Germany

This lecture series provides an introductory, selective, and exemplary overview of English literary history from the Middle Ages to the present. Selected English literature texts from Chaucer to Kureishi (and others) are presented in their contexts and interpreted in their specific aesthetics and as representatives of the respective epoch.

This seminar examines the close relationship of textuality, storytelling and subjectivity in three canonical modernist texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; and Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. Students study the period of Modernism and the distrusts and questions of the claim of human reason to be a reliable means for understanding and controlling the world. Key topics include narrative strategies within a newly structured world, textual experiments as empowering spaces for the shaken subject, and textual patterns emphasized in order to compensate for the loss of a more tangible world order. Additionally, the texts focus on textual representation served as a 'hyper-realist' depiction of the chaotic state of decay whereas story telling provided a potential panacea in a world devoid of meaning. 

This interdisciplinary course examines how gender and sexuality were experienced, represented, and contested in Weimar-era Germany (1918-1933). Drawing on a diverse array of primary sources - including theater, visual art, literature, film, and theoretical texts - students explore how marginalized individuals and communities navigated, expressed, and politicized their identities. Key topics include the emergence of sexual science and the conceptualization of the "third sex"; the proliferation of queer spaces, subcultures, and social movements in 1920s Berlin; intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability; artistic and literary depictions of gender fluidity and erotic desire; medicalization, criminalization, and the state's response to gender/sexual nonconformity; the rise of fascism and the violent backlash against LGBTQ+ rights. Through close engagement with primary sources and cutting-edge scholarly work, students gain a nuanced understanding of the complex, often contradictory dynamics that defined gender and sexuality in Weimar Germany. This course equips students with the critical tools to analyze the interplay between cultural production, social movements, and the politics of identity.

Foreigners, in particular people from the US or Canada, are often astonished when they hear how fascinated Germans are with Native Americans. So-called “hobbyist” events with Germans “playing” at being and dressing up as North American Indians, shows with Native Americans performing traditional dances or other rituals, but also theatrical festivals devoted to stories around the fictional Mescalero Apache Winnetou and his white (German) blood brother Old Shatterhand draw thousands of visitors, and it is still fair to say that most Germans have some memory of playing Indians when they were children. The creator of Winnetou, Karl May, is more widely read than Goethe or Thomas Mann, although the literary value of his texts is disputed. As puzzling as this may be from the outside: For more than 150 years, America and, in particular, North American Indians have played an important role in narratives about German national identity. Examining these narratives, students discover a complex web of fascination and identification with Native Americans on the one hand, fascination and ambivalence regarding the culture, politics, and economics of the US and white Americans on the other hand. Students study extracts from literary texts depicting Native Americans from the 19th and 20th centuries and analyze films based on Karl May and other authors, produced in the FRG and the GDR (West and East Germany). They discuss the political implications of images of Native Americans in the context of imperial Germany, in National Socialism, and in the GDR, and they review and evaluate concepts such as the “Noble Savage”, “cultural appropriation” and racial/ ethnic stereotyping and exoticism.

The seminar provides a deep dive into economic inequality as relates to political economy more broadly, delving into questions such as “what inequality is and how to measure it?”, “what causes inequality?”, “how can welfare and redistributive policies manage inequality?”, and “why are some countries more equal than others?”. The first purpose of the course is to explain what causes economic inequality and how—and to what extent—it can be reduced. The second goal is to provide students with the theoretical and methodological tools to conduct their own empirical study to address these questions. The seminar begins by delving into conceptualizations and measurements used for economic distributions and income inequality. The second part centers on theories explaining levels of economic inequality, including the work of Pareto, Kuznets, Piketty and Milanovic. The third part focuses on the role of the state and redistribution in managing economic inequality, including theories on welfare-state formation, optimal taxation and the impact of political institutions. Finally, the last part is about public opinion on inequality and redistribution, centering on studies and theories about when voters want redistribution. The interplaying dynamics between economic distributions, political institutions, and public opinion are a running theme of the seminar. Students explore and discuss these dynamics as they are articulated in the literature and also propose and test new theories.

This course explores the central question: How does our environment — natural or built — affect our mind, behavior, and brain? In a time of rapid environmental change, with expanding urbanization, shrinking green spaces, rising climate anxiety, and evolving relationships with technology, understanding the connection between environment and mental processes is more crucial than ever. Students examine what makes environments beneficial to our brain and wellbeing, how surroundings shape cognition, whether one can design cities that support mental health, and what happens in the brain when one feels connected—or disconnected—from nature. The course traces the history and key theories of environmental neuroscience, introduces sensory perception and environmental stress, and investigates the impact of both natural and urban settings on mental health. Through lab visits, neuroimaging case studies, and a hands-on research project, students actively engage with current research. Grounded in three core pillars—interdisciplinarity, research-driven inquiry, and reflective engagement—this course encourages students to draw on diverse methods, collaborate on original studies, and consider their own experiences of space and place as they explore how neuroscience can inform real-world environmental design and policy.

This project focuses on exploring Berlin through analog hand drawing, and then using drawing and model making methods to design and construct a small building project. The course offers participants an in-depth knowledge of the design professional's important tool of hand drawing, a skill that equips them for their studies and later professional work. It begins with the basics of hand drawing to establish a foundation and then moves on to apply drawing to observe, analyze and design the environment. Students learn drawing forms such as perspective, isometry, section, pictogram, and others. The subject of analysis is the city of Berlin, the city fabric, micro urban situations, and the Design-Build project site. The Design-Build part of the project focuses on the realization of a small building project for a special community in Berlin. The students develop an idea from the design stage to the built project. An examination of the context and discussions with the clients and users form the basis for the final design. In a competitive design workshop, the best and most feasible solution(s) are selected and developed. In collaboration with the users and under the guidance of a craftsman, the design is built and inaugurated. The community is the client for this Design-Build project. They actively participate in guiding the project from the design phase to on-site construction. This project is carried out in an academic environment, engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration between students of various disciplines and the community. Through designing and building together, the students gain insights into the world that the people they are designing for are facing, with the goal of making students more sensitive to the social, cultural and ecological implications of their work. The challenge is to integrate "low-cost" and "high efficiency" requirements with considerations for sustainability, aesthetics, appropriateness, participation, and education. In order to profit from the high potential of these small-scale projects, the focus has to be the quality of the space that is created. This course primarily takes place off campus, with the drawing sessions happening throughout Berlin and the construction activities conducted on-site.

At the end of the 20th century, several scholars famously pronounced that society had become “posthuman” (N. Katherine Hayles) and that “we are cyborgs” (Donna Haraway). Two and a half decades later, this diagnosis seems even more accurate: cyborgs, androids, and artificial intelligence populate literature and film; ‘cyborg’ technology in medicine can replaces limbs, organs, and senses; and artificial intelligence assists humans in various ways in their daily lives, from applications in their phones to digital assistants and chatbots. What are the implications of these developments for a traditional understanding of the human and the relationship between humans and machines? How do these transformations impact ideas about, and representations of, the human body and embodiment? What ethical and socio-political issues are at stake? The course explores these questions with the help of theoretical approaches from the fields of Posthumanism, Gender Studies and Critical Race Studies, as well as literary texts and films. Students read two contemporary novels – Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein (2019) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) – and watch two films – Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014) and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012). They also have a chat with Chat GPT.

This course introduces into the linguistic sub-discipline pragmatics. Students examine how meaning emerges in context, and how this contextual meaning can be distinguished from the literal meaning of a linguistic expression. The range of topics includes assertion, presupposition, implicature, and speech acts.

In this course, students learn and apply core principles and concepts in heterogeneous catalysis. Students learn the most important catalytic materials and how to describe their functions, including important applications of heterogeneous catalysts in sustainable energy conversion. Course topics include the scope of future energy supply and its significance for industry and society as well as the environment and various synthetic methods for the preparation of heterogeneous catalysts using various solid-state, solution-and molecular-based approaches. Students learn how to define crystalline and amorphous materials and thin-film technology and gain a basic understanding of the characterization techniques and systematic evaluation of catalysts/thin films using diffraction, microscopic, and analytics. The course covers fundamentals of electrochemistry and how to correlate and explain activity parameters to differentiate catalyst's performances in catalytic oxidation and reduction processes in the rapidly growing fields of water electrolysis, fuel cells, CO2 activation, biomass reforming, and paired electrolysis. Course readings include relevant scientific literature and key publications of leading female and male scientists of the field.