History

This course provides an overview of major currents in Jewish life across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa from the Enlightenment era to the creation of the State of Israel. Topics include continuity and rupture in Jewish cultural life and political and social status; interactions and influences between Jews in different geographical, political, and cultural spheres; the rise of modern antisemitism and Jewish responses; European and Middle East and North Africa Jews' respective roles in and reactions to the emergence of the Zionist movement; the Shoah; and the creation of the State of Israel.

This course examines the history of the American continent from the arrival of Europeans to today.

The course gives a broad overview of the archaeology, history, and art history of the material culture and of the written sources from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. The course covers different aspects of the political, social, cultural, and religious developments, as well as changes within Scandinavia. This includes such aspects as the transition from paganism to Christianity, Viking Age burials, gender and social segregation, trade and plundering, rural and urban landscapes, and economic development.

This course introduces the history of concepts of gender and sexuality, and covers topics such as heterosexuality, homosexuality, sex education, women’s emancipation, masculinity, prostitution, pornography, sexual nationalism, and transgenderism. It uses a diverse range of teaching methods including group work, movie screenings, and lectures. The course focuses on Denmark, but also studies how Denmark relates and compares to the rest of the world. The course does not require previous knowledge of theories of gender and sexuality and provides the opportunity to share knowledge of students' respective home countries in an academic setting.

This class introduces students to the system by which powerful countries in the world have related to each other over the past 400 years. This course provides an understanding of how major world powers have managed their relationships and competing interests while crafting a stable system that allows them to pursue their own goals.  Aspects of cooperation and competition as they manifest in military, economic, and cultural means are investigated to see how these fields have shaped the global order and how economics, technology, and culture have influenced the interaction.

Islam has become the subject of public debates and discourses in the Western World as well as a core research topic within various disciplines in the social sciences. This course takes a closer look at Muslims and Islam in Europe and tries to analyze and discuss the present condition of Muslims living in Europe from a socio-anthropological perspective. In order to do so, Islam is first introduced from a general perspective; students also visit a representative mosque in Berlin. The first sessions of the course provide an overview of theories of cultural difference and secularism. Having this theoretical lens in mind, the following sessions look at various public discourses regarding Islam and Muslims in Europe. Here issues such as Muslim-state relations, gender, policies, and religious practices of Muslims in Europe are examined and accompanied by a critical analysis of certain public controversies concerning Islam.

This course takes a closer look at some of the historical developments that have shaped North American literature and culture, and have been shaped by them in turn. The course also addresses the question of how an understanding of history is informed by one's standpoint as well as social hierarchies more generally. Some of the topics the course discusses include the ongoing significance of settler colonialism; slavery and its afterlives; the American Revolution; the constitution of the United States; abolitionism; feminism; U.S. imperialism; the Civil Rights Movement, Indigenous rights movements; the Black Lives Matter movement; and the historical roots of the Trump presidency. The course foregrounds an understanding of ongoing historiographical debates and methods of interpreting primary sources.