Utrecht University

In this course the views of a number of classical thinkers on capitalism will be discussed: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Thomas Piketty. What was, in their view, the nature of capitalism? Which problems does the system have? And how should these shortcomings be remedied?

This course reviews one of the most influential periods of English literature: the Renaissance. A wide range of literary texts, including poetry, drama and prose are studies. How the language and form of these texts were shaped by (international) religious, cultural, and political contexts are explored.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the four principal political, military, and cultural forces in the premodern world (together with the Qing, Mughal and Habsburg empires), and still a power to be reckoned with in the modern period until 1918. With its core in the Aegean and Balkans, the empire exercised hegemony over large parts of the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Central Europe for many centuries. Taking the perspective of world history, this course provides a basic knowledge of Ottoman history and culture, especially during the last three hundred years of its more than six centuries long existence. In a more general sense, the course introduces the developing historical fields of empire studies and court studies. The course reviews the current historiographical debates about the nature and impact of Ottoman rule, including the question of ‘modernization’. Special attention is paid to the entanglements of politics, religion and ethnic identity in the region. This includes a critical appraisal of hackneyed terms and binaries, such as the east-west dichotomy, the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, and the very concept of ‘the Middle East’ itself. In addition, the course introduces students to Ottoman institutions of imperial rule, such as the court and the palace, the army, the role of religion, and Ottoman architecture.

Literature is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that takes on many different forms in different periods, regions, and languages. In all of these forms, literature reflects in one way or another the society in which it emerges. This course connects the complex relations between literature and society and teaches how to write and speak about them in an academic way. The characteristics of narrative, interpretation, poetics, and textuality, and place literary texts and analyses in specific historical and cultural contexts are considered. Questions are considered via the analysis of one novel from a number of key theoretical perspectives in literary studies, such as narratology, memory studies, and reader-response theory. 

This course demonstrates how anthropologists have provided insights into the diverse ways in which violence and security are enacted, performed, experienced, and defined across historical trajectories and geographical localities. To unpack the anthropological approach, this course rests on three key pillars. The first is the variety of ways in which violence and security are analyzed and identified. Rather than presenting a singular approach to analyzing these themes, this course emphasizes multiplicity and diversity. To do so, the physical, structural, and symbolic forms of violence to show how divergent forms of violence and (in)security shape everyday social realities are examined. Various conceptual tools are used to analyze these diverse manifestations and the prominent ethical and methodological questions. The second pillar is the simultaneous distinction and interconnection between violence and security: although they are often mutually constitutive, they also operate as distinct subjects of analysis. The third is the politicization of both violence and security and the inherent processes of exclusion and boundary making. To define something as violence is a political act. Furthermore, security for one often entails insecurity for another and is thus always a political affair. How are notions of membership defined and enacted and what type of imaginaries of security are produced?  General themes include colonial and postcolonial violence and rupture; policing and security provision; urban violence and crime; war and militarization; surveillance, and the complex relations between perpetrators and victims of violence. Special attention is paid to the ethnographic study and representation of these issues. Entry requirements: All students must have completed at least 45 ECTS of their introductory bachelor year.

‘Geographies of Youth in Changing Societies’ studies how young people (between 4-25 years old) experience and use various places in changing societies, based on the premise that their experiences differ from those of adults.  The course examines what happens at the intersections of age and life-course (e.g. children, youth, teenagers, young adults), and places (body, home, street, neighborhood, community, city, urban, rural, (trans)national, trans local, global). The course considers young people’s lives from various but interconnected perspectives. Transformations in the context of globalization, migration and societal change define young people’s lives across the world. However, growing up in an increasingly interconnected world affects young people in different and unequal ways depending on local relations and historical contexts. This course contributes to the field by teaching how geographers and spatial planners understand and examine youth-related themes, youth’s positions in various societies and places, and their subjectivities and orientations in a constantly changing world with new possibilities as well as risks. The course provides an in-depth understanding of processes and dynamics that shape young people’s lives on various spatial scales. The places where we are born, go to school to, play, hang out, exercise, study and work are an important part of young people's lives, their everyday experiences and their identities. But young people’s relationships with these places are subject to ongoing transformations due to changing priorities, needs and aspirations across their life course. The concepts of childhood and adolescence are, however, relatively recent phenomena in Geography. Rather, in much scientific work by geographers and spatial planners, young people are seen as ‘adults in becoming’, even though the perspectives of young people on the world are qualitatively different than those of adults. The course consists of lectures and tutorials. Guest lecturers from the various sections within the Human Geography and Spatial Planning department introduce different perspectives on young people’s geographies. The first part of the course is an overview lecture that recapitulates youth as a socio-spatial construct. The geographies of youth are explored through relevant themes, such as identities and belonging, inequalities, and youth & public space. The second part of the course investigates a youth-related topic by working on their own research group project.

Celtic Studies covers enormous distances of space (Europe, Asia Minor, North and South America) and time, covering some 3000 years. Who were the Celts? Where were they? What language(s) did they speak? What did their Neighbours (Greeks, Etruscans, Iberians, Romans) say about them? This course gives an overview of Celtic Studies by looking at the history and culture of the Celts from the earliest period down to the 17th century and shall touch upon archaeology, Celtic inscriptions, the Classical world and aspects of the medieval Celtic Culture of Britain and Ireland as well as the modern Celtic heritage.

This course introduces the track on innovative and sustainable regions and sets the ground for the next course on themes. A broad perspective on innovation and sustainability is adopted. Innovation goes beyond creating economic opportunities only and addresses broader issues including quality of life and job opportunities for different types of workers; environmental sustainability and greening of firms and industries; the ability of regions to renew their profiles in response to major crises and to secure their economic development in the long run. Sustainability captures the ability of regions to innovate and renew itself and respond to major shocks (economically sustainable), to be socially inclusive (socially sustainable), and to green their economies (environmentally sustainable).