Utrecht University

The course focuses on the role of religion in the modern and contemporary Middle East and will cover four main parts: an introduction to Islam and its relations to the other monotheistic religions, namely Christianity and Judaism; Islamic thinkers and their reactions to modernity, including modern reformist movements, modernist, and Islamist thinkers; Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East; and Jewish-Muslim relations. Here the focus is on the effects of the creation of the state of Israel and its impact on Jewish-Muslin relations. 

In this course, Western ocularcentrism and the modernist segmentation of our sensory functions and sensorial experiences are questioned. Philosophical, artistic, and scientific ideas that question the supremacy of the eye, the modernist hierarchy of the senses, and the division of our sensory functions are reviewed. Through lectures, guest lectures, museum visits, experiments, discussions, and the intensive study of texts participants become more attentive to how our sensorium functions. Students learn to analyze contemporary art, film, fashion, design, consumer goods, and environments from a multisensorial perspective and identify interrelations that exist between the different senses into account in their scientific work.  If there are excursions to museums, cities, or other art institutions, these may incur additional costs.

Course goals

This course introduces key literary works of American literature written or set during the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century (1860s to 1960s). Study the aesthetic, intellectual, cultural, and/or political impact of literary works at their time of publication. Discussions in lectures and seminars consider the possible legacies of the texts: how they continue to shape intellectual debates, literary history, and cultural practices in the twenty-first century in America and in the broader field of literature in English. In-depth knowledge and understanding of the ways in which cultural, social, intellectual, and political issues of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century figure in a selection of American literary texts; ability to select and analyze relevant primary and secondary sources and to produce original scholarly work on the topic of the course; and the ability to identify and apply some of the relevant critical concepts and literary theory to the study of American literature are gained.

At the end of the course students should have gained:

• knowledge of geographical diversity in Europe and the way in which this is subject of policy-making on the level of states, regions and the EU;
• insight in the functioning of organisations and actors on several levels within the European arena on behalf of local and regional interest;
• experience in analysing, reporting and discussing EU policy within the scope of distinct scales and geographical diversity.

Content

European Integration is a complex process, with many stakeholders involved. A couple of years ago an increasing number of authors expected a collapse of the EU, due to many challenges. We witnessed the effects of the  major financial crisis in the EU that started in 2008, and the almost collapse of the Eurozone. In 2015 the influx of asylum seekers was another challenging topic for the EU. A major divide has become visible (again): between the Northern and the Southern part of the EU, between the old and the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe.
Recently, some of the aforementioned authors, changed their mind and are more positive. More integration seems to take place, forced by external circumstances (like the changing position of the US and China in the world order and the war in Ukraine), and the need to have a more common Climate Policy. But still, it is difficult to reach consensus, and discussions continue.
Perhaps the main reason for the current EU crisis is (geographical) diversity. Many say that further integration is not possible without a political union. But a stronger political union would mean deeper integration, meaning that member states should give up more sovereignty and hand over power to Brussels.
The EU is therefore at a crossroad. How have we reached this point, and what are the further possible steps: that is the mean focus of our course. But we will always relate European integration to the geography and the diversity of Europe. There are many geographical dimensions of the Integration Process. We will focus on the following questions:

• What was the effect of European integration on regional differentiation in the EU? Is EU membership in general ‘good’ for economic and regional development?
• How successful were/are regional funds?
• What are the (geographical) limits of enlargement?
• What were the causes of the euro crisis, and were the problems related to the Monetary Union fixed?
• How to deal with migration and asylum seekers? What could be the design of a common Asylum and Migration Policy?
• What are the pros and cons of the Common Agricultural Policy?
• What are the effects of BREXIT?
• What are the challenges of the EU Climate- and Energy policy?
• What are the effects of the war in Ukraine?

During the course we try to explain the backgrounds of all these problems and dimensions, and will discuss the future of European Integration.
There will be lectures and exams, and several debates to discuss the major EU policies. A major component of this courses are debates, with role-playing. Groups of four students take the role of one member states.
 

When studying organizations, different social science disciplines do not merely define this concept, they propose theories about why organizations exist, how they operate, how they can be structured, how they develop, how they interact with their external environment, and how they innovate. Insights into different organization theories are thus crucial for the understanding of a wide array of social science theories that build on the notion of organizations. The first part of this course examines seminal theories concerning different facets of organizations: stakeholders and ethics, structure and culture, strategy and relation to the external environment, and lifecycle and change. Near the end of the course, students review how organizations are shaped by organizational politics and cognitive biases in decision-making and how platforms are changing the organizational landscape. Students use case studies to analyze an existing organization using the theories learned in the course.