Humboldt University Berlin

This course explores the dynamic landscape of global social movements, taking Berlin as a focal point and lens to analyze broader international trends. Students engage with theories and case studies that illustrate how social movements emerge, evolve, and impact societies, especially in contexts marked by globalization, migration, and socio-political change. Berlin’s rich history as a hub for activism provides an ideal backdrop for examining the intersections of local and transnational movements. During the semester, students explore the complex historical and contemporary dynamics of social movements in and beyond Germany. Presenting different approaches of studies of collective action, the course provides a comprehensive understanding of the multiple contemporary social movements shaping our contemporary world, and it will highlight their contribution for the democratization of the world in which we currently live. Each class will connect a theoretical discussion on collective action with a case of a specific social movement, especially with cases from Berlin history with global entangled connections. The first section of the course is composed of theoretical texts with three different approaches to social movements: contentious politics, new social movements and dynamics approach. From the understanding of these perspectives, the students are able to navigate the different analyses discussed in the following sections and the case studies throughout the course. Next, the class focuses on the ways global social movements produce resistance, concrete utopias and position themselves in anticolonial and postcolonial struggles. By discussing these concepts, the students gain an understanding of social movements as an entry point to apprehend a society in a more comprehensive way. The third part of the course focuses on discussions of contemporary social movements and what their studies bring to understanding political action, their possibilities, their limits, their contributions to democratization in Germany and around the world. Students discuss the cases of feminism, climate justice, queer and trans liberation, housing and other social movements. Throughout the course, students are able to develop critical thinking skills, gain historical knowledge, and engage in interdisciplinary analysis on social movements. By examining the German colonial past, anti-colonial resistance movements, and decolonial theories, students gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding this area of studies and the struggles for social justice and democratization in and beyond the Berlin context.

The course discusses contemporary U.S. American graphic memoirs, exploring how comics serve as a powerful medium for autobiographical storytelling. It examines how artists narrate personal and intimate experiences through the interplay of image and text. Students analyze how image and text work together to visualize trauma, self-representation, memory, and resilience—and learn what makes the comic medium such an affective space for narrating stories of illness, displacement, queerness, race, and coming of age. The exploration focuses on both the form and content of these works, analyzing how issues of gender, class, and race are portrayed within these narratives and how they engage with broader U.S. American cultural, social, and political contexts. Readings include a diverse range of voices and styles, from graphic memoirs like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, to more recent works by George Takei, Cece Bell, Nora Krug, and Kindra Neely. As part of the course, students have the opportunity to create their own short graphic memoirs, using accessible tools such as Making Comics by Lynda Barry, Canva, or StoryboardThat. This activity is planned to invite students to experiment with visual storytelling and reflect on their own experiences—no artistic background or drawing skills required.

The course covers financial economics viewed from the perspective of shareholders of a firm. It includes an introduction to financial economics with a focus on investing in stock markets, as well as stock valuation, but also the valuation of risky cash flows from a social perspective. The course examines the issue of corporate governance and, in particular, how to assess the governance of a given firm. Moreover, it discusses trading strategies of investors in stock markets. The course concludes with a two-day workshop in which students work on case studies, analyzing current issues with respect to corporate governance.

This seminar explores Plato’s views on akrasia and its reception in the Platonic tradition, especially by Plotinus. The exploration begins with a close reading and discussion of several key passages in Plato’s dialogues before moving on to equally careful readings of key passages in the later tradition. Students discuss various versions of akrasia (synchronic, diachronic, knowledge-based, belief-based, etc.) and some views found in the secondary literature. No knowledge of Ancient Greek is required, but at times the Greek text is discussed in a manner accessible to all.

This course examines Plato’s political philosophy through the lens of John Rawls’s distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory. Rawls characterizes ideal theory as assuming full compliance with the demands of justice, while non-ideal theory addresses the conditions under which such compliance fails. By engaging closely with Plato’s Republic and Laws, the class explores how each text embodies or challenges these frameworks in order to achieve a greater understanding of the aims of Plato’s political thought and the merits versus limits of philosophical idealization.

This course examines the functions of financial markets in society. It starts with the history of financial markets, then turns to a non-technical introduction to modern finance theory. Based on a solid understanding of the theory, students are able to interpret information revealed by financial markets and to recognize common abuses of such information in policy-making. The last part of the course concerns the interaction between finance and politics, i.e. how legislation and regulation directly influence the structure of financial markets and how players in these markets intervene in the political process to create or modify legislative and regulatory outcomes. Students participate in economic experiments that illustrate the fragility of financial markets.