Sweden

This course provides a foundation in Swedish. It prepares students to engage in general conversations, daily life situations, the discussion of current events, and the presentation of rules governing academic studies and life in Sweden. It also teaches language structure and basic grammatical rules. In addition to language learning, students engage in a variety of cultural activities such as field trips/excursions to points of interest in Sweden.

This course deals with the most important developments in the history of the media concerning social aspects and key perspectives on them; special emphasis is placed on Swedish circumstances and present-day social media, which are approached from a historical perspective. Students focus on the different historical forms of participatory media and the changing concept of the audience.

With accelerating trends such as climate change, water scarcity, energy depletion, social injustice, economic crisis, resource wars, and other challenges, there is a growing need for sustainable alternatives. This course connects guest lectures that describe the severity of the challenges, workshops that discuss the possible sustainable responses, and solutions to those challenges within the context of a specific global city or region. Students have the opportunity to link global challenges to their own local and cultural backgrounds through case studies.

The course gives an introduction to numerical analysis for differential equations. This includes the construction, analysis, implementation and application of numerical methods for initial value problems, boundary value problems and different types of partial differential equations.

The course gives a broad overview of the archaeology, history, and art history of the material culture and of the written sources from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. The course covers different aspects of the political, social, cultural, and religious developments, as well as changes within Scandinavia. This includes such aspects as the transition from paganism to Christianity, Viking Age burials, gender and social segregation, trade and plundering, rural and urban landscapes, and economic development.

This course deepens students’ knowledge of the “collective action dilemma” from a social science perspective and acquaints them with two interdependent global problems: climate change and energy.  It analyzes and discusses possible political solutions to the management of climate and energy issues as well as dilemmas over natural resources at the local, regional, and international levels.
 

The course consists of an in-depth investigation of a topical area of scientific interest and activity within linguistics. A new and up-to-date theme is decided upon each time the course is run. Possible themes include the geometry of meaning, based on Gärdenfors' book by the same name; the phylogenetic analysis of language; grammaticalization; and color semantics. 

The course is given as an optional module within Linguistics C but may also be taken independently.