English

The course starts with a discussion of Roman Law. The so-called Corpus Iuris Civilis will be used as the point of departure since most of what we know about Roman Law derives from this compilation of legal materials that was made in the 6th century AD on the orders of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. While Roman law was adapted to cope with the changing society, the idea was maintained that it was essentially the same law that had been part of the early Roman way of life. The course also concentrates on the different approaches to the law that existed and still exist in Anglo-American jurisdictions. It explains the legal differences today between continental Europe and the British Isles. Additionally, some elements of American legal history are studied. The course will conclude with a study of a selection of similarities and differences that exist in today’s European legal landscape.

This course looks at the ideas, issues, and actions that shape our contemporary world.  It asks how we understand the world, how we might understand it differently and why certain issues dominate global politics while others are ignored.  It also examines the capacity for people, organizations, and nations to co-operate in search of solutions to today’s pressing problems. In doing so, this course is broken up into two key sections: Global Visions; and Conflict and Co-operation. The first section looks at different approaches to thinking about international relations and world politics and introduces students to the key actors, agents, institutions and ideas that dominate the world today. The second section, ‘Crisis and Co-operation’ looks at the sources of international tensions, and the possibilities for global co-operation around major issues such as transnational conflict, international political economy, global environmental management, and human and social rights. In each theme this course examines the history of these major areas of contemporary international relations and the competing debates and agendas within them. It then focuses upon causes and consequences of a contemporary crisis and examines the possibilities of global co-operation in its resolution.

Studying food is a way of studying some of the big questions that occupy social scientists. This course examines the role that food plays in customs and across cultures. Food culture is the expression of how people value food and everything connected to food. As such, this course is an exploration into the ever-changing social functions of food. This entails an examination of the attitudes and assumptions that shape people's lives; the rituals and beliefs that mark their identities; the role of ethics in food choice; and the ways foods are grown, processed, sold, and consumed in particular places.

This seminar introduces students to a series of crucial texts in the development of radical theories of the politics of sexuality. Taking its title from Gayle Rubin's seminal 1984 intervention into the field, this seminar takes seriously her challenge to use the politics of sexuality – pleasures, desires, transformations, and the regulations thereof – as a point of departure from which to reconsider the ways we make and understand our world. Beginning with Rubin’s essay as a guide to our general approach, the seminar will then focus around five main points of departure: firstly, gay liberation and its discontents; secondly, queer challenges to those politics around both infectious disease and gender; thirdly, sexuality in women-of-color feminism; fourthly, queer theory’s move from queer lives as its object of inquiry to a nebulous ‘queering’ as its mode of analysis; and finally, the reintegration of queer theory and materialist analysis. Throughout, we will be attentive to our location in Berlin and to how manifestations of sexual politics in Berlin are similar to and different from those articulated in the canonical texts in the field. Students will leave with a broad sense of the evolution of and relationship between activist and academic debates about sex and sexual politics, and will be able to apply these theoretical insights and approaches to the analysis of a broad variety of research questions in the study of political theories, actors, institutions, and conflicts.

This course  introduces students to contemporary European cinema. It explores some of the "blockbusters" of recent years against the backdrop of national film industries and develops the distinct and common features of a variety of films made in Europe between 1990 and the present. The following general issues are addressed: what makes a film a blockbuster; what are the dominant themes; what are the implications of filmmaking in Europe; and how does the film language differ from American blockbusters. Films to be studied may include: Boyle: TRAINSPOTTING (1996), Tykwer: RUN LOLA RUN (1998), Noe: IRREVERSIBLE (2002), Hirschbiegel: DOWNFALL (2004), Leigh: VERA DRAKE (2005), Almodovar: JULIETA (2016), Loach: I, DANIEL BLAKE (2016).

This course examines the graphic novel (book-length comics) as a relatively "new" genre of contemporary literature. It covers the “form” of the graphic novel and how it creates arguments about gender, class, sexuality and race. 

This course studies the history of the 20th century global movement before World War II, which influenced global politics. Students are expected to examine a historical case of a local movement crossing over to global politics. 
 

After its total defeat in World War II, a divided Germany developed differing forms of socio-political organizations in an attempt to find a sustainable response to the challenges posed by modern industrial society. While the East experimented with state socialism, the West implemented a liberal democracy. Yet despite their political division, the two German states remained deeply interconnected through economic linkages, a shared cultural heritage, and similar ambitions to redefine their nationhood and global position. This course explores their special relationship against the backdrop of the global Cold War. Topics include political consolidation, East and West European integration, consumption and identity, the role of the cultural institutions, social movements and dissent, immigration and ethnic diversity, holocaust memory and foreign policy, the collapse of communism and reunification. It engages critically with the attempts of both German states to deal with their problematic history, and the way history was used to legitimize the different regimes. 

The last few years have seen a remarkable increase in our understanding of the basic biological mechanisms underlying human neurodegenerative diseases. Identification of mutations in a variety of genes found to encode proteins present in neuro-pathological inclusions, has suggested that a common feature of all these diseases might be the intracellular accumulation of fibrous protein aggregates within neurons, resulting in neuronal cell death. This course will discuss this hypothesis in the light of contemporary research and provide a foundation for our current understanding of neurodegenerative diseases. It will focus on the genetics, cellular and molecular biology of Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, Motor Neuron Disease and Prion diseases, with the main emphasis on the mechanisms leading to cell death. 

This course covers basic concepts of robotics while exposing students to state-of-the-art robots. The course also discusses the basic theory for robotic manipulator operation and provides opportunities to design robots through two class projects.