University of Copenhagen

The course presents the fundamental concepts, various uses and the current threats relevant for the study of both the past and heritage in the Middle East. The course discusses the implication of recent conflicts in the region on the heritage in terms of threats and future survival. It explores the issue of the encounter between the Arabic-Islamic past and western modernity, and post-colonial, fundamentalist, nationalist, orientalist, and neo-orientalist approaches to this issue. The course reviews topics including scholarly literature on the Middle East's past, aspects of heritage in the Middle East such as archaeological sites and oral traditions, and the destruction of cultural heritage in its various forms in connection with the ongoing conflicts in the region. The course consists of lectures and case studies, and will feature several guest speakers.

This course enables students to understand and evaluate current forms of populism and technocracy and relate them to the politics of compromise. This is done from the perspective of democratic theory and normative political theory. This means that the course studies not only how democracy is understood but also how it ought to be understood. Students analyze and discuss to what extent populism and technocracy should be seen as legitimate forms of (democratic) rule, or if these forms of politics threaten fundamental (democratic) principles. In order to understand populism, technocracy, and compromise, these concepts are studied in relationship to key concepts in democratic theory, such as popular sovereignty, majority rule, representation, constitutionalism, judicial review, and partisanship. This course enhances the students' ability to think critically as well as understand and evaluate current changes in democratic politics.

The course identifies and discuses current local and global societal problems. Critically, students look at these problems to illustrate how the theoretical starting point shapes our understanding of the problem and the way we research it.

 

 

This course covers basic concepts in invasion biology. It provides students with an overview of invasive and exotic species of animals and plants with example cases. Also covered are: characterization and classification of invasive species and biological societies open to invasion; population dynamics, population genetics, and evolutionary aspects of biological invasions; general hypotheses for the occurrence of invasions and their theoretical and empirical support; expected and actual ecological consequences for invaded societies; management strategies to prevent the spread and reduce the detrimental effects of exotic and invasive species.

In this course students explore methods of creating new public domains through designing and constructing small scale architectural interventions in 1:1 in close collaboration with local site and community. A studio is set up away from the university and into sites in transformation that provide students with interesting and relevant contexts to explore and respond to. The focus is on urban areas in transition such as former industrial sites, challenged public or semi-public domains and landscapes that hold potentials for new content. Students examine and reflect on planning issues around the case area that can be investigated form a theoretical and strategic perspective and explore places from a phenomenological and perceptual position by prototyping site-specific urban interventions into an existing spatial situation. Thus, a broad strategic design approach is supplemented by small interventions that can initiate a transformation process. The location provides site-specific context to work into in terms of spatial qualities, planning conditions, historic development, as well as social and cultural character. Through careful site readings, students explore the physical, social and processual conditions of a place. Students analyze site conditions, formulate future scenarios, and construct urban interventions that respond to the current spatial qualities while simultaneously setting out a potential trajectory for the future. The drafting table is complemented by a strong presence on site developing projects in hand-crafted and local customized processes. This approach has important implications for the design process, for the interpretation of the site context and particularly for learning about space through the interaction of analysis and making by hand.

This course studies the interrelationship between gender, law, and legal culture. Addressing issues of gender underlines the importance of status in the contemporary world as it is reflected in community norms and state and international law, as well as in traditions and religions which stress the importance of gender and sexuality. Addressing the concept and understanding of legal cultures underlines a context different from the state, such as in intimate relations, spiritual communities or in economic relations including workplace and the market. The course seeks to increase the awareness of intersections between gender and culture in contemporary legal practices, and to research how both concepts meet, cooperate, compete, and change in these processes. The course seeks to improve the understanding of normative forces beyond state law and of their relevance and impact on both individuals and groups and the different and overlapping contexts they operate within. This course addresses many areas of legal and broader cultural practice where considerations of gender are typically omitted as traditionally taught in legal education, including newer twenty-first century concerns. These include reflections on: the role of authority and institutions on gendering legal decisions, the notion of gendered criminality, the influence on linguistic choices on judgments, the role of new technology and digital life on law and gender, gender minorities and the law, the legal responses to inter-generational responsibility, climate change and gender, the gendered family and work place, gender, law, culture and religion, gender and asylum gender and trans-national legal culture, post-colonialism, globalization, and international law. The course arms students with a point of view to not envision gender as a buzzword but as a social practice with legal effects. In this way it looks to develop young lawyers to not just consider gender as a side note, but as an avenue to approach the law and produce adequate and empowered institutions.

The first part of this course explores currents trends in transnational writing that demand a reconsideration of what it means to be a subject at home in a complexly intertwined world that cannot be traced back to Britain's role as a colonial center. The second part of the course focuses on English and American novels and discusses what appears to be a current re-orientation of the postmodern project towards narratives that turn on character development, coherence between form and content, and overtly probe tone and style – but with a twist.