Germany

This course focuses on important moments and crucial cultural texts and performances from roughly the 1920s through the 1990s and thus aspires to come to terms with the changes and continuities of the last century in U.S. pop-cultural production. The performers, artifacts, or performances the course considers here were often popular and unpopular at the same time – not only, but often, depending on the kind of audiences they spoke to or were discussed by. Consider, for example, the 1990s boyband phenomenon, but also performers like Madonna, who are adored by some, but hated by others. It is thus the question of (un)popularity that serves as a guiding light for the seminar at hand to make sense of U.S. cultural production in the 20th century and across media.

This course is intended for students who already have some prior knowledge of German. In this class on the A1 level according to CEFR, students learn and solidify basic grammatical structures and systematically build their vocabulary. They train the four skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in everyday situations and do simple exercises to practice and improve their verbal and written skills. Students are introduced to independent forms of learning and studying. The class covers and reflects on civilization and culture in Germany, Berlin, and at the university as related to everyday life. Topics include personal information, living situation, institutions, traffic, traveling, health, weather, and festivities.

This course provides students with the knowledge of how to develop a start-up idea into a successful business model and how to a win a startup pitch. The course offers knowledge on how to start a company and push it to success. The course consists of three main parts: the structured approach, hands-on experimentation, and feedback. The structured approach is given through lectures and case studies, which serve as a compass. The hands-on experiment consists of individual and group work where students use the new concepts and implement them to their business idea. Feedback comes from interaction with successful entrepreneurs and startup scene players. Students who develop a high quality business model may be put in contact with Berlin startup supporters.

This course offers a study of the works of Margaret Atwood. The first part of the course focuses on speculative elements, feminist themes, and the role of the narrator in Atwood's work, and examines how her novels' form contributes to their meaning. This part of the course discusses the claustrophobic first person narrative in THE HANDMAID'S TALE, the unreliable patchwork narrative of ALIAS GRACE, and the mythopoeic style of the PENELOPIAD. The course utilizes samples from TV adaptations, and a selection of essays by and about Atwood to provide a broad spectrum of perspectives and a basis for in-class discussion. The second part of the course builds on the theoretical context and literary analyses from the first part of the course. Students review essays and further context material on topics related to Atwood's novels such as the history and development of dystopian fiction in Anglophone literature, feminist literary theory, and the role of gender in classical mythology and modern adaptations. The second part of the course also offers exercises and room for discussion with regards to academic writing and working with secondary texts. Regular attendance is required. Students participate in class discussions, complete written assignments, and give an oral presentation.

This course is an introduction to political geography. The course explores what political geography is, the key concepts, its subject matter, and why political geography is needed. Topics such as knowledge and power, representations of the other, nationalism, states and territories, globalization, feminist geography, and human-environment relations are covered. A key aspect of the course is to introduce critical thinking in relation to subject matters but also the production of knowledge. A fundamental question emerging from the course is thus what is the role of geography in an increasingly complex and intertwined world.

This seminar explores Turkish/Ottoman classical music, Anatolian folk music, Arabesk, Anatolian pop/rock, Turkish pop, jazz, and Sufi (Mevlevi) music, Kurdish music, Alevi music, Armenian music, and Western classical music from Turkey. The course focuses on ethnic identities and class hierarchies reflected in these genres, the issues of orientalism and occidentalism, and the influence of globalization on the music of Turkey while expanding our knowledge of the repertoire.

This course is aimed at students who want to work on their German grammar. Students have acquired knowledge in various ways, this course systematizes that knowledge. Through targeted exercises with simple lexis, students learn to understand how a sentence is constructed in German. Students work out the grammar rules themselves during the course of the class.