Maastricht University – University College Maastricht

Students familiarize themselves with the basic concepts of evolutionary theory and cognitive science in order to able to evaluate the controversies and debates within the framework of an evolutionary perspective on art, literature, and music. Several themes are discussed, such as: the mating mind; artistic universals; human nature: blank or pre-wired, the rhythm of poetry; the science of art; the origins of music, grooming, gossip, and the novel; art as adaptation vs. art as by-product. At the conclusion of this course, students are able to evaluate and apply Darwinist approaches to practices in art, literature, music, and religion.

In this Skills course, students work to develop and improve their presentation and feedback capabilities. Students give four presentations, the first on an assigned topic, and the remaining three on self-selected academic topics. The course discusses topics including delivery, content, structure, visual aids, audience, and feedback. Students explore the importance of giving, receiving, and using constructive feedback in order to improve their presentation proficiencies. Students must have background knowledge of PowerPoint, Prezi, or other types of slideware as a prerequisite for this course.

Starting from recent debates and problems like new nationalism, misogyny, political homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism the course offers a historical inquiry into the construction and development of cultural differences marked through categories like gender, sexuality, class, race, and religion from the eighteenth century until the Holocaust. Through historical case studies, philosophy, and literature it looks at the way in which Western identity-discourse and its colonial subcode have formed dichotomies like self and other, black and white, the Orient and the West, male and female, worker and bourgeois, hetero- and homosexual, and how these differences became social inequalities. The course introduces gender as a category of historical analysis. Through a critical inquiry it reconstructs the paradoxes of a “dialectic of Enlightenment” (Adorno), that means the dark side behind its claim for reason, equality, brotherhood and freedom. The course traces and illustrates the ways in which the Enlightenment has provided a rationale to mark gendered, classed and racialized boundaries in science which, more often than not, resulted in inequalities. These inequalities became embedded in European society in such a way that the active, dominant subject came to be seen as white, male, and middle class. This discourse of dominance helped to carry out European colonialism and the imperial project. With the help of a literary analysis (Joseph Conrad HEART OF DARKNESS), the course introduces into the (critical) role literature can play within the dynamics of social change and cultural discourse. Furthermore, the course introduces into critical theories, like discourse analysis and the history of knowledge, postcolonial and gender/sexuality studies and studies on Orientalism. Thus, it examines the dynamic processes of the “history of sexualities”, their formation and contradictions, which emerged out of these processes. It reconstructs how masculinity and the image of man became a central trope of nationalism and colonialism. Last but not least, it asks how colonial and anti-Semitic discourse, stereotypes of the external Other (in the colonies) and stereotypes of an internal European Other (the Jews etc.) were intertwined and how we can better understand the Holocaust from a historical, multidirectional perspective.

Medical humanities acknowledge that instead of being fixed entities, health and illness are constantly changing, ambiguous phenomena. What is called healthy (sane) or ill (insane) depends indeed on a large variety of issues and dynamics: cultural, socio-economical, and religious aspects; moral system; legal system; science; technology; art and media etc. This course approaches the question of health and illness through a philosophical, anthropological and sociological exploration of “bodies” and “minds”. Through a historical and cross-cultural perspective it will discuss various concepts of body and mind. We will discuss how and why some bodies and minds are considered as normal and others as abnormal or pathological. For this we will draw on scientific, social, cultural and economic contexts, but also on how bodies and minds are represented in art and (popular) culture. Cases include cosmetic surgery; the modern hospital; boxing in the ghetto; organ transplantation; depression; menopause; prostheses in Paralympic athletes; medical imaging technologies; the war on cancer; depression.  

This course focuses on the structure of arguments. The first part of the skills course takes the step to a strictly formal, almost mathematical approach, to argument analysis and explores basic sentential logic. Sentential logic introduces a simple set of rules and procedures that allows one to test whether an argument is formally valid, i.e. if its structure is correct independent of its content. To test for the validity of an argument in this way, the structure of English sentences is separated from their content by translating the sentences into symbols; afterwards formal rules are applied (by using truth tables and semantic tableaus) to check whether an argument logically works or not. While the first part of the skills training concentrates on skills related to logical reasoning, the second part aims to demonstrate how such skills can be used even if a strictly formal way of argument analysis is not applicable. This is done by introducing the Toulmin model of argumentation. This model goes beyond the basic distinction of premises and conclusions as constituent parts of arguments by distinguishing different functions premises can fulfill. The Toulmin model is more flexible than argumentative analysis based on formal logic. Therefore it can be a powerful tool for specific and sophisticated argumentative analysis. Such analyses are conducted during the course, first on small, simplified academic arguments and afterwards on a larger scale, analyzing an academic paper. Finally, in the final assignment, students are asked to apply the Toulmin model to design an argument themselves.

This course focuses on cultural difference and identity in an era in which the nation seems to lose its unifying significance in matters of personal identity and group identity formation. It analyzes how globalization influences identity and culture and the ways in which these interact with social differences, gender, ethnicity, religion, and nationality. Students become familiar with theories of globalization and culture such as hybridization, McDonaldization, the clash of civilizations, and concepts such as orientalism, occidentalism, and multiculturalism. Its orientation is both practical and theoretical.