English

This course examines environmental regulation. It looks at key environmental issues through an examination of environmental policies, legislation and case law at a variety of scales (international, national and state/local). 

This course examines jazz music and its connections to both African-American culture and global social-historical contexts. It covers the development of jazz in the United States, surveying the rise of the music as an African-American art form over the course of the twentieth century, with attention to blues, ragtime, swing, bebop, modal jazz, free jazz, and fusion; and jazz as a transnationally circulating cultural form that is both a product of and a contributor to globalizing trends, examining jazz’s circulations and permutations in contexts ranging from 1930s Shanghai to present-day West Africa.

This course provides insights into one of the darkest, most disturbing, and most formative eras of European history in the 20th century. The place of the Third Reich in German and European history, as well as reflections on continuity, modernity, and radical change, are discussed in detail. The seminars pay particular attention to conflicting interpretations of how the Third Reich came into being, the reasons for its "success," and how a complete breakdown of a civilization was possible. The seminars develop students' capacity to distinguish between fundamental knowledge and historical interpretations. Different methodological approaches to key questions are presented and discussed next to different political interpretations of the Third Reich. The critical use of different theoretical models is presented and encouraged throughout the course.

This course introduces the area of Czech fairytales as a genre within its broader historical, geographical, and cultural context. Furthermore, it describes and surveys the changes in the approach to fairytales within the development of scholarship about them. The course presents historical, psychoanalytical, and philosophical interpretations, as well as anthropological and religious types of theories, and biological and gender or feminist methods of their interpretation. The course respects the connection of the fairytale to other folklore narrative forms like legends, fables, and myths; however, it defines the fairytale as a specific genre. It includes topics such as ethical and moral principles in fairytales, gender and social roles, and historical and political influences on fairytale adaptations.