English

This course examines the history of Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries: the growth of Islam and Christianity, the impact of European colonialism, the development of nationalism, and the variety of different political and social outcomes after independence

The course focuses on Gaelic song and its role in society. The approach is thematic, and the areas to be addressed include song and sense of place, religion, the emigrant experience, the role of the township bard, and community and labor. The aim is to show how song interacts with the community. Performance is emphasized, and the course draws on recordings housed in the School of Scottish Studies Archives at the University of Edinburgh as well as on live sung examples.

This course introduces advanced economic concepts relevant for analyzing problems and policies relating to the environment, natural resources, and climate change using theories and analytical tools from microeconomics and macroeconomics. Additionally, the course introduces optimal control theory, which is applied to various problems within environmental and resource economics.

This course aims to provide students with a basic understanding of the interdisciplinary field of law and economics, as well as the ability to analyze social phenomena from a combined perspective of law and economics.  The first half of the course focuses on introducing fundamental theories in law and economics, while the second half involves a critical analysis of real-world legal cases in competition law from a law and economics standpoint. 

The first part of the course addresses the economic rationale underlying the creation and implementation of legal rules, enabling them to develop their critical thinking skills in designing efficient laws. Specifically, the study covers the economic reasoning behind areas of law such as property, tort, and contract, enhancing students' capacity to select the most efficient legal rules. 

The second part of the course examines real-world legal cases in the field of competition law, in various jurisdictions such as the US and the EU. Through these case studies, the class will observe the dynamic interaction between law and economics. Additionally, through comparative analysis, the class will gain insights into how to design laws that are best suited for specific societies by taking relevant circumstances into account.

This course provides an introduction to the study of biogeography. Bridging the fields of ecology and geography, biogeography is the study of the spatial patterns of biological diversity and its causes. Students identify how historical, physical, and biological factors affect present and past distributions of individuals, species, populations, communities, and ecosystems. The actions of humans are a critical force impacting other species, and the human influence on past, present and future species distributions is a central topic in this module.

This course introduces a number of approaches to understanding the relationship between politics and economics, the state, and markets. The course focuses on different perspectives on, and key concepts in, political economy, as emphasized or challenged in major works in the field. The themes which the course looks at include (i) the role of class and interests, (ii) culture and the economy, (iii) the embeddedness of markets, (iv) markets versus hierarchy, (v) the role of institutions, and (vi) the distribution of capital. Within each theme, students discuss key contributions to the different approaches, including works by Smith, Marx, Weber, Keynes, Polanyi, Hayek, Olson, Ostrom, and Piketty. 

Survivors of trauma often only have fragmented memories of the overwhelming event. With its discontinuous form, its division into individual panels, some critics argue, graphic narrative may be particularly suited for representing the experiences and perspectives of traumatized people. In the course, we will investigate this connection, focusing on texts such as Fun Home, One! Hundred! Demons!, Maus, and others.

An individual project on the ethics of nature.

Students are introduced to environmental sociology with a focus on the interactions between human societies and the natural environment. By focusing on this two-way interaction, the course examines key theoretical perspectives, debates, and issues within environmental sociology. The course considers interdisciplinary perspectives examining a range of topics such as environmental inequality, sustainability, public attitudes towards climate change, renewable energy, consumption, pollution, environmental social movements, climate-induced migration, green crime and transformation to "green societies."  These issues are examined at multiple levels, including rural and urban, local, and global, and from different perspectives of key stakeholders. 

This course covers the development of public administrations during the 18th and 19th centuries. It addresses the ways in which government impresses political will onto the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, and how, inversely, society shapes government. It is both a course in history and public law. The course draws attention to the centuries of social evolution and legal tinkering behind many habitual features of our contemporary “bureaucratic” administrations. It explores several administrative systems across the Atlantic and Europe, namely that of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia. Each session begins with the commentary of a visual document relating to aspects of a period's daily life containing cues to the legal and institutional context. The rest of the session consists of a brief lecture and a primary sources discussion. Sources are provided in a reader and mostly consist of historical legal documents.