Norway

For the major part of Western Europe, acceptance of LGBTQI+ is growing. Different religious communities are now including Queer folks, and where LGBTQI+ people earlier were excluded, they are now openly welcomed in common worship. Many argue that Norway is such a society where both dominant politics, dominant cultures, and dominant Christian religion are inclusive. This inclusion, on the other hand, is also debated to be acceptance within the parameters of heteronormativity. This course uses Queer critique to examine how Western Christian orthodoxies emphasize heteronormativity as religious inclusion, how Queer bodies bargain these expectations through cultural and religious expressions, and how Queer Theory can deconstruct the same orthodoxies.

This course focuses on human-environment relationships and their implications for nature and society. Scientific concepts such as the “Anthropocene” and “planetary boundaries,” which are increasingly used to describe the nature and extent of contemporary environmental challenges, are explored from a social science perspective. The issue of climate change is a focal point for examining the drivers and consequences of environmental change, including relationships to processes such as globalization, urbanization, and land use changes. Social science perspectives on topics such as consumption, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, impacts, vulnerability, resilience, adaptation, and mitigation are discussed and related to the broader debates about transitions and transformations to sustainability. The lectures, readings, and seminars explore how environmental discourses influence understandings and responses to contemporary environmental problems, including the role of beliefs, values, and worldviews in shaping the rules, norms, institutions, policies, and power relationships, which can either promote or constrain practical responses to environmental challenges. Students actively engage with debates on and experiments with individual and collective change, and explore what alternative approaches and paradigms have to offer.

This course is a continuation of Calculus and Linear Algebra. The theory is generalized from finite dimensional spaces to spaces that may be infinite dimensional, and whose elements typically are functions, rather than numbers or what was previously considered as vectors. The course discusses key concepts including convergence, continuity, differentiability, completeness, and compactness. The theory is applied to problems from differential equations and Fourier analysis. The course provides training in mathematical reasoning and lays the theoretical foundation for further studies in mathematical analysis. The course requires students to have met specific prerequisites in order to enroll in the course.

This course provides a theoretical and empirical introduction to religion as a sociological phenomenon, with a focus on religion in contemporary society, fundamentalism, religious radicalization, and violence. The course provides knowledge and insight into different concepts of religion and debates on religious change in contemporary society. In order to understand fundamentalism, religious radicalization, and violence, the course discusses different perspectives that have been used in empirical studies such as social psychology, cultural analysis, and social movements. Students discuss whether Western societies are post-secular or increasingly secular by relating sociological theories to empirical studies of the role of religion in Norwegian and Nordic public spheres. The course examines religious radicalization and religious violence, and which aspects of all world religions can be used to legitimize violence. Students gain useful knowledge and skills for working in education, research, the media, public administration, health and social services, business, politics, and international affairs.

This course examines the history of England, including the British Isles, from around 400 AD to the year 1000 AD. This was a period of immense change as England transitioned from a Roman Colony, to independent warring states, to a kingdom governed by a single king. In the years following the Roman withdrawal, different groups of Germanic-speaking peoples settled in Britain, ultimately forming independent kingdoms. These settlers were later known by the name Anglo-Saxons. This course follows the development of these independent kingdoms from their origins through to the 10th century. Students learn about the rich cultural heritage of the Anglo-Saxon period, including significant works of art and literature. Through discussion and debate, students assess the reliability of these textual sources in light of new historical and archaeological research. Students study the religious and political structures and engage critically with academic literature in order to discuss primary sources.

The Marine Insurance law deals with the rules and regulations regarding marine insurance. This course purely consists of contract law, and includes the Nordic Marine Insurance Plan 2013, conditions relating to Insurance for the Carriage of Goods, and P&I Insurance conditions. The course is divided into two main parts. The first part relates to the rules that are common for all or most marine insurance branches. The second part relates to the rules for the individual branch, i.e. hull insurance, insurance on interest, war risk insurance, loss of hire insurance, P&I insurance, and cargo insurance. Students discuss how the marine insurance market is organized in different types of contracts and what is covered under these contracts. The course examines what kind of issues the insurance contracts address. The aim is a good understanding of the concept of marine insurance and the content of a marine insurance contract. This course is designed for students at master degree level, however, the achievement requirements are adjusted for students who take the subject at bachelor degree level.

The course gives an introduction to development economics with a particular emphasis on the study of poverty and inequality and the impact of different development policies. The course covers the following topics: facts about the incidence and trends of poverty in the world; how to measure poverty and inequality, and how the choice of measure may affect understanding and policy; theory and evidence on the causes and consequences of poverty and underdevelopment. Also covered is: how poverty traps from nutrition, education, and markets may hamper development; how poverty affects and is affected by family dynamics and gender issues; how the absence of credit and savings markets may explain lack of investments; how weak institutions and lack of social cohesion may suppress development.

This course starts by discussing when democratic principles and the rule of law is challenged and legal systems begin to produce injustice and human rights violations on a grand scale. Students explore how judges and bureaucrats react in such situations and if they oppose or support totalitarian regimes and authoritarian ideologies. The course considers how robust law and traditional legal authority is when thoroughly challenged and decides if the international human rights system is an effective solution to such problems. The course examines these issues by looking at the legal system and its agents in totalitarian regimes and in democracies in situations of crisis where the rule of law and human rights comes under attack. The historical examples include the Third Reich, where students analyze the role of judges and the relationship between Nazi ideology and the law. The course goes on to review to what degree a modern and legal bureaucracy helped produce the Holocaust. The Nurnberg Court and its legacy is discussed, and the rise of an international and regional human rights regime is described. Further historical examples include the role of law and judges in Communist Dictatorships and the Apartheid-system. The course also focuses on contemporary examples of what happens when basic human rights standards are challenged in democratic societies, which includes a discussion of the post 9/11 legalization of torture in the US. Theories on the relationship between fear, risk, and law are discussed. Lastly, the apparent crisis of the international human rights regime is analyzed and the current and future role of human rights is discussed. Students are graded based off a final 5-day take-home exam that you deliver electronically.