Humboldt University Berlin

This course introduces into the linguistic sub-discipline pragmatics. Students examine how meaning emerges in context, and how this contextual meaning can be distinguished from the literal meaning of a linguistic expression. The range of topics includes assertion, presupposition, implicature, and speech acts.

Language anxiety and linguistic insecurity are central topics in multilingual and transcultural contexts. In this seminar, students investigate the causes and effects of language anxiety, in language acquisition as well as in the day to day. The class looks at different forms of linguistic insecurity and language anxiety that are affected by social norms, language ideologies, and individual experiences. The goal of the seminar is to develop a critical understanding of this phenomenon and how to approach linguistic insecurity. The readiness to work with research literature in English is required. Students need to take this seminar alongside the lecture "Second Language Acquisition and Multilingualism".

This course discusses the different aspects of EU's foreign policy such as conflict transformation, financial aid packages and sanctions, geo-strategic investment, energy diplomacy and more, introducing students to the workings of EU's diplomatic bodies and their influence in the Western Balkans and the Eastern Trio. The course considers the candidate countries' regional dynamics and motivations behind their foreign policy alignment. It concludes with a simulation exercise focused on the EU's supranational institutions within a fictional negotiating scenario.

This seminar investigates morphological patterns in which prosody plays a central role for word structure, such as clippings/ truncation (fab < fabulous, veggie < vegetarian), -er comparatives (red - redder, conventional - *conventionaler but more conventional), infixation (uni-bloody-versity, Minne-fuckin'-sota) or reduplication (mish-mash). Using English and other languages as a data source, the course introduces Optimality Theory as a framework for modelling the interaction of morphology and phonology in these constructions.

The increasing uptake of generative AI technologies for a range of purposes from emotional care and companionship to work flow optimization serves as a rich field of inquiry for anthropologists studying human-technology relations. While all technologies are imbued by popular narratives and imaginaries, the use of AI tools in particular is informed by myths of hype and anti-hype that underline the need for ethnographic approaches exploring how these technologies are actualized in practice. This course explores the potential of anthropological theory and methods for elucidating the social, cultural, and political implications of generative AI. With tech companies touting the greater efficiency and profitability promised by these technologies at the expense of other considerations, qualitative research providing a more nuanced picture of human-AI entanglement in everyday life is crucial. So too, the far-reaching impacts of AI technologies provide an opportunity to revisit some of the key perspectives and questions animating cultural anthropology as well as the ways these might intersect productively with other disciplinary approaches. Key topics in the course include the political economy of AI and its impact on the future of work, race and gender logics and biases of AI, and the integration of AI into social media, virtual worlds, and the metaverse.

This course examines how British literature from the 1980s is already full of ghosts, specters, and pasts that destabilize any secure sense of present or future. In the first section, students read the novel Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd (1985) as well as parts of the graphic novel From Hell by Eddie Campbell and Alan Moore (1989-1998). They then move on to Jeanette Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry (1989), analyzing the feminist potential of (re)turning to nonlinear histories. In the final section of the class, students examine how selected Black British poetry, and the film Twilight City (1989) conjure the violent specter of the British Empire as always already all-too-present. The course has a distinct focus on improving close reading skills and developing methods to approach theory productively. Along with British Cultural Critic Mark Fisher’s and Jacques Derrida’s concepts of hauntology, students build a theoretical toolkit that includes work on historiographic metafiction and the spatial turn. Additionally, the course draws on trauma theory, queer temporality and phenomenology, as well as Afrofuturist and Afropessimist writing.

This seminar explores the interface between queer identity, music, and history and investigates how musical spaces may serve as mirrors and critiques of societal norms. Students investigate the experiences of queer artists through a historical perspective and see how they use music as a form of social critique and expression. Beginning with operatic roles in the 17th century, through contexts like the 19th century cakewalk, the cabaret of the Weimar republic in the 1920s-1930s, as well as hip-hop culture, the seminar uncovers how gender transgressivity and performance art are reflected in music. Students analyze queer and transgressive music scenes as “heterotopias” (Foucault) – places of resistance against societal norms – and discuss the role of music in the construction of community and identity. Important texts by Audre Lorde, Michael Foucault, and Theodor W Adorno offer theoretical foundations through which the interventional power of music in the negotiation of identity and difference can be understood. Students develop their own case studies of queer artists and their visual, cultural, musical, and/or social moments of intervention.

This course explores the dynamic interplay between gender, space, and state policies in Iran, focusing on how women navigate and resist the gendered narratives imposed by the state. By examining both historical and contemporary contexts, the course delves into the ways Iranian women, from various backgrounds and walks of life, have engaged with modernity, anti-modernity, and state-driven agendas. Through a mix of theoretical frameworks and case studies, students gain insights into the strategies used by women to resist and negotiate oppressive structures, with an emphasis on the spatial aspects of their resistance.