German

There are several different courses at the advanced level that cover specific topics within German language. Courses may cover: vocabulary, writing, presentation techniques, German literature, or German film.

The seminar begins with a historical overview of the different eras of energy use, from wood to shale gas. It starts with the industrial revolution and follows the energetic and social upheavals to the present day. Within each era, the course considers how societies and epochs are conditioned by their main source of energy and how international politics is to be understood as energy policy. The second half of the semester turns to climate policy. The scientific history of the topic is covered including the 1980s, the rise of UN climate diplomacy, and the hegemonic struggles over the interpretation of climate change and climate protection. The guiding question here is the connection between the interests of the institutions expressing themselves and the resulting positioning in climate policy.

This course takes into account the fact that planning is always a communicative process. It takes place against the background of the legal and social requirements for public participation in planning as well as the need to create acceptance for planning by involving affected and interested actors. In addition to the discussion of these requirements as well as practical examples of communication and cooperation in the context of nature conservation and environmental planning, the following topics are treated: basics of communication, moderation, participation process including mediation, creativity techniques, target groups and target group analysis, presentation techniques, communication through text and public relations. Students learn about typical social decision-making situations in which the environmental assessment of projects and plans plays a key role. A constellation for a project or a plan is dealt with in more detail on the basis of a case study, which is usually heavily influenced by social discourse (previously, for example, a Brandenburg wind farm in the forest or the Elbe pit to the Port of Hamburg).With the methodical approach of the constellation analysis the case studies are analyzed according to: the participating actors and actor constellations; the legal or societal, economic regulations, norms, framework conditions, which play a direct or indirect role; the scope for decision-making resulting from the respective technological or project/plan-immanent approach; the respective implications of the environmental situation. Subsequently, the meaning of the respective elements in the planning processes as well as their relation to each other are analyzed. It is determined which of the aspects promotes or inhibits the environmental friendliness and social compatibility of decision-making processes. This addresses constellations of actors, norms and discourses, political decisions, social developments, technical and economic developments as well as anthropogenic changes of natural systems to assess the significance of these influences in the context of environmental planning and environmental auditing and to analyze their implications. Overall, the students realize that action in the context of planning, environmental testing and nature conservation can not only be based on a scientific-ecological basis, but that social and political aspects must also be taken into account.

This class covers the evolution of all plant groups from the early prokaryotic algae to the Angiosperms. This class consists of a lecture, seminar, and lab. In the lecture the professor explains broad trends about each class of organisms and tendencies in the evolution process. In the seminar students work on literature reviews and presenting research. The lab period provides students with the opportunity to work in more detail on the topics covered in the lecture.

This course introduces relevant philosophical, psychological, and psychoanalytical theories of fear (including Benjamin, Blumenberg, Canetti, S. and A. Freud, Kierkegaard, Tillich). Their connection with cinematically written anxiety is highlighted, especially along American film genres of the 1960s and 1970s (atomic threat, cold war, Vietnam war, biotechnologies, reproductive medicine, women's movement, civil rights movement). Additional questions about cinematic anxiety also are covered, for example in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question is how, in each example, fear reactions are cinematic (e.g. fight-or-flight, freezing), possibly subverted or overcome by innovative-creative actions (e.g. fear-seeking, thrill-seeking, suspense, scream queens, victim/offender return, female victim-hero.)

This seminar is aimed at students who are interested in issues of European and transnational regulation of financial markets. The first part of the seminar is devoted to theoretical approaches to International Political Economy that explain the regulation of financial markets (regulatory capture, economic patriotism, club governance, institutionalist approaches, Marxist approaches, constructivist approaches). The second part of the seminar focuses on important topics of transnational financial market regulation (derivatives, investment funds, financial sustainability, banking supervision, rating agencies).

Every state and government formulates and practices its own foreign policy on different historical, normative, and institutional bases. In view of the different starting points, it is not surprising that the goals and interests of states and governments and their foreign policy differ; they formulate problems differently, define options for action and political strategies differently, talk and act differently. Against the background of this problem, this seminar deals with the question of how Germany's foreign policy presents itself in a comparative perspective. Comparative case studies examine whether, to what extent, and why Germany's foreign policy after unification may be different in comparison to other states in different foreign policy fields in the face of more or less equal challenges. The following questions serve as a common guideline for all case studies: 1) What are the characteristics of German foreign policy in comparison? 2) Is the legitimacy of German foreign policy questionable? 3) Which influencing factors do experts state for the findings under 1) and 2)? Comparative foreign policy research serves to describe, evaluate, and understand differences and similarities.

This course offers an introduction to electrical engineering specifically for Electrical Engineering majors. Topics covered include: electrostatic field, charge, field, potential, voltage, polarization, capacity; stationary electric flow field, current, Ohm's law, resistance, power; stationary magnetic field: flow rate, inductance, permeability, magnetic circuits; induction, Inductance, Energy, Motion Induction, Resting Induction; simple networks: current and voltage sources, Kirchhoff sets, resistor networks; mathematical basics. vector calculus, integral calculus, orthogonal coordinate systems.