Netherlands

Innovative drug research has a drug discovery and a drug development phase. In the drug discovery phase, medicinal chemists make molecules and pharmacologists test these molecules. This course challenges students to think of a medical need, to find a target, to come up with a lead, and optimize this lead towards a drug candidate. While performing this structure-based drug design project, students learn about medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and some computational chemistry. Concepts of organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicinal chemistry that form the foundation of structure-based drug design are taught in a just-in-time fashion.

This criminology course focuses on organized crime and its international aspects by familiarizing students with organized crime theory in an international context, with a focus on diverse forms of smuggling, like trafficking in hazardous waste, animals, arms, drugs, human beings, and body parts. The course examines the antecedents of contemporary transnational organized crime, how new opportunities have opened up, and the different means that national and international organizations have employed to match the inventiveness and adaptability of the sophisticated criminal organization. Students participate in practical research and construct a final paper. 

This course teaches literary prose fiction for adults, but writers are also given the chance to opt for non-fiction, drama, or poetry. Neither fiction for children nor genre fiction feature in the course. This course stresses process writing, rewriting and editing as essential to the crafting and sculpting of fine sentences and paragraphs. To this end students read their prose, poetry and drama in writers’ workshops. Students explore issues of lexis, syntax, character, setting, and point of view before embarking on fully-fledged prose excursions. The instructor helps to shape and polish that prose works with students to develop their talents.

Course goals

After completing this course students are able to:

• identify the major protagonists and a number of key works
• distinguish some of the practical problems artists had to confront
• approach, describe and assess a work of art in its appropriate historical context
• judge material conditions and essential aesthetic qualities of paintings
• identify main trends in art historical research
• conduct a small-scale research using secondary sources
• gain an initial understanding of the institutional context of collections

If art, as Gombrich suggests, be taken to mean such activities as building temples and houses, making pictures and sculptures, or weaving patterns, then we come to realize that there is no people in the entire world without art. Nor has there been a period in history which did not yield fascinating creations of artistic virtuosity and imagination. Human expression in a visual form can be traced back to its strange beginnings in caves and on rock faces, and it is safe to say that it has not lost a bit of its appeal since. Starting from the oldest images that have come down to us decorating the ceilings of Altamira and Lascaux, from then on to delve into the documented history of art covering the period from the ancient world till the 1960s, this course will introduce the students to the fascinating world of visual arts and its most important monuments in the domains of architecture, sculpture and painting, as rendered in Gombrich’s Story of Art.
 

This reading-intensive course studies some of the main conflicts that have occurred since 1945 – beginning with the wars in Indo-China (1946-54) and Algeria (1954-62) that saw the end of France as a colonial power. Conflicts covered in this course include: The Franco-Vietnamese conflict; Lebanon civil war; Islamic revolt in Afghanistan and occupation by the Soviet Union; and the American conflict in Iraq.  Students gain a clear understanding of the background and consequences of these conflicts, how immensely difficult it is for outside powers to intervene in any other state, and a deeper understanding of societies that are very different to those of the West. Students critically analyze the impact traditional mass media and social media have had, both in covering the conflicts and in fostering resistance or opposition to the powers that be.

The course offers a general introduction to the history, literature, and cultures of China. Emphasis is placed on the modern period from the nineteenth century onwards. Students develop basic knowledge on modern Chinese history, from the last empire to the republic to the current age of the socialist market economy. The course pays special attention to literature as a key expression of culture but also addresses Chinese linguistics as well as other cultural expressions such as film and philosophy. Throughout the course, theoretical and methodological questions are addressed concerning the study of China in a postcolonial and globalizing world.