Germany

This course introduces anthropological approaches to time, temporality, and history. Ideas about time have been part of anthropology ever since anthropologists began theorizing human development, and analyzing the ways in which people conceive of time can illuminate fundamental questions about how humans make sense of their world and act within it. This course focuses on the relationship between cultural conceptions of time and power, and examines a few theoretical concepts that help to analyze this relationship The course studies ways in which time was built into core anthropological concepts of difference (particularly between the West and the rest) and then explores the relationship between time and political possibility, or how politics must make historical sense in order to be effective. In addition to the study of such uses of the past, the course examines nostalgia, identifies its cultural foundations, and shows its politics as well as its limits as a way of thinking about history.

This seminar offers a survey of the intellectual tradition that takes for its object the interrogation and theorization of systems of power whereby inequality is associated with gender, sex, and sexuality. A range of key work are explored, mainly from western authors, that exemplify the intellectual history of feminist and queer theory. Through works of philosophy, political, and psychoanalytic theory about gender and sexuality, the course traces the foundations and development of some major strands of recent and contemporary thought about gender and sexuality including: liberal feminism, with its emphasis on sameness and equality; cultural, separatist, and lesbian feminisms with their focus on difference; radical, Marxist, socialist, and anarchist feminisms with their political and material analysis of gender; intersectional feminisms with their questioning of such identity categories as woman; postcolonial and transnational theories of gender and sexuality; queer theory and its mobilization of deconstructive modes of thought; and trans theory with its shift of emphasis back to embodiment and identity.

Perhaps the most powerful organization in world politics, the UN Security Council, is tasked with maintaining international peace and security. Because the founders of the organization did not specify what exactly constitutes "a threat to international peace and security," this course examines the breadth and depth of the Security Council mandate. The course reads theoretical and empirical literature on Security Council action and investigates the various ways in which the Council tries to prevent and solve international conflict. Course material covers institutionalist theories of (dis)cooperation, empirical case studies of Council intervention, and quantitative analyses of Council performance. The course answers the questions: Why do some conflicts never make it to the Council? Whose interest matter when resolving a crisis? And what explains the duration of eventual peace?

The lecture develops a theoretical framework that is useful to think about a wide variety of topics in international macroeconomics (along the lines of “INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMICS” by Schmitt-Grohé, Uribe, and Woodford.). The tutorial helps understand the material of the lecture in different ways. First, some additional derivations of theoretical and empirical results are provided. Second, applications of the theory are illustrated.