Core Courses
IS104 Forms of Love
AY/BA1/Begin in Berlin Core Course
Module: Medieval Literatures and Cultures
Instructors: Tracy Colony, Francesco Giusti, David Hayes, Geoff Lehman, 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.
Syllabus
IS212 Early Modern Science (a cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
BA2 Core Course
Module: Early Modern Science
Instructors: Ewa Atanassow, Maria Avxentevskaya, Noa Levin, Katalin Makkai, Ross Shields, Aaron Tugendhaft
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
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.
Syllabus
IS322 Joyce's Ulysses: A Modernist Epic
BA3-4/PY Core Course
Module: Modernism
Instructors: Laura Scuriatti, James Harker, Ross Shields, Gavin McCrea
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Syllabus Group E
Syllabus Groups A,B,C,D
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 9:00-12:15
This seminar is a training in the methods of academic research. Focusing on representative contemporary research in the humanities and the social sciences, it supports students in proceeding with their own individual research projects by focusing on the essential elements of independent scholarly work: the choice of a topic or object of study; the outline of the main components of an article or scholarly paper; finding, gathering, collating and interpreting the sources needed for the project; correct citation, attribution, and bibliographical documentation, and lastly, the effective presentation of the final work in structure and style, as well as peer review and constructive feedback. Including the participation of thesis supervisors and other faculty members, this course accompanies the first semester of preparation for the thesis project.
Syllabus
Art and Aesthetics Foundational Modules
AH234 The Bauhaus: Origins and Legacies
Module: Art and Artists in Context
Instructor: Aya Soika
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S.
Course Times: Wed 9:00-10:30, Fri 14:00-17:15
Immediately recognizable for its dramatic combination of formidable blocks and sweeping curved lines, Bauhaus architecture has created some of the world’s most famous public and private spaces. Bauhaus design objects, with their blend of functionality and whimsy, are much imitated and are highly prized as museum-display pieces. The movement itself has acquired a kind of heroic status, because of its contemporaneity—and because of the congruence of its values—with the first experiment in German democracy in the wake of the First World War. Its principles and practitioners attracted the hostility of the Nazi regime. Bauhaus influence became part of the immense contribution made by wartime European emigrés to the twentieth-century culture of the United States. To mark the centenary of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the legendary Bauhaus School of Art and Design, this course investigates the way in which Bauhaus forged our conceptions of the relation between aesthetic experience and everyday life—in its focus on artistic cultivation and education, on the provision of affordable, practical and pleasing living environments. We look at the small-scale origins of what later became an iconic movement, and its connection to much broader reform agendas going back to the late nineteenth century. We also examine the diversity of doctrines it encompassed, and its relation to other avant-garde movements, such as Constructivism and Dada. The fate and choices of its main protagonists, and their divergent political views and later activity—some of it in the service of totalitarian regimes—will be considered. Excursions to important Bauhaus sites, including the landmark museum in Dessau, are a part of the course.
Syllabus
TH164 Critical Acts. Introduction to Performance Studies
Module: Artistic Practice / Approaching Arts through Theory
Instructor: Nina Tecklenburg
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course offers a view of the world through the lens of performance studies. Since its emergence in the late 1970s, this interdisciplinary field – that has borrowed from linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies and theater studies – has fundamentally challenged supposedly fixed concepts in the humanities and social sciences in the West. It has endowed scholars and artists alike with an understanding of culture as something that is done through embodied behavior. Concepts of performance and performativity allow us to think of subjects, gender, race and class as culturally constructed and therefore potentially variable. They enable us to analyze individual and collective habits, enactments, gestures or movements as fluid entities that are both resistant to and constitutive of power relations and symbolic orders. In this course we will study performance and performativity as both object and method. Starting with the question, ‘What is a performance?’ we will engage with key texts (Austin, Turner, Goffman, Schechner, Derrida, Fischer-Lichte, Butler, Phelan, Barad, Schneider etc.) through discussion and performative responses. We will explore different approaches to performance analysis such as critical spectatorship, embodied documentation and performative writing. We will undertake field trips to sporting events, demonstrations, online assemblies, Facebook, market places or church services and uncover the politics of going for a walk. We will attend some of Berlin’s current theaters productions and question the relationship between artistic and cultural performances. Students will be asked to develop their own critical acts in response to performances studied. The aim of this course is to examine performance practically and theoretically as means of cultural production and as an artistic, political and critical mode of expression. It is open to students from all disciplines who are interested in deepening their understanding of (un)doing culture.
Syllabus
FA103: Found Fragments & Layered Lines: mixed-media techniques for drawing and collage
Module: Art Objects and Experience / Artistic Practice
Instructor: John Kleckner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
This studio art course explores contemporary and historical approaches to drawing and collage. Taking inspiration from the original Bauhaus school, lessons are designed to exercise each student's skills in visual thinking through the creation of mixed-media drawings 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 figures & 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 exploring the potential to create new and surprising meanings and content resulting from the juxtaposition of found fragments and drawn lines. 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 work sessions. There will also be several group critiques, some slideshow presentations, and artist studio / gallery visits. The ideal student will be self-motivated, with a strong interest in studying and making art, and must be comfortable with presenting their artistic creations with peers in class discussions.
Syllabus
FA106 Beginners Black and White Photography Class: The Slow Photo
Module: Art Objects and Experience / Artistic Practice
Instructor: April Gertler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
This beginning Black and White photography class, titled The Slow Photo, will focus on learning how to use a manual camera and understanding how to use an analogue darkroom. Students will be exposed to the rich photographic history of Berlin through presentations, discussions and a historical walk through parts of Berlin. The historical component of the class will cover works by Berlin based photographers from Helga Paris to Michael Schmidt. Assignments throughout the semester will mirror various photo techniques used in the historical examples discussed. Black and white printing, in addition to camera techniques will be the fundamental basis of the class. A few classes will meet on Saturdays to have concentrated darkroom time. Students will leave the class with a full understanding and ability to complete the process required to produce black and white analog images; from shooting, to film processing to printing.
Syllabus
FA222 The Sky Is The Limit: Scale Models For The Artist
Module: Artistic Practice
Instructor: John von Bergen
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Time: Thu 15:45-19:00
Model-making is used for a wide-range of purposes. From the LEGOs used in a children’s bedroom to the 7-Axis CNC machine robots working high-end fabrication, the model serves many needs for different kinds of communities.
As artists we may develop our craft through the inspiration provided by others –perhaps through the advanced language of architects, or possibly by seeing children with their building blocks – to help express what links our imagination to our world. This foundational level course will move step-by-step through the conceptual and technical considerations of model-building. Our materials may include everything from found objects, paper and styrofoam to exothermic-polymers and 3D printing.
Syllabus
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 inquiry 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.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric
FM177 Viral: Introduction to Film Studies
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 screenings Mon 19:30-22:00
As commentators on the extraordinary situation presented by the COVID-19 epidemic have suggested, many societies in the world had almost completely lost the non-metaphorical sense of “viral,” believing that the measure of shutting down everyday activity because of disease belonged entiely to the past. Film, however, has frequently used the specter (as well as the metaphor) of contagion to explore essential issues, and to develop its visual language. In this introduction to film studies, we explore the genres and styles of cinema through its representation of this motif, as well as different approaches to film analysis and interpretation. We also consider the extent to which the works we examine raise questions and conflicts that have reemerged in our contemporary experience of global contagion. Films to be considered may include Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Don Siegel), Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero), The Andromeda Strain (1971, Robert Wise), Death in Venice (1971, Luchino Visconti), The Crazies (1973, George A. Romero), Shivers (1975, David Cronenberg), Philadelphia (1993, Jonathan Demme), Outbreak (1995, Wolfgang Petersen), The Addiction (1995, Abel Ferrara), Pontypool (2008, Bruce McDonald), Blindness (2008, Fernando Meirelles), Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh), Climax (2018, Gaspar Noé).
Syllabus
TH133 Elfriede Jelinek: A Study of Postdramatic Playwriting, Directing, and Acting
Module: Art Objects and Experience
Instructor: Julia Hart
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
No female playwright has so strongly influenced the contemporary theater in Germany as the Austrian Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek. In the fall of 2017, 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 theater-making in Germany? How can her writing be considered postdramatic? Theater 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 characters at all! In this seminar, we will read, discuss, and rehearse scenes from the most recent plays of Elfriede Jelinek as directors, actors, and dramaturges. This course will explore concrete methods of directing and acting when working with postdramatic theater texts. We will also attend performances of Jelinek’s plays and works by other postdramatic writers at theaters in Berlin.
Syllabus
Economics Foundational Modules
MA120 (S) Mathematical Foundations
Module: Mathematics
Instructor: Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00
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. In case of strong math background, students can test out of this course at the beginning of the spring semester. After successfully completing this course (or testing out) they will take (the more advanced) Mathematics for Economics course in the fall semester.
This course also fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Syllabus
EC210 Microeconomics
Module: Microeconomics
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
Microeconomics is the study of how individual economic units (households and firms) interact to determine outcomes (allocation of goods and services) in a market setting. This course further develops principles and analytical methods introduced by the Principles of Economics course. The first part of the course deals with consumer behavior, market demand and the extent to which a consumer’s decisions can be modeled as rational. The second part of the course deals with the theory of the firm and the positive and normative characteristics of alternative market structures—perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, pure monopoly, and, in resource markets, monopsony—are studied in depth. Finally, the efficiency of market outcomes is studied as well as conditions (e.g. the presence of externalities) under which markets are not efficient. Part of the course is devoted to problem solving, in which students present solutions to specific case studies.
Syllabus
EC211 Macroeconomics
Module: Macroeconomics
Instructor: Irwin Collier
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 9:00-10:30
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.
This course will be conducted online.
Syllabus
MA151 Introduction to Statistics
Module: Statistics
Instructor: Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
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 also fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Syllabus
Ethics and Politics Foundational Modules
All courses are cross-listed with Politics
PT289 Hobbes's Leviathan, A Complete Reading
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Ewa Atanassow
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
A foundational text of modern political science and masterpiece of early modern English prose, Hobbes' Leviathan is rarely read in its entirety. This is likely because a good half of the book is an extended exercise in Biblical exegesis that poses great challenges to the modern reader. Not only did Hobbes strive to reform political thought and practice by setting it firmly on scientific grounds, he also perceived the demand for - and set out to supply - a theological justification for the modern project. In effect, while some consider Hobbes as a pioneer of the scientific study of politics, others (notably Carl Schmitt and his various followers) celebrate him as the principal political theologian of modernity. The purpose of this course is to read Hobbes’ entire work and seeks to understand it on its own terms, while also taking note of its most influential interpretations. The questions we shall ask include: What is Hobbes’ view of human nature, and what is it based on? How does Hobbes understand the ends of society and of political life, and the best means for achieving those ends? What is the place of religion in this understanding? In what ways does Hobbes propose to resolve the tensions between religion and politics, and religion and science? How did he strive to make his proposed solution acceptable to his readers, and is it acceptable to us today? Is Hobbes a philosopher or a theologian, and what difference does this make?
Syllabus
SO104 Methods in Social Studies
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies
Instructor: Simona Torotcoi
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
Research methods are our tools to make sense out of complex social phenomena and data. But more importantly, they help to make convincing arguments for ourselves and our audience and to start or build upon a sensible debate, which is the essence of scientific discourse and enquiry. This course explores the philosophy of (social) science, research design and techniques of qualitative data gathering and analysis. It investigates what social scientists do and how they evaluate their theories and empirical material. In the course we explore research design (finding a research question, defining concepts and measurement, case selection), data gathering (interviews, using documents and archives, observation) and data analysis.
The general goal of the course is raising awareness of methodological problems and solutions in qualitative research. As specific learning outcomes students should be able to develop a coherent research design on their own and choose the appropriate method of data gathering and data analysis tailored to their research question. In addition, students should be able to critically review research papers regarding their research design and methodological choices. Students are strongly encouraged to consciously apply principles and methods discussed in the course for the assignments in other courses and in their thesis research.
The course has three core components. The first three weeks aim to create a shared understanding on core components of social science research. The second component aims to introduce students to a variety of social science research methods and apply them, whereas the third component aims to able to prepare students critically review research papers regarding their research design and methodological choices.
Syllabus
PL287 Critical Thinking
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Hans Stauffacher
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:45
Many institutions of higher education—Bard College Berlin among them—claim to teach “critical thinking.” But what does this concept mean? Does the phrase denote a an analytic method? A scholarly attitude? An intellectual duty? Does critical thinking mean properly and thoroughly engaging with texts and materials, or does it entail finding their flaws and fallacies? Is it the commitment to a political point of view, or to an ideal of impartiality? Historically, critique denotes two distinct and possibly contradictory tendencies: on the one hand, the Kantian dedication to the self-limitation and self-examination of reason; on the other the pledge to question and even subvert existing assumptions and norms. Both of these orientations are essential to the kind of inquiry we pursue at Bard College Berlin: to consider the conditions under which it is possible for us to come to reasonable judgments, and to change our social, cultural and political environment. We will read the key texts from the legacy of critique as a practice, and of course, reflect on our own position as readers.
Syllabus
PL277 Medical Ethics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Sinem Derya Kılıç
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
The decisions taken in medical treatment are often the subject of complex philosophical and moral debate, drawing on concepts and principles that long predate new technological developments. This course addresses the ethical basis of medical research and practice, including distinct ideas of autonomy, health, well-being, and disease. We cover some of the most prominent and fraught issues that have arisen in the legal regulation of medical care, such as euthanasia and assisted suicide, cultural and historical differences surrounding questions of reproduction, and issues of information-flow, privacy, and confidentiality.
Syllabus
SC203 Bioethics and Biosciences
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Ian Lawson
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
This course considers questions and issues at the intersection of ethics and biology. What is life and how might we think about death? What are the qualities that define a life: health, disability or gender? What does biology have to say about moral thoughts and feelings themselves? Is it appropriate to use animals for food or to test drugs for humans? These broad questions arise by looking at specific and practical bioethical cases like genetic manipulation, the search for a corona vaccine, the disability rights movement or factory farming. Readings focus neither on technical biology nor traditional moral thought, but are rather drawn from bio- and medical ethics, the philosophy of biology, cognitive psychology, the sociology of science and technology, and posthumanist discourse. The eclectic syllabus familiarises students with reading a variety of academic texts and enables a broad view of the forces and histories that create ethical conundrums when new technologies, situations, or scientific theories arise.
Syllabus
PT120 Introduction to Political Theory: State versus Nature
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Fri 15:45-17:15
This course offers a historical introduction to political theory through the contrast between the political human and its “natural” other. Philosophers continually appeal to this distinction, starting with the difference between man and animal, to justify particular modes of power. We begin with Aristotle's definition of the human as the "political animal" and then move to Augustine's rejection of this term in favor of a peculiar theological citizenship. Entering the modern period, we contrast the uses that Hobbes and Rousseau make of the "state of nature" as the precondition of the social contract that assures legitimate authority. As industrialization conquers the modern world, Marx seeks to overcome alienation through a materialism that asserts that "nature is man's inorganic body." Finally, our approach to more recent political thought will be guided by Arendt's conception of world alienation, marked by an age in which humans "seek to make life also artificial." As we study these thinkers and others, we will see how the opposition between state and nature works both as a method of inclusion and exclusion as conceptions of rights and political participation expand. At the same time, we will consider how this powerful contrast helps us grasp the Faustian modern drive to remake the world and the potentially totalitarian consequences of this drive.
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PL208 Introduction to Existentialism
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Tracy Colony
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
One of the most important philosophical movements of the 20th century is unquestionably Existentialism. The philosophy of existence developed by Jean-Paul Sartre can be seen as the clearest expression of this movement. In this course we will read selections from Sartre and other core representatives of French Existentialism. However, this reading will be prepared for by tracing through important philosophical lines of influence which the existentialists often acknowledged in the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. All texts will be read in translation, however, parallel readings in the original French or German will be supported and encouraged.
Syllabus
PS186 Solidarity, Culture and Resistance
Module: Political Systems and Structures
Instructor: Hanan Toukan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
This course critically examines the various manifestations of counter-hegemony, namely, solidarity, resistance and dissent. Taking as its starting point the fact that much of the political science literature concerned with societies and cultures in the Global South emphasize the postcolonial nation and nationalism, dogged religious ideologies, ethnic identities and formal state-society relations to understand and categorize postcolonial identities and experiences, the course proceeds to study the ways in which these dominant units of analyses are in reality countered in cultural production, politics from below and every day cultural practices. The course will analyze how subcultures, social movements, transnational solidarities, and individuals in the Middle East and beyond, have tried to negotiate with, subvert and resist powerful domestic and international hegemonies through multiple forms of cultural resistance such as writing, critique, poetry, music, political film, public action and public performance. The course readings are organized thematically and cover major issues in postcolonial studies, cultural theory, decolonization theory, critical race theory, subaltern studies, and many of the key readings in Middle Eastern Studies. The case studies covered in the course provide glimpses in to compelling examples of resistance against Colonialism and Empire such as BLM and Palestine Solidarity, Decolonize This Place, Third Worldism and anticolonial struggle, the Arab Revolutions, The Rhodes Must Fall campaign in the UK and South Africa, and Transnational Feminism.
This course is being offered jointly with the OSUN Microcolleges for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
Syllabus
PS119 Nation-States and Democracy
Module: Political Systems and Structures
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
Why and how do political systems differ from one another? What processes have led to the formation of distinct political regimes? And how do these historical variations affect politics today? In addressing these questions in a wide set of contexts, this course provides an introduction to key theoretical approaches and concepts in the comparative study of politics. The focus will be on core topics in political development such as state and nation-building, the role of the state in the economy, its relationship to civil society and processes of democratization. We will also look at different types of political regimes, electoral and party systems—and the ways in which they affect the structure, functioning, and social role of political institutions. We explore these topics from a comparative perspective in combining theoretical texts with case studies. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand important topics in domestic politics, grasp the diversity of political systems and regimes, and analyze current political developments.
Syllabus
PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis
Module: Political Systems and Structures
Coordinator: Betsy Leimbigler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 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 such 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 the basic steps of this undertaking, and will have an opportunity to critique real-world policy decisions. Cases for analysis will include government policies on aging populations and social policies relating to housing and community development. The course will involve both individual and team work. Key outcomes will include an introductory knowledge of policy analysis, an ability to engage with policy problems and decide on the best policy solution. The courses fosters an ability to articulate policy recommendations both verbally and in writing.
This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.
Syllabus
Literature and Rhetoric Foundational Modules
LT120 Introduction to Critical and Cultural Theory
Module: Critical and Cultural Theory
Instructor: Clio Nicastro
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
This course will introduce students to key concepts and methodological approaches from different traditions of Cultural Studies and Critical Theory, including feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism, and black studies. The seminar will cover “canonized” as well as less well known thinkers. Our main theme will be the question of the human subject and how it is constituted by social and historical circumstances, by ideas of what is “natural,” and by conditions imposed on speech and action. Readings are from Gretel Adorno, Theodor Adorno, Sara Ahmed, Karen Barad, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Lauren Berlant, Tina Campt, Andrea Long Chu, Hélène Cixous, Silvia Federici, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Amy Hollywood, Lisa Yun Lee, Achille Mbembe, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Paul Preciado, Hortense Spillers, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Syllabus
LT132 Migration and Exile. Journeys in Imperial Space
Module: Critical and Cultural Theory / Literary History
Instructor: Laura Scuriatti
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
How to narrate the experiences of estrangement, disorientation and surprise born out of the encounter with a foreign place which is also supposed to feel like "home"? How does life go when you look or sound different to the majority of people in that space? And what kind of voice, what kind of form, can make this experience visible? We look at three journeys taken by narrators who are connected to the imperial space they wander in: voices created by Jean Rhys, of Welsh, Scottish and Creole descent, born on the Caribbean island of Dominica and later resident in London, Paris, and Vienna; Sam Selvon, an Indian West-Indian writer born in Trinidad who also later lived in London; the Nigerian-American author Teju Cole, who has become one of the major contemporary laureates of the city of New York, and the Egyptian-American and Italian writer André Aciman. In considering the following works - Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark (1934), Quartet (1928), Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956), André Aciman, False Papers. Essays on Exile and Memory (2000), Teju Cole's Open City (2011) - we also look at how the narration of exile becomes an exposure of the dreams, projections, and delusions of the imperial "center" and its ordering of the world. As part of the course, students will explore the historical context of these works, especially in the light of the recent scandal of the unlawful expulsion of British citizens of Caribbean origins from the UK. Students will also read theoretical texts on the poetics of space, on the Caribbean diaspora, and on the poetics and politics of exile by, among others, Franz Fanon, Aimé Cesaire, Stuart Hall, Edouard Glissant, Zigmunt Bauman, Henri Lefebvre, Marshall Berman.
This course is being offered jointly with the OSUN Microcolleges for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
Syllabus
LT237 The Odyssey
Module: Close Reading
Instructor: David Hayes
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
We will closely read Homer’s epic poem, with special attention to the theme of the difficult restoration, even rehabilitation, of its hero after twenty years of suffering in war and wandering. We will aim to understand the poem’s numerous fairy-tale or fantasy elements as meaningful parts of this story of a man’s struggle to “win his soul.” Concepts important to the poem that we will be discussing throughout the course include: hospitality, anger, eating, storytelling, comradery and friendship, sex and marriage, heroism and post-heroism; humanity, monstrousness, and divinity; coming-of-age and growing old; violence and intelligence; and the values of travel and home. It is recommended that students taking this class read Homer’s Iliad as preparation.
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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.
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The following courses are cross-listed with Art and Aesthetics
FM177 Viral: Introduction to Film Studies
Module: Critical and Cultural Theory
Instructor: Matthias Hurst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30, weekly film screenings Mon 19:30-22:00
As commentators on the extraordinary situation presented by the COVID-19 epidemic have suggested, many societies in the world had almost completely lost the non-metaphorical sense of “viral,” believing that the measure of shutting down everyday activity because of disease belonged entirely to the past. Film, however, has frequently used the specter (as well as the metaphor) of contagion to explore essential issues, and to develop its visual language. In this introduction to film studies, we explore the genres and styles of cinema through its representation of this motif, as well as different approaches to film analysis and interpretation. We also consider the extent to which the works we examine raise questions and conflicts that have reemerged in our contemporary experience of global contagion. Films to be considered may include Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Don Siegel), Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero), The Andromeda Strain (1971, Robert Wise), Death in Venice (1971, Luchino Visconti), The Crazies (1973, George A. Romero), Shivers (1975, David Cronenberg), Philadelphia (1993, Jonathan Demme), Outbreak (1995, Wolfgang Petersen), The Addiction (1995, Abel Ferrara), Pontypool (2008, Bruce McDonald), Blindness (2008, Fernando Meirelles), Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh), Climax (2018, Gaspar Noé).
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TH133 Elfriede Jelinek: A Study of Postdramatic Playwriting, Directing, and Acting
Module: Literary History
Instructor: Julia Hart
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
No female playwright has so strongly influenced the contemporary theater in Germany as the Austrian Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek. In the fall of 2017, 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 theater-making in Germany? How can her writing be considered postdramatic? Theater 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 characters at all! In this seminar, we will read, discuss, and rehearse scenes from the most recent plays of Elfriede Jelinek as directors, actors, and dramaturges. This course will explore concrete methods of directing and acting when working with postdramatic theater texts. We will also attend performances of Jelinek’s plays and works by other postdramatic writers at theaters in Berlin.
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Politics Foundational Modules
All courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics
PS119 Nation-States and Democracy
Module: Comparative Politics
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
Why and how do political systems differ from one another? What 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.
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PS186 Solidarity, Culture and Resistance
Module: International Studies and Globalization
Instructor: Hanan Toukan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
This course critically examines the various manifestations of counter-hegemony, namely, solidarity, resistance and dissent. Taking as its starting point the fact that much of the political science literature concerned with societies and cultures in the Global South emphasize the postcolonial nation and nationalism, dogged religious ideologies, ethnic identities and formal state-society relations to understand and categorize postcolonial identities and experiences, the course proceeds to study the ways in which these dominant units of analyses are in reality countered in cultural production, politics from below and every day cultural practices. The course will analyze how subcultures, social movements, transnational solidarities, and individuals in the Middle East and beyond, have tried to negotiate with, subvert and resist powerful domestic and international hegemonies through multiple forms of cultural resistance such as writing, critique, poetry, music, political film, public action and public performance. The course readings are organized thematically and cover major issues in postcolonial studies, cultural theory, decolonization theory, critical race theory, subaltern studies, and many of the key readings in Middle Eastern Studies. The case studies covered in the course provide glimpses in to compelling examples of resistance against Colonialism and Empire such as BLM and Palestine Solidarity, Decolonize This Place, Third Worldism and anticolonial struggle, the Arab Revolutions, The Rhodes Must Fall campaign in the UK and South Africa, and Transnational Feminism.
This course is being offered jointly with the OSUN Microcolleges for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
Syllabus
PT289 Hobbes's Leviathan, A Complete Reading
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Ewa Atanassow
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
A foundational text of modern political science and masterpiece of early modern English prose, Hobbes' Leviathan is rarely read in its entirety. This is likely because a good half of the book is an extended exercise in Biblical exegesis that poses great challenges to the modern reader. Not only did Hobbes strive to reform political thought and practice by setting it firmly on scientific grounds, he also perceived the demand for - and set out to supply - a theological justification for the modern project. In effect, while some consider Hobbes as a pioneer of the scientific study of politics, others (notably Carl Schmitt and his various followers) celebrate him as the principal political theologian of modernity. The purpose of this course is to read Hobbes’ entire work and seeks to understand it on its own terms, while also taking note of its most influential interpretations. The questions we shall ask include: What is Hobbes’ view of human nature, and what is it based on? How does Hobbes understand the ends of society and of political life, and the best means for achieving those ends? What is the place of religion in this understanding? In what ways does Hobbes propose to resolve the tensions between religion and politics, and religion and science? How did he strive to make his proposed solution acceptable to his readers, and is it acceptable to us today? Is Hobbes a philosopher or a theologian, and what difference does this make?
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PL277 Medical Ethics
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Sinem Derya Kılıç
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
The decisions taken in medical treatment are often the subject of complex philosophical and moral debate, drawing on concepts and principles that long predate new technological developments. This course addresses the ethical basis of medical research and practice, including distinct ideas of autonomy, health, well-being, and dieses. We cover some of the most prominent and fraught issues that have arisen in the legal regulation of medical care, such as euthanasia and assisted suicide, and cultural and historical differences surrounding questions of reproduction.
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SC203 Bioethics and Biosciences
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Ian Lawson
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
This course considers questions and issues at the intersection of ethics and biology. What is life and how might we think about death? What are the qualities that define a life: health, disability or gender? What does biology have to say about moral thoughts and feelings themselves? Is it appropriate to use animals for food or to test drugs for humans? These broad questions arise by looking at specific and practical bioethical cases like genetic manipulation, the search for a corona vaccine, the disability rights movement or factory farming. Readings focus neither on technical biology nor traditional moral thought, but are rather drawn from bio- and medical ethics, the philosophy of biology, cognitive psychology, the sociology of science and technology, and posthumanist discourse. The eclectic syllabus familiarises students with reading a variety of academic texts and enables a broad view of the forces and histories that create ethical conundrums when new technologies, situations, or scientific theories arise.
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PL287 Critical Thinking
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Hans Stauffacher
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:45
Many institutions of higher education—Bard College Berlin among them—claim to teach “critical thinking” to students. But what does this concept mean? Does the phrase denote a an analytic method? A scholarly attitude? An intellectual duty? Does critical thinking mean properly and thoroughly engaging with texts and materials, or does it entail finding their flaws and fallacies? Is it the commitment to a political point of view, or to an ideal of impartiality? Historically, critique denotes two distinct and possibly contradictory tendencies: on the one hand, the Kantian dedication to the self-limitation and self-examination of reason; on the other the pledge to question and even subvert existing assumptions and norms. Both of these orientations are essential to the kind of inquiry we pursue at Bard College Berlin: to consider the conditions under which it is possible for us to come to reasonable judgments, and to change our social, cultural and political environment. We will read the key texts from the legacy of critique as a practice, and of course, reflect on our own position as readers.
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PL208 Introduction to Existentialism
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Tracy Colony
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
One of the most important philosophical movements of the 20th century is unquestionably Existentialism. The philosophy of existence developed by Jean-Paul Sartre can be seen as the clearest expression of this movement. In this course we will read selections from Sartre and other core representatives of French Existentialism. However, this reading will be prepared for by tracing through important philosophical lines of influence which the existentialists often acknowledged in the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. All texts will be read in translation, however, parallel readings in the original French or German will be supported and encouraged.
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PT120 Introduction to Political Theory: State versus Nature
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Fri 15:45-17:15
This course offers an historical introduction to political theory through the contrast between the political human and its “natural” other. Philosophers continually appeal to this distinction, starting with the difference between man and animal, to justify particular modes of power. We begin with Aristotle's definition of the human as the "political animal" and then move to Augustine's rejection of this term in favor of a peculiar theological citizenship. Entering the modern period, we contrast the uses that Hobbes and Rousseau make of the "state of nature" as the precondition of the social contract that assures legitimate authority. As industrialization conquers the modern world, Marx seeks to overcome alienation through a materialism that asserts that "nature is man's inorganic body." Finally, our approach to more recent political thought will be guided by Arendt's conception of world alienation, marked by an age in which humans "seek to make life also artificial." As we study these thinkers and others, we will see how the opposition between state and nature works both as a method of inclusion and exclusion as conceptions of rights and political participation expand. At the same time, we will consider how this powerful contrast helps us grasp the Faustian modern drive to remake the world and the potentially totalitarian consequences of this drive.
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PS185 Introduction to Policy Analysis
Module: Policy Analysis
Coordinator: Betsy Leimbigler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
This course will introduce students to the definition of policy problems, the identification of alternative solutions to these, and the criteria governing the choice between these alternatives. Students are exposed to the various sources of evidence upon which assessment of alternatives is carried out as well as to the basis for considering policy impact. Through case studies, presentations and reviews of professionally-conducted policy analyses, students will receive a first-hand exposure to both the basic steps of this undertaking, and will have an opportunity to critique real-world policy decisions. Cases for analysis will include government policies on aging populations and social policies relating to housing and community development. The course will involve both individual and team work. Key outcomes will include an introductory knowledge of policy analysis, an ability to engage with policy problems and decide on the best policy solution. The courses fosters an ability to articulate policy recommendations both verbally and in writing.
This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.
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Art and Aesthetics Advanced Modules
FA366 Game changers in 20th and 21st century Art
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements / Exhibition Culture and Public Space
Instructor: Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
The 20th century was not yet out of its teens. What was anyone to make of the porcelain urinal Marcel Duchamp submitted to a New York art exhibition? Fountain, with its signature R Mutt and the date 1917, was photographed and remembered. It became art, and so changed art forever. Every once in a while, artworks change how we define and talk about art. Along six guiding themes – “Material Culture”, “The here and now”, “Collapse of ‘high’ and ‘low’”, “Gender”, “Postcolonialism” and “Anthropocene” – we will discuss artworks of the 20th and 21st century that have set new standards within these discourses. Among the artists discussed will be Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Steve McQueen, Pierre Huyghe and Arthur Jafa. We want to understand how artworks can represent and simultaneously influence the cultural zeitgeist and discourse of their time. We also want to comprehend how the iconic status of an artwork can change over time: Is Duchamp still/again contemporary? Can we look at Duchamp differently when we see him through the lens of Jeff Koons? Or Andy Warhol? Or Kanye West? What characterizes an “iconic artwork” of today? Our discussions in class will be enriched by readings (authors will include Arthur Danto, Clement Greenberg and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh) and accompanied by field trips to museums and exhibitions in the city of Berlin.
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TH384 Self-Instructions: Creating Autobiographical Performance with She She Pop
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques / Artists, Genres, Movements
Instructors: Nina Tecklenburg, in collaboration with She She Pop
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00
She She Pop is an internationally renowned feminist performance collective based in Berlin. Over the course of their 27 years of collaboration, they have challenged established theater aesthetics and traditional hierarchies of theater-making. Their experimental and provocative body of work, for which they received Germany’s highest theater prize in 2019 (Theaterpreis Berlin), has been deeply influential and groundbreaking for many emerging theater and performance artists. Considering the private as deeply political, the inclusion of their own autobiographies has been a crucial element of their artistic practice. Rather than being the purpose of their work, however, autobiography is for them primarily a method. In this respect, She She Pop’s work is deeply rooted in conceptual performance art of the 1960s and 70s, particularly with regard to the use of (self)-instructions and tasked-based approaches.
In this course we will practice and reflect on She She Pop’s particular approach to “autobiography as method.” Classes will be taught partly in weekly sessions and partly in five hour-long hands-on workshops with members of the collective (Sebastian Bark, Lisa Lucassen and Ilia Papatheodorou). We will study She She Pop’s art-historical influences by conceptual (performance) artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Sol LeWitt, Yoko Ono, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Marina Abramović, Valie Export, Chris Burden, Sophie Calle and Forced Entertainment. Investigating techniques of (self-)instructions, tasked-based performance art and conceptual rule-making for both rehearsal and performance, students will be asked to develop short autobiographical solo or group performances, which will be presented at the end of the semester. No previous experience in performance art or theater is necessary.
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FA345 Intercultural Practices: The Politics of Berlin’s Art/Museum/Off-Spaces
Module: Exhibition Culture and Public Space
Instructor: Annette Loeseke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 14:00-17:15
By exploring Berlin's intercultural arts scene and multi-faceted museum field, we discuss the impact of global debates on local arts institutions (and vice versa). The course is structured around the three themes Global-Local: The Politics of Contemporary Art Spaces; Decolonizing: Whose Memory? Whose Identity Politics?; and Museums in Post-Migrant, Super-Diverse Societies. Topics include global-local intercultural relations; contemporary art and curatorial ecosystems; writing art history/ies; memory and identity politics; decolonizing curatorial practices; cultural activism and participation, community outreach and co-curation. The course is a mix of in-class sessions, discussions with curators, independent group work and field trips to museums and off-spaces such as the Humboldt Forum (Ethnological Museum and Asian Art Museum of the National Museums in Berlin), Museum Treptow-Köpenick and the exhibition on German colonialism, Museum of Islamic Art, FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, Hamburger Bahnhof – Contemporary Art Museum, and Savvy Contemporary.
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FA355 Embody DIY Video!
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Dafna Maimon
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
Many video artists appear in their works, and turn the lens onto their own lives, environments, and bodies; they do it themselves, through themselves; creating out of a circular process. This class will explore the ways in which autobiography and DIY approaches can function as performative tools for making video art. By utilizing an embodied approach to storytelling and script creation, our aim will be to create video works that not only tell a story, but can be felt viscerally. We will relate to the filmed medium as an extension of our senses, and to the body itself, as a resource that can be both personal and political. Our goal is to unravel new approaches in communicating empathy, memories, feelings and sensations through video. As such, experiments with different self-empowering movement techniques such as Body Mind Centering, Authentic Movement, Improvisation, collaboration, and drawing will be applied to different video assignments. These methods will help us gain sensory awareness and creativity, as well as a sensitivity to the two major elements we need to learn to control as video artists: time and space. Prepare to move, play, and perform utilizing your own body as material and subject within on-site class workshops. Extreme curiosity, group participation and open-mindedness will be expected. We will also explore works from video artists and filmmakers who work with the body, performance, and autobiography as their starting point. Likewise, visiting artists and body practitioners will be invited to host workshops within the class. Students applying for this course should already have some experience in filming and be self-sufficient in editing, as the focus of this course will not be on technical video instruction. Instead, students will delve into a rigorous process and develop their own visual language that can at once analyze, criticize, and transmit visceral experiences reflecting on our existence and potential as humans in this highly digital age.
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FA317 Advanced Painting: An Illusionistic Surface
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: John Kleckner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
This advanced studio course is designed to cultivate students’ technical and conceptual abilities within the realm of contemporary painting. A specific topic of interest will be illusionism and mimetic representation in paint. Taking Donald Judd’s quote, “…Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface,” as a point of contention and discussion, we will investigate techniques, possibilities, and problems of illusionistic representation. Students will develop and pursue their own creative projects while reflecting on mimesis as metaphor, exploring depth in pictorial space, scrutinizing specific textures, and experiencing the differences between using photographic references, direct observation, visual memory, and imagination. Artworks will primarily be done with oil and acrylic paints, but experimentation with other materials is encouraged. Weekly sessions will include slideshow presentations, readings, and class discussions, but the majority of time will be spent painting.
Class size is limited to ensure each student has adequate studio space and a surplus of time with the instructor for individual feedback and support. Evaluations & critiques will occur at midterm and at the end of term. The semester culminates in a “Rundgang” / open house exhibition at the BCB Factory and a printed publication of student artworks.
Studio work is the priority, this course will require a significant amount of time working outside of class sessions. Previous experience with painting required. Prospective students should email inquiries to the instructor directly at: [email protected]
Syllabus
FA211 Photography and Social Practices
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: April Gertler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
Social practice is a medium which aims to facilitate discussion and interpersonal interactions. Although socially engaged art typically focuses on generating social and/or political change through collaboration with individuals, communities, and institutions in the creation of participatory art, this class will focus on the interaction between the audience, social systems, and the artist through research, collaboration, methodology, media strategies, food, and activism, using photography as a primary tool in those explorations. This course will concentrate on research development as well as image making. The class will use the city as a backdrop - many class meetings will take place outside in the city itself. This advanced class is open to the student who has taken a studio art class—preferably a photo class—at BCB or at another university.
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FM233 Film’s Future Worlds
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements
Instructor: Matthias Hurst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00, weekly film screenings Tue 19:30-22:00
Itself a technology of the modern age, film has often set itself to imagine worlds beyond its contemporary moment. Sometimes based on literary adaptations, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? / Blade Runner (1968), and sometimes on the imagining of new and powerful techniques of social control (The Matrix, 1999), films about the future frequently have a dystopian orientation, envisaging the dissolution of individuality within a structure of mechanization (THX 1138, 1971). Dystopias tend also to comment on the present, to locate the roots of later oppression in the illusions or blindnesses of our own time (Soylent Green, 1973; Zardoz, 1974; Logan's Run, 1976; Gattaca, 1997) We examine the historical influences (Communism, Fascism, the Cold War) on visions of the future. We also look at the ways in which constructing the future contributes to the techniques of cinema (Metropolis, 1927; Things to Come, 1936; Terminator: Judgment Day, 1991), and at interpretative approaches to film’s hypotheses about transformations across time.
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AR315 Through the Looking Glass: Art and the Oneiric
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements / Aesthetics and Art Theory
Instructor: Geoff Lehman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
“He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too!” (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass). Alice’s reflection upon her dream evokes something of the oneiric experience that can be part of one’s encounter with a work of art: the dialogue between the specific universe the artwork invites us to enter—with its own logic, kinds of seeing, and means of expression—and the viewer as subject, bringing her or his own desires and experiences to its interpretation. One important aspect of this encounter could be described, in psychoanalytic terms, as a relationship between the unconscious wishes, drives, and memories of the viewing subject, on the one hand, and the unconscious qualities of the work itself, both in its production and—especially—in its visual character (its “optical unconscious”), on the other. Major topics for the course include: psychoanalytic interpretations of art; the relationship between the oneiric, the imaginative, and the theatrical; contemplation, meditation, schizophrenia, nightmare, and other altered states of consciousness in relation to the experience of artworks; the oneiric and visual narrativity; the place of (self-)reflexivity or its absence in immersive art. Artists whose works we study include Wang Ximeng, Fra Angelico, Mirza Ali, Goya, Redon, Picasso, Ernst, Miller, Kahlo, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Woodman, and Kusama. Readings will be from Lewis Carroll, De Quincey, Woolf, Freud, Jung, Caillois, Borges, Bachelard, and others.
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The following course is cross-listed with Ethics and Politics:
HI255 Research-Creation: Artistic Approaches to Forced Migration and the Dilemma of the Nation State
Modules: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructors: Marion Detjen, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
This cross-campus class, taught in collaboration with Universidad de los Andes (Bogotà, Colombia) explores the way research-based art-making generates new kinds of knowledge about migration and displacement as urgent global challenges. Building on a Research-Creation approach to teaching migration history in dialogue with the visual arts, students will develop individual or collaborative open-media artistic projects relating to the discourses of the “modern refugee” and their impacts on the lives of forced migrants.
Thematically, the course revolves around a dilemma that seems fundamental in all attempts to find humanitarian and human rights related responses to forced migration, throughout the 20th and 21st Century: On the one hand, nation-states, and the international community based on nation-states, forged institutions – legal provisions and procedures, agencies, NGOs etc. – to mitigate, to alleviate, to control and to hedge, even to “solve” the humanitarian, social and civic consequences of forced migration. On the other hand, these institutions never intended to address the political causes that produced and to this day produce forced migration in the first place. Not getting at the roots of the underlying political and social problems, the institutions failed to keep the promise that every displaced, stateless person would eventually get on a road to state-citizenship, through integration, repatriation or resettlement. The „research“ dimension of the course will address this dilemma from a European perspective with readings, lectures and discussion sessions, in close exchange with the course taught at the Universidad de los Andes, that approaches the dilemma from a Latin-American perspective. Guest lectures from the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research/South Africa will add an African perspective, as much as new thinking about migration and mobility. In the „creation“ dimension of the course research-based artistic projects will be produced that will be presented in a public (online) exhibition at the end of the semester.
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Economics Advanced Modules
EC313 Environmental and Resource Economics
Module: Choice, Resources, and Development
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Time: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
The course focuses 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 evaluate policy instruments provided by economics and management science to overcome market failures related to the environment. We also study the practical issues affecting the applications of these instruments, for example, how to quantify environmental goods.
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EC316 From the Study of Political Economy to the Science of Economics
Module: Ethics and Economic Analysis
Instructor: Irwin Collier
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
The course will focus on the issues of the “proper” scope and methods of economic research as seen by different economists from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Students who have successfully completed the Core Course “Origins of Political Economy” have the opportunity in this course to further follow the arc of social scientific analysis of economic affairs starting from the end of classical political economy (John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx). This will be followed by the early uses of so-called “marginal analysis” to the subject of consumer demand. The last third of the nineteenth century was also notable for the controversy that erupted between the advocates of the use of formal theory vs. those advocating historical study, i.e., the Menger-Schmoller Methodenstreit. Finally, the Keynesian and econometric revolutions of the mid-twentieth century with a glimpse of the more recent neoliberal counterrevolution in economic policy as well as a sampling from the varieties of heterodox critics of mainstream of economic science will round out the required course readings.
Besides having completed IS303 “Origins of Political Economy”, students should have taken EC110 “Principles of Economics” or their equivalents before taking this course.
Please note that this course will be conducted online.
Syllabus
Ethics and Politics Advanced Modules
SO202 A Lexicon of Migration
Module: Global Social Theory / Law, Politics, and Society
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 postmigrant or superdiverse. The course critically explores migration from global and local perspectives, emphasizing the postcolonial and neocolonial power geometries that produce specific forms of mobility. Drawing on a range of primary texts (UN documents, first-person narratives, poetry) and secondary texts from migration studies, cultural studies, anthropology, urban sociology, human geography, and philosophy, students will examine diverse social experiences of migration, as well as a range of related concepts such as belonging, border, citizenship, and solidarity, among others. The in-class discussions, guest lectures, off-campus visits, as well as group and individual assignments aim at deepening students’ understanding of migration regimes, migration discourses, and migrant infrastructures in various geographical and historical contexts. Designed by scholars and educators from across the Bard International Network (AlQuds University in Palestine, American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, Bard College in the United States, Bard College Berlin in Germany), as well as faculty and students from the Mellon-funded Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (Vassar College, Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, Bard College, and Bard College Berlin), the course aims at advancing students’ understanding of migration both in the specific local contexts in which they study, as well as from international perspectives. Through a series of joint assignments, students will have a unique opportunity to engage with their peers and professors from other campuses.
Syllabus
HI247 Oral History & Research Methods
Module: Global Social Theory
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
An online course offered in cooperation with Princeton University
Most history courses expect students to learn pre-existing historical narratives. Many students, however, do not see themselves or their communities reflected in these narratives, or in the historians that tell them. The History Dialogues Project (HDP), offered by Princeton University’s Global History Lab, is a 2-part research methods course, aimed to equip learners with the tools and support they need to carry out their own historical research projects and share the narratives that they create with a network of partner institutions around the globe. The "Oral History & Research Methods" class forms the first part of the course, and offers an intensive introduction to oral history, project design, and historical and archival research. It is taught online by a Princeton Teaching Assistant, based on short readings, lectures by Prof. Marcia Schenck, and "History Dialogues" with Prof. Jeremy Adelman and Prof. Marcia Schenck, that respond to weekly guiding questions. You will write weekly response papers, and participate in the discussions across the network. At the end of the semester you will start working on your own research project, which you can then choose to elaborate in the second part of the course, the "Independent Research Seminar" during summer. This will culminate in a presentation of your work at an international student conference and a publication on the history dialogue’s website. The class can be pursued without taking the summer course, while the summer course builds on the class.
Syllabus
PT347 Politics, Populism and the Media
Module: Law, Politics, and Society
Instructor: Aysuda Kölemen, Yasemin Özgün
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
This course is designed to provide students with analytical tools to conceptualise the relationship between the media, populism and politics. It focuses on the cultural, social and economic consequences of the formation and implementation of policies that shape the media. Special attention will be paid to the question of what kind of economic environment the media operates in and by whom it is controlled. Among the themes to be explored are the links between the transformation of the media and the rise of neoliberal policies and right wing populism around the world; the relationship between populist discourses and the media (e.g. the process of mediatization of politics and the threat of media populism to democratic values); the link between the new media (in particular, social media) and populism; the construction of identities (e.g. ethnicity, minorities as well as gender and masculinity) in the media.
This course will have a blended teaching format. Dr. Aysuda Kölemen and Dr. Yasemin Özgün will co-teach the course. Dr. Kölemen will hold her section of the classes in person, and Dr. Özgün will hold her section of the classes online. Students from outside BCB will also be able to enroll and participate in the course online.
Syllabus
PL275 Wittgenstein
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Robert Martin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
The Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Our study of him will begin with discussion of his life and the context of his work, followed by careful study of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953). In the concluding part of the course we will consider aspects of his legacy.
Syllabus
SO369 Mobilizing Knowledge in Translation
Module: Movements and Thinkers / Global Social Theory
Instructor: Maria Avxentevskaya
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Fri 15:45-17:15
Translation is part of everyday life, as we encounter information, art, and other cultures in languages not our first, or which we don’t speak. What happens when knowledge is transferred across linguistic boundaries? This course explores translation as a central feature of the mobility of knowledge across geopolitical borders and social milieux. Often a single episode of translation can involve multiple agencies and interpretative positions, and draw into its orbit material objects, skills, and scientific categories. However, translation practices are often viewed as the replication of an original in another language. Although translations do self-identify as derivative, knowledge in translation often does not relate to its source in a straight-line of original to copy, but in a path that facilitates specific intellectual, cognitive and performative practices. Seen in this way, translated knowledge is a product in its own right, as much shaped by its own future in the target domain as it is determined by its past in the source. This course will examine what is lost and gained in translating knowledge across a variety of historical sites and contexts, from pre-modern Europe to the contemporary world. We will trace the rise and fall of dominant languages in knowledge transfer and the beginnings of global scientific communication. What is the role of sensory experience in written and spoken translation? Who are its practitioners? How do gender models function in translation? What technologies have been used in translating knowledge? How do translation projects facilitate cognitive learning? These issues, along with classic and contemporary work on the subject, will guide us in answering our key question: how translation participates in mobilizing knowledge across boundaries.
Syllabus
SO288 What’s in an analogy? A journey from the sciences to the humanities and back
Module: Movements and Thinkers / Global Social Theory
Instructor: Rocco Gaudenzi
Credits 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Analogical and metaphorical thinking is increasingly regarded not only as playing a major role in the formation of new ideas, but as an underlying mode of reasoning that we often resort to when confronted with unknown realities. When recognized as a core aspect of cognition, analogies and metaphors can be understood to shape their objects of investigation (e.g., in the case of gender-oriented metaphors). They thereby reveal their contradictory status, as both instruments and obstacles. Engaging with key primary sources selected from the history of physics, mathematics, and biology, and concentrating on the functions that analogical and metaphorical thinking has served in specific cases, we will see how natural scientists and mathematicians have made use of, and theorized, this mode of cognition. Our aim will be to see what scientific and non-scientific analogizing have in common, and to examine how these instances illuminate the nature and assumptions of scientific thinking itself. The larger purpose will be to consider the further interconnections between science and the humanities, through an exploration of the part played by metaphor and literary effect in science. Students will discover the relevance of analogical reasoning to the production of knowledge, along with an awareness of its more subtle and hidden mechanisms.
Syllabus
PS298 Europe’s “Others”: Race, Racialization and the Visual Politics of Representation
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Hanan Toukan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
Following from Walter D. Mignolo’s proposition in “The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options ” that western civilization is a complex colonial matrix of power, class and race that has been created and controlled by men and institutions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, this course examines this darker side’s historical and contemporary visual relationship to the varied religious, ethnic and racial minorities and migrants living in it’s midst. Specifically, it contextualizes various visual material produced about Europe’s “Others” and the public and scholarly discourses it propagates, within wider debates and scholarship on the construction of racialized subjectivities and the distribution of power. This advanced module places particular emphasis on visual theory, decolonization theory, critical race theory, gender theory and postcolonial studies to study issues of image making, circulation, translation and reception, in a global context and transnational frame. Key areas of focus include the aesthetics and politics of states and security, violence and memory, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
Syllabus
SE224 Social Justice: The Transnational Feminist Perspective
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructor: Cassandra Ellerbe
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course introduces students to the contributions of transnational feminist practices to social justice movements and politicized organizing across the globe. We will address the issues of gender and socio-economic inequality, lgbtiq rights, environmental racism, neo-colonialism and the geopolitics of forced migration. Utilizing an interdisciplinary theoretical approach (social justice theory from an intersectional perspective, human/social geography, critical whiteness studies, transnational feminism and queer theories), we will examine various historical as well as current case studies that are linked to the call for social justice. This course aims not only to discuss the purpose and necessity for a theoretical understanding of social justice and political activism, but also to assist students in the development of critical thinking and the ability to recognize the global connection of various social problems. The course entails lectures, in class discussions and presentations, off-campus excursions, and guest lectures by local experts & scholars.
Syllabus
PS399 Inclusion
Module: Law, Politics, and Society
Instructor: Simona Torotcoi
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
Liberty, equality, and justice have been numbered among the core values of democracies, and are upheld as fundamentals of the project of European transnational cooperation and integration. The European Union has developed a number of legal regulations, standards, and frameworks aiming at furthering equality within its member states. Among these are standards for fostering the empowerment of women, ending discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnic origin, and facilitating access to public life and opportunities for people with physical disabilities. Despite these efforts, we are witnessing in some European countries not only an uneven implementation of such protections, but also a backsliding of the democratic system, with political rights and civil liberties deteriorating. The impact of inequality is manifested in different ways, the most visible being instances of direct exclusion from public goods and services, as well as harassment and discriminatory behavior. Inclusion policies have generated controversies both at the European and national level, some of which have centered on concerns about fair distribution of resources or reverse discrimination. The course aims to provide students with a broad understanding of contemporary equality, social justice, and inclusion policies and challenges in Europe. One of its main aims is to familiarize students with principles and claims for equality and explore how these are translated into policies at EU level and implemented by national governments. Students will gain insights into the practical functioning of existing equality bodies (i.e., Equinet) and international non-governmental organizations (i.e., ILGA Europe) working in the field, and will get a deeper understanding of the processes and structures that determine the character and outcome of policy-making aimed at improving equality, justice and inclusion. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach and draws on scholarly literature from and beyond Europe, ranging from legal studies to critiques from the perspective of gender and race.
Syllabus
PS398 American Political Economy
Module: Law, Politics, and Society / Global Social Theory
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
A small state, individual entrepreneurialism and free markets are often seen as the bedrocks of American exceptionalism and as the characteristic features of capitalism during the long American Century. This course examines the actual role of the US state in creating and shaping markets at different historical moments to explore the intricate relationship between evolving political institutions and different forms of state-market arrangements. We begin our discussions in the post-bellum period of the late 19th century, when the US federal state consolidated its administrative capacities and helped give rise to national markets. Our discussions about the New Deal Order and a Fordist-Keynesian regime will focus on new compromises between businesses and labor as well as new visions of citizenship and social welfare in a changing global context. In the last section of the class, we will discuss the US-American variants of marketization and welfare state retrenchment and their implications for our present. In tracing the arguable distinctiveness of the American state, this course engages different lineages and traditions of state theory, literature on American Political Development, and pivotal texts in different public policy fields.
Syllabus
PT288 Globalization, Welfare States, and Public Health
Module: Law, Politics, and Society / Global Social Theory
Instructor: Betsy Leimbigler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
At the present time, a significant negative effect of globalization is being experienced, with societies across the world exposed to a public health threat for which there is as yet no permanent and secure remedy. States have reacted at varying speeds and with different degrees (and ideological views of) “lockdown.” They have also seen the extent of their own preparedness in the form of public health infrastructure exposed and put to severe test. Some states have even responded with emergency nationalizations and approaches counter to a previous neoliberal or privatization agenda. At the same time, the economic impact of the crisis may radically undermine the capacity of states to remedy already-existing weaknesses in their health care systems. To understand this situation and its possible lessons for the future, the course addresses and combines three main areas of social-scientific literature: theories of power, key concepts from the theory of globalization, and the study of the welfare state as a structure and an ideal. Drawing specifically on examples from the North American context, we will examine the relation between global processes and local occurrences. We survey the rights- and racial-justice movements seeking to advance public health provision at a national level, as well as the resistance in governmental institutions and cultural discourse to their claims. We consider the need to develop an evidence-based policy in regard to the provision of health care, as well as the implications of the current crisis for the understanding of globalization as such.
Syllabus
PL373 The Politics of the Apocalypse from The Book of Daniel to the Present
Module: Movements and Thinkers / Law, Politics, and Society
Instructor: Abed Azzam
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
The apocalypse as a way of looking at the world plays a major role in shaping political theology from its sources in The Book of Daniel right up to the present day. The idea of the end of the world is decisive for a proper understanding of the emergence of Christianity and Islam, as well as for the conceptualization of other shifts in human experience and social organization, such as modernity. The Apocalypse contributes to the theory of secularization and to the formulations of political theory. To study the connection between the Apocalypse and the political, we will read the original Jewish, Christian and Islamic apocalyptic texts, and follow their transformation in modern thought (in the work of, among others, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Carl Schmitt), before turning to their lurking or overt presence in contemporary religious and political movements, from climate change theory, to ISIS, to Evangelicalism in the USA.
Syllabus
PL325 Giorgio Agamben: The Homo Sacer Project
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Damiano Sacco
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 14:00-17:15
Giorgio Agamben has developed in nine volumes, written over two decades from 1995 to 2015, one of the most ambitious and comprehensive philosophical projects of recent years. By means of a thorough and extensive analysis of the Western philosophical tradition, Agamben has attempted to put forth a novel framework that would enable us to think anew the indissociable link that connects the dimensions of metaphysics, language, and politics in the West. The Homo Sacer project aims to carry out this task by means of a philosophical archaeology that traces the historical unfolding of the notions of being, language, and life, from their first appearance in Ancient Greece up to their contemporary value and significance. In this course, we will focus in particular on extracts from the first and last volumes of the collection, namely Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and The Use of Bodies, but also on writings published by Agamben beyond the framework of the Homo Sacer project. The principal aim of the course is to understand the dynamic between sovereign power and ‘bare life’, and to outline the way in which, according to Agamben, metaphysics, language, and politics have developed unitarily throughout the Western philosophical and political experience. Through a comparative study of these three dimensions, we will see how, according to Agamben, the mechanism of exception (or inclusive-exclusion) operates by excluding a certain element (pure being, the non-linguistic, ‘bare-life’) from a specific domain, and, with the same gesture, by including this excluded element as the very ground and foundation of the respective domain. By the end of the course, we will be in a position to assess some of the most contentious and discussed claims put forth by Agamben, in particular with respect to the state of exception and its instantiations in the concentration camp, the figure of the refugee, and the ongoing pandemic.
Syllabus
HI235 Blaming the Other: Racism and Antisemitism in Germany and the USA from the 1920s until Today
Module: Law, Politics and Society
Instructor: Frank Wolff
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Fri 10:45-12:15
In the formation of modern racism and antisemitism the 1920s were a watershed period. Traditional sets of antisemitic and racist ideas intersected with new nationalist rhetorics while social inequalities persisted or even intensified. Economic crises, increased globalization, repressive migration policies as well as the shock waves from modern means of communication added to the picture. Many societies responded by blaming minorities for both the speed and the stagnation of social change. Does this sound familiar? Revocations of experiencing “another 1920s” have accompanied public discourse ever since. But through the decades and in different places, the outcomes of crises varied dramatically – ranging from human rights campaigns to genocide. This course wants to depart from the view of stereotypes as simply irrational, and inquire to what extent “blaming the other” appeared to make sense in specific conditions and contexts. It understands ethnic and cultural scapegoating as integral parts in an intellectual history of hate: to invent and to blame “the other” for shortcomings of modern states and societies. Based on visual and textual sources on public discourse, law, and politics, it will compare and connect German and American history from the 1920s until today. It will focus on the racialized construction of “the other” during the interwar period, on the function of stereotypes in the dynamics of the Holocaust, on the construction of ethnic imaginaries in the Cold War and in decolonization, and on racism and antisemitism in contemporary migration societies. Finally, this course also aims to bring together historical evidence with the individual experiences of students, in order to integrate history into a process of social learning.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric:
PL303 The Frankfurt School
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Florian Becker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course focuses on the central preoccupation of “Frankfurt School” thought: the question of ideology and its critique. What is ideology? How, and from what vantage point, can one distinguish between ideological and non-ideological forms of consciousness? What, if anything, makes a work of literature or art ideological? How, if at all, can a work of art resist or criticize ideology? What exactly is the Frankfurt School’s notion of “critique”? In attempting to answer these questions, we will trace a central strand in German aesthetic and social philosophy, one that runs from Hegel to Habermas and beyond. We will proceed from a re-examination of Marx’s often perplexing statements on the matter. What is ideology in Marx’s sense? Is it an attribute of individual consciousness or of shared cultural norms? And what is the epistemological status of Marx’s own theory of social reality? What makes a theory “non-ideological”? What makes a theory “dialectical” or “critical”? We will attempt to make sense of the divergent answers different Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers have given to these and other questions. Finally, what happens to these questions and answers “after Marxism”? Students able to do so are encouraged to read the material in the original. In selected seminars, attention will be given to the terminology in the original German texts, and to its development across the works of the thinkers discussed.
Syllabus
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructor: Michael Thomas Taylor
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
This course engages pressing debates in German media today, asking about the issues and forms of discourse that shape German politics and social life. It is structured around visits to cultural sites, events, and organizations in Berlin, along with topics chosen from current media by the participants in cooperation with the instructor. These may include visits to museums, political parties, NGOs, or media producers. Reflecting the ongoing shift of public life to online venues, we will also examine the virtual presence of these traditionally site-based forms of publicness in relation to old and new media. In addition to the study of current public debates and civic engagement, the purpose of this course is to refine and advance your ability to articulate yourself verbally and in writing through constant vocabulary building. Students taking the class should have a B2 proficiency level in German or higher.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Arts and Aesthetics:
HI255 Research-Creation: Artistic Approaches to Forced Migration and the Dilemma of the Nation State
Modules: Global Social Theory / Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructors: Marion Detjen, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
This cross-campus class, taught in collaboration with Universidad de los Andes (Bogotà, Colombia) explores the way research-based art-making generates new kinds of knowledge about migration and displacement as urgent global challenges. Building on a Research-Creation approach to teaching migration history in dialogue with the visual arts, students will develop individual or collaborative open-media artistic projects relating to the discourses of the “modern refugee” and their impacts on the lives of forced migrants.
Thematically, the course revolves around a dilemma that seems fundamental in all attempts to find humanitarian and human rights related responses to forced migration, throughout the 20th and 21st Century: On the one hand, nation-states, and the international community based on nation-states, forged institutions – legal provisions and procedures, agencies, NGOs etc. – to mitigate, to alleviate, to control and to hedge, even to “solve” the humanitarian, social and civic consequences of forced migration. On the other hand, these institutions never intended to address the political causes that produced and to this day produce forced migration in the first place. Not getting at the roots of the underlying political and social problems, the institutions failed to keep the promise that every displaced, stateless person would eventually get on a road to state-citizenship, through integration, repatriation or resettlement. The „research“ dimension of the course will address this dilemma from a European perspective with readings, lectures and discussion sessions, in close exchange with the course taught at the Universidad de los Andes, that approaches the dilemma from a Latin-American perspective. Guest lectures from the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research/South Africa will add an African perspective, as much as new thinking about migration and mobility. In the „creation“ dimension of the course research-based artistic projects will be produced that will be presented in a public (online) exhibition at the end of the semester.
Syllabus
Literature and Rhetoric Advanced Modules
LT356 (Re-)Writing a Politics of Belonging: Race and Recognition in American Art and Literature
Module: Writer and World / Literary Movements and Forms
Instructor: Kathy-Ann Tan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
At the present time, we often hear claims that the United States is riven by intractable divisions of race, class, and gender. The arts and literature of the country have long reflected the conflicts and questions arising from such divisions, and have much to teach us about their historical foundations and development. Above all, art and literature succeed in staging a process of recognition, empowerment, and critique. Already in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, proponents of the reform and protest movements in America were aware that the “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” announced by the Declaration of Independence had not from the beginning been envisaged for all Americans, but for a white, propertied, male ruling class. In this seminar, we will discuss a selection of artworks and read a selection of texts from contemporary American art and literature that propose a struggle with this uneasy foundation, manifesting kinds of social, psychological, and stylistic predicaments imposed by exclusion and persecution. Our central question will concern the ways in which artists and authors reestablish a sense of belonging and collectivity through the processes of artistic production and literary creation. We will also look at the ways in which contemporary art and literature connect with and revise a sense of tradition, and generate new traditions and affiliations.
This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.
Syllabus
LT257 Goethe as Educator
Module: Writer and World / Producing Literature
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Fri 10:45-12:15
This course examines the range of Goethe’s work from the early Sturm und Drang period, through Wilhelm Meister, to German Classicism, Faust, and later writing including the West-Eastern Divan. Nietzsche praised Goethe for holding that “in the totality everything redeems itself.” Yet even when Goethe is most explicit about the importance of education, he leaves his readers uneasy about one’s ultimate relation to traditions of the past or institutions that steward social value. Readers have long embraced his diagnosis of a pathological subjectivity at the heart of the modern individual, but to what extent can one hope to be cured of this affliction? Some of the stops on our itinerary include: the depths of internal feeling, the art of ancient Rome, a deal with the devil, and the poetry of Hafez. Along the way we trace the challenges of education as a thread through Goethe’s work as a mode of creative, if often also self-defeating, subjective transformation in confrontation with larger truths.
Syllabus
LT212 Reading into Writing: A Fiction Workshop
Module: Producing Literature
Instructor: Rebecca Rukeyser
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course is designed to develop and enhance your capacity for imagination, empathy, clarity, and originality of written expression through the writing and reading of short fiction. We'll read broadly, examining fiction that spans genres, centuries, and linguistic and geopolitical borders. But we'll be focusing primarily on your fiction. You'll write two short fictional pieces during the semester. You'll also revise these pieces, handing in the revised drafts along with an explanatory revision key. The backbone of LT212 is the weekly workshop: through acting as a curious and exacting editor of others' fiction, you'll learn to better understand your own. These workshops are where we'll discuss the minutiae of creative writing craft, the project of short stories, and how to incorporate editorial feedback into your revision process. Other requirements include: an overview/review of a literary journal, a presentation on a favorite works of fiction, weekly workshop letters. All reading material will be supplied.
Syllabus
LT358 The Divine Comedy Today
Modules: Writer and World / Literary Movements and Forms
Instructor: Francesco Giusti
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
Celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death (1321–2021) are in preparation all over the world. This attests to the long-lasting cultural significance that his Divine Comedy still holds not just in the European canon, but in a globalizing world. The enormous influence and dissemination of this medieval poem is evident in its variegated reception in contemporary literature, cinema, music, and in the visual and performing arts. The Divine Comedy can be, and has long been, considered as a representative embodiment of authority in the European tradition. This course, instead, asks whether Dante’s “masterpiece” could also offer breaches in which the ideal Western subject cracks open and shows its problematic constitution in a never fully accomplished process of formation. By looking at figurations of desire, bodily performances, temporal entanglements, negotiations of authorship, and multicultural sources, the Divine Comedy may become much less monolithic — and Dante a less dogmatic figure — and offer a space for discussion in which contemporary readers can conjoin their diverse perspectives, interests, and experiences. In this course, students will closely explore a selection of canti from the Divine Comedy (in English translation) in their historical context and the multifaceted picture of the medieval world(s) that they present to the reader. In addition, they will discuss the transcultural aspects of the poem and its reception in contemporary culture. From J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel to artworks and installations by Alfredo Jaar and Vasily Klyukin, Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise has offered a model of engagement with the world, immersive experience of the human condition, and critical reflection on the present.
Syllabus
The following course is cross-listed with Ethics and Politics/Politics
PL303 The Frankfurt School
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture
Instructor: Florian Becker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course focuses on the central preoccupation of “Frankfurt School” thought: the question of ideology and its critique. What is ideology? How, and from what vantage point, can one distinguish between ideological and non-ideological forms of consciousness? What, if anything, makes a work of literature or art ideological? How, if at all, can a work of art resist or criticize ideology? What exactly is the Frankfurt School’s notion of “critique”? In attempting to answer these questions, we will trace a central strand in German aesthetic and social philosophy, one that runs from Hegel to Habermas and beyond. We will proceed from a re-examination of Marx’s often perplexing statements on the matter. What is ideology in Marx’s sense? Is it an attribute of individual consciousness or of shared cultural norms? And what is the epistemological status of Marx’s own theory of social reality? What makes a theory “non-ideological”? What makes a theory “dialectical” or “critical”? We will attempt to make sense of the divergent answers different Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers have given to these and other questions. Finally, what happens to these questions and answers “after Marxism”? Students able to do so are encouraged to read the material in the original. In selected seminars, attention will be given to the terminology in the original German texts, and to its development across the works of the thinkers discussed.
Syllabus
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture / Writer and World
Instructor: Michael Thomas Taylor
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
This course engages pressing debates in German media today, asking about the issues and forms of discourse that shape German politics and social life. It is structured around visits to cultural sites, events, and organizations in Berlin, along with topics chosen from current media by the participants in cooperation with the instructor. These may include visits to museums, political parties, NGOs, or media producers. Reflecting the ongoing shift of public life to online venues, we will also examine the virtual presence of these traditionally site-based forms of publicness in relation to old and new media. In addition to the study of current public debates and civic engagement, the purpose of this course is to refine and advance your ability to articulate yourself verbally and in writing through constant vocabulary building. Students taking the class should have a B2 proficiency level in German or higher.
Syllabus
Politics Advanced Modules
All courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics
PS398 American Political Economy
Module: Public Policy / Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
A small state, individual entrepreneurialism and free markets are often seen as the bedrocks of American exceptionalism and as the characteristic features of capitalism during the long American Century. This course examines the actual role of the US state in creating and shaping markets at different historical moments to explore the intricate relationship between evolving political institutions and different forms of state-market arrangements. We begin our discussions in the post-bellum period of the late 19th century, when the US federal state consolidated its administrative capacities and helped give rise to national markets. Our discussions about the New Deal Order and a Fordist-Keynesian regime will focus on new compromises between businesses and labor as well as new visions of citizenship and social welfare in a changing global context. In the last section of the class, we will discuss the US-American variants of marketization and welfare state retrenchment and their implications for our present. In tracing the arguable distinctiveness of the American state, this course engages different lineages and traditions of state theory, literature on American Political Development, and pivotal texts in different public policy fields.
Syllabus
PT288 Globalization, Welfare States, and Public Health
Module: Public Policy / Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Betsy Leimbigler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
At the present time, a significant negative effect of globalization is being experienced, with societies across the world exposed to a public health threat for which there is as yet no permanent and secure remedy. States have reacted at varying speeds and with different degrees (and ideological views of) ‘lockdown’. They have also seen the extent of their own preparedness in the form of public health infrastructure exposed and put to severe test. Some states have even responded with emergency nationalizations and approaches counter to a previous neoliberal or privatization agenda. At the same time, the economic impact of the crisis may radically undermine the capacity of states to remedy already-existing weaknesses in their health care systems. To understand this situation and its possible lessons for the future, the course addresses and combines three main areas of social-scientific literature: theories of power, key concepts from the theory of globalization, and the study of the welfare state as a structure and an ideal. Drawing specifically on examples from the North American context, we will examine the relation between global processes and local occurrences. We survey the rights- and racial-justice movements seeking to advance public health provision at a national level, as well as the resistance in governmental institutions and cultural discourse to their claims. We consider the need to develop an evidence-based policy in regard to the provision of health care, as well as the implications of the current crisis for the understanding of globalization as such.
Syllabus
PT347 Politics, Populism and the Media
Module: Public Policy
Instructor: Aysuda Kölemen, Yasemin Özgün
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
This course is designed to provide students with analytical tools to conceptualise the relationship between the media, populism and politics. It focuses on the cultural, social and economic consequences of the formation and implementation of policies that shape the media. Special attention will be paid to the question of what kind of economic environment the media operates in and by whom it is controlled. Among the themes to be explored are the links between the transformation of the media and the rise of neoliberal policies and right wing populism around the world; the relationship between populist discourses and the media (e.g. the process of mediatization of politics and the threat of media populism to democratic values); the link between the new media (in particular, social media) and populism; the construction of identities (e.g. ethnicity, minorities as well as gender and masculinity) in the media.
This course will have a blended teaching format. Dr. Aysuda Kölemen and Dr. Yasemin Özgün will co-teach the course. Dr. Kölemen will hold her section of the classes in person, and Dr. Özgün will hold her section of the classes online. Students from outside BCB will also be able to enroll and participate in the course online.
Syllabus
PS399 Inclusion
Module: Public Policy / Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Simona Torotcoi
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
Liberty, equality, and justice have been numbered among the core values of democracies, and are upheld as fundamentals of the project of European transnational cooperation and integration. The European Union has developed a number of legal regulations, standards, and frameworks aiming at furthering equality within its member states. Among these are standards for fostering the empowerment of women, ending discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnic origin, and facilitating access to public life and opportunities for people with physical disabilities. Despite these efforts, we are witnessing in some European countries not only an uneven implementation of such protections, but also a backsliding of the democratic system, with political rights and civil liberties deteriorating. The impact of inequality is manifested in different ways, the most visible being instances of direct exclusion from public goods and services, as well as harassment and discriminatory behavior. Inclusion policies have generated controversies both at the European and national level, some of which have centered on concerns about fair distribution of resources or reverse discrimination. The course aims to provide students with a broad understanding of contemporary equality, social justice, and inclusion policies and challenges in Europe. One of its main aims is to familiarize students with principles and claims for equality and explore how these are translated into policies at EU level and implemented by national governments. Students will gain insights into the practical functioning of existing equality bodies (i.e., Equinet) and international non-governmental organizations (i.e., ILGA Europe) working in the field, and will get a deeper understanding of the processes and structures that determine the character and outcome of policy-making aimed at improving equality, justice and inclusion. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach and draws on scholarly literature from and beyond Europe, ranging from legal studies to critiques from the perspective of gender and race.
Syllabus
SO324 Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences
Module: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
The course focuses on the basic methods for research design and data analysis in social sciences and political science research. The aim of course is to study how to make causal inferences in empirical research. Among the questions covered in the course are: (i) what are the differences between correlation and causal relationships?, (ii) how do we make appropriate statistical inferences from controlled experiments and from observational data?, (iii) how to present data in a research paper?, and (iv) how to use regression models for statistical inference. The course is practice-oriented and aims to enable students to analyze field data. To this end, some of the classes are devoted to work with statistical packages. At the end of the course, students will analyze field data and present it in a research workshop.
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HI247 Oral History & Research Methods
Module: Philosophy and Society
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
An online course offered in cooperation with Princeton University
Most history courses expect students to learn pre-existing historical narratives. Many students, however, do not see themselves or their communities reflected in these narratives, or in the historians that tell them. The History Dialogues Project (HDP), offered by Princeton University’s Global History Lab, is a 2-part research methods course, aimed to equip learners with the tools and support they need to carry out their own historical research projects and share the narratives that they create with a network of partner institutions around the globe. The "Oral History & Research Methods" class forms the first part of the course, and offers an intensive introduction to oral history, project design, and historical and archival research. It is taught online by a Princeton Teaching Assistant, based on short readings, lectures by Prof. Marcia Schenck, and "History Dialogues" with Prof. Jeremy Adelman and Prof. Marcia Schenck, that respond to weekly guiding questions. You will write weekly response papers, and participate in the discussions across the network. At the end of the semester you will start working on your own research project, which you can then choose to elaborate in the second part of the course, the "Independent Research Seminar" during summer. This will culminate in a presentation of your work at an international student conference and a publication on the history dialogue’s website. These two parts of the course can also be pursued independently.
Syllabus
PL325 Giorgio Agamben: The Homo Sacer Project
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Damiano Sacco
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 14:00-17:15
Giorgio Agamben has developed in nine volumes, written over two decades from 1995 to 2015, one of the most ambitious and comprehensive philosophical projects of recent years. By means of a thorough and extensive analysis of the Western philosophical tradition, Agamben has attempted to put forth a novel framework that would enable us to think anew the indissociable link that connects the dimensions of metaphysics, language, and politics in the West. The Homo Sacer project aims to carry out this task by means of a philosophical archaeology that traces the historical unfolding of the notions of being, language, and life, from their first appearance in Ancient Greece up to their contemporary value and significance. In this course, we will focus in particular on extracts from the first and last volumes of the collection, namely Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and The Use of Bodies, but also on writings published by Agamben beyond the framework of the Homo Sacer project. The principal aim of the course is to understand the dynamic between sovereign power and ‘bare life’, and to outline the way in which, according to Agamben, metaphysics, language, and politics have developed unitarily throughout the Western philosophical and political experience. Through a comparative study of these three dimensions, we will see how, according to Agamben, the mechanism of exception (or inclusive-exclusion) operates by excluding a certain element (pure being, the non-linguistic, ‘bare-life’) from a specific domain, and, with the same gesture, by including this excluded element as the very ground and foundation of the respective domain. By the end of the course, we will be in a position to assess some of the most contentious and discussed claims put forth by Agamben, in particular with respect to the state of exception and its instantiations in the concentration camp, the figure of the refugee, and the ongoing pandemic.
Syllabus
PL275 Wittgenstein
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Robert Martin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
The Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Our study of him will begin with discussion of his life and the context of his work, followed by careful study of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953). In the concluding part of the course we will consider aspects of his legacy.
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SO202 A Lexicon of Migration
Module: 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 postmigrant or superdiverse. The course critically explores migration from global and local perspectives, emphasizing the postcolonial and neocolonial power geometries that produce specific forms of mobility. Drawing on a range of primary texts (UN documents, first-person narratives, poetry) and secondary texts from migration studies, cultural studies, anthropology, urban sociology, human geography, and philosophy, students will examine diverse social experiences of migration, as well as a range of related concepts such as belonging, border, citizenship, and solidarity, among others. The in-class discussions, guest lectures, off-campus visits, as well as group and individual assignments aim at deepening students’ understanding of migration regimes, migration discourses, and migrant infrastructures in various geographical and historical contexts. Designed by scholars and educators from across the Bard International Network (AlQuds University in Palestine, American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, Bard College in the United States, Bard College Berlin in Germany), as well as faculty and students from the Mellon-funded Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (Vassar College, Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, Bard College, and Bard College Berlin), the course aims at advancing students’ understanding of migration both in the specific local contexts in which they study, as well as from international perspectives. Through a series of joint assignments, students will have a unique opportunity to engage with their peers and professors from other campuses.
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SO369 Mobilizing Knowledge in Translation
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Maria Avxentevskaya
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Fri 15:45-17:15
Translation is part of everyday life, as we encounter information, art, and other cultures in languages not our first, or which we don’t speak. What happens when knowledge is transferred across linguistic boundaries? This course explores translation as a central feature of the mobility of knowledge across geopolitical borders and social milieux. Often a single episode of translation can involve multiple agencies and interpretative positions, and draw into its orbit material objects, skills, and scientific categories. However, translation practices are often viewed as the replication of an original in another language. Although translations do self-identify as derivative, knowledge in translation often does not relate to its source in a straight-line of original to copy, but in a path that facilitates specific intellectual, cognitive and performative practices. Seen in this way, translated knowledge is a product in its own right, as much shaped by its own future in the target domain as it is determined by its past in the source. This course will examine what is lost and gained in translating knowledge across a variety of historical sites and contexts, from pre-modern Europe to the contemporary world. We will trace the rise and fall of dominant languages in knowledge transfer and the beginnings of global scientific communication. What is the role of sensory experience in written and spoken translation? Who are its practitioners? How do gender models function in translation? What technolgoies have been used in translating knowledge? How do translation projects facilitate cognitive learning? These issues, along with classic and contemporary work on the subject, will guide us in answering our key question: how translation participates in mobiliting knowledge across boundaries.
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SO288 What’s in an analogy? A journey from the sciences to the humanities and back
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Rocco Gaudenzi
Credits 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Analogical and metaphorical thinking is increasingly regarded not only as playing a major role in the formation of new ideas, but as an underlying mode of reasoning that we often resort to when confronted with unknown realities. When recognised as a core aspect of cognition, analogies and metaphors can be understood to shape their objects of investigation (e.g., in the case of gender-oriented metaphors). They thereby reveal their contradictory status, as both instruments and obstacles. Engaging with key primary sources selected from the history of physics, mathematics, and biology, and concentrating on the functions that analogical and metaphorical thinking has served in specific cases, we will see how natural scientists and mathematicians have made use of, and theorized, this mode of cognition. Our aim will be to see how scientific analogy manifests itself in non-scientific discourse, and to examine how these instances illuminate the nature and assumptions of scientific thinking itself. The larger purpose will be to consider the interconnections between science and the humanities, through an exploration of the part played by metaphor and literary effect in science. Students will discover the relevance of analogical reasoning to the production of knowledge, along with an awareness of its more subtle and hidden mechanisms.
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PS298 Europe’s Others: Race, Racialization and the Visual Politics of Representation
Module: Philosophy and Society / Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Hanan Toukan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
Following from Walter D. Mignolo’s proposition in “The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options ” that western civilization is a complex colonial matrix of power, class and race that has been created and controlled by men and institutions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, this course examines this darker side’s historical and contemporary visual relationship to the varied religious, ethnic and racial minorities and migrants living in it’s midst. Specifically, it contextualizes various visual material produced about Europe’s “Others” and the public and scholarly discourses it propagates, within wider debates and scholarship on the construction of racialized subjectivities and the distribution of power. This advanced module places particular emphasis on visual theory, decolonization theory, critical race theory, gender theory and postcolonial studies to study issues of image making, circulation, translation and reception, in a global context and transnational frame. Key areas of focus include the aesthetics and politics of states and security, violence and memory, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
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SE224 Social Justice: The Transnational Feminist Perspective
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructor: Cassandra Ellerbe
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course introduces students to the contributions of transnational feminist practices to social justice movements and politicized organizing across the globe. We will address the issues of gender and socio-economic inequality, lgbtiq rights, environmental racism, neo-colonialism and the geopolitics of forced migration. Utilizing an interdisciplinary theoretical approach (social justice theory from an intersectional perspective, human/social geography, critical whiteness studies, transnational feminism and queer theories), we will examine various historical as well as current case studies that are linked to the call for social justice. This course aims not only to discuss the purpose and necessity for a theoretical understanding of social justice and political activism, but also to assist students in the development of critical thinking and the ability to recognize the global connection of various social problems. The course entails lectures, in class discussions and presentations, off-campus excursions, and guest lectures by local experts & scholars.
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HI235 Blaming the Other: Racism and Antisemitism in Germany and the USA from the 1920s until Today
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Frank Wolff
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Fri 10:45-12:15
In the formation of modern racism and antisemitism the 1920s were a watershed period. Traditional sets of antisemitic and racist ideas intersected with new nationalist rhetorics while social inequalities persisted or even intensified. Economic crises, increased globalization, repressive migration policies as well as the shock waves from modern means of communication added to the picture. Many societies responded by blaming minorities for both the speed and the stagnation of social change. Does this sound familiar? Revocations of experiencing “another 1920s” have accompanied public discourse ever since. But through the decades and in different places, the outcomes of crises varied dramatically – ranging from human rights campaigns to genocide. This course wants to depart from the view of stereotypes as simply irrational, and inquire to what extent “blaming the other” appeared to make sense in specific conditions and contexts. It understands ethnic and cultural scapegoating as integral parts in an intellectual history of hate: to invent and to blame “the other” for shortcomings of modern states and societies. Based on visual and textual sources on public discourse, law, and politics, it will compare and connect German and American history from the 1920s until today. It will focus on the racialized construction of “the other” during the interwar period, on the function of stereotypes in the dynamics of the Holocaust, on the construction of ethnic imaginaries in the Cold War and in decolonization, and on racism and antisemitism in contemporary migration societies. Finally, this course also aims to bring together historical evidence with the individual experiences of students, in order to integrate history into a process of social learning.
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PL373 The Politics of the Apocalypse from The Book of Daniel to the Present
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Abed Azzam
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
The apocalypse as a way of looking at the world plays a major role in shaping political theology from its sources in The Book of Daniel right up to the present day. The idea of the end of the world is decisive for a proper understanding of the emergence of Christianity and Islam, as well as for the conceptualization of other shifts in human experience and social organization, such as modernity. The Apocalypse contributes to the theory of secularization and to the formulations of political theory. To study the connection between the Apocalypse and the political, we will read the original Jewish, Christian and Islamic apocalyptic texts, and follow their transformation in modern thought (in the work of, among others, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Carl Schmitt), before turning to their lurking or overt presence in contemporary religious and political movements, from climate change theory, to ISIS, to Evangelicalism in the USA.
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The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric:
PL303 The Frankfurt School
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Florian Becker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
This course focuses on the central preoccupation of “Frankfurt School” thought: the question of ideology and its critique. What is ideology? How, and from what vantage point, can one distinguish between ideological and non-ideological forms of consciousness? What, if anything, makes a work of literature or art ideological? How, if at all, can a work of art resist or criticize ideology? What exactly is the Frankfurt School’s notion of “critique”? In attempting to answer these questions, we will trace a central strand in German aesthetic and social philosophy, one that runs from Hegel to Habermas and beyond. We will proceed from a re-examination of Marx’s often perplexing statements on the matter. What is ideology in Marx’s sense? Is it an attribute of individual consciousness or of shared cultural norms? And what is the epistemological status of Marx’s own theory of social reality? What makes a theory “non-ideological”? What makes a theory “dialectical” or “critical”? We will attempt to make sense of the divergent answers different Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers have given to these and other questions. Finally, what happens to these questions and answers “after Marxism”? Students able to do so are encouraged to read the material in the original. In selected seminars, attention will be given to the terminology in the original German texts, and to its development across the works of the thinkers discussed.
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice
Instructor: Michael Thomas Taylor
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
This course engages pressing debates in German media today, asking about the issues and forms of discourse that shape German politics and social life. It is structured around visits to cultural sites, events, and organizations in Berlin, along with topics chosen from current media by the participants in cooperation with the instructor. These may include visits to museums, political parties, NGOs, or media producers. Reflecting the ongoing shift of public life to online venues, we will also examine the virtual presence of these traditionally site-based forms of publicness in relation to old and new media. In addition to the study of current public debates and civic engagement, the purpose of this course is to refine and advance your ability to articulate yourself verbally and in writing through constant vocabulary building. Students taking the class should have a B2 proficiency level in German or higher.
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Electives
FA188 The Art of Making Videos
Instructor: Janina Schabig
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
This beginners’ introduction course teaches the technical foundations of video making. You will be introduced to different kinds of cameras, learn all about your camera and how to use its manual settings, work with natural and studio lighting, record and design your own sound and learn how to edit in Adobe Premiere. We will look at feature films, documentaries, as well as experimental video art and vlogging to examine a range of different creative shooting styles and will use that for inspiration in hands-on workshops and small assignments throughout the semester. We will work on individual as well as group projects and will create a body of work ranging from short sound pieces to full videos. The goal of this course is to give you an understanding of the various creative choices within the art of making a video and the technical knowledge to help realize your visions.
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MU111 Music in our Lives
Instructor: Robert Martin
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
Taking advantage of the rich musical life of Berlin, we will make field trips to attend concerts, masterclasses, and open rehearsals throughout the city. We will also explore digital access to musical performances, something that has developed rapidly since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Choice of events to attend, in person or virtually, will depend on the interests of the class and the availability of free or low-cost tickets. Venues may include the Hans Eisler School of Music, the University of the Arts, the Barenboim-Said Akademie, the Berlin Philharmonie, Berlin Konzerthaus, jazz clubs, and other venues. We will read and discuss works in the philosophy and history of music, and fiction about music. Two pieces of writing are required, one a review of a concert, the other an essay linking a musical event we attended to one of the course readings.
Enrollment is not restricted to students who play a musical instrument. However, for those who do, a special additional weekly session may be arranged in which we play for each other, either alone or in small chamber music ensembles, with the goal of presenting an informal public concert at the end of the semester.
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TH150 body/material
Instructor: Maria Francesca Scaroni
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
The course starts on Wednesday, 3 March 2021.body/material is a dramaturgy of dances, where dance is intended primarily as a movement of attention and a technology of ecstasy, practiced alone yet together. The work invites the participants to look and treat the body as material, addressing its organic functions and spiritual potential as well as its cultural implications. The nature of the approach is eclectic, and it weaves techniques that will promote alignment, awareness and strength: In this class, we’ll experiment a variety of bodily and mental practices, such as ‘chi’ cultivation techniques such as Qi Gong (energy circulation technique) and Pranayama (breathing techniques), spine and limbs patterns explorations (body connectivity, proprioceptive systems) and Contact Improvisation/hands-on work/experiential anatomy (touch and imagination to feel how the body functions). Improvisation, fiction and free movement play are central to access physical states of enhanced consciousness. We will use journeys and extended duration to flirt with the notion of ritual and personal/collective transformation, relying on trance and exertion, boredom, frustration and contemplation as tactics. Dancing offers itself as a playground where concepts can be digested and embodied; dancing can be a lived place of speculation, ideal to test forms of thought especially around otherness, borders, mind body spirit, identity paradoxes, togetherness and difference, coexistence, interdependence. The intention is to come to an understanding or to a state of questioning of the body’s borders, acknowledging it as multiple and idiosyncratic: codified, yet desirous of ecstasy and play, and seeking grounding and tenderness. This laboratory suits anybody who is interested in the body as a site of knowledge, as a problem or a hoax or mystery, as a forest of symbols or simply as a phenomenon to be felt, visually, kinesthetically and sonically. A certain stamina is required, but no specific skill, therefore is open to any moving body.
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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?
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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 dominant 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.
This course is being offered jointly with the OSUN Microcolleges for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
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LT167 Writing African Futures
Instructor: Kerry Bystrom
Credits: 6 ECTS, 3 U.S. credits
Meeting Times: Friday 14:15-15:15 plus a 90-minute tutorial scheduled separately
In this course, students will explore the long African tradition of speculative fiction and science fiction storytelling and critically examine recent (post-Cold War) examples as political and artistic interventions. Why do people tell stories about the future in the contemporary context? Is it a mode of escapism, a way of engaging with complicated histories or making current kinds of oppression visible in new ways, a format for imagining new social configurations and fulfilling dreams, or something else altogether? How does such storytelling rooted in the African continent and particular African histories differ from similar projects elsewhere? What effects can such storytelling have? Students will engage with theoretical and historical writings that address such questions as well as films, poems, novels and short stories from South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria by authors including Nnedi Okarafor, Ben Okri, Lauren Beukes, Dilman Dila and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Students in the course will also have the opportunity to hear from professional writers and editors and craft their own poems or stories of the future.
This class is being offered as part of the OSUN Connected Learning Initiatives Hub and will bring a small number of BCB students into dialogue with students pursuing a remote BA through the Borderless Higher Education Program based at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. The class begins on January 15 and goes through April 2.
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Spring Break Artist’s Workshop
FA299 Virtual Reality in The Artist’s Studio
Instructor: John von Bergen
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Feb 3rd from 7:30 - 9pm
March 20 from 2 - 6pm
March 29 - April 2 everyday, Mon - Fri from 10 am - 6pm
In addition there will be one-on-one appointments with the Professor before and after Spring Break as well as an end of semester group session (date to be announced).
“What counts for the orientation of the spectacle is not my body as it in fact is, as a thing in objective space, but as a system of possible actions, a virtual body with its phenomenal ‘place’ defined by its task and situation. My body is wherever there is something to be done.”
--Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Phenomenology of Perception”
For artists as different as Laurie Anderson to Jon Rafman, Virtual Reality has been embraced as an art-medium in recent years. Long lines and wait lists at museums prove the high degree of curiosity about this medium, which makes possible a range of sensory aesthetic experiences unknown to audiences in previous decades.
This workshop is designed for learning about the Google VR software “Tilt Brush” and the hardware HTC Vive. By working from prompts, our goals will be to explore VR for the first time while finding ways to push our artistic interests in a medium that is at once limiting and limitless. We will meet at the beginning of the semester to discuss the workshop and explore the conversations that have related to VR in contemporary art. The spring break workshop will involve five full days of intense hands-on project development. A final end of semester presentation will make our production available to the BCB community. Students should also be prepared to compile their projects for online viewing.
Please note: participating students will be required to have their own external hard drives.
Syllabus
Language Courses
GM101 German Beginner A1
Instructor: Julia Gehring
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group A)
Instructor: Ariane Friedländer
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group B)
Instructor: Ariane Friedländer
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus
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
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group D)
Instructor: Christiane Bethke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus
GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group A)
Instructor: Ryan Carroll
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group B)
Instructor: Ryan Carroll
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 15:45-17:30
Syllabus
GM251 German Intermediate B2 (Group A)
Instructor: Tabea Weitz
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM251 German Intermediate B2 (Group B)
Instructor: Vincent Hessling
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM301 German Advanced C1
Instructor: Ulrike Wagner
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus
GM351 German Advanced C2
Instructor: Vincent Hessling
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Syllabus
GM150 German Conversation
Instructor: Martin Widmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
The course is designed to help students boost their speaking skills and communicate in German with ease and confidence. Understanding and responding to what people speak on the street and in everyday situations poses challenges for many language learners; the course will tackle these challenges hands-on and from multiple angles, always with an eye toward what is most useful for students stepping beyond the “English language bubble” on campus. Classes will be structured around topics of student interest and combine vocabulary building and pronunciation exercises with the creation of various speaking scenarios where students practice expressing themselves spontaneously and explore dialects, accents and modes of intonation. The course is open to students who have completed A1 or have at least a basic understanding of the German language; the objective of the course is to create a comfortable speaking environment for beginners to advanced learners.
Syllabus
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Instructor: Michael Thomas Taylor
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
This course engages pressing debates in German media today, asking about the issues and forms of discourse that shape German politics and social life. It is structured around visits to cultural sites, events, and organizations in Berlin, along with topics chosen from current media by the participants in cooperation with the instructor. These may include visits to museums, political parties, NGOs, or media producers. Reflecting the ongoing shift of public life to online venues, we will also examine the virtual presence of these traditionally site-based forms of publicness in relation to old and new media. In addition to the study of current public debates and civic engagement, the purpose of this course is to refine and advance your ability to articulate yourself verbally and in writing through constant vocabulary building. Students taking the class should have a B2 proficiency level in German or higher.
Syllabus
All Bard College Berlin language courses address the development of skills in reading and listening comprehension, conversation and writing within the context of the European Framework of Languages from level A1 through C2.
Beginner German A1
Emphasis on familiar vocabulary building, listening comprehension and speaking with gradual introduction to grammar and writing skills.
Beginner German A2
Continued emphasis on listening comprehension and routine communication. Students read and write short, simple texts.
Intermediate German B1
Emphasis on communication skills including comprehension of standard speech and descriptive reading passages, topical conversation and simple, descriptive composition.
Intermediate German B2
Continued emphasis on communication skills including comprehension of extended speeches and lectures, reading of newspapers and general periodicals, spontaneous conversational interaction with native speakers and writing clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects.
Advanced German Language C1
Development of listening and reading comprehension levels to include extended speech and some literary texts. Emphasis on conversational and writing skills to express ideas and opinions and present detailed descriptions expressing points of view.
Advanced German Language C2
Development of comprehension skills to allow for understanding of all forms of spoken language and written texts. Emphasis on communication skills for the fluent expression of ideas and argument both orally and in written form.
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