Aarhus University

This course approaches historical and contemporary exoticism in European culture from an interdisciplinary perspective. It examines imaginations of the foreign in literature, from antiquity to the present; the visual arts; as well as various media such as film, opera, and architecture. The course also considers historical foci, such as the connection between exoticism and colonialism or exoticism and racism. In addition to approaches from art history, aesthetics, literary studies, film studies, media studies, and cultural studies, the course discusses methods from postcolonial studies, critical race studies, and intercultural studies in order to gain a theoretically trained view of imaginations of the non-European “Other” in art and culture. Course readings include excerpts and full texts from different periods by Western European and Northern American authors: Euripides, THE BACCHAE; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, PAUL AND VIRGINIA; Thomas De Quincey, CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER; Edgar Allen Poe, LIGEIA; Thomas Mann, DEATH IN VENICE; Karen Blixen, THE SUPPER AT ELSINORE; David Henry Hwang, M. BUTTERFLY. It also analyses paintings by Henri Rousseau, Paul Gauguin, and James Tissot, and studies operas by Mozart and Puccini.

The course discusses capital structure, real options, long-term financing, short-term financing, and special topics such as mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and event studies.

This course introduces environmental communication as an interdisciplinary field of study that examines the role, techniques, and influence of communication in environmental affairs. It studies various forms of environmental communication in the public sphere and in doing so, draw on theory and methods primarily from communication, environmental studies, psychology, sociology, and political science. Topics include environmental rhetoric and culture; environmental interpersonal and intercultural identities; green advertising, public relations, and design; environmental journalism and mass media studies; science and climate communication; green applied media and arts; public health and risk communication; green governance, access to information, and public participation in environmental decision-making; environmental organizational communication studies; and environmental justice, law, and policy.

This course examines the tumultuous period of history known as the Viking Age (793 – 1066) from Vínland in the West to the Caspian Sea in the East. It traces the stories of Viking raiders and settlers in Christian Europe, the Islamic Caliphate, and the New World by interrogating a number of English-translated sources, including the Old Icelandic sagas, the writings of Latin chroniclers and Arabic geographers, and art and material culture. The course investigates what it meant to be a Viking; whether it was a lifestyle or an ethnic identity; whether Vikings were bloodthirsty marauders, well-armed businessmen, or hipsters with a snazzy sense of style, as they appear in some modern reconstructions; and how the people who spread across the islands of the North Atlantic lived in their daily lives. Finally, the course examines the enduring attraction and impact of the three centuries of chaos and expansion that emanated from Scandinavia during the Viking Age.

This course is targeted at students who are interested in real estate investments as an alternative to equity investments. The theory can be applied to analyses of real estate markets in different countries, including the US and Denmark, and students will relate the theory to US and Danish real estate market statistics.

Autobiographical memory is the ability to remember and reconstruct the past. This course focuses on how people remember their lives, and how cultural factors influence autobiographical remembering. In this context, the course discusses research in cultural differences on cognition and autobiographical memory, especially in cultural life scripts and life stories, as well as childhood amnesia and the reminiscence bump.

This course provides insight into three interconnected fields of inquiry: the interdisciplinary study of contemporary Scandinavia and the larger Nordic region; the analysis of a large variety of cultural products; and an understanding of how narratives and images reflect past and present transnational and transcultural relations. The interdisciplinary course relates close readings of literary texts, films, art works, and other cultural products to discussions of the larger socio-political and media-aesthetic context. Among other things, this context is marked by the global circulation of ideas and artifacts; migration and diversity; climate change and other environmental concerns; and decolonization processes. Within the Nordic region, changing relations between majorities and minorities and between centers and peripheries are at stake that link the region to transformations on a global level. A special focus is directed at cultural and geopolitical changes in the Nordic part of the Arctic; at shifting relations within the Danish Realm between Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands; at the situation of Indigenous people in the region including the Sámi of the northern Scandinavian peninsula; and at the legacies of the transatlantic enslavement trade linking Scandinavia to Africa and the Caribbean. The course looks at how artistic, medial, and public expressions represent and reflect these processes. It presents a variety of textual, visual, and audiovisual material, as well as discourses and practices that reflect current shifts in Nordic self-images; imagined communities on national, regional, and global levels; and transnational entanglements. In short, the course explores and expands the notion of Scandinavia or “Norden” and traces the region’s transnational connectedness as reflected by contemporary arts and public discourse.

The course covers various theories and models of culture-cognition interaction within particular domains of human life, e.g. religion, science, play, work, environment, gender, and health. The course introduces theories of how cultural practices and ideas work to align norms, values, and behaviors among members of a given society. The course also introduces to qualitative and quantitative methods that are relevant for studying the link between culture and cognition.