Free University of Berlin

This course focuses on the problems that have arisen since the development of the Euro and the various explanations that have been offered as the root of such problems. The explanations range from excessive government spending in select member states over institutional weaknesses of the currency to contradictions inherent to market-based societies. Each explanation differs in terms of the underlying premises, identification of relevant factors, and proposed solutions to the observed problems. The goal of this seminar is to understand these issues, disentangle the varied approaches, and assess merits and flaws of the different perspectives. To this end, it addresses the origins and consequences of the Euro and the Eurozone crisis. The first part of the seminar reviews the run-up to the creation of the Euro. Step-by-step, the course assesses the status quo in post-war Europe and considers the political and economic rationales for creating first a common market and then a common currency. The second part engages with the established Eurozone, its supposedly successful first ten years, and the turbulent times thereafter. Students consider the onset of the Eurozone crisis, the policy responses at domestic and European level, as well as the remaining shortcomings in the institutional and economic governance of the Euro. The seminar assesses and explains the historical, political, and economic aspects underlying the creation and the trajectory of the European Economic and Monetary Union. Prior knowledge of European integration or economic theory is helpful, but the seminar is open to all students willing to engage with the subject.

Geography is a space-based science, whose overriding cognitive interest is dedicated to the collection, analysis, and explanation of complex spatial relationships that relate to the natural and anthropogenically created environment. Since the 1960s, leisure and tourism research has become an important sub-discipline of geography. Tourism geography deals with spatial structures of tourism in destinations of the supply and demand side on different geographic scale levels as well as with tourist-related processes and functions that produce them. In addition to phenomena of tourism, the course also covers leisure activities. The course deals with theories and concepts of tourism organization and development. It explains and analyzes the fundamentals as well as current trends, products, and problems in the tourism sector. The main focus is on three groups of topics: conceptual themes (e.g. tourism as a system, community based tourism, sustainable tourism, tourism and climate change, moral/cultural/ethical); topics that analyze relationships between globalization and tourism (e.g. regionalization trends, tourism and security); topics that explain various trends in tourism (e.g. demographic change, lifestyle tourism, dark tourism, world heritage tourism).

This course takes a close look at city life from the beginning of the twentieth century to the First World War, the post-war years, the so-called “Roaring Twenties” until the Great Depression. The course introduces to students to what life was like in Berlin and London. It covers the lifestyles of people in different social classes and discusses the experiences of metropolitan everyday life. Also considered are the effects that urbanization and the boom in urban popular culture, leisure, and consumption had on their lives. By adopting a comparative approach, the course traces and examines similarities and differences in the social history of these two big cities over a time span of thirty years and thereby critically assess an important aspect of European history. Students are expected to discuss and analyze aspects of social and cultural history.

The seminar begins with a historical overview of the different eras of energy use, from wood to shale gas. It starts with the industrial revolution and follows the energetic and social upheavals to the present day. Within each era, the course considers how societies and epochs are conditioned by their main source of energy and how international politics is to be understood as energy policy. The second half of the semester turns to climate policy. The scientific history of the topic is covered including the 1980s, the rise of UN climate diplomacy, and the hegemonic struggles over the interpretation of climate change and climate protection. The guiding question here is the connection between the interests of the institutions expressing themselves and the resulting positioning in climate policy.

This course covers, in a theoretically informed way, the sources and trends of United States foreign policy. By applying different levels of analysis—the system, state, and individual—it critically examines the structures, interests, and values that underlie the goals of policy and that shape policy decisions. Substantively, it addresses the evolution of major US foreign policy tenets and aims, the role of the Presidency, Congress, and bureaucracy, and the influence of public opinion.

This class covers the evolution of all plant groups from the early prokaryotic algae to the Angiosperms. This class consists of a lecture, seminar, and lab. In the lecture the professor explains broad trends about each class of organisms and tendencies in the evolution process. In the seminar students work on literature reviews and presenting research. The lab period provides students with the opportunity to work in more detail on the topics covered in the lecture.

This seminar is aimed at students who are interested in issues of European and transnational regulation of financial markets. The first part of the seminar is devoted to theoretical approaches to International Political Economy that explain the regulation of financial markets (regulatory capture, economic patriotism, club governance, institutionalist approaches, Marxist approaches, constructivist approaches). The second part of the seminar focuses on important topics of transnational financial market regulation (derivatives, investment funds, financial sustainability, banking supervision, rating agencies).

Every state and government formulates and practices its own foreign policy on different historical, normative, and institutional bases. In view of the different starting points, it is not surprising that the goals and interests of states and governments and their foreign policy differ; they formulate problems differently, define options for action and political strategies differently, talk and act differently. Against the background of this problem, this seminar deals with the question of how Germany's foreign policy presents itself in a comparative perspective. Comparative case studies examine whether, to what extent, and why Germany's foreign policy after unification may be different in comparison to other states in different foreign policy fields in the face of more or less equal challenges. The following questions serve as a common guideline for all case studies: 1) What are the characteristics of German foreign policy in comparison? 2) Is the legitimacy of German foreign policy questionable? 3) Which influencing factors do experts state for the findings under 1) and 2)? Comparative foreign policy research serves to describe, evaluate, and understand differences and similarities.