English

This course introduces ways of thinking about culture and society in an international frame. “Culture” and “society” are familiar yet difficult terms. The main purpose of this class is to arrive at a sense of why each of them represents something important, something that speaks to everyday, real life and not just the dominant accounts of what is going on. It will introduce students to some of the key terms, techniques, and interpretive strategies that enable them to think about culture and society in complex ways. Thinking in this sense means being familiar with a range of concepts, issues, and “isms” and being able to relate them to other texts and problems. But to think is also to read. Thus we will also study the ways of reading in its broadest and narrowest senses – how we make sense of texts and problems and do “readings” of them. To do this we must place texts into their contexts and analyze them rhetorically. This includes the ability to do “practical criticism” or “close reading” – to make advanced sense of the words on the page, or what people actually say and do.

This course offers a holistic exploration of China's engagement in global governance, emphasizing its relationships and interactions with key regions worldwide. Students will examine China's foreign policies and initiatives, focusing on its engagements with Central Asia, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Through detailed case studies and critical analysis, students will gain insights into the multifaceted nature of China's global initiatives and their impact on regional geopolitics, economic landscapes, and diplomatic relations.

Brands are at the core of the business success and financial power of the world’s most successful international companies. The critical importance of building and effectively managing strong global brands has never been as pressing as today, as the other sources of lasting competitive advantage in the market erode rapidly or collapse (incl. access to technological, manufacturing or financial resources). While almost any new product or technology can be replicated rapidly and cheaply by competition, a well-established brand and its relationships with the consumers cannot, which makes it a source of lasting and highly resilient competitive advantage for the long-term financial success of the business. As such, this course features course lectures and in-class discussions covering case studies and simulation tools. Presentations, readings, projects, and a computer-based international marketing simulation game, Country Manager, are utilized in this course. The simulation entails selecting a new Asia market for entry, establishing a brand presence in that market, and expanding into additional foreign markets.  

This course explores issues of crime and detection in a variety of literary texts from different historical contexts and from a variety of European and, depending on staff availability, also Latin American countries. This is done in relation to the main tropes of the genre and a range of theoretical approaches. It considers the contexts in which the texts appear and how crime fiction addresses ideological and social issues.
 

The course introduces the rapid growing field of health psychology, which could be defined as an interdisciplinary field concerned with the application of psychological knowledge and techniques to health, illness and health care. The primary purpose of health psychology is to understand and improve the well-being of individuals and communities. A better understanding of psychosocial factors and behaviors associated with health outcomes would inform strategies or policies aimed to promote health, prevent illness, and enhance the quality of health care by facilitating changes in beliefs and behaviors about health.  

This course seeks to answer several fundamental questions: Which factors control life in the ocean? How do we know what we know about the ocean? What's at the bottom of the ocean? How does the water in the ocean move? How are human activities and climate change altering the ocean?  

The goal of this course is to give students an introduction to econometrics with applications to empirical problems in economics and policy research. While some mathematical derivations will be presented, the emphasis will be on gaining an intuitive understanding of the principles of econometrics analysis.

The course covers a total of 10 sections, which are 

1) Introduction; 

2) Simple regression model; 

3) Multiple regression model – Estimation; 

4) Multiple regression model – Inference; 

5) Asymptotic properties; 

6) Heteroskedasticity; 

7)Further specification issues; 

8) Limited dependent variable models; 

9) Panel data analysis; 

10) IV and 2SLS estimation.

How do governments support families in reconciling work and life choices? What choices do women take in terms of working life, reproduction, and political preferences? What are the consequences in terms of welfare institutions and gender inequality? This course aims to combine the three strands of literature on political economy, welfare state studies, and gender issues to instruct students about the importance of a gender-based perspective in learning how different institutions, interest groups, and ideas contribute to gender equality. The course provides students with a series of topics discussed in PE, welfare, and gender literature. Students will become familiar with concepts such as bargaining power, discrimination practices in hiring, and motherhood penalty. The second part of the course focuses on specific examples from East Asia and Europe based on the three “I”s of PE studies: interest groups, institutions, and ideas, and how they improve chances for gender equality in different political economies. The third part of the course facilitates students’ direct involvement in specific cases by having them exercise their critical skills through discussions and presentations aimed at identifying policy solutions to problems of gender inequality