Germany

Students gain an understanding of the issues and processes involved in developing an international marketing and branding strategy and plan, as well as the execution of marketing and PR operations on an international scale. Course content and practical assignments focus on real-world problems such as identifying and evaluating opportunities in international markets, developing and adapting marketing tactics in relation to multiple, specific national market needs and constraints, and coordinating marketing and branding strategies in global markets. Guest lectures by local business professionals and company visits provide first-hand context and experience for the issues explored in the course.

This course discusses the evidence for the deepening crisis of the gap between Islamic countries and the rest of the world and how it has continuously widened since the 1970’s. Students explore potential causes, the Arab Spring, including Western colonialism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relation between state and religion in Muslim countries, political and economic effects, effects on immigration, and the rise of religious fundamentalism.

This course explores how the EU can be understood as a differentiated political system, both in relation to its member states and non-EU countries. It looks into differentiation in various forms, including variation in the extent to which states participate in EU policies (horizontal differentiation) and in the level of integration across policy areas (vertical differentiation), and it explores the drivers of such differentiation. The course also discusses the consequences of differentiation for the legitimacy of European integration.

This course examines a multinational corporation and the ways it formulates, implements, evaluates, and conducts its international and global business in the most cost-effective and efficient way. Students explore how an organization must effectively coordinate all business units (human resources, finance, accounting, sales and marketing, R&D, logistics, corporate social responsibility, etc.) across national boundaries, extending them to places where the environment can be challenging and, at times, even hostile. This course equips students with the necessary tools and concepts to analyze and understand the formulation, implementation and evaluation of a company. 

The seminar enquires the question of how affluence translates into influence, both on the domestic and international level via the engagement with three recently published books. With Guido Alfani’s “As Gods Among Men. A History of the Rich in the West”, the course asks what makes a person rich, what the richs’ role is in society and how either changed across history. With Katharina Pistor’s “The Code of Capital. How the law creates wealth and inequality”, the course seeks to understand the law and its international application as a core mechanism that turns affluence into influence. And with Helen Thompson’s “Disorder. Hard Times in the 21st Century”, the course assesses the implications of “aristocratic excess” on contemporary democratic politics. The seminar is an introduction to the topic and does not require any previous knowledge. However, it does require a commitment to reading substantive parts of each book.

This course provides students with an overview of the dynamics of the global financial and international monetary systems. Students develop knowledge of the fundamental concepts needed to understand foreign direct investment, financial flows, international trade and investment deals. As political risk and economic exposure to global events have become more immediate, special attention is given to the 2007-2012 world banking crisis, the role of central banks in the stabilization of national economies, national debts, and the specific economic challenges to which individual countries have been exposed in varying ways. Alternative views and policy measures to help struggling economies overcome the economic and financial crisis like contracting (or expanding) government spending are assessed and critically analyzed.

The lecture covers four major aspects of HCI: 1. Understanding users (user behavior, user research techniques such as interviews and usability testing) 2. Designing user interfaces (principles of interface design for usability, interaction paradigms) 3. Evaluating interfaces (usability testing methods, identifying usability problems, iterative design based on user feedback) 4. Integrating HCI into system development (integrating the above aspects into an iterative product development cycle). The exercise section of the course applies the above theory in practice. Learning outcomes include: Apply HCI principles to design user-friendly interfaces; conduct fundamental user research and analyze user needs; understand principles of iterative prototyping and evaluation of interactive systems; communicate HCI concepts effectively.

There are two thoughts at the center of this class, which are to be challenged and clarified in discussion. The first thought is that all desire is somehow or other aimed at the good. The second thought is that all action is somehow or other subject to normative evaluation. The class challenges and clarifies these thoughts by close reading of parts of Plato's Republic and of contemporary texts. From Plato's Republic, the class focuses on the role of technical expertise (techne) in guiding action; on theory of the tripartite soul; and on the theory of desire and its objects. Students read contemporary works, especially by Christine Korsgaard, that deals with related themes and also touches on Plato's Republic. Students also read works by Rachel Barney, which is focused on the Republic and helps to forge a connection between Plato's text and these contemporary debates.

This course provides students with fundamental knowledge of the German architectural tradition through a historical survey of key buildings and urban spaces. Political, cultural, historical and technological factors are closely studied as influences on the process of design and final built forms. Throughout the course, representative architectural examples in Berlin are also studied. Students explore how the city is a particularly rich site to observe how numerous competing political visions and social movements influenced German architecture and urban development.

This introductory course explores the origins of universal civil rights in the USA with an emphasis on historical events, review of biography and legacy of significant activists and change makers from the USA and other countries. The course also presents cases to examine the relationship between the causes triggering civil rights development, and how these events can relate to impactful social events and movements in the last decade in different regions of the world. The course intends to provide a theoretical background, a historical review of events, and a social analysis of movements that students can study by using varied resources for data collection and examination of influential media resources or independent documentation of these processes.