English

This course introduces some major theories of international relations, providing students with a better understanding of world events and opportunities to critically engage with theories to assess their usefulness and limits. The course aims to equip students with intellectual tools with which they can better navigate themselves in the world as broadly informed and critically minded global citizens.  

The technological advances associated with Virtual Reality (VR), as well as its close cousins such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR), represent a fundamental shift in how humans experience the digital realm. Using devices such as VR-headsets, we can now access digital environments full of computer-generated simulations in a way that allows for a more intuitive kind of interactive experience than is typically afforded by more familiar uses of computers. In recent years, via devices such as the Oculus Rift, VR-technology has become increasingly accessible in the home and it is anticipated to become even more ubiquitous in the near future.

This class aims to examine a range of philosophical questions associatedwith VR. As we shall see, VR gives us new ways to both articulate classic philosophical problems and also to sharpen those problems. The relevant philosophical questions are wide-ranging, encompassing topics in epistemology (“Can you know you are not in a virtual world?”), metaphysics (“Are virtual worlds real?”), and value theory (“Can you live a good life in a virtual world?”). In examining these issues, we will focus on David Chalmers’ (2022) treatment of VR in his pioneering book Reality+, where Chalmers argues for a range of bold answers to these questions (and others): that we cannot know that we are not in a virtual world, that virtual worlds are just as real as non-virtual worlds, and that it is possible to lead a meaningful and valuable life in a virtual reality. By the end of the class, students will not only have been introduced to many of the most central philosophical problems, but will have further evaluated both the ways in which technology can shed light on old problems in philosophy and the ways in which philosophy can shed light on new problems about technology.

The media landscape and associated industries are in a constant state of evolvement, repeatedly undergoing transformations in their manner of production and positioning within social and thus market contexts. These dynamic processes of change within the broader field of media products and services are often intertwined with and conditioned by associated innovations in the enabling and underlying technological frameworks employed to produce, distribute and consume them. Innovations in communication technology thus also entail an impact on individual, social and psychological aspects of modern life. While this impact has long been influential, pressures of digitization and digital transformation have been making the need for a scholarly assessment of aforementioned processes ever more apparent. In this seminar we will thus explore current research and theory aiming to shed light on the intricacies of such developments, getting to know different dimensions of innovation and connecting them to practical examples of how these processes take shape within the wider media landscape. The course thus offers a rather broad perspective on what characterizes media innovation, how it develops, and what structural conditions facilitate and shape it.
 

This is a course in the history of ideas that introduces students to important shifts in the ways in which history, society, and politics have been thought about from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The course covers key figures in the history of political thought and philosophy, including Niccolo Machiavelli, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, Mohandas Gandhi, and Hannah Arendt, and addresses influential debates about such issues as the relationship between politics and morality, the justification for violence, the nature and causes of inequality, the rise of capitalism, imperialism, and the rights of women. Attention throughout is focused on a careful scrutiny of primary sources. By the end of the course, students have deepened their understanding of some of the critical issues that have dominated modern history.

This course covers the strategic aspects of facilities management: strategy formulation, planning, studying options, delivery and review. Emphasis is on the strategy and business of the organization and how this translates into the outcomes for the physical workplace. Topics include strategic facilities management framework; the need for coordination between workflow and space; facilities management system and tools; the procedures; automation; integrated FM systems; and strategic FM case studies.

This  course explores the theoretical and practical intersections of filmmaking, social impact, and activism in international relations. It does so with a core focus on how filmmaking has been used to explore phenomena related to humanitarian issues globally, especially those linked to contexts of conflict, migration, and violence. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the course delves into the rich scholarship of visuality across the social sciences, introducing that work both theoretically and practically in three main ways. First, the course engages with critical interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of visual media within contexts of violence through theoretical literature and audio-visual material. Second, it explores practical skills in visual research methodologies. As such, in this section of the course, students develop a short filmmaking project of their own. Workshop-format sessions are offered to develop the skills necessary to achieve this. Thematically, the course explores how filmmaking can illuminate questions concerning violence, humanitarianism, conflict, and migration in ways that connect local (i.e., Copenhagen) and global contexts. In addition, guest lectures inspire and connect students to experts in the field. Finally, the course reflects on broader questions, debates, and dilemmas that concern the use of filmmaking for social impact, activism, and/or political intervention. This ranges from the critical examination of storytelling techniques, ethical considerations, and the influence of the filmmakers situated gaze (i.e., positionality) on crafting visual narratives. The course engages these issues by collaboratively reflecting on the filmmaking project that each student develops in the preceding section of the course. Overall, this course provides a nuanced understanding of the transformative potential of filmmaking, alongside tools to navigate the many ethical challenges intrinsic to visual research.

This course offers a critical view on the current mainstream economic and financial model, including its exhaustion, contradictions, and unsustainability. It explores the potential that a new approach to the use of money could have to overcome the main global challenges that society faces, and which are mainly caused by the current economic and financial model. The course presents a new approach based on the alignment between social, ethical, and environmental aspirations on the one hand, and on the management of economic and financial activity on the other.

This course introduces the fundamental concepts of problem solving by computing and programming using an imperative programming language. It is and introductory course to computing. Topics include computational thinking and computational problem solving, designing and specifying an algorithm, basic problem formulation and problem solving approaches, program development, coding, testing and debugging, fundamental programming constructs (variables, types, expressions, assignments, functions, control structures, etc.), fundamental data structures (arrays, strings, composite data types), basic sorting, and recursion.

In this course, we will address two related questions: 1) Why were queer creators largely responsible for the introduction of modernity in American art and 2) why do we so often find that queer social and political dissent found form in, and as, aesthetic dissent as well? In creating new forms for art that often seem far removed from any traditional definition of sexuality, queer artists pushed the boundaries of normativity, leading to new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and thinking that often dared to encode queer meanings as part of their formal innovation. Were queer artists driven by a utopian hope that in a more modern world, the egregious homophobia/transphobia of the past would finally be no more? And finally we will ask about the social and political usefulness of forms of queer political dissent if those forms still remain illegible as queer to a wider audience. Throughout, new methods informed by queer, gender, and critical race theory will be utilized.

In this course, students achieve an understanding and appreciation, in as integrated a form as possible, of some mathematical techniques which are widely used in theoretical physics.