European Studies

This course focuses on key texts of the European literary tradition between the 19th century and the present. It explores the philosophical, political, and ethical issues raised in these texts.

This course outlines the structures of the European Union, its law-making processes, judicial architecture, and its most important policy domains. It does so by focusing on both the law of European integration and the political, social, and cultural context within which it operates. Students tackle questions about the dynamics and direction of integration, including the existential challenges posed by Brexit, the rule of law crisis and the refugee crisis.

The course provides an overview of modern health challenges in Europe and how they are embraced by a variety of stakeholders: policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and civil society. The course focuses on three perspectives, the first being health in Europe: which focuses on the health status across the European countries, the organization of health systems, and major healthcare challenges for individual countries. Secondly, the perspective of European health focuses on integration and collaboration among Member States within the European Union (EU) and more widely according to the WHO European region. Lastly, European health in a globalized world is assessed. The course combines theory with practice through lectures, tutorials, and field visits.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course is a survey of the history of the concepts and practice of war and peace from the Renaissance to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It primarily explores the main ideas, events, aspects, and trends related to the topics of the classes. First, the course examines the period traditionally known as the Renaissance. The course then focuses on ideas on human nature, war, and peace in early-modern Europe. The course demonstrates how the medieval cultural attitude towards war and peace was replaced during this period by a new concept, based around novel ideas on the nature of man shaped by social and political tensions caused by unprecedented challenges which threatened early-modern European societies. Finally, the course addresses questions concerning modernity such as why European cultures increasingly relied on science and reason instead of religion.

Berlin is a multi-cultural city with a diverse cultural life. The seminar presents this transcultural landscape connected to Asia. Starting with the fascination of collectors and travelers to Asia in the Barock period of the 18th century and the establishment of cabinets of curiosities, collections and material culture has lend contemporary relevance to ethnography, art history and anthropology. Asian collections and architecture presented in Berlin are confronted with the very colonial contexts from which substantial parts of them hail, giving contemporary relevance to the history of their origins. As issue today are questions of cultural heritage, cross-cultural methods and opening-up to non-western research, discourses, Arts and Asian communities.

The course provides an overview over the history of racism from antiquity to the postwar era. It addresses the relationship with different historical developments like colonialism, slavery, race science, eugenics, segregation and genocide. The course discusses the exemplary developments in different European and non-European societies. While the perspective of the victims of racist discrimination is addressed frequently, the course also focuses on the logic of such discrimination. For this, various related issues are raised, like anti-black racism, antisemitism, hatred against Sinti and Roma etc.

This course provides students with an introduction into European environmental and climate politics and policy. Theories on European integration are discussed and students consider their explanatory value in understanding the emergence of environmental and climate policy. Special attention is paid to the European Union's institutional set-up and the actor constellations involved in policy-making processes. The course then reviews the policy cycle and explores the influence of different actor groups on the initiation, agenda setting, decision-making and implementation of European environmental policy. The focus is on regulatory areas related to the environment, climate change, and energy policy. Students consider the problems, debates, and decisions, and compare political expectations and results.

In Germany and Europe public debates on migration, migrant and ethnic communities and religion play a big role in politics and society. This course first analyzes the concepts of race and racism, looking at historical and contemporary moments as well as developments of racism in society. Further, it examines the various uses of terminology in the field and particularly elaborates on the concept of ‘intersectionality’, studying racism and discrimination from this angle. After gaining the theoretical lens for this course, students engage with clear examples of different forms of racism and discrimination such as Antisemitism, anti-Black racism, anti-Muslim racism or anti-Gypsyism. These examples are analyzed and contextualized by looking at structural and societal problems of racism. Finally, students visit and hear from activists in Berlin dealing with the problem of racism and discrimination. Additionally, the course looks into how governments and policy makers try to tackle racism within their own societies. Students learn from this course the different concepts and forms of racism and are able to apply this knowledge in future discussions by critically questioning processes and events in politics and society.

This course examines the place of Europe - its countries, and the institutions they have created in the global order from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Students study how Europe has articulated its interests on the international stage, how the EU has evolved as an actor in foreign and security policy, what characterizes the European perspective on key issues and on international politics more generally, and how the EU relates to other regions and powers, including the United States, China, and Russia. The course proceeds chronologically, beginning with the origins of the Cold War and European integration in the 1940s and 1950s, and proceeding to analyze Europe 'between the superpowers' as the Cold War unfolded, its place in the American-dominated 'unipolar moment', and where the continent stands now as the 'rise of the rest' leads to the emergence of a more diffuse international order. The course concludes with a strategic foresight exercise in which students depict divergent scenarios for Europe in the world over the coming decade.