Germany

As a global conflict impacting society and culture, the Cold War poses a unique challenge for Musical historiography. While historians concentrate on the „superpowers“, the USA and the Soviet Union, the developing field of Cold War studies is emphasising the importance of smaller countries caught between west and east governments. With this expansion and new focus of our perspective, we are revising and pluralising our historiographical methods to make the dynamic national/historical borders of the Cold War more visible. The course uses the approach of political musical history to conceptualise the era. At the same time we also study broader Cold War history and new perspectives on national/international musical historiography.

As we observe increased news-avoidance, particularly among young adults, questions arise as to how journalists can counteract the trend and at the same time potentially redefine their role in public discourse. In this context, we will explore the role of constructive journalism in navigating and reporting on crises, such as natural disasters, pandemics, political upheavals, social and armed conflicts. Through a combination of theoretical discussions, case studies, and practical exercises, we will examine how journalism can go beyond traditional reporting to foster constructive dialogue, promote solutions, inspire change, and offer multiple perspectives during times of crisis. Thus the course objectives include: understanding the principles and concepts of constructive journalism, analyzing the challenges and opportunities of reporting on crises, examining case studies of constructive journalism in various crisis contexts, developing critical thinking and analytical skills in evaluating media coverage of crises, as well as practicing constructive journalism techniques through hands-on exercises and projects.

The technological advances associated with Virtual Reality (VR), as well as its close cousins such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR), represent a fundamental shift in how humans experience the digital realm. Using devices such as VR-headsets, we can now access digital environments full of computer-generated simulations in a way that allows for a more intuitive kind of interactive experience than is typically afforded by more familiar uses of computers. In recent years, via devices such as the Oculus Rift, VR-technology has become increasingly accessible in the home and it is anticipated to become even more ubiquitous in the near future.

This class aims to examine a range of philosophical questions associatedwith VR. As we shall see, VR gives us new ways to both articulate classic philosophical problems and also to sharpen those problems. The relevant philosophical questions are wide-ranging, encompassing topics in epistemology (“Can you know you are not in a virtual world?”), metaphysics (“Are virtual worlds real?”), and value theory (“Can you live a good life in a virtual world?”). In examining these issues, we will focus on David Chalmers’ (2022) treatment of VR in his pioneering book Reality+, where Chalmers argues for a range of bold answers to these questions (and others): that we cannot know that we are not in a virtual world, that virtual worlds are just as real as non-virtual worlds, and that it is possible to lead a meaningful and valuable life in a virtual reality. By the end of the class, students will not only have been introduced to many of the most central philosophical problems, but will have further evaluated both the ways in which technology can shed light on old problems in philosophy and the ways in which philosophy can shed light on new problems about technology.

The media landscape and associated industries are in a constant state of evolvement, repeatedly undergoing transformations in their manner of production and positioning within social and thus market contexts. These dynamic processes of change within the broader field of media products and services are often intertwined with and conditioned by associated innovations in the enabling and underlying technological frameworks employed to produce, distribute and consume them. Innovations in communication technology thus also entail an impact on individual, social and psychological aspects of modern life. While this impact has long been influential, pressures of digitization and digital transformation have been making the need for a scholarly assessment of aforementioned processes ever more apparent. In this seminar we will thus explore current research and theory aiming to shed light on the intricacies of such developments, getting to know different dimensions of innovation and connecting them to practical examples of how these processes take shape within the wider media landscape. The course thus offers a rather broad perspective on what characterizes media innovation, how it develops, and what structural conditions facilitate and shape it.
 

In this course, we will address two related questions: 1) Why were queer creators largely responsible for the introduction of modernity in American art and 2) why do we so often find that queer social and political dissent found form in, and as, aesthetic dissent as well? In creating new forms for art that often seem far removed from any traditional definition of sexuality, queer artists pushed the boundaries of normativity, leading to new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and thinking that often dared to encode queer meanings as part of their formal innovation. Were queer artists driven by a utopian hope that in a more modern world, the egregious homophobia/transphobia of the past would finally be no more? And finally we will ask about the social and political usefulness of forms of queer political dissent if those forms still remain illegible as queer to a wider audience. Throughout, new methods informed by queer, gender, and critical race theory will be utilized.

In this class, students learn about the characteristics of social ventures that are driven by a dual mission: a strong social, societal and/or ecological purpose alongside their economic mission. The class invites students to reflect how social and economic purpose can be aligned in their ventures and how their own personal values can drive the various blocks of a venture creation process. To reflect and build upon the individual set of values, we are using the method 'Theory U’ by Otto Scharmer. To that end, students learn about, discuss, and reflect upon social and economic purpose during ideation, team building and business modelling. This knowledge is applied to a business idea that supports both the social and economic mission of the founding team.

The course focuses on analogue drawing of real urban and natural motifs (urban/nature sketching). We focus on drawing techniques, knowledge of materials and examples from the rich world of illustration. With the help of exercises, different techniques and graphic languages are tried out, and your own style can gradually be discovered and developed. We will work outdoors directly on the motif as much as possible.

This seminar seeks to provide an overview of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. It starts by looking at Schopenhauer’s central work – The World as Will and Representation (1819), touching upon each of the central themes found therein: epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, and ethics. Subsequently, we will partially mirror the themes covered in studying Schopenhauer, this time providing Nietzsche’s take on these. We will approach Nietzsche’s work initially by looking at his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) – one of his clearest and most systematically argued work. We will find that this not only provides insight on morality but will provide a good foundation for exploring Nietzsche on topics such as art, truth or the will to power. The final part of the seminar will be student driven. Three alternative options have been prepared, covering either A. Nietzsche on Knowledge, Causality and Truth; B. Nietzsche on Art; or C. Nietzsche on Nihilism and The Will to Power. Students will be asked to make a joint decision as to which one of these three topics they will choose for us to cover. This way, in addition to the topic of morality we will be able to cover in some detail Nietzsche’s take on one of the other topics that we explored at the beginning of the seminar from Schopenhauer’s perspective.

Depression is a painful existential situation that seems to be quite widespread in our contemporary capitalist, ultra-individualistic societies. Recent and current interrelated crises, as for example the financial crisis, the climate crisis and the threat of a global war, seem to have exacerbated the phenomenon. But what does it mean exactly to be depressed, or to live with depression? How could we better conceive of it: as mental and bodily disorder, condition, disposition, mode of experience, habit, …? What kind of relations – to oneself, to fellow human beings, and to the world – does depression foster and is fed by? If one agrees to consider it as a pathology, is it just an individual or also a social, collective pathology? What does constitute its ‘pathological’ (i.e. ‘wrong’) character? Does depression also entail ‘positive’ aspects? This course follows various paths for developing a critical philosophy of depression, an undertaking that finds itself, in the current philosophical landscape, at its outset. Note that the preposition “of” has a double meaning: on the one hand, we will study and articulate philosophical, conceptual and also nonconceptual tools for understanding what depression is; on the other hand, we will explore the cognitive (and affective) resources that the depressive experience disclose and unleash, what their epistemological, ethical and political values can be. The seminar aims at addressing and discussing the topic by drawing upon a vast range of theoretical and literary resources, from psychoanalysis to philosophy, from sociology to literature.