Czech Republic

Gain insight into a variety of approaches to ensuring that children grow up healthy and with opportunities to become contributing members of society. The historical roots, current issues, and future challenges related to children’s well-being are addressed in this course by covering a broad spectrum of related topics, including family life, the influence of the turbulent 20th century on youth and education, regional and national differences in educational systems, preventive youth health care, public policy on social services and divorce support, parental leave, and daycare provision. Students also learn about alternative educational approaches, such as those developed by Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Célestin Freinet, and A. S. Neill. The course includes guest speakers and incorporates guest talks and site visits to relevant museums/exhibitions.

This course examines the tremendous impact of social media on many walks of life, with a special emphasis on how social media have been transforming the profession of journalist and how the public now consumes news and information. It also offers a look beyond the field of journalism to consider how social media and online communities are profoundly affecting the ways in which young people form their identities and then how those identities develop later in life. Special sessions tackle the influence of social media on the construction of identity, and on the relationship and community building. Many of these issues are discussed in the context of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western experience of social media is compared to the situation in the post-communist world. The course addresses many questions related to social media, including the definition of social media; the role of social media in the formation of community; the role of social media as a uniting or dividing factor; the differences in the consumption of social media in Central and Eastern Europe; the role of social media technologies in constructions of youth, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality; the effect of social media improving on the state of journalism; changes in the role of the journalist with the advance of social media; and others.

This course provides an introduction to European fairytales within a historical, geographical, and cultural context including European folk genres such as myth or legends and a close focus on Czech fairytales. The course describes and surveys the changes in the approach to European fairytales within the development of scholarship about them. It presents sociohistorical, psychological, or anthropological interpretations, as well as biologically based and gender or feminist methods of their interpretation. The course topics include ethical or moral principles in fairytales, gender and social roles, and historical and political influences on fairytale adaptation.

This course examines the influence of psychoanalysis and art on each other. It primarily focuses on dream psychology, psychology of the creative process, and aesthetic experience. It explores basic conceptions of psychoanalytic psychology, including the unconscious, the formation of dreams, and conditionality of love. The psychoanalytic theory is evidenced with examples from visual art, literature, and film, some of which are explored through field trips to current exhibitions of Czech and international art, offering a first-hand experience. In addition to theoretical study of psychoanalysis and its application on art and artistic process, including the psychoanalysis of the creative process, the aesthetic experience, and psychoanalytic aesthetics and criticism (including film theory), students also employ the theories and techniques related to the creative process
to critically reflect on a work of art or to produce one of their own, accompanied by a reflection on their own creative process. The areas of art covered during the course include dreams and art, jokes and humor, surrealism, and the uncanny.