Free University of Berlin

In 1951, six European countries signed the Treaty of Paris to form the European Coal and Steel Community that laid the foundation for what is known today as the European Union (EU). Since its humble beginnings, the EU has played a crucial role in the political and economic development of Europe and the globe and has evolved into an ‘ever closer union’ of currently 27 member states that have pooled their sovereignty to a historically unprecedented degree. Today, the EU constitutes one of the most complex and intriguing political and economic systems in the world, and as the European integration process remains in flux, the EU remains a moving target for those who study it. This course focuses on the scientific study of the EU and EU politics. It offers you the opportunity to deepen your knowledge of the EU’s institutional actors and decision-making procedures, to actively analyze EU politics and policy-making, and to find answers to the various theoretical and empirical questions that are raised by the EU’s existence and developments. To provide you with a more tangible feel for the EU and the problems of EU policy-making and to make your learning experience as interactive as possible, the course complements regular class meetings with simulations of the Council of the European Union.

Moral Psychology is a field of study between philosophy and psychology that studies human functioning in Moral contexts and the way this has an impact in ethical theory. This course is an Introduction to some of the main topics and methods in the field of Moral Psychology, including moral judgment, moral reasoning, moral responsibility and moral emotions.

For this advanced research seminar, students choose the topic of their research paper from the range of processes, legal innovations and socio-legal practices that took place within Germany in any period of choice from 1933 to today. The seminar will be held as a block when students will present the elaborated papers with a seminar presentation. The prerequisite for participation is the prior attendance of a lecture on “State Crime Criminology, Transitional Justice, and the Nazi Regime.” Students will write a 20-page seminar paper, give a seminar lecture, and participate in the discussion of the other students’ presentations.

Philosophers, and non-philosophers alike, have fought over the meanings, values and consequences of love and sexual desire from philosophy’s very beginning. The seminar addresses some of these controversial issues, their aporias and paradoxes, and encourages students to find their own interpretations and answers. We will discuss questions such as: Are there different forms of love? What are the differences, if any, between e.g. love and friendship? Is sex or sexual desire essential for love? Do we lose or find ourselves in love relationships? How do we change when we fall in love? Are we free or unfree when we are in a love relationship? How do power and love relate? How much aggressivity, hate and mastery are entailed in love bonds? The seminar will address these (and further) questions by concentrating on four models of love: (1) Love as union or fusion; (2) Love as knowledge; (3) Love as work on oneself; (4) Love as struggle. As conceptual basis for these models, two texts in particular will be read, analysed and discussed, an ancient one, Plato’s Symposium, and a modern one, which however draws upon ancient myths, Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea. The two texts will be studied in light of modern and contemporary insights and issues, as for example those raised by Hegel (and especially his master/slave figure), psychoanalysis, feminism, polyamory theory, and others. There will be space for students to (partially) participate in the articulation of the programme, and for practicing philosophy in some more ‘creative’ ways than usual (by for example staging philosophical theatrical scenes).

The mythologically masculine figure of the creative genius has often been employed to minimize and excuse violence against marginalized people. In exchange for great art, audiences might be more than willing to look the other way when women, people of color, queer people and children get hurt. With the arrival of social media, the violent price of art by monstrous men has become harder to ignore. Their crimes are all over the internet. When knowledge of the wrongdoings by artists spread, it becomes challenging for fans to ignore the reprehensible behavior of people like Michael Jackson, Roman Polanski, Louis CK, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey and R. Kelly. In this course, we reflect on the dilemma this leaves for audiences: How do we deal with great art made by horrible people? Students will learn how to make use of an intersectional feminist toolbox to engage with questions like: -- Does art have to be moral? -- Can we separate art from artist? Is this dependent on the medium? -- Is the audience complicit or culpable if they continue consuming the work created by monstrous men? -- How does the art by monstrous men play into discussions around individual taste and political identity as shaped by cultural consumption? -- What do strategies of ethical cultural consumption look like? -- Can we have harmless, morally sound cultural products in patriarchal, white supremacist capitalism? -- What is “woke capitalism” and does canceling culture ever work? -- What do accountability and consequences look like? -- Can monstrous men redeem themselves through confessions, apologies and contrition?

The seminar examines selected areas of development in early childhood. The focus is on emotional development in infancy and toddlerhood, supplemented by important milestones in early social and social-cognitive development.

American sports culture frequently serves as an example of an alleged American exceptionalism; a fact that a relative indifference towards soccer, the exceptional “big four” pro sports leagues, and collegiate sports culture (NCAA) seemingly underline. This course sets out to make sense of and (maybe) trouble the narrative of American exceptionalism by examining the history of modern sports in the United States. We will consider the aesthetic, social, cultural, and political factors that contributed to the development and practice of sports from roughly the middle of the 19th century into our current age. The class will approach sports history with a focus on the relationship between sports and society, i.e. the role that sports has played in shaping ideology and informing popular thought, for example in the context of nationhood and globalization, but also with regard to modern discourses of health and fitness. The ultimate goal of this course is to encourage critically looking at, thinking, and writing about sports as everyday practice and as a professional field, as connected to discourses of health and (the pursuit of) happiness, as media event and content, and as a prominent repository of liberal narratives of meritocracy.

Since the middle of the 19th century, realistic movements in the visual arts have claimed to show 'real life'. However, this is not about the deceptive illusion of a particularly natural representation, so that one could confuse the image with the model. Rather, a new understanding of the objects worthy of images and the political functions of art is emerging, which not only aims to provide information about reality, but also actively participates in it. The representation of 'real people' and social reality can coincide with the stylistic devices of factual documentaryism as well as with the melodrama and drastic nature of the description, the use of fantastic-magical elements or the artistic processing of everyday objects. The seminar examines and questions various varieties of this understanding of art (e.g. European realism in the 19th century, New Objectivity, Magical Realism, American Realism, Socialist Realism, Nouveau Réalisme, Capitalist Realism, New Leipzig School, Neo-Realism in China). with regard to continuities and changes in demands and means in the respective representation of 'reality'.

Old English was the language spoken and preserved in written texts up to the mid-eleventh century CE in the regions of the British Isles. It developed from the languages spoken by Germanic peoples coming to Britain from the continental mainland and presents the earliest precursor of Modern English. This course focuses on Old English texts written in verse, exploring their themes, styles, meanings, and the challenges of dealing with a language surviving only in a small number of often unique and damaged manuscripts. Texts read include heroic poetry, such as Beowulf, elegies, as well as Old English versions of Biblical texts. The focus of the readings is on the question of how such texts portray concepts of gender, how they construct but also deconstruct gender roles, and how they relate to gender theory in the 21st century. Students are introduced to the grammar and pronunciation of Old English and use their knowledge to work with the original texts alongside Modern English translations.