English

This course provides an introduction to ecology, sustainability and environmental science, introducing a range of biological topics and how scientists approach these topics to solve problems. 

This course explores the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch marked by significant human impact on Earth's ecosystems, climate, and geology. By focusing on pluralizing the Anthropocene, the course examines a diverse range of perspectives, including postcolonial, feminist, indigenous, and ecological frameworks.  The course interrogates how the term 'Anthropocene' can be problematized and expanded, reflecting on how different cultures, knowledge systems, and disciplines engage with the concept.  

This course explores the idea of the Anthropocene in two parts: 

(1) Theory and Concept: The course analyzes how scholars define the Anthropocene with different theoretical backgrounds, providing diverse understanding of nature-social and human-nonhuman relations. 

(2) Case studies: The course dives into various case studies to learn how geographers and anthropologists adopt diverse methods to study the uneven impacts of the Anthropocene across the world.  

This course offers an immersive journey into the world of French luxury, thoughtfully designed to captivate students from various academic and social backgrounds. The course begins with a focus on the history of French fashion, exploring its evolution from the 17th century to its present role as a global leader in style and innovation. Students uncover the cultural and technical advancements that have kept French luxury at the industry’s forefront, while examining how it continues to adapt to changing consumer demands. The course also provides an expanded look at the luxury world, touching on other sectors such as high-end automobiles, watchmaking, jewelry, and hospitality to offer a well-rounded understanding of luxury’s diverse landscape. Building on this historical foundation, the course then shifts to a business perspective, exploring the strategies, management practices, and digital transformations of iconic brands like Chanel, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, and Dior. Students learn how these luxury houses maintain their prestige in a fast-paced, digitally-driven world. To enrich the Paris experience, the course includes field visits to institutions like the YSL Museum and Cartier Foundation, as well as guided excursions to luxury boutiques and hotels. These experiences offer students studying in Paris a unique, hands-on look at the codes of luxury and the art of customer experience, making the most of their time in one of the world’s fashion capitals.

In this course, students examine various important positions on the nature of consciousness including physicalism, dualism, eliminativism, and idealism. Students review both sides of various philosophers’ opinions on whether consciousness can be explained solely in terms of brain activity and if consciousness can arise from the purely physical. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course provides an overview of the dynamics of the global financial and international monetary systems. It develops knowledge of the fundamental concepts needed to understand foreign direct investment, financial flows, international trade, and investment deals. As political risk and economic exposure to global events have become more immediate, special attention is given to the 2007-2012 world banking crisis, the role of central banks in the stabilization of national economies, national debts, and the specific economic challenges to which individual countries have been exposed in varying ways. Alternative views and policy measures to help struggling economies overcome the economic and financial crisis like contracting (or expanding) government spending are assessed and critically analyzed.

This course enables students to work strategically with internal communication in organizations. The purpose is threefold: to understand, explain, and critically reflect on key concepts, theories, and models relevant to the internal communication in organizations; use these to critically analyze, discuss, and assess examples of internal communication in organizations in different situations and under the influence of different contexts; and plan, prepare, and evaluate internal organizational communication material. The course covers key aspects of strategic internal communication in organizations and introduces key concepts, theories, and models within the field of internal communication, including knowledge of opinion formation as a phenomenon, organizational structures, the role and function of internal communication in an integrated strategic perspective, the interaction between communication and organization, and communication between management and employees. The course also deals with the planning and preparation of different types of strategic internal communication in relevant internal communication channels and media such as employee magazines, newsletters, intranet, and internal social media. The course is relevant for students who wish to work with internal communication in a strategic perspective, particularly focusing on managers and employees as active opinion makers of internal communication in relation to specific organizational situations and challenges.

This course introduces students to a wide range of texts (literary, visual, and academic), concepts, ideas, theories, and practices, both historical and contemporary, and the skills they need to analyze them. The course is divided into two 5-week blocks, devoted respectively to reading literary texts, visual cultures, cultural theory and politics, and linguistics. 

Tracing the history of beer from China in 7000 BCE, through to the impact of U.S. federal law and European Union regulations, this course explores the determinants and drivers of the economics of beer. This course includes an examination of the labor market and brewing, technology and innovation, national beer market trends, media and marketing of beer, new and emerging beer markets, cultural and political factors impacting the beer market, and the decline and rise of local, import, and craft beers.

What does the future world of work look like? This course critically evaluates contemporary trends in the changing world of work. The course focuses on these trends with a view to understanding their implications for work, employment, and society. Some issues explored in this course are automation and AI, emotional labor, flexible working, the platform economy, climate change, regulation and the role of the state, and globalization. 

This course examines the abiotic environment; plankton and productivity; cephalopods and fish; adaptations to life in the epipelagic; marine turtles, mammals and seabirds - diversity, distribution, adaptations for feeding and reproduction, key Caribbean species and conservation status; life in the deep sea; and tropical coastal communities.