Netherlands

This course introduces mathematical and programming skills that are employed by researchers in the Molecular and Biophysical Life Sciences to analyze and integrate data and to understand the physics of living systems. The course is divided into two parts that run in parallel. The mathematics part of the course consists of nine lectures that cover: basic algebra, goniometry, differentiation and integration (including functions of multiple variables), limits, (partial) differential equations (first order and second order), Taylor expansion, basic probability theory and statistics and vectors (including dot product and cross product). Each lecture is followed by a supervised practical session. The programming part consists of six lectures that introduce the basics of programming by discussing the modulare structure of programs (modules, functions, loops), different data types and variables, as well as good practices. For some calculations of the mathematics part of the course it is explained how to perform those calculations using Python. After each lecture, students work individually on a series of practical coding assignments that familiarize them with the basics of programming in Python during supervised tutorials, where regular instruction and feedback is provided.

This course traces the main historical contexts in which democracy has emerged as an idea, practice, and set of institution. Main thinkers on democracy are read and discussed on the basis of primary sources. Their ideas are interpreted in the historical context of transforming practices and institutional change. Historical explanations and philosophical interpretations of democratization and de-democratization are analyzed in their interaction.

In this course the views of a number of classical thinkers on capitalism will be discussed: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Thomas Piketty. What was, in their view, the nature of capitalism? Which problems does the system have? And how should these shortcomings be remedied?

This course reviews one of the most influential periods of English literature: the Renaissance. A wide range of literary texts, including poetry, drama and prose are studies. How the language and form of these texts were shaped by (international) religious, cultural, and political contexts are explored.

This course studies excerpts of literary texts from the late 19th century to the present day, that propose a variety of crucial different meaning-of-life insights and meaning-in-life potentialities, all of which resonate to some extent with ideas from meaning-providing wisdom traditions (e.g., Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Sufism) and philosophical movements (e.g., existentialism and perennialism). Each work is furthermore explored in conjunction with thought-provoking intertexts. For example, Etty Hillesum is read alongside Rainer Maria Rilke and Martin Buber. The course all engages with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in conjunction with interviews with Maya Angelou and speeches by James Baldwin. Previous coursework in LIterature and English writing are required.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the four principal political, military, and cultural forces in the premodern world (together with the Qing, Mughal and Habsburg empires), and still a power to be reckoned with in the modern period until 1918. With its core in the Aegean and Balkans, the empire exercised hegemony over large parts of the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Central Europe for many centuries. Taking the perspective of world history, this course provides a basic knowledge of Ottoman history and culture, especially during the last three hundred years of its more than six centuries long existence. In a more general sense, the course introduces the developing historical fields of empire studies and court studies. The course reviews the current historiographical debates about the nature and impact of Ottoman rule, including the question of ‘modernization’. Special attention is paid to the entanglements of politics, religion and ethnic identity in the region. This includes a critical appraisal of hackneyed terms and binaries, such as the east-west dichotomy, the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, and the very concept of ‘the Middle East’ itself. In addition, the course introduces students to Ottoman institutions of imperial rule, such as the court and the palace, the army, the role of religion, and Ottoman architecture.

Literature is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that takes on many different forms in different periods, regions, and languages. In all of these forms, literature reflects in one way or another the society in which it emerges. This course connects the complex relations between literature and society and teaches how to write and speak about them in an academic way. The characteristics of narrative, interpretation, poetics, and textuality, and place literary texts and analyses in specific historical and cultural contexts are considered. Questions are considered via the analysis of one novel from a number of key theoretical perspectives in literary studies, such as narratology, memory studies, and reader-response theory.