Utrecht University – University College Utrecht

The language section of the course helps students develop and improve the skills and strategies necessary to successfully manage most uncomplicated oral and written tasks and social situations which may be confronted within daily life in the Netherlands. The culture & society section provides a basic understanding of present-day Dutch society and culture. Through reading articles covering Dutch culture, students learn to understand the Dutch way of approaching and discussing cultural and society issues.

Format
During the language section, the classroom language is Dutch. The main activity is the use of Dutch in a variety of oral and written communication tasks. The instructor provides input, instruction, and explanations.
In the culture section, topics on Dutch society and culture are introduced and discussed. Reading materials on Dutch culture are studied in English and/or Dutch.
Students are expected to give a presentation in English.

This course looks at different ways of analyzing economic situations at a micro-level by building on microeconomic concepts learned from an introductory level Economics course. Familiar concepts are discussed in more depth and in a more mathematical way, while new concepts, such as the Slutsky equation, compensating, and equivalent variation are introduced. Game theory, the study of multi-person decision problems, and behavioral economics are also introduced. Behavioral economics adds insights from the field of psychology to the traditional economic rational-choice and equilibrium models. The course emphasis is on behavioral economics, for which students are required to carry out independent research.

This course demonstrates how social psychology can illuminate our understanding of social relationships and processes. It introduces the history, theories, and methods of social psychology and encourages a critical view of social psychological research. The course reviews classic and recent social psychology studies on social influence, interpersonal attraction, social cognition, aggression, and prejudice. Prerequisites for this course include Introduction to Psychology and Introduction to Research.

The course deals with multiple ontological models of the human person, developed in different traditions (Western, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese) and at different times. This course offers a survey of philosophical reflection on what it is to be human, based on primary philosophical texts from different philosophical traditions brought in dialogue with each other. It is philosophical anthropology, or theoretical philosophy, focusing on the human condition. Students become familiar with different ways of interpreting and answering the philosophical question "what is a human being?"

This course focuses on the relationship between science and magic in the period between 1500 and 1700. Although the two seem mutually exclusive in our age, in the early modern period that was by no means obvious. It is, in fact, impossible for historians of this period to maintain rigid distinctions between tradition and innovation, the natural and supernatural, between the rational and irrational, fact and fantasy, the ridiculous and the sensible, popular and scholarly discourse. Students learn how magic and science were intricately, and often indistinguishably, intertwined in the minds of people in Western Europe.

Our contemporary world is deeply permeated with media and new technologies that inherently influence the way we communicate, transfer knowledge, exchange information, offer representations, and experience reality and its possible imaginaries. This course traces the development of such media technologies (print media, telephony, radio, television, film, internet, mobiles, games) and accounts for their historical transformations while focusing on their intermedial character and their relation to other arts (literature, photography, performing arts, painting, architecture, music). The course takes into account archeological and philosophical notions of media and how new forms of communication exert social, cultural, and political influences in a global context. In particular, the course addresses fandom and popular culture, gender and race in networked spaces, convergence culture, intellectual property, the role and function of social networks in the redefinition of the public sphere, notions of citizenship and democracy, and the future of digital humanities.

This course provides an overview of long-term developments in the world economy and reviews how the theoretical insights of social scientists help us to understand world history better. The main emphasis is on understanding the two main problems of social and economic history: what are the origins and drivers of economic growth, and why does that process result in wide disparities in wealth?  Students independently carry out a research project and acquire skills relating to social and economic historians, for example, source criticism, and working with data and theory.