English

The course focuses on the principal elements of EU constitutional law, namely: sources of EU law, EU competences, institutions, law-making procedures, judicial procedures, implementation of EU law in the Member States, and the essential aspects of the main EU policies. The course helps develop the ability to analyze the main implications of the EU institutional structure and to determine the overall effects of the law into the municipal legal orders of the Member States; and to illustrate the main trends of the interplay between the Union and its Member States (both internally and on the international scene).

How does racial difference teach us to see, or not to see? This seminar examines the intersection of Modernist aesthetics and racial formation, with a focus on the United States and Europe in the 20th century. From monochrome painting and mid-century furniture to Josephine Baker and Isamu Noguchi, we will analyze how race materializes through form and style. Topics and themes will include: race and abstraction; primitivism in 20th century art; formalism and art historiography; exhibition history. By the end of this course, students will gain an interdisciplinary foundation in conducting aesthetic analysis from a critical race viewpoint. Readings include Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon [1940],” in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997); Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness [1952],” in Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles L. Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967); Stuart Hall and Sarat Maharaj, "Modernity and Difference: A Conversation," in Modernity and Difference, ed. Gilane Tawadros and Sarah Campbell (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2001).

This course covers maritime trade and cargo, the shipping market, the market cycle, supply and demand, freight and cost structure, tramp shipping, and liner shipping. 

This course examines a wide range of Maori writing in English, and situates these works within a vast and vibrant whakapapa of Maori creative production in Aotearoa and beyond. Key themes within the course include: purakau and their contemporary retellings, Maori futurism(s), representations of kai and palate politics, the relationship between birds, writers, and the written word, and narrative sovereignty.

In recent years Machine Learning has started to influence all aspects of human life, and education is no exception. In this seminar course, we will introduce basic concepts of machine learning and education and learn how Machine Learning is employed nowadays to solve day-to-day problems, which are the most common in higher education. The problems include data manipulation, feature engineering, drop-out prediction and visualisation of student characteristics. Students will learn basics of Machine Learning using one of the most prominent Data Science languages R in the context of higher education data.

Employing the theory of Bourdieu throughout the course, students examine the interrelatedness of economy, governance, and society in influencing the choice of where we live. Students focus on the role of culture in nuancing class-based explanations of the relationship between people and place. We consider how housing choices can confer social advantage or disadvantage on individual households. Students discuss the significance for policy makers of placing the social at the center of our understanding of housing choices. We use a series of place-based typologies and phenomenon to relate theory to practice. Examples might include but are not limited to suburbanization, rural second homes, and gentrification.

This course investigates the nineteenth-century roots of contemporary issues in the middle east. It introduces the issues, actors, and processes that have shaped the post-Ottoman region and its neighbors during the past two centuries. The course surveys broad trends in the evolution of the Ottoman Sultanate during the nineteenth century, then focus on themes for discussion and analysis. It also examines the Ottoman state, the diverse communities that made up the empire, and the great powers that surrounded it. The course attends to political, military, economic, social, and cultural developments, attempting to understand historical breaks and continuities that continue to affect the region today. Finally, it critiques analytical categories (nation, class, faith, and gender) while relating them to concrete case studies and asking whether they are relevant to different societies.

This course introduces students to descriptive and analytical methods in structural geology. Geological maps are used to help students analyze structural features (e.g., folds, faults, contacts). 

For this excursion-based course, we will visit the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEN), considering questions around legacy,  historiography, and representation in the telling of electronic dance music’s histories. We will also avail ourselves of experiential opportunities on offer at the museum, such as DJ workshops and artist talks. In addition, we will visit the Robert Johnson nightclub in nearby Offenbach, which will afford firsthand experience as well as an opportunity to think about nightlife ethnography. In the seminar leading up to the excursion, we will explore the histories of German popular electronic music and Detroit techno, discuss nightlife fieldwork, and consider what might happen when museums and electronic music meet.

As possibly the oldest representation of embodied difference, monsters have always served as warnings not to stray off the beaten path. They might warn against the dangers that lurk in unknown territories or against engaging in aberrant behavior so as to avoid degenerating into something monstrous oneself. Monstrosity is thus not only a matter of those fantastical beings that we find in science fiction and fantasy narratives, but has always been attached to human bodies as well, or those who are designated as inhuman or less than human. In this seminar, we will engage with literary representations of monstrosity that blur the lines between the real and the fantastical and thematize monsters as both supernatural and otherworldly, as well as real material beings. Analyzing such literary constructions of monstrosity thus allows us to delve into an unconscious realm of social anxieties regarding human difference and non-normative embodiment with special attention to the intersections of race, gender, and disability.