Humboldt University Berlin

From the Enlightenment up to the present Berlin has been a preferred home for poets, novelists, playwrights, journalists and creative writers of any kind. Their stories and visions are not only represented but shaped by the idea of the city. This course includes selected works of literature (and some works of visual art as well) written in different periods in Berlin. The works are contextualized by the dynamic and multilayered history of the city and are connected to the urban spaces of today. Excursions, readings and discussions help students gain insight into the rich cultural history and the current discourses in and about Berlin.

This course offers an overview of Israel's political and social structure from an urban perspective. The course is divided into three main chapters. The first chapter, "Political and Social Foundations in Israel," will deal with the political system in Israel, particularly emphasizing the local government; and with the main social divisions that underlie this system. The second chapter, "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict," will present the history and geography of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while referring to critical and institutional theories. The third and main chapter, "Cities in Israel," will present an analysis of politics and society in Israel through various cities in Israel, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Be'er Sheva, Acre, Nazareth; and peripheral agricultural areas that include the tension between the kibbutzim and the development towns.

In this course we will study code-switching, the alternation between two or more languages (or two or more varieties of a language) within the same discourse. We will relate code-switching to both individual and societal multilingualism, investigate the phenomenon from a structural perspective as well from sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives, see how theories of code-switching have developed over time, and apply a variety of theoretical perspectives to the analysis of examples of code switching involving a variety of language pairs.

Dao 道 (sometimes written Tao) means path or road and extends to mean methods and principles. It has a broad range of usage across different schools, most obviously philosophical and religious Daoism. In this research group, we will be reading and discussing selections from the foundational texts of Daoism, the Laozi (also known as Daodejing) and the Zhuangzi, and their direct historical and current reception. We will read texts of both religious and philosophical Daoism. Reading suggestions from participants are welcome. This research group is open to interested bachelor’s and master’s students of all disciplines. Prior engagement with Chinese philosophy is welcome but not required, as we will be starting with the foundational texts.

This course introduces students to the description, analysis, and interpretation of popular music. We will focus mainly on the music of popular music, exploring (1) how it is structured, patterned, and organized, and (2) how it achieves its effects. We will consider various stylistically relevant musical features, such as form, melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm, and sound design. Students will build their skills in identifying and describing salient features in popular works, and they will learn to produce their own critically informed close readings of individual popular songs. We'll also look at ways others have modeled these skills. A wide range of musical styles will be discussed, though the course is not intended as a historical survey.

While potential urban green space accessibility is being discussed widely, specific barriers that affect accessibility are often under-estimated. They are not equal to limited or uneven accessibility nor are they exclusively related to physical settings. Rather, the variety of barriers and their complex interactions including people’s perception, personal conditions, and institutional frames make this subject fuzzy and difficult to operationalize for planning purposes. Given the importance of barriers for decision-making of people, this class will conceptualize different barriers on realizing recreational benefits of urban green spaces within the frame of environmental justice. Studying multidimensional barriers allows for a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ decisions in terms of accessing recreational benefits and a discussion of planning responses. Based on theoretical insights and local examples, the focus will be on qualitative and quantitative assessments methods for studying barriers, as well as on potential planning pathways for mitigating or minimizing barriers.

This course offers a systematic introduction to the central themes of the philosophy of mind. It is divided into three parts. The first part deals with fundamental problems. In addition to more traditional distinctions such as that between dualism and monism, newer empirical theories of consciousness and the conflicts that exist between them are also discussed. The second deals with methodological questions and central concepts such as emergence or supervenience. The third part deals with particularly important individual problems. This includes the problem of free will, theories of embodied and extended cognition, and questions of self-confidence. The lecture will fundamentally also take empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience into account.

Personal dedications in book copies from this author's library are examined as documents of literary history. The form, content and dating of each individual dedication must be contextualized through extensive research in order to find out to what extent they are documents of East-West German, transnational or GDR-internal relationship networks. In the first step, we explore the bibliophilic form and variety of dedications in the “turning library” comprising several shelves from the basement of Christa and Gerhard Wolf's Pankow apartment, which, after being donated and moved, is now located at the Christa and Gerhard Wolf private library work and research center. The second step is documentation and the third is an attempt at contemporary and literary-historical contextualization.

In this course, students practice writing simple texts and train grammar topics that are important for both casual and formal writing. The focus is on writing occasions from everyday private and student life (e.g. creative writing, notes, emails). Students also prepare a short essay at the end of the course. The grammar topics that are covered are based on the students' texts. Students' willingness to write short texts on a regular basis is therefore important.

This course aims to provide a range of qualitative research tools to invoke different stories, views, voices, identities, embodimenets and experiences. We discuss the theory, methodology and foundation of non-textual research methods. These different methods are hoped to provoke a new way of thinking away from the Western canon, contribute to more democratic and just research settings, and open up possibilities for transforming social inequalities. Through readings, class discussions, lectures from invited guests, and practical exercises students will explore the potentials and challenges of various methods, identify opportunities to use them, and consider how to treat and deal with data that comes out of the use of creative methods. This course is suitable for anyone who would like to experience and learn more about alternative and/or complementary methods to existing qualitative approaches (i.e. focus groups, interviews). It is of advantage if participants have prior experience of and with qualitative research. Participants at the early, middle and final stages of a qualitative research project will benefit, but if possible, it is best to consider data collection and analysis at the proposal stage.