Humboldt University Berlin

If justice meant “helping friends and harming enemies,” then it would be important to know who your friends and enemies are – so it is no surprise that Socrates, confronted with that theory of justice, has a fair amount to say about friendship both in Plato and Xenophon. It is however a surprise to find friendship put at the center of Plato’s sketch of the most just city – a city that will also be “a friend to itself” – as well as the center of a Platonic theory of self-knowledge. For interpreters long thought that Socrates had repudiated this account of justice. This course first considers the treatment of individual friendship intertwined with political friendship for Socrates and Plato, and then turns to Aristotle’s disentangled treatment of them with an eye to the question of whether something goes missing when they are disentangled.
 

Freedom of will is both a philosophical problem and an empirical issue. However, the distinction between the philosophical and empirical aspects of the problem has not always been clear, leading to serious confusion at times. Bringing together philosophical and empirical approaches, the seminar focuses on the distinction between the philosophical and empirical aspects of the problem, which matters for interdisciplinary work in general. The first part presents several more recent theoretical approaches advocating for and against the existence of freedom of will. The second part reviews recent empirical work on the role of consciousness, intention, or a possible veto in decision-making processes, as well as related lay intuitions. Finally, the third part discusses the effects of psychiatric disorders on free will. A number of case studies on disorders like addiction, antisocial personality disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorders are examined.

This course explores the morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the grammatical category of gender. It examines what kids of gender systems exist, how gender is morphologically manifested on different grammatical categories, what the relation between gender and agreement is, how gender is interpreted and how this all varies across different languages. The class compares English with languages with different gender systems, such as German, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, or those of Bantu languages, in order to gain a comprehensive overview of its crosslinguistic variation.

This course investigates British literature from the mid-19th century onwards to consider its aim to look at the every-day, often mundane aspects of life and describe life 'as it really is’, engaging especially with questions on the representation of labor and social class in Britain. While much of the course literature is concerned with the period of industrialization in Britain, over the course of the seminar it moves on to the later 20th century to think about the relationship between fiction and late-stage capitalism. The texts in the seminar largely consist of prose fiction but also include plays and films.

This course examines mechanisms underlying real economic integration, including growth convergence, trade, factor mobility and fiscal transfers. It also analyzes theoretical and policy dimensions of the economic integration of Europe, the recent history of European monetary and financial integration, and the rationale for European Monetary Union, the theory of optimal currency areas, the European Central Bank, fiscal and monetary policy in a currency union, and the impact of banking and sovereign debt crises on the financial stability of the Eurozone.

This course introduces students to the mechanisms of the production of speech sounds, e.g. vowels and consonants, their description, classification and transcription. The course explores how speech sounds are organized across languages. Students practice how to establish speech sounds in a language (or phonemes) by using minimal pairs and complementary distribution. They learn basic phonological processes which occur in language.

Why is ‘gender’ a global far-right obsession? How do algorithms amplify anti-feminist hate? This course combines theory and action—from dissecting memes to designing resistance campaigns. It examines how anti-gender movements weaponize digital platforms to spread disinformation, enforce patriarchal norms, and target marginalized communities. Through feminist, postcolonial, and disability justice lenses, students analyze global case studies—from #TradWife influencers to algorithmic oppression in the Global South. Students engage with theorists like Butler and Haraway, conduct hands-on research (e.g., TikTok comment analysis), and design counterspeech campaigns. Centering a transdisciplinary and decolonial approach, the course equips students to critique structural exclusion and imagine emancipatory digital futures.

Through the reading of scholarly texts, collective analysis of sources, and personal research, this course aims to address European integration through the lens of gender and how gender issues impact European integration. The course highlights the contribution of women’s networks to bringing European societies closer together, but also examines the place of feminism and reflections on gender in the development of European values, which today help to set Europe apart globally. Particular attention is paid to the different experiences of gender and feminism in Western Europe and in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin has long been imagined as a site of queer freedom, experimentation, and resistance. This course explores how queerness is shaped by and shapes urban space, using Berlin as a lens to examine intersections of sexuality, space, and power. Drawing from queer theory, urban studies, and architecture, students investigate how queer spaces are produced, contested, and remembered, and how they intersect with race, class, gender, and transnational histories. Through readings, discussions, exercise and fieldwork, participants critically reflect on what makes a space “queer,” who has access to it, and how Berlin’s reputation as a queer capital both reveals and obscures broader social dynamics. The course combines theoretical inquiry with experiential learning and invites critical engagement with the ethics of researching queer urban life.

This seminar seeks to trace the arguments and development of queer theory from the early 1990s when the term was first introduced to the present, including earlier texts that helped to shape the discourse. Special focus lies on the political and rhetorical strategies that these texts employ and how they establish queerness as a lens through which one can analyze US American culture and cultural productions. To test the scope and limits of a queer framework, students also ask themselves how queer theory relates to interrelated discourses such as feminism, transgender studies, intersex studies, critical race theory, and disability studies. The course discusses such topics as compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity, women of color feminism and queer of color critique, queer negativity versus utopianism, homonormativity and homonationalism, crip theory, and trans studies as queer theory’s supposed evil twin.