English

This course engages with the politics of policy making from queer and feminist perspectives, rooting the discussion in cultural discourse of contemporary society. Students discover how policies shape – and are shaped by – the lived experiences of individuals and communities. Students explore the importance of gender and sexuality for various forms of policymaking across local, national, and international levels. Using various innovative approaches and perspectives in gender and sexuality studies, the course investigates how sexual and gender inequalities, in connection with other power structures like race, ethnicity, and class, are embedded and activated in the policymaking process.

This course will provide a quantitative understanding of the hydrologic cycle, will identify the properties of water as a natural resource, will describe the aspects of the integrated water resource management, as well as the engineering related to water purification processes. The module will recognise socio-economic factors that impact effective water solutions, including urban infrastructure projects and managed urban infrastructure. Models for water transport in the subsurface (hydrogeology) will also be discussed, specifically in relation to the resources sector with focus on the pressure on groundwater quality and quantity, relating to appropriate measures to preserve or improve the quality of water. This will cover aspects of water management to combat water shortage in the energy and mining sectors. Management of wastewater and produced water in the oil and gas sector, involving injection to the reservoir and suitable reclamation treatments will also be considered. Of particular importance for the mining sector, effective tailing management, will be discussed.

This course explores both the theoretical and practical components of Self-Portrait as a genre. Students learn to observe and reflect on how they see themselves and how others see them. Students explore personal identity using mixed media and film diaries of everyday lives. The course includes three small projects, one for each genre topic and students analyze both classic and contemporary works throughout the course.

Terror expands the soul, said Ann Radcliffe. Does it? Why did Gothic begin in the 18th century? How does it work as a powerful, disturbing, dangerous genre? How did it challenge philosophers and aesthetic thinkers? What can we learn from parodies and satires of Gothic? What questions does it stage and why do they continue to compel and fascinate? Could there be a "Female Gothic"? This course explores a selection of Gothic texts – poems and novels - to investigate the genre's variety of forms and its appeal to readers. 

This course introduces students to the key texts, arguments and controversies in European political thought from the end of the 17th century to the present. This is based on the close reading of classic and complex texts, situated in their broader intellectual and historical context. A single key thinker is typically central to each week’s teaching, but these thinkers are read in relation to the political environments that shaped them and the debates in which they participated. Students explore the development of the central assumptions, arguments, institutions, and concepts that have played and continue to play a crucial role in political organization and debate across the Western world and beyond. 

The focus of this course is on critically evaluating the place and meaning of American popular culture in contemporary life. In order to do so, students look at the complex historical and transnational roots of American popular culture. Students also discuss how American ideals, both constitutional (such as freedom of the press, and also the right to keep and bear arms) and mythic (the American Dream, the frontier, individualism) have influenced the place and content of popular culture in the US.

This course introduces and explains a range of concepts from set theory, philosophy of language and metaphysics, probability theory, and decision theory. These include the notions of set, cardinality, infinity, analyticity, necessity, possible worlds, reference, scope, probability, conditionals, utility, decision rules, dominance, backward induction. The emphasis is on basic ideas rather than on technical elaboration. The concepts are sketched, illustrated by examples, and made familiar via exercises. 

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the temporal and territorial entanglements in Brazil and Argentina since their consolidation as nation-states in the first third of the 19th century until contemporary times. Some of the materials worked with, in addition to theoretical texts, are films, short stories, political and aesthetic manifestos, and architectural and urban projects. The course analyzes and discusses political, social, aesthetical, and literary expressions that, in a variety of ways, address and/or develop what is one of the critical issues in the discursive construction around these countries: the apparent need to narratively connect the present moment to a colonial and pre-colonial past and a future to come, not rarely using fiction as a methodology. The comparative focus on these two countries, in addition to being widely used in the Humanities in specific studies on each country, is justified by the way in which the issues to be explored in the course occur in their similarities and differences, shedding light on the constructions of time and space in what are the two most extensive countries in South America, not only individually but in relation to each other. Furthermore, the methodological and theoretical foundation developed throughout the semester helps consider temporal and spatial issues in other contexts within Latin America and, generally, the Global South. An intermediate knowledge of Latin America's political and social contexts is recommended but not mandatory.

This course provides an in-depth understanding of the principles and practices of brand management, with a focus on building and managing strong brand identities in various contexts. Students explore the strategic and tactical aspects of brand management, including brand positioning, brand equity, brand extension, brand communication, and brand performance measurement. The course also covers the latest trends and issues in brand management, such as digital branding, brand storytelling, and brand sustainability. 

Through the study of some of the most controversial and celebrated examples of what may be termed as utopian, anti-utopian, and dystopian literature, this course explores some key elements of utopian/dystopian/anti-utopian literature. The course examines themes such as the control and manipulation of language, as well as religion, history, and gender and considers the way in which the contemporary can be explored in an imagined future. Examples of texts studied for this course include Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s HERLAND (1915), set in an isolated society made up entirely of women and engages with issues relating to gender identity in the early part of the 20th century. Zamyatin's WE (1924) presents a totalitarian society, "OneState", and is arguably the archetype of the modern dystopia. BRAVE NEW WORLD (1931) in an imagined future engages with questions of identity, mass production, and homogenization emerging post World War One.