Germany

This course discusses the different aspects of EU's foreign policy such as conflict transformation, financial aid packages and sanctions, geo-strategic investment, energy diplomacy and more, introducing students to the workings of EU's diplomatic bodies and their influence in the Western Balkans and the Eastern Trio. The course considers the candidate countries' regional dynamics and motivations behind their foreign policy alignment. It concludes with a simulation exercise focused on the EU's supranational institutions within a fictional negotiating scenario.

This course starts with the question of what is understood by “gender” in gender studies and a systematization of the field of gender studies in STEM/planning. In the second part students examine studies of gender studies in STEM and planning in different disciplines. The course concludes with a project phase in which students are in working groups on topics from the field of gender studies on STEM/planning using the materials provided and present the results.

This seminar investigates morphological patterns in which prosody plays a central role for word structure, such as clippings/ truncation (fab < fabulous, veggie < vegetarian), -er comparatives (red - redder, conventional - *conventionaler but more conventional), infixation (uni-bloody-versity, Minne-fuckin'-sota) or reduplication (mish-mash). Using English and other languages as a data source, the course introduces Optimality Theory as a framework for modelling the interaction of morphology and phonology in these constructions.

The increasing uptake of generative AI technologies for a range of purposes from emotional care and companionship to work flow optimization serves as a rich field of inquiry for anthropologists studying human-technology relations. While all technologies are imbued by popular narratives and imaginaries, the use of AI tools in particular is informed by myths of hype and anti-hype that underline the need for ethnographic approaches exploring how these technologies are actualized in practice. This course explores the potential of anthropological theory and methods for elucidating the social, cultural, and political implications of generative AI. With tech companies touting the greater efficiency and profitability promised by these technologies at the expense of other considerations, qualitative research providing a more nuanced picture of human-AI entanglement in everyday life is crucial. So too, the far-reaching impacts of AI technologies provide an opportunity to revisit some of the key perspectives and questions animating cultural anthropology as well as the ways these might intersect productively with other disciplinary approaches. Key topics in the course include the political economy of AI and its impact on the future of work, race and gender logics and biases of AI, and the integration of AI into social media, virtual worlds, and the metaverse.

This course offers an in-depth exploration of quantitative text analysis methods for studying international relations. Students engage with advanced computational techniques, including text classification, topic modeling, and network analysis, to systematically examine textual data. The class places emphasis on methodological rigor, critical interpretation of results, and the application of these tools to address key research questions in the field. It is designed to equip students with the skills needed to conduct independent research using text as data.

This course examines how British literature from the 1980s is already full of ghosts, specters, and pasts that destabilize any secure sense of present or future. In the first section, students read the novel Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd (1985) as well as parts of the graphic novel From Hell by Eddie Campbell and Alan Moore (1989-1998). They then move on to Jeanette Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry (1989), analyzing the feminist potential of (re)turning to nonlinear histories. In the final section of the class, students examine how selected Black British poetry, and the film Twilight City (1989) conjure the violent specter of the British Empire as always already all-too-present. The course has a distinct focus on improving close reading skills and developing methods to approach theory productively. Along with British Cultural Critic Mark Fisher’s and Jacques Derrida’s concepts of hauntology, students build a theoretical toolkit that includes work on historiographic metafiction and the spatial turn. Additionally, the course draws on trauma theory, queer temporality and phenomenology, as well as Afrofuturist and Afropessimist writing.

This course immerses students in a global examination of the rise of far-right movements, employing mixed methods to explore radicalization, narratives, and mobilization strategies. The comparative perspective encompasses cases in both Latin America and Europe. Participants gain practical experience in qualitative data collection and analysis techniques, as well as skills in database construction and discourse analysis. The course culminates in the drafting of a research publication, fostering the development of rigorous academic skills.

All engineering disciplines today employ machine learning for monitoring systems and fault detection, for data-based decision support as well as for leveraging new potentials in the environment of big data. This module teaches the fundamentals of standard machine learning techniques as well as their implementation using standard libraries in the Python programming language based on real-world engineering examples. It focuses on the complete data science process from data exploration over modeling to inference and production.

This seminar explores the interface between queer identity, music, and history and investigates how musical spaces may serve as mirrors and critiques of societal norms. Students investigate the experiences of queer artists through a historical perspective and see how they use music as a form of social critique and expression. Beginning with operatic roles in the 17th century, through contexts like the 19th century cakewalk, the cabaret of the Weimar republic in the 1920s-1930s, as well as hip-hop culture, the seminar uncovers how gender transgressivity and performance art are reflected in music. Students analyze queer and transgressive music scenes as “heterotopias” (Foucault) – places of resistance against societal norms – and discuss the role of music in the construction of community and identity. Important texts by Audre Lorde, Michael Foucault, and Theodor W Adorno offer theoretical foundations through which the interventional power of music in the negotiation of identity and difference can be understood. Students develop their own case studies of queer artists and their visual, cultural, musical, and/or social moments of intervention.

The course is an introduction to the geometry of the image formation process and how visual data is represented and manipulated in a computer. Students learn projective geometry, which helps model the perspective projection, and digital image processing. Topics include how to model the perspective operation that happens when a picture is taken (projective geometry, image formation process), how pictures (visual data) are represented and processed in a computer (digital image processing), how to find out the internal geometric parameters of a camera (camera calibration), and what applications camera technology has in robotics (stereopsis, visual odometry, AR/VR, etc.).