Germany

This course is designed for students who have successfully completed the basic level of German. Students expand their competences in listening, speaking, reading, and writing and strengthen their knowledge of grammar, while emphasizing self-correction. Furthermore, students analyze and interpret cultural, political, and historical topics in German-speaking countries and compare them with their own cultural background. Students develop and regularly use new strategies for language acquisition and engage in detailed discussions on above mentioned topics. Furthermore, students develop reading strategies that allow for the understanding of different text types in detail. In addition, students improve their essay writing skills, and are able to write short texts on different topics, revise, and proofread them.

Modern capitalist market economy is an extremely powerful instrument to create wealth and to satisfy human demands – and to exploit, alienate, and destroy the very societies it is supposed to serve. How can it be made moral? There are quite a number of ways: for example through deliberate lawmaking, responsible research and development (e.g. technology assessment), through enlightened consumer choices, and sustainable use of human and natural capital assets. But they often come at a high cost and involve more fundamental questions: How can politicians and lawmakers regulate the market for the common good without suffocating it? How can big corporations and tech companies continue to deliver innovative services without monopolizing the market and dominating their customers? What does a fair distribution of income look like? How do we assign value to natural and social goods (like clean air or low crime rates) and how do we measure sustainable welfare beyond traditional economic growth? How can consumers harness their own power to make informed choices and act in accordance with their values? Are digital business models based on artificial intelligence and machine learning threatening the autonomy of consumer choice? What does corporate social responsibility look like in times of crisis? These and other questions are not only of interest to economists and business people but are relevant to all economic agents (individuals, companies, state institutions, etc.). To answer these questions, the course equips participants with key ethical approaches to economic behavior (virtue ethics, religious teachings, deontology, utilitarianism, master morality, neo-liberalism), approaches which have been or still are dominating ethical discourses on economic behavior.

Democratic responsiveness is central to the functioning of modern democracies. In this course students learn about the central theories and debates in scholarship on democratic responsiveness. The course begins with an introduction of basic concepts and theories. The course then discusses the emergence and functioning of democratic institutions, as well as the role of contextual factors and intermediaries, such as parties. Subsequently, the course delves into questions about political inequality and why certain interests and groups are better represented than others. Finally, the course discusses the politics of responsiveness, its strategic use by political actors, and its import for the survival of democracy.

What can individual citizens contribute to making cities greener and more ecological? Will a concept of a climate‐friendly and healthy city grow over this ‐ in the truest sense of the word? And how specifically can urban and private areas be gardened? What are private and municipal strategies for dealing with urban gardens and their implementation? What are the costs to cities of private urban gardening? Which horticultural and which structural engineering aspects have to be considered? Which psychological and healthy effects does a green city have on its inhabitants? What kind of biodiversity exists in green cities? These questions form the thematic framework of this course. The questions are dealt with and answered within an interdisciplinary framework.

When thinking of US-Japanese history, the words usually coming to mind are Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Okinawa. But beyond their violent clash in World War II, both countries share a fascinating historical relationship dating back to the 1850s. This seminar introduces the major events, developments, and dynamics that have shaped this relationship from the mid-19th century until the Cold War. The course investigates issues of diplomacy, trade, migration, war, and cultural transmission to show how closely the histories of both countries have been intertwined and shaped by one another.