English

This course covers the main dementia subtypes and language change associated with each. In lab sessions, students work with language samples to understand the linguistic profiles of dementia first-hand.

This course examines the evolving cultural dimensions of the digital domain. It examines moral issues, including privacy, surveillance, and hacking, as well as the political implications of our online lives. It also examines the aesthetic potential of the digital and investigates key concepts such as “virtuality,” “interactivity,” “hypertexts,” “simulation,” “cyborgs,” and “cyber-subcultures.” Media synergy and depictions of cyberculture in the cinema, literature, and other art forms will also be considered. 

This course provides a synthetic study of the history, politics, and political economy of modern Ukraine. Students study history up to independence in 1991, the formation of post-Soviet Ukraine in the 1990s and 2000s, and the attempts to reform it via the Orange Revolution and Maidan Revolution/Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14. Students look at the reasons for the election of a comedian Volodymyr Zelensky as President in 2019. Particular attention is paid to the theme of national identity, and to the complex historical interrelationship between Ukraine and Russia. Students also explore Russia’s motives for invasion in 2014 and 2022 and Ukraine’s will to resist.

The course addresses the complex relationship between systems of education and the society in which these systems are located. Students study theories concerning the form and use of education systems. By studying historical and more contemporary examples, they are introduced to the varying social influences that shape school systems.

Students learn to identify and remove simple trends and seasonalities from time series data; describe the properties of stationary time series and their autocorrelations; define various time series probability models (ARMA, ARIMA, GARCH); construct time series probability models from data and verify model fit; define the spectral density function and understand it as a distribution of energy in the frequency domain; compute the periodogram and smoothed versions; and analyze multivariate time series.

This course covers generalized linear models, some major statistical learning tools, and models for complex causal relationships, mainly in the context of social sciences. Lectures are combined with practical computer lab tutorials in order to illustrate the applications of the theoretical tools. The analysis is carried out using the statistical software environment R, which is freely available under the GNU General Public License.

This course examines behavioral economics, which incorporates insights from psychology and neuroscience into economic analysis. It covers decision-making under uncertainty, decision-making over time, social preferences, and non-standard beliefs. It will relate theories to empirical evidence and applications, including procrastination, labor supply, finance, and policymaking. 

This course explores the 19th- and 20th-century development of crime fiction, with a double focus on the subgenres of detective fiction and of the psychological thriller, which flourished in relation to the relevance psychoanalysis acquired as an interpretative paradigm of the human. Its aim is to illustrate the complexity of a genre that was reductively considered in the past as structurally formulaic and critically uninteresting, but which has recently obtained increasing attention and recognition as a significant literary phenomenon.

This cross-media genre is explored as a ‘field of tension’ in order to study the changing status of both detection/detectives (due to the development of forensic science) and of crime/criminals (due to the continuous reshaping of laws and social norms). The course investigates the interplay between aspects of the detective such as mind and body (thinking machines versus vulnerable detectives), intellect and emotions (how do these apparently opposed dimensions concur to the personality of fallible and infallible detectives?). Students also utilize the critical category of gender to investigate authorial issues and characterization.

Upon completing this course, students acquire an in-depth knowledge of the history of English literature. They obtain critical insight into a selection of literary works and can evaluate their literary qualities, analyzing them with the help of precise critical metholodogies. They acquire the theoretical tools needed to recognize the formal, thematic and stylistic components of the works included in the syllabus, relating them to their historical and cultural contexts. Students discuss, translate, and relate the contents of these works from a linguistic, historical, and philological viewpoint.

In this project students engage in a deep reading of a text linked to seminal themes and issues in the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences. Deep reading is a process of thoughtful and deliberate reading through which a reader actively works to critically contemplate, understand and ultimately enjoy a particular text to the fullest extent possible. Rather than selectively skimming for facts or speed-reading for summaries, the process of deep reading means slowing down, re-reading and even stopping periodically to more fully contemplate specific pages or passages. Having considered and recognized what a text says, deep reading goes a step further and strives to reflect upon the broader implications or consequences of the text, i.e. what does the text ‘do’? Although deep reading is a profoundly personal experience, within the context of problem-based learning the process of deep reading also rests on the premise that profound understanding and appreciation of a text emerges through group-based discussion and deliberation. A single seminal text (classic or contemporary) or cohesive set of readings will be assigned by tutors. Tutorial group meetings and individual and collaborative work. Final paper in the format of an extended book review, presentation, and reflective essay.

This course explores the related topics of war and security. It is divided into three parts. The first part looks specifically at the idea of war, particularly how the idea of war has been conceptualized within the field of strategic studies and the tactics of war. The second section considers how these traditional notions of war and security have been questioned; specifically, it looks in depth at two key issues that have challenged traditional perceptions of war and security. These are the rise of non-state threats (i.e. terrorism) and the concept of human security. The third section looks at a range of contemporary issues in security studies, such as nuclear proliferation, genocide, and cybersecurity.