying way in which technical apparatuses record sounds and images. How does space affect memory? As (our) bodies are always political bodies, we will dedicate a particular attention to the way in which the vulnerability of our own body affects our working methods, modes of articulation, and ways of sharing. Even the refusal to speak can be a mode of action. In the first phase of the course, we will engage with these questions through a selection of audio-visual and textual artistic works. In the second phase, the focus will be placed on the student’s experiences and artistic practice. At the end of the course, the completed projects will be shown as a public exhibition. This seminar invites students with a particular interest in questioning and traversing normative framing through audio-visual practices as well as writing. Reflecting on the issue of the position from which one speaks will be an important emphasis.
AR303 Curating the Alter Ego
Module: Aesthetics and Art Theory / Exhibition Culture and Public Space
Instructor: Dorothea von Hantelmann / Joel Mu
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
The trope of the alter ego runs through many times and cultures. It can be traced back to roman philosophers Cicero and Seneca, who described it as “a second self, a trusted friend”. Appearing in common language in the early 19th century, when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists, Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung used it in the field of psychoanalysis to describe the collective unconscious or that part of ego that remains directly non-accessible. In phenomenological philosophy the alter ego is explored as a philosophical or theoretical concept, e.g. in Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931) and in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943).
Many artists of the 20th and 21st centuries have created alter egos, particularly in the field of performance and interdisciplinary art: From Marcel Duchamp’s gender-bending alter ego Rrose Sélavy, who was frequently photographed by Man Ray in the 1920s to contemporary anonymous artist collectives, brands, drag, online personalities or avatars, alter egos are embodied by artists such as Ming Wong, Johannes Paul Raether, Puppies Puppies, and the Bernadette Corporation.
This course will have a tripartite structure: In the first part, various artistic references of invented fictional identities will be studied. We will discuss alter egos as an entryway into a thinking through (sexual) identities, cultural assimilation, racial discrimination and social hierarchy. In the second part, students will research and produce their own relevant alter ego, which will become manifest in a medium of choice (film, music, poetry/text, performance etc.). In the third part, these artistic and/or curatorial outcomes will be presented to the public in a one-night/one-weekend-only event. This entails a work on presentation formats combing exhibition and performance modalities.
FA313 Hive Mind: Possibilities of Collaboration in Studio Practice
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: John Kleckner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
Often an art studio can become a kind of lonely aesthetic island-- the tortured artist working in isolation for long stretches. In today's political climate we need to be thinking more about community and collaboration. How can we support and inspire each other’s work and how is our work expanding ourselves?
This class will emphasize collaborative approaches to making art as a conversation between practices. Coursework will be divided between individual projects and group efforts. Students own artistic ideas and practices will be engaged and challenged by working individually, in pairs, small groups, and as the entire class. We will consider how “Hive Mind” can generate artistic surprises, affect the speed of production, and move us beyond our creative abilities and limitations.
This is a studio art course, work in a wide variety of materials will be encouraged-- drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, photography, installation, etc. At the conclusion of the semester students would collaboratively design and paint a mural on the exterior of one of the art buildings to coincide with Open Studios.
The ideal student would have some prior artmaking experience and a willingness to work together with their peers to produce artworks.
Economics Advanced Modules
EC311 Ethics and Economics
Module: Ethics and Economic Analysis
Instructor: Martin Binder
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
This course aims at highlighting the various ways in which economics and ethics intersect: Is it legitimate to dump our trash in lesser-developed countries because it is, economically speaking, "efficient"? Are high salaries for managers or movie stars justified? Should a company be allowed to bribe officials in foreign countries in order to do business there? Should we encourage markets for organs or blood if they are efficiently allocating "resources"? In this course, seminars deal with these aspects of the economy, where different value judgments may be in conflict. While it is often useful to analyze various aspects of human life in economic terms, there may be spheres where economic calculation might seriously distort our judgments of goodness and rightness and hence might be in need of correction by other forms of measurement. The course balances the positive aspects of economics (such as alleviation of poverty and development of nations) with its negative sides (such as corruption of values and neglect of fairness issues). It elaborates on the value judgments underlying economics (its often utilitarian or libertarian commitments), and the difference between market logic and market ideology.
EC313 Environmental Economics
Module: Choice, Resources, and Development
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
The course centers on the economic analysis of environmental issues. We will start by addressing market failures related to the environment and to the management of natural resources. Throughout the course we will discuss both global and local environmental issues (e.g., global and local resources held in common, energy production, climate change, water pollution, overfishing, etc.). Our goal will be to review and critique the policy instruments provided by economics and management science to overcome market failures. We also confront the practical issues affecting the application of these instruments, including the question of how monetary values can be assigned to environmental goods.
HI200 Contemporary Issues in Economic History
Module: Ethics and Economic Analysis
Instructor: Martin Kenner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 US credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00
This is a survey course on contemporary issues in economic history. We examine three subjects. First among them is the so-called “great divergence,” the emergence of Western Europe as the dominant economic region in the mid eighteenth-century. Our second major topic is income and wealth inequality in the modern world – we study the extent and the reasons for inequality and how it manifests itself differently in a variety of regions. Our third focus will be the fraught topic of austerity, in recent years a central source of tension within the economic and political frameworks of the European Union. We place the debate on austerity in the context of economic thinkers from Ricardo and Malthus through Keynes and contemporary economists.
Ethics and Politics Advanced Modules
The following courses are cross-listed with Politics
HI309 Colonialism, Science, and the Subaltern in the Middle East and North Africa
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructors: Edna Bonhomme
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
Science and medicine in their ability to demarcate power and space can serve as an index for social and political relations, a fact which becomes particularly evident in respect to the lives and experiences of those who are less powerful or influential, and whose activities have often been neglected in scholarly discourse. This course critically examines science in the Middle East and North Africa from the 1800s until the contemporary period. We will collectively consider the role that colonialism has played in shaping scientific practice and discourse. At the same time, the seminar will consider the ways that the subaltern, i.e., the working poor, women, lay people, were also active participants in producing scientific and medical knowledge. By exploring the contradictions and tensions between colonialists and their subjects, the course will uncover how science has been used as a colonial tool but also an instrument of resistance. In this seminar, students will be exposed to a range of historical texts, visual materials, and film from the nineteenth-century Middle-Eastern and North-African contexts.
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students
SO300 Contemporary visual cultures in/of the ‘Middle East': an interdisciplinary survey of (mis)representation
Module: Global Social Theory / Movements and Thinkers
Instructors: Walid El-Houri, Rasha Chatta
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 US credits
Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00
This course explores the formation of the Middle East as a geographical region, an idea, and a discursive construct through visual cultures. The representation of the Middle East remains a crucial aspect of its study and understanding. The interdisciplinary field of study termed "visual culture" has come to form a possible way of offering a critical understanding of the representation(s) of the Middle East through the theoretical insights related to analyzing visual material. Representations stem from various parties, as part of the legacy of a colonial power producing orientalist depictions that contribute to an ongoing process of othering or again by a wide range of agents with differing ways of seeing and showing to their communities, or to various others. This rich visual history of representation and misrepresentation, from within and without, uncovers and contributes to the making of what we call the Middle East. Throughout the course we will explore some of this rich archive of visual cultures produced in the region and elsewhere and addressed to different interlocutors and audiences: local, regional or foreign.
Module: Global Social Theory
Instructor: Agata Lisiak
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
As one of the most important features of today's globalized world, migration remains highly debated on local, national, and international levels. Migration is assigned various meanings and statuses (high-skilled and low-skilled, legal and illegal, documented and undocumented, forced and voluntary, restricted and unrestricted), which are, in turn, contested in multiple ways through grassroots activism, academic and artistic interventions, as well as the work of local and international NGOs. Today, migration affects everyone regardless of their own migratory status, and many contemporary societies – especially but not exclusively their urban centers – have been described as pluralist, post-migrant, or super-diverse. The course critically explores the history of migration from global and local perspectives, emphasizing the uneven geopolitical developments that produce specific forms of mobility. The selected readings will help students examine diverse social experiences of migration, as well as a range of concepts such as belonging, border, movement, mobility, citizenship, and hospitality. Students will familiarize themselves with the UN refugee system, regional and national policies and procedures regarding migration, as well as the challenges and opportunities that emerge from them. By the end of the semester, students will have gained insight into histories of migration, migration regimes, and migrants’ cultural production. Designed by scholars and educators from across the Bard network, the course aims at advancing students’ understanding of migration both in the specific local contexts in which they study, as well as from an international perspective. Through a series of joint assignments, students will have a unique opportunity to engage with their peers and professors from other campuses.
PT318 The New Nexus between Party Politics and Foreign Policy – Right-Wing Populism and International Challenges
Module: Law, Politics and Society
Instructor: Timo Lochocki
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
The rise of populist parties – such as the French Front National (FN) or the Alternative for Germany (AfD) – fundamentally affects the conditions governing international cooperation on global scale. Populists sucessfully campaign on nationalist platforms, rejecting international cooperation. The presence of this new political player and its nationalist agenda has the potential to alter the mechanisms defining the scope of action for governments dominated by traditional “mainstream” political parties. With a populist sitting in the White House, the governments of the three strongest Western European liberal democracies – Germany, France and the United Kingdom – therefore have to square a circle: regaining voters of populist parties keen on following a nationalist agenda, while at the same time safeguarding the international cooperations that lie in their very own national interest. This course will try to develop a possible solution to this inherent paradox, focusing on Germany as a case study. After discussing the theory and the data on the rise of populist parties and their impact on foreign policy, we will try to craft policy recommendations for the current German government. This class is recommended for advanced politics students only.
PT229 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructors: Jan Völker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 17:30-20:45
Our contemporary understanding of terms like “Law” and “Right” seems narrow and restrictive when compared with the possibilities opened by the set of problems considered in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The central question of this 1820 text concerns the realization of freedom within the form of the modern state. For Hegel, freedom cannot be achieved through individualistic and liberal frameworks; freedom relies on the freedom of the other. It is realized within the state as the lawful form of collective existence. Hegel’s proposal strikes us as ambivalent: on the one hand, it is far distant from a current sense of the state as a purely administrative apparatus—it seems conservative, even Romantic in tenor. On the other hand, it prompts questions that clearly continue to haunt the modern state from within, questions that have gained renewed importance in debates about identity, belonging, populism, and representation. Is freedom individual or collective? How does the state relate to individuals? In this seminar, we will discuss the entirety of the text, and complement our reading of Hegel by referring to interpretations of specific passages.
PT321 Freedom of Expression
Module: Law, Politics and Society
Instructor: Michael Weinman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
In this course, we investigate a very old and quite foundational question in political thought; namely: what, if any, are the possibly justifiable limits to the freedom of expression? In so doing, we will keep close to the conviction that “theory follows practice,” meaning: we shall “discipline” our theoretical discussion through constant reference to actual legal, political, and cultural practices of restricting or regulating speech. Our reading of theoretical reflections defending or questioning an absolute right to free expression, from the classical (Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Cicero, Seneca) to the modern (Spinoza, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Mill), to the contemporary (Butler, McKinnon, Matsuda, Rancière) will closely follow case studies of constitutional and criminal law in the United States and Germany. Through this interplay of historical and normative study, we shall try to encompass not only the range of controverting views concerning this fundamental right within the liberal order that have existed and continue to persist until today, but also to understand something about the future valences of the very notion of “basic rights,” widely considered to be under attack as the liberal international order faces an ongoing crisis of legitimacy.
PT357 Critical Human Rights Practice / Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)
Module: Social Commitment and the Public Sphere
Instructor: Valentina Azarova
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
This seminar explores the role of human rights advocates and groups as a community of practice, in light of the growing attacks against civil society, the rise of populism, and the ‘crises’ experienced and produced by international law. Students will be introduced to the main concepts of international human rights law, the role of lawyers and the law in promoting and consolidating social change, and the dilemmas associated with the strategies and impacts of this practice. We will critically examine the mandates, methods, and theories of change used by rights groups, their objectives as a movement, and their past and present blind spots towards issues such as global socio-economic inequality, struggles for self-determination, and the legality of war. We will explore case studies through the work of the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), a collective that challenges global injustice through innovative legal strategies, and engage in hands-on research and advocacy to contribute to GLAN’s actions to challenge exploitative transnational dealings such as trade in products made in modern slavery, land grabs, abusive ‘migration management’ policies, and arms sales and defense cooperation with actors that commit war crimes.
PT375 Nationalism
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Aysuda Kolëmen
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
In this course, we will investigate the ideological and material conditions under which individuals and groups contest for political goods through the construction of and resistance to state infrastructures and national identities. In so doing, we will keep close to the conviction that "theory follows practice"; meaning: we shall "discipline" our theoretical discussion by constant reference back to the actual practice of nationalism. This means that our reading of (often critical) theoretical analyses of nationalism, such as those offered by Anderson, Arendt, Gellner, and Brubaker, will be constantly referred back to close descriptive readings of particular national movements that cross both historical eras and geographical boundaries, from the emergence of nation-states in Europe to the (post-)colonial struggles for self-determination and national independence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Through this interplay of theoretical and empirical study, we shall try to encompass something of the breadth and depth of the impact that nationalist movements and their institutionalization in state form have had throughout both the ("long") 19th century and the ("short") 20th century. In this way, perhaps, we will learn something about the future valences of nationalism, widely considered to be flourishing as the liberal international order faces an ongoing crisis of legitimacy.
SE220 Social Justice and Urban Spaces
Module: Social Commitment and the Public Sphere
Instructor: Cassandra Ellerbe
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
Urban spaces have often served as the backdrop for social justice movements and politicized organizing. Racial and ethnic tensions, gender and socioeconomic inequality, forced or voluntary migration etc. are undoubtedly issues that have been at the forefront of many emancipatory movements. However, these issues also play a significant role in how urban space(s) are structured and experienced, and utilised in the struggle for socio-political justice and transformation. In this course we will explore in depth the significance of social justice and politicized mobilization, and how the issues involved in both of these phenomena have taken shape within urban space(s) across the globe. Utilizing an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective (social justice theory, human geography, post-colonial and intersectional theory), we will analyse various historical as well as current contexts that show socio-politically informed social justice movements of marginalized groups in a variety of urban spaces. This course aims not only to discuss the purpose of and necessity for social justice and political activism, but also to assist students in the development of critical thinking of a contextualized understanding of a variety of urban-related social problems. The course entails lectures, in class discussions and presentations, off-campus visits to various Berlin based organisations, as well as guest lectures by local experts & scholars.
SE221 Digital Politics: Theories and Practices of Surviving in the Age of Algorithms
Module: Social Commitment and the Public Sphere
Instructors: Magdalena Taube, Krystian Woznicki
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
The seminar “Digital Politics” is an introduction to the field of critical Internet studies and it will provide a toolbox for students to maneuver more securely through the vast digital networks of our times. We will learn how to verify news online, how to communicate safely with each other and how to build stories that attract attention. We will try to shed light on the buzzwords that form our digital landscape: big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, leaks, post-privacy and post truth. The seminar will focus on recent case studies and draw out their lessons both for individuals and for larger social and political forces. We will address cases of alleged hacking and their potentially far-reaching consequences, as well as the social media strategies of political parties and social movements, from those described as "populist," to others that have long been a part of the establishment landscape. Our aim will be to arrive at a clear grasp of the reach of the impact of digital technology on politics and society; to develop a practical, personal ethic of response to this transformation; and to discover ways of influencing it in a positive direction.
PL306 Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
(a cooperation between Bard College Berlin and the Péter Szondi Institute, FU Berlin)
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Catherine Toal, Wolfgang Hottner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 16:00-18:00
The course takes place in German, and is held between April 8 and July 13
A philosopher and intellectual historian of Jewish heritage and Catholic upbringing, Hans Blumenberg was perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures in the academic landscape of the German postwar era. That period gave rise to a number of theories of what has come to be known as “modernity,” the advent of scientific methods that represented a break with medieval theology. The destructiveness of twentieth-century warfare, the use of technology for the purposes of annihilation, as well as the drawbacks of industrialism and urbanization, prompted intense reflection on the value and meaning of the promises of emancipation offered by science. Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, the text that stands at the center of his work, is a key contribution to this debate. Unusually among the diagnoses of modernity, Blumenberg returns to the transition between Antiquity and Christianity to explain the complexities and compromises of the “modern age.” In doing so, he produces an analysis that also responds to the question of guilt, responsibility and agency lurking in his own historical context. In this seminar, we will explore Blumenberg’s interpretation of pivotal early-modern and late medieval thinkers, as well as his challenge to German near-contemporaries such as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. Also addressed will be the relation between Legitimacy and recurring concerns in Blumenberg’s work, especially the crossover between literature and philosophy.
Syllabus
Literature and Rhetoric Advanced Modules
LT300 Kafka’s Outsider, Kafka’s Politics
Module: Writer and World
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Kafka famously depicts the alienated individual's frustrations in a disenchanted world of failing social bonds and bureaucratic overload. In this class we study how the very pressures of modernity that contort his characters also narratively transform enduring problems of political representation. In addition to Kafka's novels, stories, and letters, we will study his Romantic predecessors, his Expressionist contemporaries, and the uniquely rich critical tradition that has responded to his work. (In addition to Kafka, authors include Hoffmann, Gogol, Trakl, Brod, Benjamin, Camus, Adorno, Agamben, Ronell, and Butler.)
LT212 Reading into Writing: A Fiction Workshop
Module: Producing Literature
Instructor: Rebecca Rukeyser
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 14:00-17:15
This course is designed to develop and enhance your capacity for imagination, empathy, and clarity and originality of written expression via the writing and reading of short fiction. As a workshop, we will be focusing primarily on your short fiction, supplemented by contemporary and canonical readings.
Written requirements: You'll write two short fictional pieces, 1500 words minimum, due on a rotating schedule over the course of the semester. You'll also revise these pieces post-workshop, and will hand in the revised drafts along with a revision key that explains what changes were made (and why). In addition, you're required to write and overview of a literary journal and hand in short, 250-word workshop letters as part of the peer review process.
Participation requirements: Read all assigned works carefully and come to class prepared to discuss them in detail with regard to sentence structure, phrasing, narrative voice, images, dialogue, etc., and how these function as unifying elements. Participate in peer workshops, giving both encouragement and specific suggestion, as well as speaking about the larger goals of each piece. Give a ten-minute presentation on a work of fiction you recommend to your fellow workshoppers.
All reading material supplied, both in hard copy and PDF form.
Please note as this is an advanced course, enrollment in this class is subject to approval by the instructor. Please submit an example of your work to [email protected].
LT301 Concepts of the Person: Character, Mind, Subject
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture
Instructor: James Harker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
This course will examine terms for the person that are important for literature and literary theory. We will begin with probably the most important such term in literary study, “character,” and processes by which characters are created and understood. What is the relationship of character to action? What distinguishes a character from an agent? We will compare accounts of “character” with the concept of “personality” as it emerged in the twentieth century and “mind” as it is understood in analytic philosophy. We will look at the literary theory of “mind style,” the concept of “theory of mind” as well as the growing interest in literary treatments of “mind.” Finally we will consider treatments of the “subject” as well as “identity.” Our examination of theories of the agent, character, personality, mind, and identity will be complemented by our reading of novels from three distinct periods: Aphra Behn’s Oronooko, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time. There will be a research component to the course, and each participant will select additional critical sources to read.
LT304 Race and the Black Radical Tradition in Contemporary Literature and Art: A Comparative Perspective
Module: Writer and World / Literary Movements and Forms
Instructor: Kathy-Ann Tan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 12:30-15:45
In this class, we will trace the trajectory of the "Black radical tradition" (Cedric Robinson, 1983, Fred Moten, 2003) in literature and art - from its early beginnings in Black Reconstruction and W.E.B. Du Bois' 1903 essay, "The Souls of Black Folk", via the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts movements of the 1920s and 1960s respectively, to its contemporary manifestations in work inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. We will acknowledge the transatlantic dimension of the Black radical tradition by exploring the writings of Black German scholars such as Maisha Eggers, Peggy Piesche, Fatima El-Tayeb, Sharon Dodua-Otoo and May Ayim, as well as Audre Lorde, a central figure whose work was highly influential on both sides of the Atlantic. Our readings will also include work on Afrofuturism, a visual, literary and musical aesthetic that combines elements of science-fiction, fantasy and post-humanism with Black history and culture. Finally, we will examine how the Black radical tradition is significant not only as a literary or aesthetic movement, but also as a body of critical thought that seeks to bring about a restructuring of political, economic, and social relations.
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture / Writer and World
Instructor: T. Weitz
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
What are the sources, networks and voices (prominent and minor) that shape the discourses of the German public sphere? This course supports the development of speaking and writing skills in German beyond C1 level through a study of national, regional, and alternative forums for debate. We look at the main figures and institutions that have an influence on the content, tone and direction of argument. Our discussion will be guided by the prevalent issues of concern that have emerged with great urgency in recent times and their current treatment: most notably, the "refugee crisis," the future of Europe, and Germany's role in the world, past and present. In addition to language study the purpose of the course will be to navigate the wide range of platforms for news, comment, and discussion in Germany, and to find what participants in the seminar judge to be reliable and enriching contributions to and interventions in public life. Among the issues we will consider is the question of access to public debate (the issue of diversity of identity, origin, belief, and modes of expression), as well as the part played by new outlets (social media) that have come to complicate the question of reliability and propriety in the public sphere.
NB. Students taking the class should have C1 proficiency level in German.
PL306 Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
(a cooperation between Bard College Berlin and the Péter Szondi Institute, FU Berlin)
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture
Instructor: Catherine Toal, Wolfgang Hottner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 16:00-18:00
The course takes place in German, and is held between April 8 and July 13
A philosopher and intellectual historian of Jewish heritage and Catholic upbringing, Hans Blumenberg was perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures in the academic landscape of the German postwar era. That period gave rise to a number of theories of what has come to be known as “modernity,” the advent of scientific methods that represented a break with medieval theology. The destructiveness of twentieth-century warfare, the use of technology for the purposes of annihilation, as well as the drawbacks of industrialism and urbanization, prompted intense reflection on the value and meaning of the promises of emancipation offered by science. Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, the text that stands at the center of his work, is a key contribution to this debate. Unusually among the diagnoses of modernity, Blumenberg returns to the transition between Antiquity and Christianity to explain the complexities and compromises of the “modern age.” In doing so, he produces an analysis that also responds to the question of guilt, responsibility and agency lurking in his own historical context. In this seminar, we will explore Blumenberg’s interpretation of pivotal early-modern and late medieval thinkers, as well as his challenge to German near-contemporaries such as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. Also addressed will be the relation between Legitimacy and recurring concerns in Blumenberg’s work, especially the crossover between literature and philosophy.
Syllabus
Politics Advanced Modules
SO323 Measuring Democracy and Autocracy
Module: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences
Instructor: Seraphine Maerz
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
What is democracy and how can we measure it? What constitutes autocracy and how does it differ from democracy? Which data resources and methods can we use to assess democratization or – in turn – democratic backsliding and autocratization? In this course, we critically engage with the core literature and existing methodological approaches of measuring, comparing and categorizing political regimes. The course has a theoretical and applied component. By discussing several studies from democracy and autocracy research, the theoretical component of the course aims to provide a thorough understanding about the purposes and benefits but also challenges and drawbacks of comparing political regimes through time and across countries. During the applied sessions of the course, we will learn basic statistical techniques in R, a free software environment for statistical computing (https://www.r-project.org/). Based on this, we are able to actually work with the discussed regime classifications and measurements and learn how to assess the impacts of democratic and autocratic governance. The overarching goals of the course are to gain literacy in comparative and quantitative studies and to develop first programming skills in R which are of great use for working with quantitative methods in the social sciences in general.
We will be using DataCamp for the Classroom during our applied sessions, a great resource for free exercises and online tutorials by expert instructors for R. Please find our interactive DataCamp course website here and register for free with your BCB e-mail address (all registered course participants will be provided free access): https://www.datacamp.com/groups/measuring-democracy-and-autocracy
PS374 Comparative Public Policy
Module: Public Policy
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
This class addresses key public policy fields through a comparative lens. A first part is dedicated to the means and ends of public policy and addresses historical shifts in policy regimes. In the second section of this class we develop an understanding of theory traditions and approaches to analyzing the processes and institutional mechanisms by which policy-makers, experts and interest groups can have an impact on policy. The third part of the course shifts gears and zooms in on a series of specific policy fields, notably (1) welfare and labor market policy, (2) higher education, (3) research and development, and (4) urban planning. As such, the different policy fields will serve as ways to address questions of distributional justice, of inequalities and the mechanisms that reproduce them. Overall, this course will enable us to critically rethink the role of the state in globalization processes as well as the uneven development within and between national political systems and regional economic clusters.
PS378 The Future of Work
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15 (Group A); Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30 (Group B)
The 21st century has been hailed by many scholars and policy-makers as the beginning of the urban era. Many commentators see postindustrial cities as harbingers of a knowledge-based, no-collar, sharing economy. This course focuses on urbanization patterns to explore changing divisions of labor, philosophies of work, and political arrangements in four distinct historical moments. We begin by analyzing late 18th-century debates about the spirit of commerce and visions of a harmonious society at a moment where modern states were forming. In the 19th-century context of accelerating industrialization processes, we examine how economic geographies changed with the rise of national markets—and how visions of work and urban living were revisited with them. Our discussions about the Fordist period in the mid-20th century will deal with critiques of state technocracy, political hopes for entrepreneurial revolutions, and dystopias of stagflation and suburban uniformity. In the last section on the post-industrial era we will discuss recent literatures on accelerationism, green growth and de-growth, and how these discourses are reimagining the potential of social policy and democracy—and the future of work.
The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics
PT357 Critical Human Rights Practice / Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructor: Valentina Azarova
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
This seminar explores the role of human rights advocates and groups as a community of practice, in light of the growing attacks against civil society, the rise of populism, and the ‘crises’ experienced and produced by international law. Students will be introduced to the main concepts of international human rights law, the role of lawyers and the law in promoting and consolidating social change, and the dilemmas associated with the strategies and impacts of this practice. We will critically examine the mandates, methods, and theories of change used by rights groups, their objectives as a movement, and their past and present blind spots towards issues such as global socio-economic inequality, struggles for self-determination, and the legality of war. We will explore case studies through the work of the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), a collective that challenges global injustice through innovative legal strategies, and engage in hands-on research and advocacy to contribute to GLAN’s actions to challenge exploitative transnational dealings such as trade in products made in modern slavery, land grabs, abusive ‘migration management’ policies, and arms sales and defense cooperation with actors that commit war crimes.
SE220 Social Justice and Urban Spaces
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructor: Cassandra Ellerbe
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
Urban spaces have often served as the backdrop for social justice movements and politicized organizing. Racial and ethnic tensions, gender and socioeconomic inequality, forced or voluntary migration etc. are undoubtedly issues that have been at the forefront of many emancipatory movements. However, these issues also play a significant role in how urban space(s) are structured and experienced, and utilised in the struggle for socio-political justice and transformation. In this course we will explore in depth the significance of social justice and politicized mobilization, and how the issues involved in both of these phenomena have taken shape within urban space(s) across the globe. Utilizing an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective (social justice theory, human geography, post-colonial and intersectional theory), we will analyse various historical as well as current contexts that show socio-politically informed social justice movements of marginalized groups in a variety of urban spaces. This course aims not only to discuss the purpose of and necessity for social justice and political activism, but also to assist students in the development of critical thinking of a contextualized understanding of a variety of urban-related social problems. The course entails lectures, in class discussions and presentations, off-campus visits to various Berlin based organisations, as well as guest lectures by local experts & scholars.
SE221 Digital Politics: Theories and Practices of Surviving in the Age of Algorithms
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructors: Magdalena Taube, Krystian Woznicki
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
The seminar “Digital Politics” is an introduction to the field of critical Internet studies and it will provide a toolbox for students to maneuver more securely through the vast digital networks of our times. We will learn how to verify news online, how to communicate safely with each other and how to build stories that attract attention. We will try to shed light on the buzzwords that form our digital landscape: big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, leaks, post-privacy and post truth. The seminar will focus on recent case studies and draw out their lessons both for individuals and for larger social and political forces. We will address cases of alleged hacking and their potentially far-reaching consequences, as well as the social media strategies of political parties and social movements, from those described as "populist," to others that have long been a part of the establishment landscape. Our aim will be to arrive at a clear grasp of the reach of the impact of digital technology on politics and society; to develop a practical, personal ethic of response to this transformation; and to discover ways of influencing it in a positive direction.
PT318 The New Nexus between Party Politics and Foreign Policy – Right-Wing Populism and International Challenges
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Timo Lochoki
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
The rise of populist parties – such as the French Front National (FN) or the Alternative for Germany (AfD) – fundamentally affects the conditions governing international cooperation on global scale. Populists sucessfully campaign on nationalist platforms, rejecting international cooperation. The presence of this new political player and its nationalist agenda has the potential to alter the mechanisms defining the scope of action for governments dominated by traditional “mainstream” political parties. With a populist sitting in the White House, the governments of the three strongest Western European liberal democracies – Germany, France and the United Kingdom – therefore have to square a circle: regaining voters of populist parties keen on following a nationalist agenda, while at the same time safeguarding the international cooperations that lie in their very own national interest. This course will try to develop a possible solution to this inherent paradox, focusing on Germany as a case study. After discussing the theory and the data on the rise of populist parties and their impact on foreign policy, we will try to craft policy recommendations for the current German government. This class is recommended for advanced politics students only.
PT375 Nationalism
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Aysuda Kolëmen
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
In this course, we will investigate the ideological and material conditions under which individuals and groups contest for political goods through the construction of and resistance to state infrastructures and national identities. In so doing, we will keep close to the conviction that "theory follows practice"; meaning: we shall "discipline" our theoretical discussion by constant reference back to the actual practice of nationalism. This means that our reading of (often critical) theoretical analyses of nationalism, such as those offered by Anderson, Arendt, Gellner, and Brubaker, will be constantly referred back to close descriptive readings of particular national movements that cross both historical eras and geographical boundaries, from the emergence of nation-states in Europe to the (post-)colonial struggles for self-determination and national independence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Through this interplay of theoretical and empirical study, we shall try to encompass something of the breadth and depth of the impact that nationalist movements and their institutionalization in state form have had throughout both the ("long") 19th century and the ("short") 20th century. In this way, perhaps, we will learn something about the future valences of nationalism, widely considered to be flourishing as the liberal international order faces an ongoing crisis of legitimacy.
SO202 A Lexicon of Migration
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice / Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Agata Lisiak
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
As one of the most important features of today's globalized world, migration remains highly debated on local, national, and international levels. Migration is assigned various meanings and statuses (high-skilled and low-skilled, legal and illegal, documented and undocumented, forced and voluntary, restricted and unrestricted), which are, in turn, contested in multiple ways through grassroots activism, academic and artistic interventions, as well as the work of local and international NGOs. Today, migration affects everyone regardless of their own migratory status, and many contemporary societies – especially but not exclusively their urban centers – have been described as pluralist, post-migrant, or super-diverse. The course critically explores the history of migration from global and local perspectives, emphasizing the uneven geopolitical developments that produce specific forms of mobility. The selected readings will help students examine diverse social experiences of migration, as well as a range of concepts such as belonging, border, movement, mobility, citizenship, and hospitality. Students will familiarize themselves with the UN refugee system, regional and national policies and procedures regarding migration, as well as the challenges and opportunities that emerge from them. By the end of the semester, students will have gained insight into histories of migration, migration regimes, and migrants’ cultural production. Designed by scholars and educators from across the Bard network, the course aims at advancing students’ understanding of migration both in the specific local contexts in which they study, as well as from an international perspective. Through a series of joint assignments, students will have a unique opportunity to engage with their peers and professors from other campuses.
HI309 Colonialism, Science, and the Subaltern in the Middle East and North Africa
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructors: Edna Bonhomme
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
Science and medicine in their ability to demarcate power and space can serve as an index for social and political relations, a fact which becomes particularly evident in respect to the lives and experiences of those who are less powerful or influential, and whose activities have often been neglected in scholarly discourse. This course critically examines science in the Middle East and North Africa from the 1800s until the contemporary period. We will collectively consider the role that colonialism has played in shaping scientific practice and discourse. At the same time, the seminar will consider the ways that the subaltern, i.e., the working poor, women, lay people, were also active participants in producing scientific and medical knowledge. By exploring the contradictions and tensions between colonialists and their subjects, the course will uncover how science has been used as a colonial tool but also an instrument of resistance. In this seminar, students will be exposed to a range of historical texts, visual materials, and film from the nineteenth-century Middle-Eastern and North-African contexts.
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students
SO300 Contemporary Visual Cultures in/of the ‘Middle East': an interdisciplinary survey of (mis)representation
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics / Philosophy and Society
Instructors: Walid El-Houri, Rasha Chatta
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 US credits
Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00
This course explores the formation of the Middle East as a geographical region, an idea, and a discursive construct through visual cultures. The representation of the Middle East remains a crucial aspect of its study and understanding. The interdisciplinary field of study termed "visual culture" has come to form a possible way of offering a critical understanding of the representation(s) of the Middle East through the theoretical insights related to analyzing visual material. Representations stem from various parties, as part of the legacy of a colonial power producing orientalist depictions that contribute to an ongoing process of othering or again by a wide range of agents with differing ways of seeing and showing to their communities, or to various others. This rich visual history of representation and misrepresentation, from within and without, uncovers and contributes to the making of what we call the Middle East. Throughout the course we will explore some of this rich archive of visual cultures produced in the region and elsewhere and addressed to different interlocutors and audiences: local, regional or foreign.
PT229 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructors: Jan Völker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 17:30-20:45
Our contemporary understanding of terms like “Law” and “Right” seems narrow and restrictive when compared with the possibilities opened by the set of problems considered in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The central question of this 1820 text concerns the realization of freedom within the form of the modern state. For Hegel, freedom cannot be achieved through individualistic and liberal frameworks; freedom relies on the freedom of the other. It is realized within the state as the lawful form of collective existence. Hegel’s proposal strikes us as ambivalent: on the one hand, it is far distant from a current sense of the state as a purely administrative apparatus—it seems conservative, even Romantic in tenor. On the other hand, it prompts questions that clearly continue to haunt the modern state from within, questions that have gained renewed importance in debates about identity, belonging, populism, and representation. Is freedom individual or collective? How does the state relate to individuals? In this seminar, we will discuss the entirety of the text, and complement our reading of Hegel by referring to interpretations of specific passages.
PT321 Freedom of Expression
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Michael Weinman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
In this course, we investigate a very old and quite foundational question in political thought; namely: what, if any, are the possibly justifiable limits to the freedom of expression? In so doing, we will keep close to the conviction that “theory follows practice,” meaning: we shall “discipline” our theoretical discussion through constant reference to actual legal, political, and cultural practices of restricting or regulating speech. Our reading of theoretical reflections defending or questioning an absolute right to free expression, from the classical (Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Cicero, Seneca) to the modern (Spinoza, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Mill), to the contemporary (Butler, McKinnon, Matsuda, Rancière) will closely follow case studies of constitutional and criminal law in the United States and Germany. Through this interplay of historical and normative study, we shall try to encompass not only the range of controverting views concerning this fundamental right within the liberal order that have existed and continue to persist until today, but also to understand something about the future valences of the very notion of “basic rights,” widely considered to be under attack as the liberal international order faces an ongoing crisis of legitimacy.
PL306 Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
(a cooperation between Bard College Berlin and the Péter Szondi Institute, FU Berlin)
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Catherine Toal, Wolfgang Hottner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 16:00-18:00
The course takes place in German, and is held between April 8 and July 13
A philosopher and intellectual historian of Jewish heritage and Catholic upbringing, Hans Blumenberg was perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures in the academic landscape of the German postwar era. That period gave rise to a number of theories of what has come to be known as “modernity,” the advent of scientific methods that represented a break with medieval theology. The destructiveness of twentieth-century warfare, the use of technology for the purposes of annihilation, as well as the drawbacks of industrialism and urbanization, prompted intense reflection on the value and meaning of the promises of emancipation offered by science. Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, the text that stands at the center of his work, is a key contribution to this debate. Unusually among the diagnoses of modernity, Blumenberg returns to the transition between Antiquity and Christianity to explain the complexities and compromises of the “modern age.” In doing so, he produces an analysis that also responds to the question of guilt, responsibility and agency lurking in his own historical context. In this seminar, we will explore Blumenberg’s interpretation of pivotal early-modern and late medieval thinkers, as well as his challenge to German near-contemporaries such as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. Also addressed will be the relation between Legitimacy and recurring concerns in Blumenberg’s work, especially the crossover between literature and philosophy.
Syllabus
Electives
IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar: Working Cultures, Urban Cultures
Instructor: Agata Lisiak, Florian Duijsens
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits (in combination with an internship)
Course Times: Thu 14:00-15:30
The Berlin Internship Seminar accompanies students' undertaking of an internship or period of practical training, and addresses such issues as: the successful functioning of institutions, the role of guiding principles and values in determining the direction and structure of projects and initiatives, and the relationship between the various spheres of society (the EU, the state, the market, and the individual) in influencing the way institutions operate. Over the course of the seminar we will also talk about contemporary ways of living and working in Berlin and beyond: 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 emerged in Berlin recently? Which of them seem to thrive? How do Berlin's political, artistic, and citizen-activist organizations operate? What can we learn from these institutions?
EL203 Writer/Artists/Activistas!
Instructor: Ariane Simard
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
Looking at conscientious action, both large and small, we will look for a way to define an Activista! and try to determine the ways some writers and artists are shifting the dominat paradigm. Through the lens of Trinh T. Minh Ha and others who use their art to question existing social structures, we will survey the work of Rebecca Solnit, James Baldwin, Arundathi Roy, bell hooks, Judith Butler, Martin Luther King, Agnes Varda, Lucy Walker, Cathie Opie, Kara Walker, Shepard Fairey, Robbie Conal and Jayna Zweiman among others as a way to engage and share thoughts on bigger questions about social responsibility, economic justice and cultural engagement.
In this course, we will explore small acts of consciousness and the nexus where the writer and/or artist might achieve this by the dint of their work alone. What happens when conscientious acts move from being merely a political practice to becoming something that resembles works that are more subtle and personal? What happens when an artist's work veers into the political realm?
Building on proven pedagogical methods developed by the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, this "Writing to Learn" class will offer students the chance to grapple with the above questions through close reading, focused and private writing, group projects and seminar discussions. The main aim of the course is to improve students' ability to draft successful narrative, descriptive and analytical essays in academic English, as well as to develop skills in verbal argumentation, critical thinking and effective collaborative work needed for success in almost any discipline in the university setting. Because this class is a"blended" learning (part in person and part online) project that brings together students based in Berlin at Bard College Berlin, a Liberal Arts University, with refugee students located across the world studying with Kiron Open Higher Education, students will engage in global learning and cross-cultural negotiation as well as sharpen their digital literacy skills. The class will be held online and on-site simultaneously.
TH181 The Synesthetic Voice
Instructor: Alessio Castellacci
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
During this course you will be introduced to the field of vocal-physical performance, which exists in the interstitial space between the traditional definitions of theatre, dance, music. One of the main goal is to develop an investigative focus towards the subtleties of sound and motion, through practices of deep listening, impulse work, dynamic meditations, experiential anatomy, improvised singing, vocal instant composition and improvisation. More specifically, we will approach the voice and movement connection from two linked perspectives: the experience of sound as vibration, and how this can be perceived as a tactile input from the body; the practice of synesthetic perception as a unifying process of voice, mind and body, that we can tap in as a source for spontaneous imagery in improvised performance. In each class we will activate the body's perceptual intelligence through bio-energetic work, yoga of breath and somatic explorations.
Once we are aware of the fine levels of the body/voice connection, I will invite you to move on to a more intuitive and open level of improvisation. About synesthesia: a synesthetic experience happens every time an input gathered through one organ of perception triggers a sensorial impression in a different sense. We will practice opening up the possibilities of perception through different tasks (eye/ear sense deprivation, graphic voice response, Authentic Movement, Authentic Toning), finding your own flow and orientation in this augmented sensorial world. The synesthetic experience will invite us to shift into right brain functioning and intuitive choice making. At the end of each session we take time to practice improvised performance in different configurations, allowing inner impulses to manifest and articulate in the space, and to exchange verbal feedback in a supportive way.
GM300 German for Reading Knowledge
Coordinator: Ulrike Wagner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
This course is designed for students who wish to acquire German reading skills for research and study purposes. Focused on grammar topics and applied translation, texts read in class are chosen from a variety of genres and disciplines with special emphasis on philosophical writings. Students completing this course will have the necessary foundation for reading and translating written texts from German into English. The course is taught in English, focused on reading knowledge of the language only, and not on developing oral or written competencies. No previous knowledge of German is assumed.
Language Courses
GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group A)
Instructor: Narges Roshan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group B)
Instructor: Narges Roshan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group A)
Instructor: Christine Schott
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group B)
Instructor: Alwin Franke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group C)
Instructor: Christiane Bethke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group D)
Instructor: Christiane Bethke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group A)
Instructor: Alwin Franke
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group B)
Instructor: Ariane Faber
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
GM251 German Intermediate B2
Instructor: T. Weitz
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
GM301 German Advanced C1
Instructor: Martin Widman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon, Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
GM362 The German Public Sphere(In German)
Instructor: T. Weitz
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
NB. Students taking the class should have C1 proficiency level in German.
GM300 German for Reading Knowledge
Coordinator: Ulrike Wagner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
This course is designed for students who wish to acquire German reading skills for research and study purposes. Focused on grammar topics and applied translation, texts read in class are chosen from a variety of genres and disciplines with special emphasis on philosophical writings. Students completing this course will have the necessary foundation for reading and translating written texts from German into English. The course is taught in English, focused on reading knowledge of the language only, and not on developing oral or written competencies. No previous knowledge of German is assumed.
All Bard College Berlin language courses address the development of skills in reading and listening comprehension, conversation and writing within the context of the European Framework of Languages from level A1 through C2.
Beginner German A1
Emphasis on familiar vocabulary building, listening comprehension and speaking with gradual introduction to grammar and writing skills.
Beginner German A2
Continued emphasis on listening comprehension and routine communication. Students read and write short, simple texts.
Intermediate German B1
Emphasis on communication skills including comprehension of standard speech and descriptive reading passages, topical conversation and simple, descriptive composition.
Intermediate German B2
Continued emphasis on communication skills including comprehension of extended speeches and lectures, reading of newspapers and general periodicals, spontaneous conversational interaction with native speakers and writing clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects.
Advanced German Language C1
Development of listening and reading comprehension levels to include extended speech and some literary texts. Emphasis on conversational and writing skills to express ideas and opinions and present detailed descriptions expressing points of view.
Advanced German Language C2
Development of comprehension skills to allow for understanding of all forms of spoken language and written texts. Emphasis on communication skills for the fluent expression of ideas and argument both orally and in written form.
Bard College Berlin typically offers students three levels of language instruction, beginning, intermediate and advanced. Placement tests determine each student's enrollment level.
Academics Quick Links
-
More Information
-
Academic Projects