Core Courses
IS104 Forms of Love
AY/BA1/Begin in Berlin Core Course
Module: Medieval Literatures and Cultures
Instructors: Tracy Colony, David Hayes, Geoff Lehman, Katalin Makkai, Hans Stauffacher, Andrea Ottone, E. Cameron Wilson
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Groups D-H: 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, Katalin Makkai, Ross Shields, Maria Avxentevskaya, Anastassia Kostrioukova
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Groups C-E: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
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 Modernism Core course - Global Modernisms
BA3-4/PY Core Course
Module: Modernism
Instructors: Laura Scuriatti, James Harker
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
Modernism is generally thought of as a period characterized in literature and art by radical experimentation, by the invention and re-invention of new forms, and by an aesthetic that privileged the present, the modern, the new. As such, it also reacted to and reflected on the process of modernization and different notions of modernity. Modernism was, in fact, a complex constellation of phenomena that saw close interaction among the arts, literature, politics, philosophy, science and economics, and that questioned the most basic categories of aesthetic, political and philosophical thought. The course will focus on three related topics, which will be investigated in relation to each other through a variety of philosophical and theoretical texts, literature, artworks and architecture from across the globe: 1) theories of modernism, modernity and modernization; 2) the role played cities as increasingly dominant cultural centers, hegemonic forces and subject matter of modernist literature and the arts; 3) the increasing expansion of industry, colonization and global commerce, with a particular focus on literary responses to the perceived dehumanization brought about by technological advancement, bureaucracy and exploitation of the environment.
Syllabus
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
AH161 What is (Modern) Art?
Module: Art and Artists in Context / Approaching Arts Through Theory
Instructor: Aya Soika
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
In the modern era artists have struggled continually to define what art actually is – and have asked for a radical reassessment of its traditional conceptualizations. Whether we look at Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Swiss-born Dada or French Surrealism we can assert that all these avantgarde movements, despite differences in aesthetics and agenda, were eager to question previous narratives and reassess the relation between art, the artist, and society. Our class aims to take a closer look at the aims of the European avantgardes, focusing on some of the crucial discourses to which they responded: urban growth and the machine age, the interest in “world” art and the question of colonialism, war and militarism, the human psyche and the role of individual or collective trauma, but also the challenges posed by new media such as film and photography and the wish that art should be accessible to the masses for the betterment of society. The Berlin art museums offer an outstanding range of relevant works which allow us the perusal of “originals” (yet another category that comes under scrutiny in the modern period!). Weekly readings consist of texts by artists and contemporary art critics, but also historians or philosophers who have retrospectively tried to analyze modern art’s attempts to theorize and produce itself.
Syllabus
AR191 Art and Power
Module: Art and Artists in Context / Approaching Arts Through Theory
Instructor: Hanan Toukan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
Does power shape art? How does art respond to power? Can there be politics without art? How are we to think about about art created only for the sake of art, or art that forgoes aesthetics and only aims at political intervention? This course uncovers the ways in which power; ideology, hegemony and legitimacy circulate through specifically modern and contemporary forms of art, the processes of their making and the experience of encountering them in diverse sites. The course approaches the study of the relationship between art and power within a framework of cultural politics that emphasizes the value of a postcolonial approach relevant for the study of culture, art and politics in the twenty-first century. It encourages students to think about some of the key questions that underpin the conundrum that globalizing art and culture institutions find themselves in today vis-à-vis their publics, collections and exhibitions. By covering examples from Europe, the Americas and the Middle East the course will run thematically starting with understanding how power functions in art-making via artistic and cultural institutions and moving on to key examples of artistic responses to power. Topics covered will include colonialism and museums; nationalism, state-building and art; Cold War and post 9/11 cultural diplomacy; decolonizing museum initiatives in Europe and the US; art collectives; migration, art and borders; activist art and more.
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. Inspired by the Vorkurs of the original Bauhaus school, projects are designed to enhance aesthetic comprehension and expression through the creation of mixed-media drawings and collages. Course activities will ask students to: make analytical drawings of figures & object arrangements, develop conceptual approaches for generating compositions, make abstractions from nature by working outdoors, gather materials from Berlin's famous Flohmärkte (flea markets) to use in collages, work collaboratively on large drawings, and experiment with expressive combinations of 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 printed fragments and hand-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, slideshow presentations, and artist studio / gallery visits. The ideal student is self-motivated, with a strong interest in studying and making art, and must be comfortable with presenting their creations during class discussions.
Studio work is the priority, this course will require a significant amount of time working outside of class sessions. Prospective students should email inquiries to the instructor directly at: [email protected]
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 9:00-12:15
The Slow Photo is an introduction to Black and White photography. The class will focus on learning how to use a manual camera and finding one’s way in 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 styles used in the historical examples discussed, from Portraiture to Street Photography. Camera techniques and Black and White printing will be the fundamental basis of the class. Students will leave the class understanding the time commitment and concentration it takes to produce beautiful Black and White analog images.
Syllabus
FA108 Beginners in Digital Photography - Your own point of view
Module: Art Objects and Experience / Artistic Practice
Instructor: Carla Åhlander
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 14:00-17:15
This course is an introduction to digital photography with a focus on artistic expression. The course is aimed at those who want to learn digital photography at a basic level and develop their photographic work into a project. The course includes in-class critiques and discussions on the choice of method, technique and subject matter, as well as possible forms of presentation. Parts of the course will consist of looking at works by contemporary and historical photographers, as well as introductions to the technical and theoretical tools you will need to work on your project. We will ask questions such as ”What is my own way of seeing something?”, ”What is my own point of view?"
Syllabus
MU171 Berlin: City of Music: Performance Focus (Group A)
Module: Art Objects and Experience
Instructor: Benjamin Hochman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Group A: Tue 15:45-19:00
Berlin’s musical life presents an embarrassment of riches- where to begin? This course helps you chart a path through Berlin’s endlessly fascinating musical offerings, from chamber music to symphonic music and opera, covering a wide range of musical styles from the last three-hundred years. We will make field trips to attend concerts, masterclasses, and open rehearsals throughout the city. We will also explore a range of musical performances in digital format, from live broadcasts to historical recordings. Choice of events to attend, in person or virtually, will depend on scheduling 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, and other venues. We will prepare for each event by reading a variety of texts (musicological, historical, critical) and listening to recordings. Writing requirements will include short weekly assignments as well as two longer assignments such as a concert review or a response to one of the musical events we attend. No prior musical knowledge is required for this course: music-lovers and musicians of all levels are equally welcome.
Syllabus
MU171 Berlin: City of Music: Composition Focus (Group B)
Module: Art Objects and Experience
Instructor: Paul Festa
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Group B: Mon 15:45-19:00
For more than three centuries, Berlin and its environs have nurtured a steady output of musical genius so influential that a reasonably thorough perspective on the history of Western classical music can be gleaned from it with only a few Ausflüge (excursions) to parts south. This course will start from the earliest origins of European music in church plainchant and its basis in the physics of sound, then swiftly pivot to the monumental contribution of JS Bach, his sons’ role in the transition to the Classical period dominated Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven who in turn opened the door to musical Romanticism; the triumphs and tribulations of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn (pictured above); the agon between revolution and tradition in the post-Wagnerian world of Ferruccio Busoni and Richard Strauss; the role of classical music and cabaret in the Weimar era and Nazi regime, and up through the contemporary composers from around the world who call Berlin home today. No prior musical knowledge required.
Syllabus
FA222 The Sky's The Limit: Scale Models For The Artist
Module: Artistic Practice
Instructor: John von Bergen
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
Model-making is used for a wide-range of purposes. From the LEGOs used in a child’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. Visiting artist studios off-campus and assigned readings will supplement our workshop and seminar time.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric:
FM209 Images of War / War of Images: Introduction to Film Studies
Module: Approaching Arts Through Theory / Art and Artists in Context
Instructor: Matthias Hurst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30, plus weekly film screening Mon 19:30-22:00
This class introduces fundamental knowledge of film aesthetics and cinematic language through a focus on the genre of the war film. Central topics are the characteristics of film as visual form of representation, the development of film language since the beginning of the 20th century, styles of filmic discourse, and different approaches to film interpretation.
In our study of the war film genre (and its close bond to the anti-war film), we will examine the relation between the cinematic image and narrative and other conceptualizations and representations of war, with Paul Virilio’s theory of the links between military technology, speed and visuality as a starting point. Among the films addressed will be Westfront 1918 (1930, Georg Wilhelm Pabst), Johnny Got His Gun (1971, Dalton Trumbo), Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola), Come and See (1985, Elem Klimov), and The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick). Throughout our exploration, we will examine the way in which film intervenes in political and historical discourses, promoting patriotism or exposing the horrors of military conflict, and thus highlighting both the ideological function and the critical function of cinema as a means of sociohistorical commentary as well as its power to shape collective memory.
Syllabus
TH137 Adapting Novels for the Stage: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Module: Art Objects and Experience
Instructor: Julia Hart
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece Orlando is a fairytale-like portrait of a young aristocrat who barely ages over the course of four hundred years and seven historical periods, changing gender and witnessing the state of flux of people, systems, nature and what is right or wrong. Orlando is funny, malicious, provocative, and an exploration of gender fluidity. How can theater artists attempt to dramatize a famous and complex novel such as Orlando and transform it into material for the theatre? How do you even begin to create your own theatrical language or tackle practical issues like conjuring the sense of time passing on stage? This seminar will explore different contemporary methods of adapting literary works for the theater. Our work will not be about solely reproducing, but will focus more on reinvention. First, students will learn ways to develop a conceptual approach to creating a piece of theatre inspired by the themes, language, and story of Woolf’s Orlando. In a workshop setting, students will work together as directors and dramaturges to adapt sections of Orlando into a script for the stage. In the second half of the semester, students will form teams to further develop their scripts and experiment with stage ideas in the rehearsal room as actors and directors. Throughout the semester, we will also study and examine director Katie Mitchell’s 2019 production of Orlando at the Schaubühne Berlin and other recent /German theater productions of Orlando at the Schauspiel Hannover, Deutsches Theater and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg.
Syllabus
Economics Foundational Modules
MA110 Mathematical Foundations
Module: Mathematics
This course also fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Instructor: Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
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.
Syllabus
EC210 Microeconomics
Module: Microeconomics
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 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.
Prerequisites: Principles of Economics and Mathematics for Economics
Syllabus
EC211 Macroeconomics
Module: Macroeconomics
Instructor: Irwin Collier, Marcus Giamattei
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Group B (Giamattei): Wed 15:45-17:15 & Thu 10:45-12:15
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 long-term economic growth. 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 and central banks in stabilizing the economy. After an analysis of investment and inflation, we connect the building blocks to an integrated macroeconomic consensus model to explain the development of inflation, interest rates and GDP. We apply this theoretical knowledge to a range of current economic issues.
Prerequisite: Principles of Economics
Syllabus
MA151 Introduction to Statistics
Module: Statistics
This course also fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Instructors: Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg, Marcus Giamattei
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Group B (Blankenberg): 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.
Syllabus
Ethics and Politics Foundational Modules
SO104 Field Research: Dilemmas and Possibilities
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies
Instructor: Ayşe Çavdar
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Ethnography, which has experienced a revival in recent decades, is understood as a way of ensuring that social science researchers develop a direct grasp of the motives, conduct and contexts of the human actors in a social group, through exchanges with and observation of these participants. In addition to learning about how ethnography works as a method, students will develop the capacity to recognize the role it plays in the results proposed by contemporary social science research. Our use and examination of ethnographic methods will also examine how those methods are informed by the researcher’s own perspective: ethical and political judgments, as well as disciplinary frameworks. The ultimate aim of the course will be to acquire a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and practical questions that arise in the application of ethnography.
Syllabus
SO181 Race, Racism and Resistance: From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter
Module: Methods in Social and Historical Studies / History of Political Thought
Instructor: Joshua Paul
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 17:00-20:30
This course examines the emergence of modern ideas of ‘race’ and forms of racism as well as the social and political forces that have shaped their development. We will consider how racial ideas are conceptualized and justified through separate and interrelated forms of biological, social, and cultural description and explanation. The course covers the history of racial ideas from their invention in Enlightenment Europe through to contemporary debates namely the mobilization of race for exclusion (i.e. Charlottesville and a resurgent white supremacy) and inclusive, anti-racist ends (i.e. Black Lives Matter and allied struggles such as Stacey Abrams and Felicia Davis' voter campaigns in Georgia). We will consider the shifts in ‘race’ and racism in relation to slavery and emancipation in the Caribbean and North America, colonialism in the Americas, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Europe, contemporary far-right politics in the USA, ‘new’ or ‘cultural’ racisms in the USA and Europe, and will finishing with a look at the successes of and backlashes to Black Lives Matter. Throughout the module we will examine the work performed by racial ideas as well as its political functions and social effects. Ultimately, the course will emphasize a critical approach to the understanding of race and racism and encourage students to evaluate the social implications of persistent racial ideas.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Politics:
PL105 In Search of the Good: An Introduction to Ethics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Instructor: Tracy Colony
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue &Thu 17:30-19:00
What is the basis for ethical action? Since its beginnings, philosophy has confronted this question. In this course we will read some of the central texts in Western philosophy that have attempted to come to terms with it. Starting with Socrates and focusing on the works of Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Emerson, and Nietzsche we will trace a tradition which has sought to understand and elaborate the possible grounds and scope of ethical action. The approach of the course will be predominantly chronological and we will engage in close readings of these seminal texts with an eye to their historical context and reception. However, we will also approach their concepts and vocabularies as possible starting points or references for conceiving of and reflecting on our own ethical responses to our circumstances and wider historical situation.
Syllabus
PL121 Plato and Aristotle on the Political Significance of Knowledge and Philosophy
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy / History of Political Thought
Instructor: Joseph Bjelde
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
Is philosophy useless? Plato's Republic might seem to be the strongest possible repudiation of that charge. After all, in the Republic we are told that happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia) is only possible in cities ruled by philosophers. But then it is surprising to find Socrates, at the end of Plato's Meno, claiming that knowledge is no better a guide to action than true belief. If that claim is right, then shouldn't Plato acknowledge that politicians like Themistocles (who Socrates there suggests have divinely supplied true beliefs) are just as good at politics as philosopher-kings would be? In this course, we'll press Plato on these questions, by looking past the Republic at less commonly studied dialogues, especially his Statesman and Laws, and by looking at some of the contemporary rivals to whom Plato is responding, including Aristophanes, Isocrates and Aeschines. Then we'll look at how Aristotle inherits and responds to the same questions in his Ethics, Politics, Protrepticus and Metaphysics - with an eye to whether Plato and Aristotle really do disagree, as they sometimes seem to, about whether philosophy is useless, or about whether it has specifically political advantages. Along the way we'll encounter hard philosophical problems about what knowledge is, how it affects our actions, what actions are, what we mean when we call something useless or practical, how to interpret Plato and Aristotle - and, not least, what philosophy is.
Syllabus
PL277 Medical Ethics
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Instructor: Sinem Derya Kılıç
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 10:00-13:00
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 physician-assisted suicide, cultural and historical differences surrounding questions of reproduction, and issues of information-flow, informed consent, privacy, truth-telling and confidentiality, as well as questions of medical racism, social justice and rights to healthcare, human research, genetic enhancement, and the ethical dilemmas that arise during global pandemics as we experience them today.
Syllabus
PS119 Nation-States and Democracy
Module: Political Systems and Structures // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Jean-Rémi Carbonneau
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 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 // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gale Raj-Reichert
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Public policies are courses of action undertaken by governments to solve societal problems through altering behavior. They include laws, regulations, incentives, as well as the provision of services, goods and information. It is important to remember that policies not only include what governments choose to do but also what they choose not to do. Policies formulated by individual governments, groups of governments and intergovernmental organizations can affect outcomes for people, communities, industries and the environment in different parts of the world. During the first half of the semester, we will learn the foundational concepts that shape our understanding of what public policies are, why they are needed, and how they are made and evaluated. During the second half of the semester, we will apply these foundational concepts to the examination and discussion of real-world policy case studies addressing current problems within a domestic and global context. Two of our central examples will include policies on vaccine equity (including the laws regulating patents), and on labor rights and working conditions (the impact of socially responsible public procurement).
Syllabus
PS208 The Political Economy of Globalization
Module: Political Systems and Structures // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gale Raj-Reichert
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
This course engages with the topic of ‘globalization,’ understood here as the interconnectedness of economic activity across borders since World War II. We will focus on understanding how powerful thinkers and domestic and global political institutions helped shape policies, practices and outcomes of different patterns of globalization. Organized in three parts, the course begins by chronicling the rise of Keynesianism and its strategy for reconstruction and economic development after World War II. Next, we turn to the shift towards neoliberal market economies during the 1980s, examining ideology and policies which became a cornerstone of the Thatcher and Reagan years and which were spread globally, in particular to the Global South, by the Bretton Woods institutions throughout the 1990s. Finally, we will focus on the rise of globalized industries which emerged as part of foreign investment practices by multinational corporations supported by liberalization-friendly regulations and the more recent shift, since the early 2000s, towards global outsourcing comprising global production networks.
Syllabus
PT122 Democracy in Theory and Practice
Module: History of Political Thought / Political Systems and Structures
Instructor: Riaz Partha Khan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00
This course offers an introduction to the histories, theories, and practices of democracy. The main aim of the course is to provide students with a broad yet systematic overview of the complex discourses and practices of democracy in the past, and their contested legacies in contemporary societies. In Part One, the course begins with a conceptual overview of Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism, and the legacies of liberal democratic and revolutionary traditions. Part Two comprises the bulk of the course: here, we will focus on a range of democratic theories of political participation, representation, pluralism, and deliberation. Our inquiry will be guided by such questions as: Who are the “people” as bearers of sovereignty, and when, where, and how do they express their will? Does representation lead to a “tyranny of the majority?” How do representative structures account for dissenting and diverse voices marked by gender, racial, and class distinctions? Can deliberative principles and procedures produce legitimacy in a pluralist society? In Part Three, students explore these themes by focusing on one of the following historical contexts and challenges of democratic consolidation: (1) Post-Civil War reconstruction in America, (2) legal and political crises in Weimar Republic, and (3) contemporary challenges of democratization and democracy promotion in a global context.
Syllabus
PT141 Theories of Justice
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Hans Stauffacher
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
Questions of justice have always occupied center stage in ethical, political, social, and legal theory. And they have always been crucial for our everyday lives: More often than not the question of whether it is right or wrong to do something seems to boil down to a question of justice. This course, therefore, aims at being both, an introduction to political and social philosophy and a discussion of the questions of justice we face in our own political, social, and personal lives. Reading seminal theories of justice from Aristotle to the 20th Century we will encounter different approaches to justice like eudaimonism, utilitarianism, contractualism, and egalitarianism, and discuss core concepts and distinctions like distributive and corrective justice, conservative and ideal justice, substantive and procedural justice, comparative and non-comparative justice. We will discuss all the texts in two different ways: In a first step, we will attempt to understand them in their historical and systematical specificity. And in a second step, we will confront them with problems of justice from our own lives and ask whether, how, and to what extent these historical positions are applicable to the questions of justice we face today.
Syllabus
PT171 Aristotle’s Politics: A Complete Reading
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Ewa Atanassow
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
One of the most influential political treatises ever written, Aristotle’s Politics continues to be an indispensable reference today not only for political theorists and intellectual historians but also for empirical social scientists, students of comparative politics, as well as for civically engaged defenders of democratic inclusion. Our main purpose in this course will be to read through the entire work and gauge its enduring appeal. Taking note of its complex history, uncertain composition, and diverse interpretations, we’ll seek to understand the text on its own terms and evaluate its central claims and key findings. Alongside its seminal theory of democratic government, the book's highlights include a comprehensive view of human sociality; analysis of slavery as a social and political institution; a theory of economics; a typology of political regimes; an account of the interrelation between ethics and politics; and a sustained reflection on the gap between theory and practice, or how and why an ideal political order differs from the best practicable.
Syllabus
PT182 Thinking Revolution: Philosophy and Politics
Module: History of Political Thought
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 9:00-10:30
This course is being offered jointly with the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
The French Revolution brought philosophical ideals of equality and self-government into modern politics with unprecedented force and suddenness. In its violent wake Enlightenment thinkers fiercely debated the limits of progress, institutional reform, and the relation between human nature and government. In this course we begin with Rousseau’s articulation of the social contract and natural right which explicitly inspired revolutionaries. Then we move to the debate between Burke and Paine on the comparative advantages of tradition and abstract rights as the basis of government. Comparing Hannah Arendt’s account of the American and French Revolutions with these earlier authors challenges us to reconceive the relation between thought and action in the form of participatory politics. In conclusion, C.L.R. James’s work on the Haitian revolution then challenges Arendt’s apparent purification of action of both violence and the exclusion of race as merely relevant to an apolitical ‘social’ sphere.
Syllabus
SC204 Introduction to Feminist Science and Technology Studies
Module: Ethics and Moral Philosophy
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Instructor: Marianna Szczygielska
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 10:45-12:15 & 14:00-15:30
This course explores feminist science and technology studies (STS) as closely related to the disciplines of history and sociology of science, as well as to scientific practices in natural sciences and interdisciplinary approaches in social sciences. The explicit aim of this course is to give a comprehensive and historically contextualized overview of the key themes and debates within feminist STS scholarship and related disciplines like the actor-network-theory, postcolonial theory, and new materialism. Through readings, class discussions, and practical assignments we will explore feminist engagements with science through the lenses of gender, sexuality, race, and class. The course is structured in three parts. The first part grapples with feminist epistemologies and introduces key methodologies. The second part maps out the spaces and places of scientific practices from laboratories and fieldwork to the issues of colonial legacy of Western scientific endeavor. The third part focuses on the body and medicine, introducing the gendered themes of materiality. Students do not need to have backgrounds in feminist theory or scientific practice; the course is designed to work across disciplines.
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. By a close reading of a selection of texts and film excerpts (including fiction films, documentaries, tv and web series, videoart) we will mainly explore the question of human subjectivity 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 Theodor Adorno, Sara Ahmed, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Rey Chow, Andrea Long Chu, Wendy Chun, Hélène Cixous, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Lisa Yun Lee, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Paul Preciado, Hortense Spillers, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Syllabus
LT147 From Confession to Personal Essay: Forms of Life-Writing
Module: Close Reading / Literary History
Instructor: Laura Scuriatti
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
What do we read when we read autobiographies, confessions, memoirs, personal criticism, autofiction and personal essays? Why would we want to read them? Do we want to know more about ourselves, the authors, the world, or do we behave like voyeurs? Do we treat these forms as literature, or as documents, or both? Is the readers’ interest for life-writing a form of consumerism and exploitation? In the last two decades life-writing and autobiography have become dominant forms, structuring both social media platforms and seeping into all literary genres as well as journalism. Self-presentation and autobiographical modes of reading have become an almost inevitable ingredient of literature and criticism. Life-writing however, has always been a fundamental form in literary history, starting with the genres of the confession and evolving into the structuring principle of the emerging genre of the novel in the eighteenth century. We read both canonical and marginal texts in this heritage, before turning to the modern era and works by Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, Annie Ernaux, Derek Walcott, Karl Ove Knausgård, Maggie Nelson, Jia Tolentino. Some of our themes are: the relationship between truth and fiction in narrative, the work of memory, the consequences of narrative intimacy, the tension between invention and disclosure, the relationship between literary style and the representation of self and mind, and between life-writing and the novel as instruments for depicting and understanding the world. Looking at critical theories of the genre, we also reflect on the ideological and historical meaning of autobiographical forms.
Syllabus
LT171 Speculative Fiction
Module: Close Reading / Literary History
Instructor: Sladja Blazan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 9:00-12:15
Speculative fiction has been defined as exploring things that really could happen but haven’t (quite) yet (Margaret Atwood), or postulating an as-yet-unknown future (Jewell Gomez). This focus gives the speculative mode a special resonance at the moment. We live in a world of shifting foundations, facing threats posed by political instability and environmental disaster, not to mention our experience of a frequently predicted but still incredible event: a global pandemic. It is no surprise that the hypothetical explorations of contemporary literature are expressed in the language of, among other genres, science fiction, fantasy, or horror. This seminar examines how post-millennial Anglo-American film and literature use speculative fiction to address the question of the human impact on nature. We will identify the narrative strategies artists have deployed to register their protest against those visions of tomorrow that are generated by relentlessly profit-oriented industries. As Daniel Heath Justice puts it: “we can’t possibly live otherwise until we first imagine otherwise.” For example, we will explore the attention given to the possibility of nonhuman sentience inscribed in landscapes endowed with intelligence, consciousness, and agency, all marks of the potential for communication and cooperation, as well as for feeling, needing, and plotting. We will learn about Afrofuturism, Indigenous Speculative Fiction, Climate Fiction, and Cyberculture. Primarily, we will discuss why speculative fiction came to matter at this historical juncture: the crossroads of colonization, decolonization, globalization, capitalism, and change. This seminar will include excursions to readings and performances.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Art and Aesthetics:
FM209 Images of War / War of Images: 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, plus weekly film screening Mon 19:30-22:00
This class introduces fundamental knowledge of film aesthetics and cinematic language through a focus on the genre of the war film. Central topics are the characteristics of film as visual form of representation, the development of film language since the beginning of the 20th century, styles of filmic discourse, and different approaches to film interpretation.
In our study of the war film genre (and its close bond to the anti-war film), we will examine the relation between the cinematic image and narrative and other conceptualizations and representations of war, with Paul Virilio’s theory of the links between military technology, speed and visuality as a starting point. Among the films addressed will be Westfront 1918 (1930, Georg Wilhelm Pabst), Johnny Got His Gun (1971, Dalton Trumbo), Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola), Come and See (1985, Elem Klimov), and The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick). Throughout our exploration, we will examine the way in which film intervenes in political and historical discourses, promoting patriotism or exposing the horrors of military conflict, and thus highlighting both the ideological function and the critical function of cinema as a means of sociohistorical commentary as well as its power to shape collective memory.
Syllabus
TH137 Adapting Novels for the Stage: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Module: Written Arts / Literary History
Instructor: Julia Hart
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00
Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece Orlando is a fairytale-like portrait of a young aristocrat who barely ages over the course of four hundred years and seven historical periods, changing gender and witnessing the state of flux of people, systems, nature and what is right or wrong. Orlando is funny, malicious, provocative, and an exploration of gender fluidity. How can theater artists attempt to dramatize a famous and complex novel such as Orlando and transform it into material for the theatre? How do you even begin to create your own theatrical language or tackle practical issues like conjuring the sense of time passing on stage? This seminar will explore different contemporary methods of adapting literary works for the theater. Our work will not be about solely reproducing, but will focus more on reinvention. First, students will learn ways to develop a conceptual approach to creating a piece of theatre inspired by the themes, language, and story of Woolf’s Orlando. In a workshop setting, students will work together as directors and dramaturges to adapt sections of Orlando into a script for the stage. In the second half of the semester, students will form teams to further develop their scripts and experiment with stage ideas in the rehearsal room as actors and directors. Throughout the semester, we will also study and examine director Katie Mitchell’s 2019 production of Orlando at the Schaubühne Berlin and other recent /German theater productions of Orlando at the Schauspiel Hannover, Deutsches Theater and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg.
Syllabus
Politics Foundational Modules
The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics:
PL105 In Search of the Good: An Introduction to Ethics
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Tracy Colony
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
What is the basis for ethical action? Since its beginnings, philosophy has confronted this question. In this course we will read some of the central texts in Western philosophy that have attempted to come to terms with it. Starting with Socrates and focusing on the works of Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Emerson, and Nietzsche we will trace a tradition which has sought to understand and elaborate the possible grounds and scope of ethical action. The approach of the course will be predominantly chronological and we will engage in close readings of these seminal texts with an eye to their historical context and reception. However, we will also approach their concepts and vocabularies as possible starting points or references for conceiving of and reflecting on our own ethical responses to our circumstances and wider historical situation.
Syllabus
PL121 Plato and Aristotle on the Political Significance of Knowledge and Philosophy
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Joseph Bjelde
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
Is philosophy useless? Plato's Republic might seem to be the strongest possible repudiation of that charge. After all, in the Republic we are told that happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia) is only possible in cities ruled by philosophers. But then it is surprising to find Socrates, at the end of Plato's Meno, claiming that knowledge is no better a guide to action than true belief. If that claim is right, then shouldn't Plato acknowledge that politicians like Themistocles (who Socrates there suggests have divinely supplied true beliefs) are just as good at politics as philosopher-kings would be? In this course, we'll press Plato on these questions, by looking past the Republic at less commonly studied dialogues, especially his Statesman and Laws, and by looking at some of the contemporary rivals to whom Plato is responding, including Aristophanes, Isocrates and Aeschines. Then we'll look at how Aristotle inherits and responds to the same questions in his Ethics, Politics, Protrepticus and Metaphysics - with an eye to whether Plato and Aristotle really do disagree, as they sometimes seem to, about whether philosophy is useless, or about whether it has specifically political advantages. Along the way we'll encounter hard philosophical problems about what knowledge is, how it affects our actions, what actions are, what we mean when we call something useless or practical, how to interpret Plato and Aristotle - and, not least, what philosophy is.
Syllabus
PL277 Medical Ethics
Module: Political and Moral Thought
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Instructor: Sinem Derya Kılıç
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 10:00-13:00
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 physician-assisted suicide, cultural and historical differences surrounding questions of reproduction, and issues of information-flow, informed consent, privacy, truth-telling and confidentiality, as well as questions of medical racism, social justice and rights to healthcare, human research, genetic enhancement, and the ethical dilemmas that arise during global pandemics as we experience them today.
Syllabus
PS119 Nation-States and Democracy
Module: Comparative Politics // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Jean-Rémi Carbonneau
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 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: Policy Analysis // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gale Raj-Reichert
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Public policies are courses of action undertaken by governments to solve societal problems through altering behavior. They include laws, regulations, incentives, as well as the provision of services, goods and information. It is important to remember that policies not only include what governments choose to do but also what they choose not to do. Policies formulated by individual governments, groups of governments and intergovernmental organizations can affect outcomes for people, communities, industries and the environment in different parts of the world. During the first half of the semester, we will learn the foundational concepts that shape our understanding of what public policies are, why they are needed, and how they are made and evaluated. During the second half of the semester, we will apply these foundational concepts to the examination and discussion of real-world policy case studies addressing current problems within a domestic and global context. Two of our central examples will include policies on vaccine equity (including the laws regulating patents), and on labor rights and working conditions (the impact of socially responsible public procurement).
Syllabus
PS208 The Political Economy of Globalization
Module: Globalization and International Relations // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gale Raj-Reichert
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
This course engages with the topic of ‘globalization,’ understood here as the interconnectedness of economic activity across borders since World War II. We will focus on understanding how powerful thinkers and domestic and global political institutions helped shaped policies, practices and outcomes of different patterns of globalization. Organized in three parts, the course begins by chronicling the rise of Keynesianism and its strategy for reconstruction and economic development after World War II. Next, we turn to the shift towards neoliberal market economies during the 1980s, examining ideology and policies which became a cornerstone of the Thatcher and Reagan years and which were spread globally, in particular to the Global South, by the Bretton Woods institutions throughout the 1990s. Finally, we will focus on the rise of globalized industries which emerged as part of foreign investment practices by multinational corporations supported by liberalization-friendly regulations and the more recent shift, since the early 2000s, towards global outsourcing comprising global production networks.
Syllabus
PT122 Democracy in Theory and Practice
Module: Comparative Politics
Instructor: Riaz Partha Khan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 17:30-19:00
This course offers an introduction to the histories, theories, and practices of democracy. The main aim of the course is to provide students with a broad yet systematic overview of the complex discourses and practices of democracy in the past, and their contested legacies in contemporary societies. In Part One, the course begins with a conceptual overview of Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism, and the legacies of liberal democratic and revolutionary traditions. Part Two comprises the bulk of the course: here, we will focus on a range of democratic theories of political participation, representation, pluralism, and deliberation. Our inquiry will be guided by such questions as: Who are the “people” as bearers of sovereignty, and when, where, and how do they express their will? Does representation lead to a “tyranny of the majority?” How do representative structures account for dissenting and diverse voices marked by gender, racial, and class distinctions? Can deliberative principles and procedures produce legitimacy in a pluralist society? In Part Three, students explore these themes by focusing on one of the following historical contexts and challenges of democratic consolidation: (1) Post-Civil War reconstruction in America, (2) legal and political crises in Weimar Republic, and (3) contemporary challenges of democratization and democracy promotion in a global context.
Syllabus
PT141 Theories of Justice
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Hans Stauffacher
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
Questions of justice have always occupied center stage in ethical, political, social, and legal theory. And they have always been crucial for our everyday lives: More often than not the question of whether it is right or wrong to do something seems to boil down to a question of justice. This course, therefore, aims at being both, an introduction to political and social philosophy and a discussion of the questions of justice we face in our own political, social, and personal lives. Reading seminal theories of justice from Aristotle to the 20th Century we will encounter different approaches to justice like eudaimonism, utilitarianism, contractualism, and egalitarianism, and discuss core concepts and distinctions like distributive and corrective justice, conservative and ideal justice, substantive and procedural justice, comparative and non-comparative justice. We will discuss all the texts in two different ways: In a first step, we will attempt to understand them in their historical and systematical specificity. And in a second step, we will confront them with problems of justice from our own lives and ask whether, how, and to what extent these historical positions are applicable to the questions of justice we face today.
Syllabus
PT171 Aristotle’s Politics: A Complete Reading
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Ewa Atanassow
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 15:45-17:15
One of the most influential political treatises ever written, Aristotle’s Politics continues to be an indispensable reference today not only for political theorists and intellectual historians but also for empirical social scientists, students of comparative politics, as well as for civically engaged defenders of democratic inclusion. Our main purpose in this course will be to read through the entire work and gauge its enduring appeal. Taking note of its complex history, uncertain composition, and diverse interpretations, we’ll seek to understand the text on its own terms and evaluate its central claims and key findings. Alongside its seminal theory of democratic government, the book's highlights include a comprehensive view of human sociality; analysis of slavery as a social and political institution; a theory of economics; a typology of political regimes; an account of the interrelation between ethics and politics; and a sustained reflection on the gap between theory and practice, or how and why an ideal political order differs from the best practicable.
Syllabus
PT182 Thinking Revolution: Philosophy and Politics
Module: Political and Moral Thought
Instructor: Jeffrey Champlin
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 9:00-10:30
This course is being offered jointly with the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
The French Revolution brought philosophical ideals of equality and self-government into modern politics with unprecedented force and suddenness. In its violent wake Enlightenment thinkers fiercely debated the limits of progress, institutional reform, and the relation between human nature and government. In this course we begin with Rousseau’s articulation of the social contract and natural right which explicitly inspired revolutionaries. Then we move to the debate between Burke and Paine on the comparative advantages of tradition and abstract rights as the basis of government. Comparing Hannah Arendt’s account of the American and French Revolutions with these earlier authors challenges us to reconceive the relation between thought and action in the form of participatory politics. In conclusion, C.L.R. James’s work on the Haitian revolution then challenges Arendt’s apparent purification of action of both violence and the exclusion of race as merely relevant to an apolitical ‘social’ sphere.
Syllabus
SC204 Introduction to Feminist Science and Technology Studies
Module: Political and Moral Thought
This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for humanities students.
Instructor: Marianna Szczygielska
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 10:45-12:15 & 14:00-15:30
This course explores feminist science and technology studies (STS) as closely related to the disciplines of history and sociology of science, as well as to scientific practices in natural sciences and interdisciplinary approaches in social sciences. The explicit aim of this course is to give a comprehensive and historically contextualized overview of the key themes and debates within feminist STS scholarship and related disciplines like the actor-network-theory, postcolonial theory, and new materialism. Through readings, class discussions, and practical assignments we will explore feminist engagements with science through the lenses of gender, sexuality, race, and class. The course is structured in three parts. The first part grapples with feminist epistemologies and introduces key methodologies. The second part maps out the spaces and places of scientific practices from laboratories and fieldwork to the issues of colonial legacy of Western scientific endeavor. The third part focuses on the body and medicine, introducing the gendered themes of materiality. Students do not need to have backgrounds in feminist theory or scientific practice; the course is designed to work across disciplines.
Syllabus
Art and Aesthetics Advanced Modules
AH305 Raphael, Titian, and the Art of Painting
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements / Aesthetics and Art Theory
Instructor: Geoff Lehman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Wed 15:45-19:00
This course examines the works of two painters central to the Renaissance tradition, Raphael and Titian, and considers the dialogues among them and the larger questions they raise for understanding the art of painting. For Vasari, Raphael’s art was the epitome of Florentine disegno (design, drawing) and Titian’s of Venetian colorito (coloring). And yet this is only one of a myriad of ways that these two artists, between them, defined the terms of Renaissance painting, and of its long afterlife in the following centuries. Their individual works are exceptional in the complexity of interpretation they demand, in their aesthetic and affective power, in their engagement with the wider humanist culture of the Renaissance, and in the degree to which all these qualities emerge from the use of the medium itself and from the very process of painting. Indeed, the works of these artists not only play a central role in defining the “art of painting” historically within the Western tradition; they also raise the question of the meaning and the power of the art itself, its philosophical (metaphysical, ontological, epistemological) character and its role in responding to and shaping human experience. The course will focus on a small number of major works (among others: Raphael’s Madonnas, large altarpieces, and frescoed rooms in the Vatican; Titian’s mythologies, portraits, and paintings in sitù in Venice) and will consider the response to Raphael and Titian in the works of the Mannerist generation and of later artists (Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, Velázquez, Goya, Monet, Picasso, Kentridge, Weems). Visits to museums to encounter works of art firsthand will be an integral part of the course.
Syllabus
FA304 Merging the Photo with the Book Form
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: April Gertler
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
The historical relationship between the photograph and the book form goes very far back. This photography class will look at how the book form as a time-based structural format can support the photograph and the photographic sequence. A book is an object, and its very properties cannot be approached without considering its content. The two-part class will loosely explore the structures of 4-6 different book forms (including; the 8-fold, the single signature, the ‘Zine’, the perfect bind, and the accordion fold) while examining how a photographic sequence can use the form to its best advantage. Each student will leave the class with a mini-library of their very own artist books. Although the class will be challenging, it is open to all students, and no prior experience with photography is necessary, however it’s a bonus. Digital and vernacular photography will be the photographic focus.
Syllabus
FA317 Advanced Painting: Illusionistic Surfaces
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
FA323 Inside / Outside – documentary photo essays
Modules: Media, Practices, Techniques / Artists, Genres, Movements
Instructor: Carla Åhlander
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course times: Mon 9:00-12:15
In this advanced level photography class each student will have the opportunity to conceptualize, plan, and execute their own documentary project, supported by discussions, assignments, and critiques in class. The participants are encouraged to define their project and the stories they want to tell based on their personal interests related to the genre. It can be a project exploring a social, cultural, political, or personal reality – and an excellent way to access a new city. We will explore how documentary photography and art photography increasingly overlap today and the exciting possibilities that opens for us as photographers. Together we will also look at and discuss documentary work by historical and contemporary photographers. At the end of the semester each student will have finished their own documentary photo essay.
This is a class for those who have had some photographic practice and are comfortable with a digital camera, as well as editing and processing images.
Syllabus
FA355 Embody DIY Video!
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques // // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Dafna Maimon
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times:
Group A: Tue 9:00-12:15
Group B: Tue 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.
Syllabus
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: Mon 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. Through 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. Some of these field trips can take place on Saturdays and schedule changes may occur.
Syllabus
FM303 Berlin School and Beyond: German Cinema after Reunification
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements
Instructor: Matthias Hurst
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 15:45-19:00, plus weekly film screening Wed 19:30-22:00
In the 1990s the term “Berlin School“ (Berliner Schule) was coined to describe a group of German films that specifically reflect the Zeitgeist and cultural atmosphere in Germany after reunification. Directors often classed as belonging to the Berlin School are Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler, Thomas Arslan, Maren Ade and Valeska Grisebach, with films like Milchwald (2003), Marseille (2004), Ghosts (2005), Yella (2007), Barbara (2012), Phoenix (2014), The Dreamed Path (2016) or Toni Erdmann (2016). However, their common themes and stylistic elements are difficult to identify, as are their divergences from or continuities with the New German Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore this class explores German cinema of the last decades in a broader sense, analyzing selected films that represent Berlin School but also others films that go beyond or lie outside this categorization, e.g. films by Andreas Dresen (As We Were Dreaming, 2015), Thomas Stuber (In the Aisles, 2018), Nora Fingscheidt (System Crasher, 2019) and Burhan Qurbani (We Are Young, We Are Strong, 2015, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 2020), in order to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the German cinema of recent decades and its relation to social change and historical experience. Students should have basic knowledge of film history, theory, and analysis.
Syllabus
TH312 Postdramatic and Contemporary Theater in Berlin
Module: Artists, Genres, Movements / Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Nina Tecklenburg
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 9:00-12:15
The term "postdramatic theater" was coined by the theorist and critic Hans-Thies Lehmann in the late 90s to describe a radical new mode of performance that repudiated "traditional" practices and assumptions. Driven by technological and social transformation, this kind of theater came to be associated with a range of features such as aesthetic innovation, emancipation from text-based theater, de-hierarchization of theatrical means and working structures. Though the concept is over two decades old, it has proved durable, and is often invoked to characterize Berlin's theater world in particular. Through an intensive theoretical and practical exploration of contemporary performing art in the city, we will look at the way in which postdramatic theater has changed and diversified. We will study works by current postdramatic theater makers such as Gob Squad, She She Pop, Milo Rau, andcompany&co, René Pollesch, Rimini Protokoll, as well as works by an emerging generation and ask the question: what new aesthetic, technological and socio-political parameters are reflected in contemporary performing arts? What comes after the postdramatic theater? We will look at posthuman, digital and postpandemic theatre; migrant and decolonial theater; immersive game theater; participatory practices and new queer performance art. Besides readings from performance and theatre studies, culture studies and social science we will make excursions to Berlin’s vibrant theater world and create (postpostdramatic) theater including two hands-on workshops with well-known Berlin-based theatre artists. No previous experience in theater and performance is necessary. Open to all students with a curiosity for experimenting with thought and theater.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics:
FA285 Mesh/Weave/Network
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Asad Raza
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 13:00-19:00 (bi-weekly)
The mindset of Western modernity is one of separation: From the way societies are organised, based on principles of division (e.g. of labour and production), to the separation of knowledge into academic disciplines. For instance what used to be an integrated idea of ‚healing‘ is now separated into medical specialities corresponding to distinct parts of the bodies or organs. Also the arts have been separated: ritual forms have been divided into artistic disciplines to which individual sensory organs are allocated (visual arts for the eyes, music for the ears, dance for the body). Today, however, confronted with the economic, social and ecological consequences of this imperative of separation, the question that concerns us increasingly is how to bring everything that has been separated – nature from culture, individuals from their social ties, disciplines of knowledge from holistic forms of wisdom – back together. The question is how new forms and practices of association and connectedness can be constructed. This course is about modalities of the relational. In our workshop-sessions we’ll read, discuss, and practice various models of the intersubjective and the relational. We’ll reflect on theoretical concepts like Glissant’s Relation, Spivak’s weave, Margulis’ holobiont, Ingold’s mesh, Latour’s Actor Network Theory, and pair these ideas with activities in the classroom. We’ll discuss existing artworks that delve into this realm, and we’ll engage in embodied practices of movement, breathing, conversation and cooking that create a relational, intersubjective realm in the present. Each session will conclude with a soup cooking in the factory. The final project will be a choice between a practice-based artistic project or a theoretical essay on one of these conceptions of interpenetration.
Syllabus
FA292 Animism. Nature as Self.
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructor: Andreas Weber
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Our world views are undergoing fundamental change. In the „Anthropocene“, boundaries between the human sphere and animals and plants, stones and waters, the atmosphere and the whole „earth system“ are dissolving. There are many emerging work hypotheses trying to come to terms with this. One which is gaining particular traction in both humanities and the natural sciences is animism, the cosmology of indigenous cultures which believe the world is made of persons, not things, with whom humans must act in togetherness. The seminar will explore prominent position of animism in anthropology, philosophy, biology and the arts. Students will engage with these viewpoints on theoretical, practical and artistic levels. We will discuss, among others, ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Philippe Descola, Edoardo Kohn, Freya Mathews, Bayo Akomolafe, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bruno Latour, Francisco Varela and Karen Barad. In practical terms, we will experiment with animistic processes through guided embodied experiences and reflection, also in outdoor settings and in direct contact with the non-human living world. As for animistic cultures the human participation in the broader “society of being” needs to be expressed and enhanced through painting, sculpture, dance and song (all of which from a western perspective are called “art”), the participants will develop their own artistic ways of reflecting on the experiences and the content of the seminar. For mid-term and end-of-term grades, students can choose to either write an academic essay but can also devise open-media artistic projects (e.g. fiction and non-fiction narratives, paintings, videos, podcasts or visual essays) in this class.
Syllabus
HI255 Research-Creation: (Im-)Materialities of 20th/21st Century Migration Regimes
Module: Media, Practices, Techniques
Instructors: Marion Detjen, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 14:00-17:15
This cross-campus class, taught in collaboration with Universidad de los Andes (Bogotà, Colombia) and University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), 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 arts, students will develop individual or collaborative open-media artistic projects relating to the (im-)materialities of the “modern refugee”.
Thematically, the course revolves around the bureaucracies that were created to curb and control migration and to react to asylum claims of those made stateless. They mirror a fundamental dilemma in all attempts to find responses to forced migration, throughout the 20th and 21st Century: On the one hand, nation-states and the international community based on nation-states have 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 political 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. Instead, national and international policies and administrations have been focussing predominantly on combating migration as such, a futile endeavour that leaves a trail of bureaucratic failure in its wake.
The „research“ dimension of the course will enquire the materialities of these trails - lists, papers, forms, stamps, technological devices of all kinds for surveillance and control, and the physical traces of migrants handling of it -, as well as address the immaterialities of increasingly digitalised migration regimes. We will read Hannah Arendt, Achille Mbembe, and Walter Benjamin for theoretical grounding, and share lectures and discussion sessions with our partner classes in Bogotá and in Johannesburg. In the „creation“ dimension of the course, research-based artistic projects will be produced. At the end of the course, these projects will be presented in public exhibitions/events in the three cities (Berlin, Bogota and Johannesburg) and on a common website.
Syllabus
Economics Advanced Modules
EC320 Econometrics
Module: Econometrics
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
Economics is in many ways an applied science deeply anchored in real-world phenomena that can be measured and quantified. In order to answer important quantitative questions, the economist needs to collect data and assess the empirical relationships between objects of interest. Since much economic data is observational, a main task of the econometrician is trying to find out whether events that are correlated also stand in causal relationship with each other and in what order of priority. In order to answer such questions, the economist needs the toolkit of multivariate regression analysis as well as a number of sophisticated techniques that expand on the simple linear regression model (time series and panel data models, vector-autoregressive models, non- and semiparametric econometric techniques, and various methods to assess the degree to which such models fit). This course expands on the basic statistics course by applying and developing core statistical notions within an economic context. It develops literacy in applied economics, and capacity to assess claims made in that field through critique of methods of econometric analysis. The course will introduce students to the statistical software package R, which will be used to analyze data applying the methods learned.
Prerequisites: Microeconomics and Statistics
Syllabus
EC212 Experimental Economics
Modules: Behavioral Economics
Instructor: Israel Waichman
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 9:00-12:15
Experimental economics is the application of experimental methods to the study of economic questions. Especially, experimental economics allows for the controlled study of markets, environments, and the behavior of participants. The course aims at introducing experimental economics and its various applications. Our inquiry consists of two parts. In the first part, “the methodology of experimental economics,” we introduce experimental economics. We discuss the merits (and limits) of experiments, and the principles of conducting and analyzing an experiment. In the second part, “Applications: Influential experiments in economics,” we survey some of the seminal research in experimental (and behavioral) economics (e.g. market experiments, bargaining experiments, biases and heuristics under uncertainty, field experiments, social dilemma experiments, etc.). During the course we will conduct some experiments in the classroom, providing the course participants with first-hand experience of the economic situations that are being described.
Prerequisite: The course is non-technical and students from all disciplines are encouraged to participate. However, students taking this class must have successfully completed the course Principle of Economics.
Syllabus
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 14:00-15:30
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 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.
Syllabus
Ethics and Politics Advanced Modules
All courses are cross-listed with Politics:
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 14:00-15:30
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
PS302 Global Public Policies and their Impact on the Global South
Module: Law, Politics, and Society / Global Social Theory // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gale Raj-Reichert
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
This course focuses on examining global public policies and their impacts on lower-income countries located in the Global South. We understand ‘global’ public policy to mean policies which have a cross-border or transnational effect both directly and indirectly. This includes policies developed and enforced at the national level which ‘reach’ countries in the Global South and policies established at the intergovernmental or international level which set out rules for many countries. The aim of the course is for students to understand which questions to ask and generally to critically examine the analytical tools available to assess global policy impacts on economies, communities, and the environment in the Global South. An important aspect of our discussions will be focused on understanding the ways in which different policymaking institutions function and the influence different actors (and their politics) have on the policymaking process and outcomes. The specific global policies and issues covered in the course are climate change, intellectual property rights rules (and their impacts on vaccines), international trade, international labor standards, migration, and foreign aid.
Syllabus
PS328 State Theory: Law, Politics, and Space
Module: Law, Politics, and Society
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 14:00-17:15
Law and politics are embedded in space and its many territorial categories. However, the spatial dimensions of law and politics are not always made explicit in the respective disciplinary traditions. Jurisdiction, sovereignty, non-intervention, even human rights – all these terms are relevant for contemporary debates and would be difficult to operationalize without a clear understanding of their spatial dimension. In the past decades, the importance of territoriality has also been called into question, for instance through processes associated with digitalization and globalization. And yet, the importance of territory persists. At the intersection of legal studies and political science, this course explores key issues and concepts pertaining to space and territoriality with a view to a critical re-assessment of their contemporary importance. The course will be offered in cooperation between the Politics Section of Bard College Berlin (Professor Boris Vormann) and the Department of Law at Freie Universität Berlin (Professor Helmut Philipp Aust).
Syllabus
PS355 War, Peace, and Mediation: Theory and Cases
Module: Law, Politics, and Society // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Nassim Abi Ghanem
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
How and why do violent conflicts erupt and how are they resolved? Why do some states help in resolving conflicts? When are conflict and war amenable to the possibility of being ‘managed’? When is intervention essential or a mediation by third parties merited? Why do attempts at conflict resolution have a mixed record of success? Why do contexts with peace agreements relapse into violent conflict? This course covers the basic concepts in conflict life cycles from prevention to reconciliation. The course also exposes students to theoretical and empirical conceptualizations of conflict management and mediation, featuring a combination of scholarly, policy and practitioner perspectives on international relations in conflict management contexts. Moreover, we will also explore how local civic engagement and mediation by civil society are becoming more prominent in intra-state conflict management processes. In doing so, we pay attention to issues in contemporary debates on the various post-conflict processes—such as disarmament and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR)—analyzing their relevance to creating sustainable and durable peace.
Syllabus
PS386 Governance and Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean
Module: Law, Politics, and Society
Instructor: Markus Schultze-Kraft
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 15:45-19:00
This course aims to build students’ analytical skills in understanding the relationship between governance and transnational organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, helping them to apply these skills to policy issues related to curbing violent criminal activities and addressing both criminal and crimilegal patterns of governance. From Mexico to Argentina, many regions and locales in the sub-continent are today immersed in a virtual vortex of criminal violence and insecurity. Though not the only cause and driver, organized criminal activities are typically identified as contributing significantly to citizen insecurity and bad governance. The global COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated this situation across the region. The course builds on the lecturer’s long-time experience as an analyst of organized crime, violent conflict and crimilegal governance in Latin America and other parts of the global South and will follow a comparative approach, based on detailed analysis of a number of country cases. It will also be participatory, and small groups of students will share responsibility for analysing the cases chosen for study.
Syllabus
PT351 Civic Engagement
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Kerry Bystrom, Xenia Muth
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
Over the semester we will explore historical, philosophical and practical elements of civic engagement while also investigating the underlying question of what it means to be an engaged citizen in the early 21st century. Together, students will address issues related to political participation, civil society, associational life, social justice, and personal responsibility, particularly in relation to the liberal democratic order (and its rupture). The class reflects a balance between theory and practice, exploring notions of civic life while supporting students to be active and thoughtful participants in the communities in which they are situated. More specifically, we will begin to map the local community engagement landscape in Berlin (with all its fault lines) and connect this into theories of civil society and histories of citizen activism in Europe and globally. This work will feed into engaged student research, participation in local and global initiatives, hand-on project development trainings, and the crafting by each student of a project proposal aimed at improving their local communities (however defined). The course will feature seminar discussions, workshops on interviewing and organizing, and field trips to relevant sites, as well as guest lectures by scholars, activists, members of local NGOs, government officials and foundation representatives.
Syllabus
SE261 Seemingly Inseparable – Reporting and Debating Israel-Palestine, Antisemitism and Racism in German Media
Instructor: Yossi Bartal
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
Providing an overview of the ways in which German newspapers cover and administrate debates on the intersection between foreign policy and the politics of memory, this course critically examines different publishing forms – from war reporting abroad and coverage of political conflicts domestically to in-depth interviews as well as the feuilleton commentary--while also offering concrete practice in writing journalistic texts. The course begins with an analysis of how media outlets and political actors shape the discussion during periods of tension in Israel-Palestine. Students will be equipped with media critique skills, will hone their skills at distinguishing how and under which influence reports are written, and what voices and opinions are heard or excluded. The second part of the course focuses on the Achille-Mbembe-Controversy, precipitated in early 2020 following accusations of Antisemitism against the renowned Cameroonian philosopher. Reviewing the numerous essays dealing with legacies of the Holocaust and colonialism, critique of Israel's occupation and the boundaries of free speech, students will gain insights into the making of German national narratives and will have the opportunity to gain practice in feuilletonistic writing.
Syllabus
SE301 Making the Case: Human Rights Research and Reporting
Instructor: Fred Abrahams
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice / Law, Politics, and Society
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
This workshop-oriented class teaches the practical skills of a human rights investigator: how to identify the topic and focus of an investigation, how to design an investigative strategy, how to conduct the fact-finding, and how to present findings. Covered topics include research design, interviewing victims and witnesses, interviewing officials, corroborating evidence, using new technologies, consulting experts and using secondary sources, mitigating security risks, and managing personal stress, wellbeing and resilience. Students will develop their writing and presentation skills to communicate human rights findings in clear, concise and compelling ways. Guest speakers from the human rights movement will occasionally join to present their experiences and advice.
Syllabus
SO202 A Lexicon of Migration
Modules: Global Social Theory / Law, Politics, and Society
Instructor: Zeynep Kivilcim
Course Times: Tue, Wed 17:30-19:00
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
The following courses are cross-listed with Arts and Aesthetics:
FA285 Mesh/Weave/Network
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Asad Raza
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 13:00-19:00 (bi-weekly)
The mindset of Western modernity is one of separation: From the way societies are organised, based on principles of division (e.g. of labour and production), to the separation of knowledge into academic disciplines. For instance what used to be an integrated idea of ‚healing‘ is now separated into medical specialities corresponding to distinct parts of the bodies or organs. Also the arts have been separated: ritual forms have been divided into artistic disciplines to which individual sensory organs are allocated (visual arts for the eyes, music for the ears, dance for the body). Today, however, confronted with the economic, social and ecological consequences of this imperative of separation, the question that concerns us increasingly is how to bring everything that has been separated – nature from culture, individuals from their social ties, disciplines of knowledge from holistic forms of wisdom – back together. The question is how new forms and practices of association and connectedness can be constructed. This course is about modalities of the relational. In our workshop-sessions we’ll read, discuss, and practice various models of the intersubjective and the relational. We’ll reflect on theoretical concepts like Glissant’s Relation, Spivak’s weave, Margulis’ holobiont, Ingold’s mesh, Latour’s Actor Network Theory, and pair these ideas with activities in the classroom. We’ll discuss existing artworks that delve into this realm, and we’ll engage in embodied practices of movement, breathing, conversation and cooking that create a relational, intersubjective realm in the present. Each session will conclude with a soup cooking in the factory. The final project will be a choice between a practice-based artistic project or a theoretical essay on one of these conceptions of interpenetration.
Syllabus
FA292 Animism. Nature as Self.
Module: Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Andreas Weber
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Our world views are undergoing fundamental change. In the „Anthropocene“, boundaries between the human sphere and animals and plants, stones and waters, the atmosphere and the whole „earth system“ are dissolving. There are many emerging work hypotheses trying to come to terms with this. One which is gaining particular traction in both humanities and the natural sciences is animism, the cosmology of indigenous cultures which believe the world is made of persons, not things, with whom humans must act in togetherness. The seminar will explore prominent position of animism in anthropology, philosophy, biology and the arts. Students will engage with these viewpoints on theoretical, practical and artistic levels. We will discuss, among others, ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Philippe Descola, Edoardo Kohn, Freya Mathews, Bayo Akomolafe, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bruno Latour, Francisco Varela and Karen Barad. In practical terms, we will experiment with animistic processes through guided embodied experiences and reflection, also in outdoor settings and in direct contact with the non-human living world. As for animistic cultures the human participation in the broader “society of being” needs to be expressed and enhanced through painting, sculpture, dance and song (all of which from a western perspective are called “art”), the participants will develop their own artistic ways of reflecting on the experiences and the content of the seminar. For mid-term and end-of-term grades, students can choose to either write an academic essay but can also devise open-media artistic projects (e.g. fiction and non-fiction narratives, paintings, videos, podcasts or visual essays) in this class.
Syllabus
HI255 Research-Creation: (Im-)Materialities of 20th/21st Century Migration Regimes
Module: Law, Politics, and Society
Instructors: Marion Detjen, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 14:00-17:15
This cross-campus class, taught in collaboration with Universidad de los Andes (Bogotà, Colombia) and University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), 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 arts, students will develop individual or collaborative open-media artistic projects relating to the (im-)materialities of the “modern refugee”.
Thematically, the course revolves around the bureaucracies that were created to curb and control migration and to react to asylum claims of those made stateless. They mirror a fundamental dilemma in all attempts to find responses to forced migration, throughout the 20th and 21st Century: On the one hand, nation-states and the international community based on nation-states have 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 political 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. Instead, national and international policies and administrations have been focussing predominantly on combating migration as such, a futile endeavour that leaves a trail of bureaucratic failure in its wake.
The „research“ dimension of the course will enquire the materialities of these trails - lists, papers, forms, stamps, technological devices of all kinds for surveillance and control, and the physical traces of migrants handling of it -, as well as address the immaterialities of increasingly digitalised migration regimes. We will read Hannah Arendt, Achille Mbembe, and Walter Benjamin for theoretical grounding, and share lectures and discussion sessions with our partner classes in Bogotá and in Johannesburg. In the „creation“ dimension of the course, research-based artistic projects will be produced. At the end of the course, these projects will be presented in public exhibitions/events in the three cities (Berlin, Bogota and Johannesburg) and on a common website.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric:
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Michael Thomas Taylor
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 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
LT351 Contemporary Cultural Theory: Comparative Approaches to Race, Class and Gender
Module: Global Social Theory / Movements and Thinkers
Instructor: Kathy-Ann Tan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.
In this class, students will be familiarized with comparative approaches in contemporary cultural theory that engage with the central issues of representation and discourse, memory, race, class and gender. By reading the seminal writings of American and continental European thinkers such as Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Lauren Berlant, Audre Lorde and Sylvia Wynter, we will cover the major concepts relevant to an exploration of cultural texts, narratives and discourses. Our discussion of the theoretical texts within a comparative framework will reflect and facilitate the adoption of a broader transnational approach to contemporary cultural theory.
Syllabus
Literature and Rhetoric Advanced Modules
LT212 Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop
Module: Producing Literature
Instructor: Clare Wigfall
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 12:30-15:45
With over sixteen years experience of teaching creative writing, British author Clare Wigfall has developed a method that aims to break down the barriers that inhibit so that the creative process can come naturally. Under her gentle guidance, you will develop a body of new work, learning craft organically through practice and exposure to great writing. The carefully-structured workshops are a springboard, designed to stimulate ideas and encourage experimentation; one or two might even move off campus – how might a museum prove a source of inspiration, for example? A park? The city we live in? Focus will be given to new genres you might not yet have considered, such as fantasy, or magic realism, or how you might weave myths and legends into your work. Also explored will be the subject of how our own experience can shape our fiction, while also considering the issue of how writing fiction can give us scope to imagine places and experiences we’ve never lived in our own lives. You have already begun to develop a voice that is uniquely your own, and will take this further now with opportunities to share your work with a group of fellow writers who you can trust to give you invaluable critique. Alongside this, the reading element of this course will be key; from writers such as Toni Morrison to Carmen Maria Machado, or Katherine Mansfield to Neil Gaiman, the selected reading will cast the net wide to throw you in to the literary sea, also introducing you to writing about writing from authors such as Zadie Smith and Alexander Chee. With a proven track record of inspiring her students to produce award-winning, publishable writing, Clare will talk with you about how to submit work to literary journals. Plus, there’ll be a chance to share new work with the world with a public reading. Open to students who have already taken an introductory fiction workshop, as well as new students with some writing experience under their belt, you are very welcome to make contact with Clare before registration to introduce yourself and ask any questions.
Syllabus
LT285 Literature and the Border
Module: Writer and World
Instructor: Catherine Toal
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
Borders are a fact of geopolitics, possessing greater or lesser degrees of permeability. At the extreme, they are closed, contested, provisional or collapsing, creating new and strange worlds inside their lines or in the event of their disappearance. Even when apparently stable, a border is usually the product of struggle and force. Demarcations characteristic of the modern nation state have been imposed on territories for which this kind of definition is alien. Partitions established to contain the ethnic and religious divisions provoked by imperial or colonial dominance have often perpetuated the conflicts they were supposed to settle. The literary text always creates its own world but frequently has to deal, especially in highly charged political circumstances, with the violence of a border, the experience of life on one or either side of it, and the means of finding an aesthetic expression for these realities. Contemporary literature is preoccupied with the catastrophes surrounding borders to an unprecedented extent, as is clear across genres: fiction in recognizable present-day settings, historical novels, poetry, journalistic studies by novelists, and archival collections already considered literary classics. We read a selection of these compelling works by, among others, Yuri Herrera, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chinua Achebe, David Grossman, Susan Abulhawa, Jenny Erpenbeck, Svetlana Alexievich, Colm Tóibín. Addressing the background and the controversies of the situations of crisis they address, we examine their unique language and form, as well as drawing on theories of sovereignty, identity, space, and power relevant to both literary and political invention.
Syllabus
LT326 Time to Experiment: Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop
Module: Producing Literature / Writer and World // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gavin McCrea
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course times: Tue & Thu 10:45-12:15
As writers, we’re constantly learning how to do what we do. There will never come a moment in our writing career when we will be able to say, “Now I know for certain how this is done.” Ours is, and will remain, the role of the doubter, the questioner, the analyzer, the student, the experimenter.
Where does our writing come from? The answer, simply, is other writing. It is by learning how to read writing that we become writers. In order to grow and develop as writers, we must read regularly and widely. But the quantity of works we read will count for nothing if we do not learn how read carefully. If we do not approach every book, chapter, page, paragraph, sentence as an opportunity to find out what we like and why we like it, what we dislike and why we dislike it, and, importantly, what we will choose to emulate or to recast in our own work. Reading carefully in this way, for this purpose, means slowing down. It means forgetting the race to the end, overcoming the desire to get on to the next story, the next book, and instead approaching each page as a world to immerse ourselves in.
This course, then, is an antidote to fast judgements, fast fashions, speed reading, speed writing. In it, we will slowly and carefully analyze a number of short fictional texts in order to learn specific lessons about certain themes relevant to all fiction writing: consciousness, secrets, voices, desire, body, violence, illness, hatred, history. We will then put these lessons into practice in our own writing.
Each week, at home, we will read a short story or a novel extract. In class we will perform close textual analyses of a number of passages from that week’s text. During these analyses, we will not be overly concerned with rhetorical jargon (although some of that might be useful). Our focus, really, will be on identifying what information the writer is transmitting in a specific unit of text, how she conveys that information, what she seems to hide or elide, what questions she is trying to answer and what further questions her answers raise. Why did the writer convey the information in this way, and not in another? What specific techniques did she use? Faced with the task of conveying similar sort of information, how would we ourselves proceed?
In addition to the reading, we will perform a series of writing experiments. These experiments will spring from our in-class textual analyses. For example, having spent some time in class looking at how the writer constructs a specific transition between the narrative present and the narrative past, we might set ourselves the task of writing a short piece of prose containing a similar kind of transition. We will be invited to share our experiments in class. Here, the idea is to show our writing in a raw state, as fragments that have yet to be built upon or integrated into larger narrative bodies. Structured around specific themes, seminars will be devoted to sharing writing experiments and performing close textual analyses and writing exercises.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics:
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: Thu 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
LT351 Contemporary Cultural Theory: Comparative Approaches to Race, Class and Gender
Module: Theories of Literature and Culture
Instructor: Kathy-Ann Tan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.
In this class, students will be familiarized with comparative approaches in contemporary cultural theory that engage with the central issues of representation and discourse, memory, race, class and gender. By reading the seminal writings of American and continental European thinkers such as Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Lauren Berlant, Audre Lorde and Sylvia Wynter, we will cover the major concepts relevant to an exploration of cultural texts, narratives and discourses. Our discussion of the theoretical texts within a comparative framework will reflect and facilitate the adoption of a broader transnational approach to contemporary cultural theory.
Syllabus
Politics Advanced Modules
SO324 Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences
Module: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences
Instructor: Nassim Abi Ghanem
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 14:00-15:30
Why do people vote the way they do? Why does violence erupt in some states while in other states it does not? Can development aid improve democratization and development? One way of answering these questions is through effective analysis of quantitative data. This course focuses on the different strategies of quantitative statistical analysis. We explore how to read, understand, and critically assess quantitative research. Students will engage in quantitative research design, testing hypotheses, unpacking causal mechanisms, and applying probability and regression analysis tools. Finally, students will learn how to present the interpreted data logically and systematically in research output. In this course, students will also learn the basics of R software to conduct statistical analysis. Towards the end of the course, we will also briefly explore social network analysis (SNA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as alternative quantitative social science methods.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Ethics and Politics:
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 14:00-15:30
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
PS302 Global Public Policies and their Impact on the Global South
Module: Public Policy // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Gale Raj-Reichert
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
This course focuses on examining global public policies and their impacts on lower-income countries located in the Global South. We understand ‘global’ public policy to mean policies which have a cross-border or transnational effect both directly and indirectly. This includes policies developed and enforced at the national level which ‘reach’ countries in the Global South and policies established at the intergovernmental or international level which set out rules for many countries. The aim of the course is for students to understand which questions to ask and generally to critically examine the analytical tools available to assess global policy impacts on economies, communities, and the environment in the Global South. An important aspect of our discussions will be focused on understanding the ways in which different policymaking institutions function and the influence different actors (and their politics) have on the policymaking process and outcomes. The specific global policies and issues covered in the course are climate change, intellectual property rights rules (and their impacts on vaccines), international trade, international labor standards, migration, and foreign aid.
Syllabus
PS328 State Theory: Law, Politics, and Space
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Boris Vormann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 14:00-17:15
Law and politics are embedded in space and its many territorial categories. However, the spatial dimensions of law and politics are not always made explicit in the respective disciplinary traditions. Jurisdiction, sovereignty, non-intervention, even human rights – all these terms are relevant for contemporary debates and would be difficult to operationalize without a clear understanding of their spatial dimension. In the past decades, the importance of territoriality has also been called into question, for instance through processes associated with digitalization and globalization. And yet, the importance of territory persists. At the intersection of legal studies and political science, this course explores key issues and concepts pertaining to space and territoriality with a view to a critical re-assessment of their contemporary importance. The course will be offered in cooperation between the Politics Section of Bard College Berlin (Professor Boris Vormann) and the Department of Law at Freie Universität Berlin (Professor Helmut Philipp Aust).
Syllabus
PS355 War, Peace, and Mediation: Theory and Cases
Module: Public Policy // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Nassim Abi Ghanem
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 17:30-19:00
How and why do violent conflicts erupt and how are they resolved? Why do some states help in resolving conflicts? When are conflict and war amenable to the possibility of being ‘managed’? When is intervention essential or a mediation by third parties merited? Why do attempts at conflict resolution have a mixed record of success? Why do contexts with peace agreements relapse into violent conflict? This course covers the basic concepts in conflict life cycles from prevention to reconciliation. The course also exposes students to theoretical and empirical conceptualizations of conflict management and mediation, featuring a combination of scholarly, policy and practitioner perspectives on international relations in conflict management contexts. Moreover, we will also explore how local civic engagement and mediation by civil society are becoming more prominent in intra-state conflict management processes. In doing so, we pay attention to issues in contemporary debates on the various post-conflict processes—such as disarmament and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR)—analyzing their relevance to creating sustainable and durable peace.
Syllabus
PS386 Governance and Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean
Module: Public Policy
Instructor: Markus Schultze-Kraft
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 15:45-19:00
This course aims to build students’ analytical skills in understanding the relationship between governance and transnational organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, helping them to apply these skills to policy issues related to curbing violent criminal activities and addressing both criminal and crimilegal patterns of governance. From Mexico to Argentina, many regions and locales in the sub-continent are today immersed in a virtual vortex of criminal violence and insecurity. Though not the only cause and driver, organized criminal activities are typically identified as contributing significantly to citizen insecurity and bad governance. The global COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated this situation across the region. The course builds on the lecturer’s long-time experience as an analyst of organized crime, violent conflict and crimilegal governance in Latin America and other parts of the global South and will follow a comparative approach, based on detailed analysis of a number of country cases. It will also be participatory, and small groups of students will share responsibility for analysing the cases chosen for study.
Syllabus
PT351 Civic Engagement
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Kerry Bystrom, Xenia Muth
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
Over the semester we will explore historical, philosophical and practical elements of civic engagement while also investigating the underlying question of what it means to be an engaged citizen in the early 21st century. Together, students will address issues related to political participation, civil society, associational life, social justice, and personal responsibility, particularly in relation to the liberal democratic order (and its rupture). The class reflects a balance between theory and practice, exploring notions of civic life while supporting students to be active and thoughtful participants in the communities in which they are situated. More specifically, we will begin to map the local community engagement landscape in Berlin (with all its fault lines) and connect this into theories of civil society and histories of citizen activism in Europe and globally. This work will feed into engaged student research, participation in local and global initiatives, hand-on project development trainings, and the crafting by each student of a project proposal aimed at improving their local communities (however defined). The course will feature seminar discussions, workshops on interviewing and organizing, and field trips to relevant sites, as well as guest lectures by scholars, activists, members of local NGOs, government officials and foundation representatives.
Syllabus
SE261 Seemingly Inseparable – Reporting and Debating Israel-Palestine, Antisemitism and Racism in German Media
Instructor: Yossi Bartal
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice // (fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
Providing an overview of the ways in which German newspapers cover and administrate debates on the intersection between foreign policy and the politics of memory, this course critically examines different publishing forms – from war reporting abroad and coverage of political conflicts domestically to in-depth interviews as well as the feuilleton commentary--while also offering concrete practice in writing journalistic texts. The course begins with an analysis of how media outlets and political actors shape the discussion during periods of tension in Israel-Palestine. Students will be equipped with media critique skills, will hone their skills at distinguishing how and under which influence reports are written, and what voices and opinions are heard or excluded. The second part of the course focuses on the Achille-Mbembe-Controversy, precipitated in early 2020 following accusations of Antisemitism against the renowned Cameroonian philosopher. Reviewing the numerous essays dealing with legacies of the Holocaust and colonialism, critique of Israel's occupation and the boundaries of free speech, students will gain insights into the making of German national narratives and will have the opportunity to gain practice in feuilletonistic writing.
Syllabus
SE301 Making the Case: Human Rights Research and Reporting
Instructor: Fred Abrahams
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice / Law, Politics, and Society
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:30
This workshop-oriented class teaches the practical skills of a human rights investigator: how to identify the topic and focus of an investigation, how to design an investigative strategy, how to conduct the fact-finding, and how to present findings. Covered topics include research design, interviewing victims and witnesses, interviewing officials, corroborating evidence, using new technologies, consulting experts and using secondary sources, mitigating security risks, and managing personal stress, wellbeing and resilience. Students will develop their writing and presentation skills to communicate human rights findings in clear, concise and compelling ways. Guest speakers from the human rights movement will occasionally join to present their experiences and advice.
Syllabus
SO202 A Lexicon of Migration
Modules: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructor: Zeynep Kivilcim
Course Times: Tue, Wed 17:30-19:00
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
The following courses are cross-listed with Arts and Aesthetics:
FA285 Mesh/Weave/Network
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Asad Raza
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 13:00-19:00 (bi-weekly)
The mindset of Western modernity is one of separation: From the way societies are organised, based on principles of division (e.g. of labour and production), to the separation of knowledge into academic disciplines. For instance what used to be an integrated idea of ‚healing‘ is now separated into medical specialities corresponding to distinct parts of the bodies or organs. Also the arts have been separated: ritual forms have been divided into artistic disciplines to which individual sensory organs are allocated (visual arts for the eyes, music for the ears, dance for the body). Today, however, confronted with the economic, social and ecological consequences of this imperative of separation, the question that concerns us increasingly is how to bring everything that has been separated – nature from culture, individuals from their social ties, disciplines of knowledge from holistic forms of wisdom – back together. The question is how new forms and practices of association and connectedness can be constructed. This course is about modalities of the relational. In our workshop-sessions we’ll read, discuss, and practice various models of the intersubjective and the relational. We’ll reflect on theoretical concepts like Glissant’s Relation, Spivak’s weave, Margulis’ holobiont, Ingold’s mesh, Latour’s Actor Network Theory, and pair these ideas with activities in the classroom. We’ll discuss existing artworks that delve into this realm, and we’ll engage in embodied practices of movement, breathing, conversation and cooking that create a relational, intersubjective realm in the present. Each session will conclude with a soup cooking in the factory. The final project will be a choice between a practice-based artistic project or a theoretical essay on one of these conceptions of interpenetration.
Syllabus
FA292 Animism. Nature as Self.
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Andreas Weber
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Our world views are undergoing fundamental change. In the „Anthropocene“, boundaries between the human sphere and animals and plants, stones and waters, the atmosphere and the whole „earth system“ are dissolving. There are many emerging work hypotheses trying to come to terms with this. One which is gaining particular traction in both humanities and the natural sciences is animism, the cosmology of indigenous cultures which believe the world is made of persons, not things, with whom humans must act in togetherness. The seminar will explore prominent position of animism in anthropology, philosophy, biology and the arts. Students will engage with these viewpoints on theoretical, practical and artistic levels. We will discuss, among others, ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Philippe Descola, Edoardo Kohn, Freya Mathews, Bayo Akomolafe, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bruno Latour, Francisco Varela and Karen Barad. In practical terms, we will experiment with animistic processes through guided embodied experiences and reflection, also in outdoor settings and in direct contact with the non-human living world. As for animistic cultures the human participation in the broader “society of being” needs to be expressed and enhanced through painting, sculpture, dance and song (all of which from a western perspective are called “art”), the participants will develop their own artistic ways of reflecting on the experiences and the content of the seminar. For mid-term and end-of-term grades, students can choose to either write an academic essay but can also devise open-media artistic projects (e.g. fiction and non-fiction narratives, paintings, videos, podcasts or visual essays) in this class.
Syllabus
HI255 Research-Creation: (Im-)Materialities of 20th/21st Century Migration Regimes
Module: Advanced Topics in Global and Comparative Politics
Instructors: Marion Detjen, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 14:00-17:15
This cross-campus class, taught in collaboration with Universidad de los Andes (Bogotà, Colombia) and University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), 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 arts, students will develop individual or collaborative open-media artistic projects relating to the (im-)materialities of the “modern refugee”.
Thematically, the course revolves around the bureaucracies that were created to curb and control migration and to react to asylum claims of those made stateless. They mirror a fundamental dilemma in all attempts to find responses to forced migration, throughout the 20th and 21st Century: On the one hand, nation-states and the international community based on nation-states have 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 political 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. Instead, national and international policies and administrations have been focussing predominantly on combating migration as such, a futile endeavour that leaves a trail of bureaucratic failure in its wake.
The „research“ dimension of the course will enquire the materialities of these trails - lists, papers, forms, stamps, technological devices of all kinds for surveillance and control, and the physical traces of migrants handling of it -, as well as address the immaterialities of increasingly digitalised migration regimes. We will read Hannah Arendt, Achille Mbembe, and Walter Benjamin for theoretical grounding, and share lectures and discussion sessions with our partner classes in Bogotá and in Johannesburg. In the „creation“ dimension of the course, research-based artistic projects will be produced. At the end of the course, these projects will be presented in public exhibitions/events in the three cities (Berlin, Bogota and Johannesburg) and on a common website.
Syllabus
The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and Rhetoric:
GM362 The German Public Sphere
Module: Civic Engagement and Social Justice // (fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement)
Instructor: Michael Thomas Taylor
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 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
LT351 Contemporary Cultural Theory: Comparative Approaches to Race, Class and Gender
Module: Philosophy and Society
Instructor: Kathy-Ann Tan
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
This course is being offered as an OSUN online course and will include students joining from other OSUN universities.
In this class, students will be familiarized with comparative approaches in contemporary cultural theory that engage with the central issues of representation and discourse, memory, race, class and gender. By reading the seminal writings of American and continental European thinkers such as Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Lauren Berlant, Audre Lorde and Sylvia Wynter, we will cover the major concepts relevant to an exploration of cultural texts, narratives and discourses. Our discussion of the theoretical texts within a comparative framework will reflect and facilitate the adoption of a broader transnational approach to contemporary cultural theory.
Syllabus
Electives
EL203 Writer/Artists/Activistas!
Instructor: Ariane Simard
Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate and Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirements
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9-12:15
This course is being offered online jointly with the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning and will include students studying remotely from Kenya and/or Jordan.
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.
Syllabus
FA157 Dance & Community - Building Utopias
Instructor: Jacalyn Carley
Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Wed 9:00-12:15
Community Dance is widely practiced by throughout Europe, offering support and generating self-confidence to every thinkable type of community—often focused on but not limited to communities like refugees, seniors, the handicapped, school classes. We start off with a critical historical overview, including prompts for discussion about the nature of community and the (lost?) promise of utopias. A third of the course time will be dedicated to workshops and practice. In the last third of the semester, students will be mentored and aided in creating their own Community Dance work for a final project. Dance experience is not necessary. Every Body Can Dance.
Syllabus
FA188 The Art of Making Videos
Instructor: Janina Schabig
Fulfills Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement
Credits: 8 ECTS Credits, 4 U.S. Credits
Course Times: Mon 15:45-19:00
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.
Syllabus
IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar: Working Cultures, Urban Cultures
Instructor: Florian Duijsens, Asli Vatansever
Fulfills Civic Engagement Certificate requirement
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits (in combination with an internship)
Course Times: Thu 14:00-15:30
Students enrolled in the Bard College Berlin Internship Program are required to complete the Berlin Internship Seminar, an interdisciplinary course designed to accompany the internship experience. We will meet on a weekly basis and discuss contemporary ways of living and working in Berlin and beyond: What do we mean when we talk about work? Do we need to love what we do? What renders work in/visible? How is work gendered and classed? How is work organized temporally and spatially and how does it, in turn, affect the city and its residents? What distinguishes the spaces in which we live and work today? Which new forms of work have recently emerged in Berlin? Which of them seem to thrive? How do Berlin’s art institutions and citizen-activist organizations operate? Besides in-class discussions, invited lectures, and off-campus visits, the seminar offers a platform for the exchange of observations, reflections, and comments on individual internships.
Students must already be in the process of arranging an internship with Careers Office before registering. If a student has arranged their own internship, they should contact [email protected] to register your internship before enrolling in the course.
Syllabus
SO211 Sociological Investigation of the University
Instructor: Asli Vatansever
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 9:00-12:15
The goal of this course is to (re)think the meaning and function of the “modern university” by following its transformation from its (re)configuration in the era of Enlightenment to today, the “Information Age”, “post-modern”, “post-truth” society, characterized by fast flows of knowledge and financial capital. After a brief introduction to the conceptualization of the university by the Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant and idealists such as Fichte, we will follow how the perception and function of the university changed with the consolidation of the nation-states, enhancement of social-democracy and welfare states, and then with their demise in the era of globalization and ascendency of finance. What kind of discussions have taken place within the universities between public intellectuals and academics in each era? How did the public perception of the university change?What re(formations) and re(formulations) of policies took place at the political and policy-making level? How did the citizens of the nation-state come to see the university as the regime characterized by social democratic values left its place to neoliberal values?Through a close look at mainly three countries, the United States, Germany and Turkey, the readings and discussions in this course will try to answer these and similar questions. The United States and Germany are cases that stand for the conceptualization and materialization of the “modern university”, therefore investigation of the transformation in these countries is crucial. The Turkish case represents the transformation in question in a Southern country in which not only the economic developments but also the hegemonic political and economic paradigms emulate those of the Northern ones. The final session(s) of the course will be devoted to thinking and discussing what the transformations in question mean about the value of knowledge and freedom of thought.
Syllabus
Language Courses
GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group A)
Instructor: Manuel Gebhardt
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group B)
Instructor: Ariane Faber
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Syllabus
GM101 German Beginner A1 (Group C)
Instructor: Jana Fedtke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group A)
Instructor: Nora Freytag
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group B)
Instructor: Rabea Erradi
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group C)
Instructor: Christiane Bethke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group D)
Instructor: Rabea Erradi
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group E)
Instructor: Julia Gehring
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus
GM151 German Beginner A2 (Group F)
Instructor: Julia Gehring
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 15:45-17:15
Syllabus
GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group A)
Instructor: Martin Widmann
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM201 German Intermediate B1 (Group B)
Instructor: Christiane Bethke
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 14:00-15:30
Syllabus
GM251 German Intermediate B2 (Group A)
Instructor: Ariane Friedländer
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 9:00-10:30
Syllabus
GM251 German Intermediate B2 (Group B)
Instructor: Ariane Friedländer
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed & Fri 10:45-12:15
Syllabus
GM301 German Advanced C1
Instructor: Vincent Hessling
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
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Instructor: Ulrike Wagner
Course Times: Mon & Wed 14:00-15:30
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
Fulfills the Transnational Media and Journalism Certificate requirement
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Thu 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.
NB: 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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