Humboldt University Berlin

In this course, students explore a double and interrelated focus: connecting theories of place with readings of poems in which place is more than just a setting and instead gains poetological significance. From the more accessible approaches of poets like Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Alice Oswald or, in the postcolonial context, Arun Kolatkar, to the more experimental poetics of Allen and Roy Fisher or Wendy Mulford and Geraldine Monk, the course analyzes a variety of place-based poetics from the 1960s to the beginning of the 21st century. Topics include how to think of place in the context of a globalizing world, phenomenological approaches of place and how globalization has disrupted it, identities of places, geological materialities and the social and communal process. Students examine how poets have not only recognized the multidimensional complexity of places and the culturally as well as politically critical ways of determining the boundaries and identities of places, but have used explorations into how to represent places in their various material and semiological layers also for reflecting on, and experimenting with, poetic forms and the materiality, historicity as well as performativity of poetic signification. 

From the 1790s to the 1840s, a Berlin-based network of artists and intellectuals developed novel ways of writing, thinking, feeling, and living under the conceptual banner of the ‘romantic.’ Drawing on key texts by Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Novalis, Henriette Herz, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Bettina and Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and the brothers Grimm, the class explores the central areas and practices of their romantic discourse of radical aesthetic, philosophical, political, and sociocultural modernity. Students critically examine how the romantics manifested and confronted the defining conflicts of their political and cultural present as these crystallized in Berlin, the capital of Prussia, 19th century Germany’s emerging hegemonic power. The course also surveys influential contemporary critiques of the romantic movement (Goethe, Hegel, Heine) and follow its legacies in the 20th century. Art history is another focus of the class, which includes a museum visit.

This interdisciplinary seminar examines Berlin as a crucible of revolutionary thought and action across two transformative centuries. Rather than simply surveying historical events, the course investigates how revolutionary ideas—about the state, freedom, justice, and human emancipation—have evolved, collided, and been reimagined from the Napoleonic era through contemporary social movements. Students engage with canonical texts in philosophy and political theory (Hegel, Marx, Luxemburg, the Frankfurt School) alongside historical analysis and on-site exploration of Berlin's revolutionary landscapes—from the Berlin Wall Memorial to former Stasi prisons to sites of student uprising. Throughout, the course emphasizes critical connections between past and present, examining how Berlin's revolutionary traditions inform contemporary debates about surveillance, resistance, urban space, and democratic participation. Students develop skills in comparative historical analysis, philosophical argumentation, and critical citizenship, learning to recognize how understanding revolutionary history can illuminate present-day struggles for social transformation.

Structured as a chronological survey, this class provides a historical overview of British and Commonwealth spoken word poetry from the late 1960s to the present day. Beginning with US American influences from beat poetry and the Liverpool poets, the class moves on to the “punk poet” John Cooper Clarke and dub poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah and Linton Kwesi Johnson from the 1970s and 1980s. It then discusses work from the 1990s and early 2000s by spoken word performers such as Roger Robinson and Malika Booker, ending with Jay Bernard’s contemporary archival poetry. Students use these primary texts to introduce and revise concepts from literary studies such as intertextuality, reader-response theory, the archival turn, and autotheory. Incorporating modes of writing like Saidya Hartman’s “critical fabulation” and Antonio Gramsci’s and Stuart Hall’s figure of the “organic intellectual” into the discussion, the class attempts to conceptualize spoken word poetry as a uniquely ephemeral and performative form of knowledge production. In addition to discussing the role of spoken word poetry for marginalized communities and identities, the class attempts to understand how it challenges categories like authorship and genre, as well as distinctions between e.g. fiction and nonfiction or high and popular culture.

This seminar examines the museum as a global institution that emerged through its entanglements with empire, colonial collecting practices, and systems of knowledge production. Divided into two parts, the course first traces the birth and colonial origins of the museum in Europe. It analyzes how collecting, classification, and display became intertwined with imperial ideologies and modes of governance. Finally, the seminar turns to museums in the colony, investigating how these institutions developed distinct trajectories as sites of both imperial control and local agency, as well as their roles in nationalist and postcolonial imaginaries. Through key readings in critical museology, postcolonial theory, and heritage studies, students engage with case studies from Asia and Africa. The seminar concludes by reflecting on what decolonial futures for museums might entail and how curatorial and collaborative practices can challenge established museological frameworks.

This seminar explores crisis as both a topic of ethnographic research and a way of understanding contemporary social and political change, including economic breakdown, humanitarian intervention, environmental disaster, and political upheaval. Organized into three thematic blocks, the course begins with ethnographic case studies that examine how different communities, experts, and anthropologists experience and respond to crisis in everyday life. These cases are situated within broader historical and political processes such as imperialism, capitalism, and authoritarianism. The second block introduces crisis as an analytical concept, focusing on questions of time, rupture, repetition, and chronic or overlapping crises. Building on this approach, the final block explores alternative ways of thinking about social and political transformation beyond crisis. Through close reading, discussion, collaborative work, and selected multimedia materials, students move from concrete ethnographic analysis to theoretical comparison and critique, gaining the tools to critically assess dominant narratives of crisis and to develop alternative frameworks for understanding social and political transformation within or beyond crisis.

The lecture series brings together thirteen fellows from Humboldt University’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg for Advanced Study ­ – inherit. Heritage in Transformation, whose research spans disciplines to explore what it means to inherit. From colonial legacies and ancestral remains to genetic memory, religious ritual, and postcolonial art, the lectures probe how inheritance shapes belonging, identity, and knowledge itself. Through these diverse projects, the lecture series asks what can be passed on and how, and in what ways does inheritance invite us to rethink the ethics and possibilities of living with the past in the present. The contributors to the lecture series include artists of various media as well as researchers from a wide range of humanities and social sciences, such as anthropology, art history, history, literature, philosophy, political science and sociology. The lecture series introduces trans- and multi-disciplinary humanities approaches with a particular focus on the following three strands of ongoing transformation: decentering of the West (Europe/Global North); decentering of the human; and transformation of value.

The course discusses the global economy since 1500, from a European perspective. The focus is placed on the development of material living standards, political participation, and their interaction over time. Students understand the long-term perspective and the role of historical case studies for economic decision making. They gain new insights into long-term development and apply their knowledge of economic theory and basic empirical methods, together with a critical perspective on historical sources.

This course explores the debates of how Berlin is viewed through subtopics such as gentrification, inequality, and political polarization (e.g. on environmental and housing policy). Topics include how Berlin is often seen as left-leaning and progressive due to its multicultural image, the nuance of the city's socio-political landscape, the Berlin Wall's legacy shaping socio-economic divides between East and West, and influencing political positions. Students examine the political leanings of the city center and outside the transport boundary, historical changes including the integration of GDR infrastructure and the revival of Prussian heritage, alongside the gentrification of some areas, rising rent prices and the tensions on the role of the market. Students analyze global trends like the rise of far-right movements and neoliberalism rooted partly in historical East-West societal divides and how these conflicts reveal broader debates on societal value(s) and the common good. 

The seminar begins with discussing the challenges academic research – even if mostly historically oriented – faces when investigating clandestine phenomena such as criminal networks. It then introduces core concepts of illicit markets including trafficking corridors, and the political economy of criminal violence. The seminar goes on to explore the historical origins (starting in the 1970s and 1980s) of drug trafficking in both regions using, among others, historical, journalistic and criminological accounts. From then on it proceeds chronologically until the 2010s with an outlook on the current situation. For both regions, the class examines and reviews the historical interface/interlinkages between state secret services and criminals (e.g. the use of criminals by the UDBA to eliminate Yugoslav dissidents in the West, or the use of Mexican drug trafficking networks to support clandestine aid to anti-Sandinista Contras). The final part uses the comparative material to formulate a historically grounded puzzle: Why did the two corridors follow such different trajectories of organized violence? The seminar concludes by mapping the divergence of historical pathways of violence and discussing tentative explanations suggested in the literature.