English

This course explores the practices and techniques related to both script adaptation and original scriptwriting. Their inter-relationship is an important step for students wishing to establish their scriptwriting skills above a foundation level. Both types of scriptwriting are given equal weight as topics and assessed accordingly. Students gain the ability to adapt a pre-existing text (a prose short story) into a film script; an understanding of the practice and techniques of script adaptation; the ability to write an original script that is not based on a pre-existent script; an understanding of the skills and techniques required for original scriptwriting; and the ability to work the format and discipline of scriptwriting to a suitable level.

This course presents Japanese traditional culture and health, through the practice of Bon Dance, or "Bon Odori." Bon Dance is a kind of dance performed at summer festivals in many parts of Japan. This dance features simple movements which represent a traditional sense of beauty; however, it is also a good cardio exercise. Each dance is introduced to the class through an explanation of the cultural and social significance of the dance to foster an understanding of the meanings behind some of the traditional movements. 

Ever since Berlin became the capital of the first German nation state in 1871, it has attracted the attention of German as well as international writers and has featured prominently in fictional as well as non-fictional texts. Observers and visitors from other parts of Germany and from abroad have described and commented on Berlin as the German capital and its political relevance for the nation as a whole, but also as a place that they saw as quite different and disconnected from the rest of Germany. Opinions on the city have always been divided: At different historical junctures and from varied angles, authors have looked at the city with awe and admiration, or with skepticism and bewilderment, highlighting its liberty, modernity, and vibrancy on the one hand, or its ugliness, authoritarianism, or chaos on the other hand. In this course, we will read short literary and journalistic texts by American, English, Swiss, Austrian, Dutch, Russian, and German authors, written between 1870 and 2023 (some originally published in English, some translated into English), describing and commenting on Berlin in imperial Germany, during the Weimar years, in National Socialism, in divided Germany, and since unification. Studying these texts, students will engage with relevant aspects of Berlin history, society, and culture, while reflecting upon the challenges faced with when reading texts from different periods and referring to historical events and figures. 
 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course provides knowledge of the multilateral trade system (the WTO system) and international investment law. The course teaches the ability to recognize the interests underlying those rules and legal instruments to enforce them, especially through the dynamics of argumentation emerging from international litigation. The course contains: an overview of the WTO system; the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO; the most favored nation clause; the national treatment principle; GATT Article XX trade & non-trade values; the WTO TBT Agreement; the precautionary principle and the SPS Agreement; the New Government Procurement Agreement; the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs); China in the WTO; DSM the cases concerning natural resources; WTO and climate change; WTO and energy; the new generation of EU Free Trade agreements; principles of non discrimination and of fair and equitable treatment; direct and indirect expropriation; interpretation and application of investment treaties; investment dispute settlement mechanisms; transparency in investment arbitration proceedings; investment and sustainability issues; and protection of foreign investment, environmental, and human rights protection. For students who have not previously attended a course on International Law, it is advised to read Jan Klabbers, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

This course examines how prominent modern Western thinkers addressed philosophical issues within their historical and intellectual context. It traces the intellectual trajectory from Hobbes' social contract theory, through Mandeville, to the French and Scottish Enlightenment, culminating in the development of political economy by Adam Smith.

Berlin is a city layered with history: a palimpsest of ruins, reconstructions, and marks of the past, even of futuristic imaginations that are now history. These layers can seem romantic and invited the modern flaneur to imagine Berlin alongside other cosmopolitan and urban projection screens. But the multi-layered city also implies a casting aside, a covering up, digging up, and hiding. The ruins of Berlin tell a story of an injured city, whose wounds are variously exposed to lay the finger on the wound of historical reckoning, or plastered in a vain attempt to heal, or return to a state prior to injury, as artist Kader Attia put it about the city of Berlin. The city as a multi-layered palimpsest thus reveals psycho-affective and political strategies of future-making and heritage-mobilization. In this seminar, we trace and dig into the difficult, awkward, eerie, uncomfortable heritage of the city and speak to stakeholders involved in its transition: curators, activists, artists, citizens. The seminar will produce a modular book-case, which can be unpacked into a mini-exhibition, featuring students’ own profiled “difficult heritage” sites of the city with a brief problematization. These loose pages will be put together in a box to create a mobile, modular book-exhibition. Among the sites that may be visited are: Zionskirche, Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Stasi Archive and headquarters, Humboldt Forum, Holocaust Memorial and the Sinti Roma Memorial, exhibition "looking back” at Museen Treptow-Köpenick. The seminar focuses on field visits with methodological exercises, which introduce students to diverse ways of doing research that they will build on to articulate their own research outcomes in a multimodal portfolio.

Students focus on contemporary forms and practices of Malay families and households, the underlying concepts in family studies, and prevalent notions of the Malay family and household. A major focus is the changing nature of Malay family and household structures and their diverse forms. Students analyze the dynamic social relationships in households from different perspectives. The course explores how Malay families design family styles in a context of changing societies and is targeted for students interested in family studies.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course develops an appropriate knowledge base of theories of gender in relation to cultural processes and an understanding of the relevance of gender as a lens to analyze operations of power. In addition, it develops a good awareness of methodological issues in the study of gender and space/place and their mutually constitutive nature. The course focuses on the analytical skills needed for digesting complex theories to put theories to use in engaging with contemporary debates inside and outside of academia. Finally, this course develops appropriate and diverse research and communication skills where theory can be applied in projects outside of the classroom. This course explores the construction and lived realities of gender in its intersection with race, space, and place. Exploring “gender” as a fluid, socially, and spatially constructed category, the course guides through the ways that gender, race, and space intertwine in theory and in lived experience, both historically and in present times. Taught through interdisciplinary contributions ranging from social, feminist, queer, and affect theories – across disciplines such as anthropology, political geography, cultural studies, architecture - the course examines the diverse and interconnected understandings, experiences, and effects of “gender” as a system of meaning-making and power across spaces, places, and historical times. The course includes gender and feminist theories, starting from the nature/culture divide through to the contestation and dissolution of gender binaries. The course further examines the interface between gender theory and a variety of other theoretical perspectives applied to the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including postcolonialism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism. The course also investigates central questions of epistemology and methodology in relation to the application of gender theories in the field of cross-cultural studies. The main focus running through the course is the body, and body politics. The class pays particular attention to introducing diverse feminist trajectories and embodied politics, including Black feminism, Islamic feminism, feminist liberation movements in the Global south, and others.

In this course we will examine how existing network layers are protected, how to verify the security of a protocol, and how to improve the dependability. We will specifically learn about the common vulnerabilities in the current Internet, such as botnets, viruses, denial-of-service attacks, etc., and design principles to overcome these issues in the future. We will also learn about the security benefits and challenges of network virtualization technologies, about air-gapping, as well as automated network testing methods and fuzzing.

What is good reasoning? The course answers this question by studying the mechanics of reasoning. Students learn what an argument is, what the difference between validity and soundness is, and what it means to say that an argument is valid in virtue of its form. Students are introduced to various strategies and pitfalls in reasoning. In addition, to hone analytical skills, students are given arguments—drawn from philosophy and other areas—to unpack and evaluate.