Humboldt University Berlin

The European Union is an important actor when it comes to law-making. While this often appears to be very abstract, it does impact our lives as European citizens very much, also on the national level. In 2021, the European Commission opened a series of citizen-led debates, the Conference on the Future of Europe. These meetings, taking place in various formats, allowed citizens from all over Europe to share their ideas and provide suggestions on how to improve their future in Europe. This seminar will offer students the opportunity to investigate this process more closely, its results, achievements and implications for all inhabitants of European member states. Connecting them in a better was with EU institutions is crucial considering that European elections will take place in May 2024 and that Eurosceptical voices are rising in many European societies. At the end of the seminar, students will have fostered their background on theoretical perspectives to critically analyze Europeanization, integration and multi-level governance, including institutional, feminist and sociological approaches.

Agile software development methodologies and frameworks have changed how software is created, and are widely used and supported. This is not surprising, given that agile approaches stand, among other aspects, for continuous change and collaboration between stakeholders. These characteristics are aligned with the dynamic needs of business models pursuing innovation, which is why companies consider agile software development a key element for the future. In this seminar we will explore the rise and evolution of agile software development. Among other aspects, we will look at the principles and values behind it, what differentiates it from traditional software development approaches, its main frameworks and methodologies, the challenges jeopardizing its values, and what we can expect from it for the years to come.

What is at stake in reading, writing, depicting and telling the histories of Berlin’s architectural and urban landscape? How do historical and analytical frameworks shape scholarly understandings of the city? How does the architecture of Berlin shape its history and theory? Conducted as a discussion seminar, this course uses recent architectural and urban histories of 20th century Berlin to explore different ways of narrating the city’s history. Each week, students will approach Berlin’s urbanity through different textual and visual media to discuss the themes and methods—from femininity to migration, politics to privatization—by which they narrate the entanglement of Berlin’s physical and social landscape. Over the course of the semester, students will develop their scholarly reading techniques, and their fluency in the multipolar and manifold circumstances of the city. The premise of the course is that engaging the narrative can lead to ‘changing the narrative,’ thereby opening the door for students to develop an original final project, situating their worldly experience in the past, present and future of Berlin.

How does racial difference teach us to see, or not to see? This seminar examines the intersection of Modernist aesthetics and racial formation, with a focus on the United States and Europe in the 20th century. From monochrome painting and mid-century furniture to Josephine Baker and Isamu Noguchi, we will analyze how race materializes through form and style. Topics and themes will include: race and abstraction; primitivism in 20th century art; formalism and art historiography; exhibition history. By the end of this course, students will gain an interdisciplinary foundation in conducting aesthetic analysis from a critical race viewpoint. Readings include Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon [1940],” in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997); Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness [1952],” in Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles L. Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967); Stuart Hall and Sarat Maharaj, "Modernity and Difference: A Conversation," in Modernity and Difference, ed. Gilane Tawadros and Sarah Campbell (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2001).

In recent years Machine Learning has started to influence all aspects of human life, and education is no exception. In this seminar course, we will introduce basic concepts of machine learning and education and learn how Machine Learning is employed nowadays to solve day-to-day problems, which are the most common in higher education. The problems include data manipulation, feature engineering, drop-out prediction and visualisation of student characteristics. Students will learn basics of Machine Learning using one of the most prominent Data Science languages R in the context of higher education data.

For this excursion-based course, we will visit the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEN), considering questions around legacy,  historiography, and representation in the telling of electronic dance music’s histories. We will also avail ourselves of experiential opportunities on offer at the museum, such as DJ workshops and artist talks. In addition, we will visit the Robert Johnson nightclub in nearby Offenbach, which will afford firsthand experience as well as an opportunity to think about nightlife ethnography. In the seminar leading up to the excursion, we will explore the histories of German popular electronic music and Detroit techno, discuss nightlife fieldwork, and consider what might happen when museums and electronic music meet.

As possibly the oldest representation of embodied difference, monsters have always served as warnings not to stray off the beaten path. They might warn against the dangers that lurk in unknown territories or against engaging in aberrant behavior so as to avoid degenerating into something monstrous oneself. Monstrosity is thus not only a matter of those fantastical beings that we find in science fiction and fantasy narratives, but has always been attached to human bodies as well, or those who are designated as inhuman or less than human. In this seminar, we will engage with literary representations of monstrosity that blur the lines between the real and the fantastical and thematize monsters as both supernatural and otherworldly, as well as real material beings. Analyzing such literary constructions of monstrosity thus allows us to delve into an unconscious realm of social anxieties regarding human difference and non-normative embodiment with special attention to the intersections of race, gender, and disability.

This course aims to introduce students to the sociological study of social inequalities. That is, to gain a broad understanding of the social processes through which some end up having more resources than others and through which some become included and some excluded. In the introductory sessions, we will begin by defining social inequality and its relevant dimensions, learning about its trends in Europe and the world as well as its pernicious effects for society. Students will also learn key sociological concepts such as social class, social mobility, and ethnoracial categorization processes. In the second part of the course students will be introduced to some of sociology’s most studied mechanisms that help explain the perpetuation of inequalities in a wide range of contexts such as cumulative advantage, opportunity hoarding, discrimination, boundary making, and social networks. As a next step we will learn about some of the most relevant engines of inequality such as families and schools, labor markets, tax systems, extreme weather events, and migration systems. We will end the course by learning about how to tackle inequality. We will discuss how acceptance or opposition to it comes about and reflect on sociology’s relevance in addressing societal disparities.

This course focuses on deepening the knowledge of selected topics in personality psychology as well as the practical application of the knowledge and methods. This includes the evaluation and interpretation of psychodiagnostic methods of personality psychology as well as a critical confrontation with empirical studies from primary literature.

Hannah Arendt's work has become a classic of modern political theory, drawing on themes of totalitarian rule, flight, and statelessness. In the context of current crises, such as the climate crisis and the global conflict between authoritarianism and liberal democracy, Arendt's concept of politics reemerges as relevant.  At the heart of this conflict is Russia's attack on Ukraine and Hamas's attack on Israel. Moscow has become the center of a new form of fascism. Russia's aggression against Ukraine is, alongside man-made climate change, the greatest catastrophe of our time. Why were we unable to recognize the signs of impending disaster? Everything is possible, even in this century. The elements and origins of totalitarian rule remain relevant. "The meaning of politics is freedom," wrote Hannah Arendt, a meaning that we have lost sight of in times of peace and prosperity. But what does the controversial term freedom actually mean? How is the distortion of freedom at the expense of people and nature connected to the destruction of a free society? Arendt's thoughts on freedom go beyond today's understanding of liberalism: individual freedom and community spirit are interdependent. Hannah Arendt allows us to rethink freedom.