English

The contemporary era shows a proliferation of film production from all over the African continent, and in this course, students become familiar with some of the most significant developments in narrative styles, genres, themes, and aesthetics in contemporary African cinemas. The course also includes discussions of suitable theoretical and critical frameworks in which to analyze and interpret these new films and film movements.

This course looks at the life and lasting legacy of Alexander the Great. It begins with Alexander’s father Philip and the troubled relations he had with his son.  From there it studies Alexander’s rise to power in Macedon and his conquest of the Persian Empire; examining his army, strategy, and tactics - and those of his opponents. Students also look at what motivated Alexander throughout his short life and at the nature of the empire that he constructed. 

This course is an exploration of scholarly and popular perspectives pertaining to rite and ritual, life-cycle, and annual cycle including funerals, wakes, and weddings. This course advances and deepens students' understanding of time, temporality, and periodicity in vernacular culture and everyday life in general. Topics include celebration and festival, rites, and rituals as well as traditions around wakes, patterns, and pilgrimages. The contexts of these traditions in contemporary society is examined throughout the course.

This course covers well-being, a key issue in practical philosophy. Topics that might be covered include theories of well-being (hedonism, desire theories, objective theories, hybrid theories); the relation between momentary and lifetime well-being; particular prudential goods (achievement, friendship etc.); disability and well-being; the nature and badness of pain; prudential reasons; the well-being of children and nonhuman animals.

Why is diversity good for businesses? What can leaders do to make their organizations more inclusive? This course explores these and other questions by introducing students to a range of theories and practical issues relevant to managing diversity in contemporary organizations. Students learn why inclusion matters, how diversity relates to business and organizational success, and explore case studies related to different dimensions of diversity like gender, age, race and so on. The course discusses various theories that help us understand why diversity and inclusion issues continue to persist in organizations and the labor market. For instance, why are some professions continue to be male- or female dominated? Where does gender pay gap comes from? Can recruitment be unbiased? The course then explores how to apply theory to practice and explore how to design and deliver effective diversity initiatives in organizations and consider the role of managers and leaders in fostering organizational inclusion. 

This course covers the principles and practice of modern computer communications through studying network abstractions, protocols, architectures, and technologies at all levels of the five-layer reference model.

This course explores the art of Europe in the long 15th century (approximately 1380-1520) with particular attention to religious culture and belief; how gender and the body were understood and expressed; the role of pilgrimage, suffrages and the saints; the differences of artistic expressions between northern Europe (e.g. Flanders) and southern (Italy); the art of crises such as witchcraft, plague and religious reform; and the ways in which naturalism and humanism challenged existing modes of artistic expression. Students also look at whether the view of the period as one steeped in pessimism, the macabre and thoughts of decay, known according to the formulation of Jan Huizinga as the "waning of the Middle Ages" is still useful. The dominant centers to be examined are the cities of Flanders and Italy, but the art of northern France, England, Germany, and elsewhere is also drawn on.

The analogy between the intelligence analyst and the academic, evoked above by the spy fiction writer John le Carré, is theme of this course. The course teaches students about the function of intelligence in the 20th and 21st centuries, and promotes reflection on the nature of scholarly work. The connection between scholars and the spies is not just a fanciful one dreamed up by novelists. During the world wars and the Cold War, academics swelled the ranks of Anglo-Students learn about the problems of gathering evidence, interpretation, analysis, presentation, and distribution of intelligence. 

Social media is an important part of our everyday lives, for better or worse. It has the power to bring people together but also to threaten democracy. This course looks at social media through an economics lens, analyzing how it shapes the incentives of users, platforms, firms, news organizations, politicians, and governments. To do so, it reviews basic models of individual and firm behavior, borrowing tools from the most “rational” economic frameworks but also covering important psychological biases from the behavioral economics literature. Armed with this toolkit, the course reviews frontier empirical literature, studying questions such as: How can we incentivize the production of “good” content and mitigate harmful content? Are the incentives of platforms aligned with users’ interests? What are the consequences of social media algorithms optimizing for engagement? Do algorithms cause echo chambers? What are the political effects of social media? Does it harm users? This course contributes to the education program by showcasing how to apply economic knowledge to answer some of the most pressing challenges in our society.

This course introduces students to the leading theories and frameworks in comparative politics, with a broad focus on political systems, institutions, and behaviors across different countries and regions. The course addresses critical questions, including why some countries are democracies while others are dictatorships; which factors contribute to the rise of populism, and how institutions shape political outcomes.