Free University of Berlin

This philosophy course addresses the historical reality of the German moment of philosophy in two subsequent phases. In the first part, the course follows the emergence and full deployment of German philosophy from its Kantian beginnings to Hegel's grand but fragile synthesis, trying to understand its richness as well as its fragility. In a second part, the course discusses the later renewal of German philosophy in the late nineteenth century and its historical tragedy in the twentieth century. This includes a discussion of the new beginnings of philosophy since the mid-nineteenth century, from Marx, and Nietzsche, via Frege and Mach, to Husserl and Wittgenstein, who have been reacting to the scientific and political revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Martin Heidegger as an established pro-Nazi philosopher and Max Horkheimer as the leading philosopher of the “Frankfurt School” driven into exile are studied as philosophers immersed into the Night of the twentieth century. Finally, post-World War II developments in philosophy (as exemplified by Jürgen Habermas and Ernst Tugendhat) are looked at as pathways out of the self-destructive turn philosophy in Germany had taken in the first decades of the twentieth century, and as passages into an emerging world philosophy. The course is based upon contemporary attempts at rethinking a global philosophical perspective. The focus is on the tension between the Enlightenment heritage of a universalizing human philosophy and a national culture project, as well as on the tension between classicist rationalism and romantic emotionalism in its construction as a series of philosophical projects. From the perspective of a German version of the dialectics of the Enlightenment, the German philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are studied in context, combining the reading of key texts with a reconstruction of their historical contexts and their interaction.

This course provides students with an introduction into European environmental and climate politics and policy. Theories on European integration are discussed and students consider their explanatory value in understanding the emergence of environmental and climate policy. Special attention is paid to the European Union's institutional set-up and the actor constellations involved in policy-making processes. The course then reviews the policy cycle and explores the influence of different actor groups on the initiation, agenda setting, decision-making and implementation of European environmental policy. The focus is on regulatory areas related to the environment, climate change, and energy policy. Students consider the problems, debates, and decisions, and compare political expectations and results.

Within the scope of this course, basic concepts of EU competition law are examined along with the recent decisions by the EU Commission. The aim of the course is to teach students how to evaluate current debates on EU competition law within the framework of EU Law. It is expected from participants to conceptualize main concepts of EU competition law and consequently, to be furnished with the ability of holding fundamental discussions in this manner.

This course explores the relationship between the natural world and United States culture, considering specifically the visual expression of that relationship: How have Americans imagined “nature” and represented it? How have concepts of land and landscape shaped perceptions about social order, identity, and sustainability? The course provides both a historical framework for thinking about these questions as well as a contemporary perspective, particularly in the context of a potential new era known as the “Anthropocene.” 

In Germany and Europe public debates on migration, migrant and ethnic communities and religion play a big role in politics and society. This course first analyzes the concepts of race and racism, looking at historical and contemporary moments as well as developments of racism in society. Further, it examines the various uses of terminology in the field and particularly elaborates on the concept of ‘intersectionality’, studying racism and discrimination from this angle. After gaining the theoretical lens for this course, students engage with clear examples of different forms of racism and discrimination such as Antisemitism, anti-Black racism, anti-Muslim racism or anti-Gypsyism. These examples are analyzed and contextualized by looking at structural and societal problems of racism. Finally, students visit and hear from activists in Berlin dealing with the problem of racism and discrimination. Additionally, the course looks into how governments and policy makers try to tackle racism within their own societies. Students learn from this course the different concepts and forms of racism and are able to apply this knowledge in future discussions by critically questioning processes and events in politics and society.

Living and studying in a foreign country can be an exciting time in your personal and intellectual development. One productive way of dealing with the onslaught of impressions is to write about it. This course is designed to help you transform your ideas into a well-considered piece of literary writing. The resulting text may be fictional or non-fictional. It could take the form of a short story set in Berlin, a literary reportage, a creative essay, a series of poems or even the beginning chapter of a novel. Program: This course will be conducted workshop-style. You will work on your own text throughout the semester, and share and discuss it with your fellow students and the instructor. In addition, we will conduct short writing exercises and discuss assigned texts about the process of writing.

This in-depth seminar on the general methodology of psychotherapy focuses on child and adolescent psychotherapy with a focus on the consequences of trauma and child protection. The heart of the seminar is the dream-focused behavioral therapy, a modular and component-based therapy with about 16 sessions with the children and a caregiver. In addition, further methods of trauma therapy with children and adolescents and other trauma-related topics such as experiences of racism and discrimination and their consideration in psychotherapy are examined in more detail.

The seminar covers topics such as evaluation procedures, benefit assessments, adherence, and data protection and information security of digital health applications. As part of a project, students investigate selected digital health applications for different indication areas (such as alcohol consumption, insomnia, diabetes, fatigue, stress) and discuss the opportunities and risks of digital health applications for prevention and rehabilitation.

What kind of anthropology is it that we, as scholars and students of the discipline, should or need to be advocating – also and especially with a view to current timely demands for conceptual and structural decolonization? How has anthropological critique questioned the fundamentals of the discipline (of anthropology) itself? Which programmatic pathways have been sketched out to indicate constructive ways forward? What do we think of them; which others would we like to raise; why? Does the inclusion of, and focus on theory from the South already constitute a fundamental change? How might anthropology engage constructively with thinkers and theoretical contributions from the global South? In which ways, finally, does it matter that we as researchers and social agents are inevitably positioned in certain ways, often belonging clearly to regions of the Global North or South? This seminar course will pursue these and related questions with a view to some classic and some recent readings, both from within and outside anthropology, and engaging with theorizing from the South, especially from Africa.

The so-called “Marshall Plan” was only a four-year-program, and yet, it looms large in public memory, especially in Western Europe. This is not a coincidence: The influence that the US government had on the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II came not only in the form of financial investments or material aid. The European Recovery Program (ERP) has also been considered ‘the largest single propaganda operation… ever seen in peacetime’ (Ellwood 2010, 113). This seminar is centered around questions like: What is the image that the US wanted to project during the Marshall Plan years, and why? What did these images, of the US, of Europe, and of the other, look like and how were they perceived? The seminar will be divided into two parts. Part I provides a historical and conceptual frame: It examines the motives behind Marshall Plan ‘aid' and traces the image of the US as ‘a benevolent nation’ (McCrisken and Pepper 2005, 89). Further, it introduces students to historical debates and perceptions of Americanization, and contrasts different conceptualizations of influence, ranging from cultural imperialism to ‘cultural transfer’ (Gienow-Hecht (2000), ‘Westernization’ (Nehring 2004), or ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004). Part II of the seminar will be dedicated to the actual (graphic) images that the US produced during the Marshall Plan years, especially propaganda films. Building on concepts and methods developed in the field of Visual Culture, students will learn to “read” images as primary sources and interpret them within the historical frame of the early Cold War.