CIEE, Prague

This course examines various elements of Czech non-mainstream culture, such as graffiti and street-art, political art collectives, the underground, new social movements, psychedelia, D.I.Y. music scenes, LGBTA, and social theater. It examines critical theory to discuss the practices of "alternative" urban lives in postindustrial society and certain trends of artistic production. The focus is on the political interpretation of youth subversion and disclosures of power mechanisms. Visuals and field trips to graffiti and other subcultural sites are an inherent part of this course.

This interdisciplinary course discusses the identities of nations in European space that have served as a crossroad of ideas and ideologies, as well as wars and totalitarian regimes. The course covers masterpieces of Russian, Hungarian, German, French, Georgian, Polish, and Czech cinematography, focusing on several crucial periods of history, in particular WWII, its aftermath, and the Stalinist years. Students are exposed to often controversial works of film art focusing on the moral dilemmas of individuals under the stressful times of history. Students map the European space through the means of film, analyzing the individual’s approach to historical events, and gain a general picture of Europe in its crucial periods of history. Students participate in open discussion sessions following each screening.

Cultural psychology examines how our psychology (perception, emotion, judgment, attitudes, personality, etc.) and our culture (the distribution of values, practices, beliefs, institutions, and human-made physical environments within which each of us uniquely develops) make one another up. Some of the topics explored in this course include: how language influences how we think or what we can think about; the extent to which are our emotions shared across the species and the extent to which they depend on culture; mental disorders such as PTSD, depression, ADHD, or schizophrenia, which are more highly diagnosed in the U.S. than in other countries around the world; the role culture might play in mental health and in its diagnosis, and in the conception of mental disorders themselves. A common tension throughout this class is the extent to which we can—or should— generalize about psychology across the human species. Arguably, unlike any other species in earth's history, humans come into the world ill-prepared to survive in any particular physical environment; yet, thanks in large part to social and cultural systems, we are able to adapt across an extreme range of habitats. The basic question to examine here is: To what extent do people in all cultures share the same psychology and to what extent does our psychology differ along with our distinct cultures?

Liberal democracy seems to be the obvious winner of the ideological struggle of the twentieth century. It is therefore hard to understand why the two main alternatives to liberal democracy – Nazism and Communism –exercised such a power over the lives and minds of people of Central Europe throughout the larger part of the twentieth century. This interdisciplinary course examines this conundrum through systematic study of totalitarian practices. Following a basic theoretical outline and criticism of the term “totalitarianism”, the course analyses the ideologies of the “Totalitarian Twins”, Communism and Nazism, which both grew from a perceived crisis of liberal democracy. The main focus of the course is on the methods the two regimes used to rule over their citizens, going beyond the obvious themes of fear and terror and looking at the role of economic policy, propaganda, leader’s cult, and media and art in securing the conformity of the citizens. By studying these methods, the course touches upon the challenges liberal democracy faces in the current political situation. The course also includes the often overlooked issue of environmental destruction especially under communism, and the consequent rise of the environmental consciousness and movements, which contributed significantly to the eventual fall of communism. The course presents a "Prague perspective," examining the experience of the Czechs in the twentieth century as an example of a nation dealing with the two dictatorships. Although the Nazi and Communist dictatorships are over, their residues remain in the collective memory, which influences everyday life. As mentality can only be explained against the historical backdrop, students undertake a journey into the minds of people who lived in these two destructive dictatorships and try to understand them.

This course introduces the area of Czech fairytales as a genre within its broader historical, geographical, and cultural context. Furthermore, it describes and surveys the changes in the approach to fairytales within the development of scholarship about them. The course presents historical, psychoanalytical, and philosophical interpretations, as well as anthropological and religious types of theories, and biological and gender or feminist methods of their interpretation. The course respects the connection of the fairytale to other folklore narrative forms like legends, fables, and myths; however, it defines the fairytale as a specific genre. It includes topics such as ethical and moral principles in fairytales, gender and social roles, and historical and political influences on fairytale adaptations.