Free University of Berlin

The class offers an introduction into the modern approaches to causal identification in quantitative political science research. Traditional view implying that quantitative work can establish only correlations, and no causal links, has been challenged recently by new research designs allowing scholars to identify causal effects using quantitative data. This class reviews these methods (such as appropriate strategies of selecting control variables in regressions, matching, instrumental variables, experiments and regression discontinuity design), as well as discuss their application to the practical problems of political science research. It uses specific examples to train students' ability to develop effective research designs.

The aim of this course is to understand why income and wealth inequality varies across space and time by focusing on one of the richest, but also one of the most unequal democracies of our time: The US. While in theory all citizens in a democracy have the same voting power - so one would expect democratic governments to act to keep inequality as low as possible - there are quite significant differences in economic inequality over time and space. Why is this? To answer these questions, the course examines different theories of inequality and different policy areas that affect inequality. It looks at long-term trends in inequality and the structural features of capitalism that tend to push inequality upwards. The course examines the wide range of policies in what is loosely termed the 'welfare state' that tend to mitigate the inequalities generated by market capitalism. Students discuss how demography, gender differences, migration and ethnicity relate to inequality. And they try to understand why elections sometimes produce governments that redistribute income and wealth from rich to poor, and sometimes produce governments that do the opposite. Finally, the course reviews how rising inequality - a clear trend in the rich world since the late 20th century - affects politics and democracy.

This course, comprised of a lecture and discussion section, includes the following topics: 1) Introduction (historical notes, coordinate dependence of Newton‘s equations, systems with constraints); 2) Lagrange equations (systems w/o constraints, non-inertial reference frames, constraints and generalized coordinates, virtual displacements, D’Alembert’s principle, systems w/ constraints); 3) Hamilton‘s principle (variational calculus, derivation of Lagrange equations from Hamilton’s principle, Lagrange multipliers and constraints); 4) Symmetries and conservation laws (cyclic coordinates and canonical momenta, translational and rotational invariance, Noether theorem, translational invariance in time and energy conservation, energy conservation in 1D systems, Galilei invariance and Lagrangian of free particles, relativistic mechanics of free particles, gauge invariance, mechanical similarity); 5) Oscillations (coupled oscillators, driven oscillators, Green function of damped oscillator, parametric resonance, motion in rapidly oscillating fields); 6) Rigid bodies (degrees of freedom, tensor of inertia and kinetic energy, angular momentum, principal axes of tensor of inertia, equations of motion, Euler angles, free symmetric top, heavy symmetric top, fast top).

Since the 1990s the term “new media” has become associated with digital media, but throughout the 20th century it was used to refer to any image technology of recent vintage. Thus, during the 1920s, artists would refer to photography or film as “new media.” This seminar picks up this history at a later point, in the late 1960s, when the “electronic” medium of video became available to visual artists. It traces how video was adopted by European and American artists and, in particular, how the medium was defined in relation to more conventional media, such as painting or sculpture, or in relation to television as a mass medium. Certain unique characteristics of video can be highlighted (e.g. liveness or feedback), however not all artists who used video were concerned with establishing a separate “discipline” of video art. Video was also instrumental to a form of “artivism” during the seventies, which mirrors comparable developments in contemporary art. Today, the terms “film” and “video” tend to be used interchangeably, but this is largely due to the introduction of digital video in the 1990s. The seminar pursues a genealogy of digital art, which originates in the 1960s, and trace it into the present, discussing the role of artistic practice within an “algorithmic culture” and the impact of artificial intelligence on the current status of the image.

Berlin and Warsaw were two central theaters of the Holocaust. While in Berlin the Nazis planned the global murder of the Jews and attempted to transform the city into the capital of Nazi Europe, it was in Warsaw that they created Europe’s biggest ghetto, in which 100,000 Jews died before the first deportations to the Treblinka death camp in July 1942. In this seminar, the course studies and compares how the Jews were persecuted and murdered in Berlin and Warsaw; who helped them, how and why; and how the local population reacted to their persecution. In studying the Holocaust in both cities, students concentrate on the general frameworks for understanding the Holocaust, the plans of the perpetrators, the behavior of the collaborators, and the fate of particular actors, especially survivors, while analyzing their diaries, memoirs, and interviews. In this seminar, students read theoretical texts about the Holocaust and discuss the urban aspect of the genocide, while concentrating on persecution, murder and help. The course includes visits to museums and memorial sites in Berlin.

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone, published in German in 2015, is a politically charged novel about the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Richard, an older German with a GDR background, gets involved with, and befriends, a number of African refugees at a protest camp on Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg. A former Classics professor who was recently forced into retirement, he empathizes with the refugees, who are not allowed to work under German asylum laws. Richard researches their plight and helps them with administrative and everyday tasks, even giving piano lessons to one of them. After a break-in at Richard’s house, he and his friends question their own prejudices and attempt to learn from the experience. The novel serves as a starting point for the exploration of the political and human rights issues surrounding the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Some additional materials are provided to round out the discussion.

This seminar examines the close relationship of textuality, storytelling and subjectivity in three canonical modernist texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; and Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. Students study the period of Modernism and the distrusts and questions of the claim of human reason to be a reliable means for understanding and controlling the world. Key topics include narrative strategies within a newly structured world, textual experiments as empowering spaces for the shaken subject, and textual patterns emphasized in order to compensate for the loss of a more tangible world order. Additionally, the texts focus on textual representation served as a 'hyper-realist' depiction of the chaotic state of decay whereas story telling provided a potential panacea in a world devoid of meaning. 

Foreigners, in particular people from the US or Canada, are often astonished when they hear how fascinated Germans are with Native Americans. So-called “hobbyist” events with Germans “playing” at being and dressing up as North American Indians, shows with Native Americans performing traditional dances or other rituals, but also theatrical festivals devoted to stories around the fictional Mescalero Apache Winnetou and his white (German) blood brother Old Shatterhand draw thousands of visitors, and it is still fair to say that most Germans have some memory of playing Indians when they were children. The creator of Winnetou, Karl May, is more widely read than Goethe or Thomas Mann, although the literary value of his texts is disputed. As puzzling as this may be from the outside: For more than 150 years, America and, in particular, North American Indians have played an important role in narratives about German national identity. Examining these narratives, students discover a complex web of fascination and identification with Native Americans on the one hand, fascination and ambivalence regarding the culture, politics, and economics of the US and white Americans on the other hand. Students study extracts from literary texts depicting Native Americans from the 19th and 20th centuries and analyze films based on Karl May and other authors, produced in the FRG and the GDR (West and East Germany). They discuss the political implications of images of Native Americans in the context of imperial Germany, in National Socialism, and in the GDR, and they review and evaluate concepts such as the “Noble Savage”, “cultural appropriation” and racial/ ethnic stereotyping and exoticism.

The seminar provides a deep dive into economic inequality as relates to political economy more broadly, delving into questions such as “what inequality is and how to measure it?”, “what causes inequality?”, “how can welfare and redistributive policies manage inequality?”, and “why are some countries more equal than others?”. The first purpose of the course is to explain what causes economic inequality and how—and to what extent—it can be reduced. The second goal is to provide students with the theoretical and methodological tools to conduct their own empirical study to address these questions. The seminar begins by delving into conceptualizations and measurements used for economic distributions and income inequality. The second part centers on theories explaining levels of economic inequality, including the work of Pareto, Kuznets, Piketty and Milanovic. The third part focuses on the role of the state and redistribution in managing economic inequality, including theories on welfare-state formation, optimal taxation and the impact of political institutions. Finally, the last part is about public opinion on inequality and redistribution, centering on studies and theories about when voters want redistribution. The interplaying dynamics between economic distributions, political institutions, and public opinion are a running theme of the seminar. Students explore and discuss these dynamics as they are articulated in the literature and also propose and test new theories.

This course explores the central question: How does our environment — natural or built — affect our mind, behavior, and brain? In a time of rapid environmental change, with expanding urbanization, shrinking green spaces, rising climate anxiety, and evolving relationships with technology, understanding the connection between environment and mental processes is more crucial than ever. Students examine what makes environments beneficial to our brain and wellbeing, how surroundings shape cognition, whether one can design cities that support mental health, and what happens in the brain when one feels connected—or disconnected—from nature. The course traces the history and key theories of environmental neuroscience, introduces sensory perception and environmental stress, and investigates the impact of both natural and urban settings on mental health. Through lab visits, neuroimaging case studies, and a hands-on research project, students actively engage with current research. Grounded in three core pillars—interdisciplinarity, research-driven inquiry, and reflective engagement—this course encourages students to draw on diverse methods, collaborate on original studies, and consider their own experiences of space and place as they explore how neuroscience can inform real-world environmental design and policy.