Anthropology

This course introduces the field of anthropology and applies it to the study of Latin America, specifically indigenous populations. In this context, it defines concepts related to populations: ethnicity minorities, Indians, indigenous populations, communities, and mixed race. It examines how public policies reflect indigenous populations through the methods used to count them. The course then addresses indigenous peoples' desire for recognition of their specific rights. Primary topics include key points on anthropology; the history of indigenous populations and current accounting of Indian populations in Latin America; study of a few specific groups: the Patagonian people, the Tinigua of Colombia, the Mapuche of Chile, the Yucuna of the Colombian Amazon; contemporary Indian societies; emergence of the Indian question in Latin America.

Berlin’s rich museological landscape lends itself to in-depth exploration of Germany’s difficult heritage: How are the upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially, remembered and represented? This course enables students to get to know a number of Berlin museums focusing on Memory and Post-WWII migration using anthropological methods and to critically analyze them within larger theoretical frameworks of “self” and “other” constructions. To explore the role of museums is rendering such constructions visible and therefore debatable. The course consists of classroom sessions and site visits.

This course provides a broad-based introduction to the core themes and ideas of the anthropology of the Middle East, and by extension of the Anthropology of Islam. It begins by exploring the reasons behind the relatively late emergence of the Middle East as an area of study, before moving on to consider such topics as Orientalism, gender, rural versus urban anthropology, the role of religion (traditional and modern), and the forging of a regional subjectivity (as witnessed in the ongoing uprisings throughout the Middle East, the so-called “Arab Spring”). The course stands alone as a regional module, as well as offers an overview of the issues for continued study of the Middle East.

This course explores the place of food in art in France, with a focus on the modern and contemporary periods. Throughout the course, representations of food are studied as a means to survey the evolution of French art within a global context, and as significant markers of social, ethnic, and cultural identity. The analysis of these depictions provides the opportunity to learn about dietary and dining customs, habits, and beliefs prevalent in France from the early modern period to the present. The course begins by decoding the archetypal representations of succulent food in the still life and genre painting of 16th-17th-century Holland, which established the conventions of the genre for centuries to come. It then examines how the rise of these previously minor artistic genres in 18th-century France coincided with the birth of French gastronomy. Frivolous depictions of aristocrats wining, dining, and indulging in exotic beverages like coffee and hot chocolate then give way in post-Revolutionary France to visions of austerity and “real life,” featuring potato-eating peasants. The focus then shifts to representations of food and dining in the age of modernity, when Paris was the undisputed capital of art, luxury, haute cuisine, and innovation. The course analyzes how Impressionist picnics and café scenes transgress social and artistic codes. Building on their momentum, Paul Cézanne launches an aesthetic revolution with an apple. Paul Gauguin’s depictions of mangos and guavas speak to his quest for new, “exotic” sources of inspiration, and allow discussion of questions of race, gender, and French colonialist discourse. Drawing from these pictorial and social innovations, the course subsequently observes the place of food and dining themes in the avant-garde movements of early 20th-century Paris, whose defiance of conventional society and art leads them to transform previously comforting themes into troubling ones.  It questions the place of food—or its absence—in art to capture the suffering and violence of upheavals like the Second World War and consider the place of food and dining in contemporary art: from the Pop Art movement’s calling into question postwar consumer society through its representations of mass-produced food; to contemporary creators in a plural and globalized art scene who use these traditional themes to challenge the status and roles of the artist, the spectator, and the work of art itself; to how depictions of food in visual art grapple with multiculturalism in France today.

This course offers a sample of Irish traditional cultural expressions, focusing on the three main areas of oral literature, custom belief and tradition, and folk life. Students are introduced to storytelling, storytellers, stories, calendar customs, traditions, festivals, rituals, and fascinating aspects of popular belief and religion, such as fairies, Irish Saints, the Otherworld, Wake "amusements" and the Pattern Day. Folk life includes a survey of Irish vernacular architecture, furniture, objects of everyday life, traditional boats, and much more. 

The course is an introduction to social theories in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The course draws reflections and theoretical comparisons between how humans engage in meaningful interactions with other humans and with social robots. The course begins with an overview of the standard and contrasting accounts of social cognition and its development, spanning from the Theory of Mind, embodied and situated approaches, and neural mirroring theories. Mainstream research paradigms to investigate human-robot interactions will be also presented. Finally, the course advances some current psychological and philosophical critical issues related to ethical, relational, and functional issues of using social robots as partners in human daily interactions.

In this hands-on course, students work in interdisciplinary teams to uncover the rich history of Utrecht and share findings with the public. Combining historical, architectural, and societal data, students develop and design an innovative application for the city of Utrecht. In the process, students cooperate across disciplinary borders, take charge of their own learning process, and experimentally assess the added value of new media and ICT. The course accumulates in presentations and interactive demos of the teams’ final prototypes.