Germany

This course explores freedom of expression as a fundamental right in democracies. It first introduces different philosophical foundations of free speech, before comparing the American free speech tradition with other Western traditions, including Germany and the United Kingdom. It also examines the legal limits of free speech and other less direct forms of speech restriction and looks at the regulations of free speech in work settings and universities. The course draws extensively upon Anglo-American scholarship and utilizes legal texts and examples from various Western countries.

This seminar approaches German refugee and migration politics through examining the role and the importance of various religious groups against the backdrop of a society based on the separation of state and religion, the right to religious freedom, and the European context. The class features discussions of current problems and conflicts (e.g. Does Islam belong to Germany?).

This introductory seminar approaches two intertwined questions: 1. What is the study of history? 2. How does gender figure into it? Over the course of the semester, this course explores these questions from several perspectives. This includes introductions to the theories and methods of historical scholarship and gender studies, as well as specific historical events and developments to which the theories and methods can be applied. The topics of investigation covers the United States from the colonial period until the Cold War, focusing on issues of femininity, masculinity, and queerness, as well as concepts such as indigeneity, blackness, and imperialism. The course discusses how to find and analyze scholarly literature and primary sources and how to write the seminar’s final research paper.

According to the archaeologist and literary scholar John Hines, “the curation, interpretation, and active use of material remains … is a near-constant feature” of human societies, past and present. Such an interest in the material remnants of the past can be encountered also in medieval literary texts – which is not to say that these texts should be seen as direct reflections of contemporary practices. Rather, the depiction of material remains allows texts to explore different ways of imagining time, history, and the transmission of knowledge. Students read and discuss a number of Middle English texts, including Osbern Bokenham’s Life of St. Margaret and the anonymous St. Erkenwald, as well as a number of Latin texts (in translation), all of which discuss material remains from the past in the context of constructing ideas of time and history.

This course provides theoretical as well as practical introduction to quantum computation. By the end of the course students understand the basics of quantum mechanics, quantum logic and computation, important quantum-algorithms, and work with actual quantum computers and quantum simulators. Covered topics include a basic introduction to quantum mechanics to understand quantum computation, quantum algorithms, Simon's algorithm, the prime factorization algorithm, Grover's search algorithm, mathematical models of quantum computation, their relationships to each other, and to physical systems, and quantum error correcting codes. The exercise component of the course includes a background section on the need for quantum computing and then addresses the following topics: hardware technologies for quantum computers, quantum logic, computation on a quantum computer, and programming on IBM Q.

This course introduces concepts and theories of Political Economy to shed light on Europe’s history and presence: the course askes and tries to answer questions on how the EU developed from a peace-making into a market-making project, what conflicts and dilemmas this has entailed, what the most recent and future challenges are, and how the EU responds to them in institutional and policy regard.