Germany

In this course, students are taught the foundational concepts of major stochastic fields and associated topics, including Statistics, probability, and combinatorics. The course is presented in “flipped-classroom” format, such that students are expected to learn concepts on their own, and then practice application in the classroom.

What kind of anthropology is it that we, as scholars and students of the discipline, should or need to be advocating – also and especially with a view to current timely demands for conceptual and structural decolonization? How has anthropological critique questioned the fundamentals of the discipline (of anthropology) itself? Which programmatic pathways have been sketched out to indicate constructive ways forward? What do we think of them; which others would we like to raise; why? Does the inclusion of, and focus on theory from the South already constitute a fundamental change? How might anthropology engage constructively with thinkers and theoretical contributions from the global South? In which ways, finally, does it matter that we as researchers and social agents are inevitably positioned in certain ways, often belonging clearly to regions of the Global North or South? This seminar course will pursue these and related questions with a view to some classic and some recent readings, both from within and outside anthropology, and engaging with theorizing from the South, especially from Africa.

The subtitle to Søren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death captures both the tone and the overall project for this seminar as: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. From this point of orientation, an exploration of the Kierkegaardian oeuvre will unfold that focuses on what he believes to be the earnest need of attending to the dual existential tasks of self-examination and the strengthening of the inner being through spiritual upbuilding. In “building up” from his spiritual diagnosis on the various forms of existential despair – and by way of his cycle of discourses on the “lilies of the field and the birds of the air” – this course will ultimately arrive at Kierkegaard’s proclamation of “how glorious it is to be a human being.”

The so-called “Marshall Plan” was only a four-year-program, and yet, it looms large in public memory, especially in Western Europe. This is not a coincidence: The influence that the US government had on the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II came not only in the form of financial investments or material aid. The European Recovery Program (ERP) has also been considered ‘the largest single propaganda operation… ever seen in peacetime’ (Ellwood 2010, 113). This seminar is centered around questions like: What is the image that the US wanted to project during the Marshall Plan years, and why? What did these images, of the US, of Europe, and of the other, look like and how were they perceived? The seminar will be divided into two parts. Part I provides a historical and conceptual frame: It examines the motives behind Marshall Plan ‘aid' and traces the image of the US as ‘a benevolent nation’ (McCrisken and Pepper 2005, 89). Further, it introduces students to historical debates and perceptions of Americanization, and contrasts different conceptualizations of influence, ranging from cultural imperialism to ‘cultural transfer’ (Gienow-Hecht (2000), ‘Westernization’ (Nehring 2004), or ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004). Part II of the seminar will be dedicated to the actual (graphic) images that the US produced during the Marshall Plan years, especially propaganda films. Building on concepts and methods developed in the field of Visual Culture, students will learn to “read” images as primary sources and interpret them within the historical frame of the early Cold War.

Berlin is called the most sexually open capital of Europe today. In clubs, bars, workshops and festivals, a broad range and mix of sexual orientations are created in different and also crossing scenes and sex-positive spaces. Homosexual, transgender, tantric, polyamory, sex-positive and BDSM-oriented persons meet and celebrate and create new sexual techniques and lifestyles in so-called sex-positive spaces. The government of Berlin has already recognized the economic dimension of the liberal sexual culture. What does liberal sexual culture exactly mean? What kind of historical roots are important to analyze, e.g. the anonymity of the big city, the homosexual movement and the golden twenties? What was and is avant-garde and when does it turn into commerce? Four sub-items will structure the seminar: Sex-positive spaces, LGBTQI+ and Gender-Fluidity, Kink and Tantra, alternative porn films and literature. Excursions and interviews with experts will be part of the seminar. We will work with texts and films, and students will develop their own research question and project.

The objectives of the methods tutorial are the practical application and deepening of the knowledge  in methods of empirical media and communication research. The course develops a joint survey project on a current issue (for instance the medial perception of a current topic). Groups work on particular sub-questions and develop and operationalize corresponding theoretical concepts for them. Following a joint pretest and field phase, the results are finally analyzed and presented.

This course deals with syntactic change in the history of English (in comparison, in particular, with German and French). Phenomena to be discussed will include the loss of inflectional morphology, the loss of free word order, the change from OV to VO word order, the loss of verb movement and the development of do-support, and the shift from a general verb-second language to a residual verb-second language.

This course examines the rise of humanitarianism as a dominant way in which both powerful and weak actors conceptualize and respond to a range of social problems and processes, such as political conflict, emancipation, poverty, and migration. This is core terrain for anthropology, because the figure of the human lies at the center of humanitarian discourses and forms of action.  In this course we historicize humanitarianism and ethnographically investigate the possibilities and limits of humanitarian frameworks and action as ways of confronting the challenges that face our world.

The urban ecohydrology contains a theoretical part which comprises all aspects related to the urban water cycle including urban rainfall pattern, water availability, groundwater recharge, urban rivers and drainage (traditional and sustainable approaches), urban waterscapes and alternative perspectives for water in cities, and the specific requirements for urban green including urban rainwater gardens, green roofs and facades and aspects of water shortage and heat stress on urban green conditions. Specific requirements of mega-cities and urban areas in developing countries will be assessed. In a practical part of the module, students will learn how to use simple modelling software for the calculation of greywater use and for the configuration of sustainable drainage systems including sustainable rainwater management. In the excursion part, students will get the chance to visit and study different elements of urban water, including e.g. excursions to a sewage treatment plant, the implementations of the water framework directive for urban rivers, integrated rain and grey water management of office blocks, and green wall installations (excursions will vary according to the availability of invited guides).

In this course, the topic of human rights is explored from a legal perspective, but with a view to discussing the salience of current political debates about human rights and against the background of the historical development of this field of international law.

Topics include

• Basic features of the protection of human rights in the international legal system I: Historical development and UN level
• Basic features of the protection of human rights in the international legal system II: The European regional level
• Critical perspectives on human rights
• Extraterritorial application of human rights
• Climate change litigation before human rights courts and treaty bodies
• Human rights in the digital sphere
• Decolonization and human rights
• Indigenous peoples and human rights
• Human rights in the urban age: The role of cities and local governments
• The Relevance of the African Human Rights System in the Urban Age