Germany

This course examines the comparative analysis of women's roles in politics and the challenges they encounter in attaining positions of power within the political arena. The seminar is split into two parts. The first part explores various aspects of women's involvement in politics, such as the historical struggle for women's suffrage, the gender gap in voting behavior, ideology, and political involvement, and their variation across countries and time. The second part focuses on various aspects of women's representation in political institutions, including the challenges they face when seeking public office, their portrayal in the media, their impact on political decision-making, and the relationship between their presence and corruption. Additional topics include the entry of women into politics and the degree of this transformation varying across different countries and regions. Questions covered include: what factors underlie these variations? Why have some political systems successfully integrated women into politics while others lag behind? Do men and women approach politics differently in terms of understanding and engagement? Is there a disparity in political involvement and aspirations between genders? Additionally, how has media coverage affected female candidates? Furthermore, once in power, do women govern differently from men? 

This course introduces both computer game design and development. It includes important computer design concepts and fundamentals to create electronic games using C# and Unity. Students manage paper and digital prototyping, design iteration, and user testing. They also use game scripting and programming, including computer graphics and animation. The audience for this course includes current and aspiring game designers and those interested in all principles of the game creation process. Students from different locations share observations for a multinational/multicultural perspective.

This pre-semester course prepares foreign students for academic study at a German university. The focus is on the improvement of oral and written expression as well as grammar and lexical proficiency. The course covers selected topics on German politics and society within a historical context. In addition, excursions are planned to introduce students to German culture. Students work with cultural topics in everyday situations and broaden their intercultural knowledge. They are introduced to independent learning methods and familiarize themselves with typical learning situations at German universities. In this class at the B2.2/C1.1 level according to CEFR, students consolidate their knowledge of grammar and study complex structures and do in-depth study of grammatical structures that are typical of academic writing and its application in text production and reception. The course includes exercises to improve oral and written communication such as doing research, structuring, presenting, and discussing. Writing skills are enhanced through different types of academic texts and handouts. Students critically analyze different types of texts and systematically expand their vocabulary (including abstract vocabulary) and stylistic ways of expression.

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.