English

This course offers a range of approaches to contemporary conversations around embodiment and ideas of normativity. In particular, it familiarizes students with representations of physical and mental difference in film, social media, and literature within and beyond European and North American contexts. Featured themes include disability and identity, health and constructions of the self, mental difference, and the quest for political recognition.

In this course, students explore ten of the “big questions”: What do I know? What is consciousness? Who am I, and do I exist? Do I have free will? Does God exist? What are space and time? What are numbers? What should I do? What is justice? What is the meaning of life? To find answers to these questions, students learn essential skills of a philosopher: first, reading philosophical texts, focusing on how to extract and present a philosophical thesis and argument in a clear, logical way; and second, practicing creative, critical thinking and impromptu discussions by participating in philosophical discourse with peers. Students also learn to write philosophical arguments of their own in essay-form.

Since the 1990s the term “new media” has become associated with digital media, but throughout the 20th century it was used to refer to any image technology of recent vintage. Thus, during the 1920s, artists would refer to photography or film as “new media.” This seminar picks up this history at a later point, in the late 1960s, when the “electronic” medium of video became available to visual artists. It traces how video was adopted by European and American artists and, in particular, how the medium was defined in relation to more conventional media, such as painting or sculpture, or in relation to television as a mass medium. Certain unique characteristics of video can be highlighted (e.g. liveness or feedback), however not all artists who used video were concerned with establishing a separate “discipline” of video art. Video was also instrumental to a form of “artivism” during the seventies, which mirrors comparable developments in contemporary art. Today, the terms “film” and “video” tend to be used interchangeably, but this is largely due to the introduction of digital video in the 1990s. The seminar pursues a genealogy of digital art, which originates in the 1960s, and trace it into the present, discussing the role of artistic practice within an “algorithmic culture” and the impact of artificial intelligence on the current status of the image.

This course equips students with the background knowledge and understanding of concepts that link atomic and molecular physical chemistry to macroscopic behavior of gasses, liquids, and solids.

This course reviews fundamental concepts in economic theory and presents some of its most successful applications. The first part of the course consists of an introduction to auction theory. Auctions have been widely used to allocate spectrum licenses, drilling rights or central bank lending against collateral; their design is therefore of immediate practical concern. The theory, drawing on mechanism design, allows us to analyze what makes auctions desirable, how different formats compare, and tackle issues such as strategic entry, collusive behavior, or allocative externalities. The course is strictly theoretical and cover fundamental issues, most importantly the revenue equivalence theorem. From here students embark on an eclectic tour, covering issues relating to competition policy and auction design, and exploring connections with competitive markets and nonlinear pricing. The second part of the course surveys concepts in non-cooperative game theory and introduces students to game theoretic modeling in economics. After setting up the primitives of the game theory framework, different solution concepts are analyzed with an emphasis on economic applications including bargaining, voting, communication, and matching.

This course explores issues of economic development in a globalizing world. Today, trade policy is at the forefront of the development agenda, and it is a critical element of any strategy to fight against poverty. This renewed interest in trade liberalization does not come from dogma, but instead is based on a careful assessment of development experience over the last 50 years. This course examines how multilateral trade cooperation in the World Trade 2 Organization (WTO) helps developing countries create and strengthen institutions and regulatory regimes that will enhance the gains from trade and integration into the global economy. The course also surveys how the growth of regional trading blocs affects developing countries that are turning to regionalism as a tool for economic development. 

Prerequisite: Principles of International Commerce (Highly Recommended).

This is an advanced course in psychological statistics. The objective of the course is to gain knowledge of multivariate statistics especially non-experimental, cross-sectional data. The course covers how to select, conduct, interpret, and report quantitative statistical analyses to help answer research questions that involve multiple dependent variables. Students are expected to have taken PSY104 and PSY223. R and R Studio will be used as main statistical packages. 

The course History of Economic Thought provides a broad overview of the history of economics as a science. The major schools of economic thought and many of the greatest economic thinkers in history are explored. Their contributions, taking into account the proper historical context are studies. The course emphasizes not only the strengths of the theories, but also their deficiencies and the various ways in which other economists have dealt with these deficiencies. Knowledge and understanding of first year and second year microeconomics and macroeconomics (intermediate level) is required.

This course examines how the University of Berlin (now Humboldt University) became Europe's philosophical center, tracing its evolution from its revolutionary founding in 1810 through its various transformations. By exploring the dynamic relationship between the university's philosophers and Berlin's cultural and political life, this course follows how philosophical ideas developed within its walls and resonated beyond them. The course examines key figures who taught, studied, or lectured at the university—from Hegel's influential tenure and the Young Hegelians, through Dilthey's establishment of the human sciences and Cohen's Neo-Kantianism, to the philosophical responses to war, division, and reunification. Furthermore, students explore how the University of Berlin shaped major philosophical movements while being shaped by Berlin's dramatic historical transformations: from Prussian reform era through imperial expansion, from Weimar culture through Nazi persecution, from Cold War division through reunification. By examining philosophical texts alongside historical documents and cultural materials, students understand how the University of Berlin fostered philosophical innovations that responded to and influenced some of the most significant political and cultural developments of modern Europe.

The course focuses on the molecular and pharmacological foundations of psychiatric diseases. Based on understanding of the normal brain processes involved in the functioning of the brain (and focusing on regulatory, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of neuroscience), pathological processes in anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and psychotic disorders are covered. Current treatments and new treatment options are part of an endeavor to initiate students in the exciting story of the (dys)functioning brain and its behavioral consequences. Each week expert lectures illustrate relevant topics in each domain studied. Several psychiatric disorders are explained from a clinical perspective by a psychiatrist and from a neurobiological perspective by a researcher in that particular area. The process of conducting an experiment to presenting the scientific data is reviewed. Students work individually or in small groups on each (CNS disease) topic and produce weekly products (presentations). Participants write a publication and get a walkthrough of the scientific review process. All this is performed in the framework of the development of new innovative therapeutics for CNS disorders.