Sociology

This seminar examines American cities over the past 150 years through major theoretical traditions and empirical themes. It explores housing markets, racial segregation, immigration, suburbanization, gentrification, policing, gender, finance, education, and urban politics. Throughout, it maintains a comparative lens, juxtaposing American patterns with European experiences. The course has two goals. First, to familiarize students with major theoretical frameworks in urban sociology, building a conceptual toolkit for analyzing cities. Second, to develop critical analytical skills through engagement with classic texts and contemporary research.

This course introduces key concepts and analytical tools for understanding science and technology as social enterprises. Students examine classical philosophical debates—such as the demarcation problem—and analyze how social systems, institutional norms, and cultural contexts shape the work of scientists and engineers.  

The course explores motivations and incentives that drive knowledge production, as well as the collaborative and competitive structures that organize research. Building on this foundation, the course asks practical questions about how to promote science and technology through effective governance, economic analysis, and policy design.  

A distinctive feature of this course is its applied project structure. Students take on two roles over the semester: first, acting as a funding agency by drafting Requests for Proposals (RFPs) on pressing science policy issues; second, acting as policy researchers by responding to a peer’s RFP with a complete policy study.  

This process mirrors real-world science policy cycles, from setting priorities to producing actionable recommendations, and will push students to think both strategically and analytically. By the end of the course, students will have a critical understanding of how science and technology are constructed, organized, and sustained, as well as hands-on experience in research design, policy analysis, and communication skills directly transferable to real-world science policy work. 

This survey course examines innovation holistically, encouraging students to question the status quo and critically examine both the positive and negative impacts of innovation. 

Innovation is often hailed as the ultimate solution to many challenges, ranging from economic growth to technological advancement. However, this enthusiastic embrace of innovation frequently overlooks its significant negative effects on individuals, society, politics, and the environment. While innovation has propelled societies forward in many areas, it has also created new problems, often exacerbating inequalities and producing unforeseen consequences. 

Through lectures and debates on current case studies—such as climate change, the brain drain from poorer countries to developed nations, and the impact of artificial intelligence on individuals and society—students will explore the multifaceted nature of innovation and develop principles for a more inclusive and responsible approach. This course challenges students to think critically about who benefits from innovation and who may be disadvantaged, prompting consideration of ethical, social, and environmental dimensions alongside economic and technological ones. By engaging with diverse perspectives, students gain an appreciation for the complexity of innovation and the importance of a balanced approach. 

This is a special topics course that explores the history of popular music: its significant performers, recordings, performances, and cultural identity, with the focus on the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, the two decades that shaped the "visual era" in pop. Through watching and interpreting videos, students understand the aspects, causes, and effects of these social phenomena. 

This is not a music course, per se, but we will listen to and watch a lot of audio/video material as we consider the effects of popular music on contemporary history, culture, and society. Reading assignments will introduce the distinct musical styles, performers, and works that comprise each genre and a certain time period. While the previous course "Cultural Sociology" offered in Spring 2025 emphasized the social and cultural roles of popular music, this course focuses more on visual, commercial, technological and global aspects, which parallel the social circumstances of the era. 

No prior familiarity with pop music is necessary or assumed, but "Cultural Sociology" (SOCI446) is highly encouraged and recommended. However, all are welcome to enroll if they are willing to put in time and effort. 

This course explores the dynamic landscape of global social movements, taking Berlin as a focal point and lens to analyze broader international trends. Students engage with theories and case studies that illustrate how social movements emerge, evolve, and impact societies, especially in contexts marked by globalization, migration, and socio-political change. Berlin’s rich history as a hub for activism provides an ideal backdrop for examining the intersections of local and transnational movements. During the semester, students explore the complex historical and contemporary dynamics of social movements in and beyond Germany. Presenting different approaches of studies of collective action, the course provides a comprehensive understanding of the multiple contemporary social movements shaping our contemporary world, and it will highlight their contribution for the democratization of the world in which we currently live. Each class will connect a theoretical discussion on collective action with a case of a specific social movement, especially with cases from Berlin history with global entangled connections. The first section of the course is composed of theoretical texts with three different approaches to social movements: contentious politics, new social movements and dynamics approach. From the understanding of these perspectives, the students are able to navigate the different analyses discussed in the following sections and the case studies throughout the course. Next, the class focuses on the ways global social movements produce resistance, concrete utopias and position themselves in anticolonial and postcolonial struggles. By discussing these concepts, the students gain an understanding of social movements as an entry point to apprehend a society in a more comprehensive way. The third part of the course focuses on discussions of contemporary social movements and what their studies bring to understanding political action, their possibilities, their limits, their contributions to democratization in Germany and around the world. Students discuss the cases of feminism, climate justice, queer and trans liberation, housing and other social movements. Throughout the course, students are able to develop critical thinking skills, gain historical knowledge, and engage in interdisciplinary analysis on social movements. By examining the German colonial past, anti-colonial resistance movements, and decolonial theories, students gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding this area of studies and the struggles for social justice and democratization in and beyond the Berlin context.

This course explores the diverse cultures, practices, and geographies of activism with a focus on France and Paris. Through lectures, workshops, site visits, and films, students engage with the ways individuals and collectives resist systems of domination, claim rights, and imagine alternative futures. It examines the theories and practices that shape activism, ranging from ecological and feminist struggles to LGBTQIA+ movements, artistic interventions, and festive forms of protest. By combining conceptual readings with experiential learning, the course emphasizes both critical reflection and direct engagement. Students map sites of power and resistance, participate in workshops, analyze cultural artifacts, and debate pressing issues of social justice. Throughout, they develop tools to understand activism not only as political action but also as a cultural practice that reshapes identities, communities, and public space.

This course examines the institutional and cultural production of knowledge as well as the various forms of power that structure and legitimize it. It is co-taught by colleagues from different departments. Engaging with a range of anticolonial, anti-caste, feminist, indigenous and anti-capitalist texts, the course decenters the university as the exclusive site, and the individual as the paradigmatic source, of intellectual work. It (re)considers knowledge produced in other settings such as radical and revolutionary movements, forms of collective study, and its tension with extant structures of power. Central to the course is prioritizing engagement with, rather than mastery of, theory as part of a broader political commitment to praxis and “doing” intellectual work collectively. To that end, the course incorporates a form of assessment that recognizes and rewards this style of engagement. 

This course introduces students to the key ideas of sociology by examining the relationship between individuals and societies. The course explores how social processes shape individual lives, and how changes that occur around us influence our sense of self. It draws on C. Wright Mills' idea of the sociological imagination. Mills makes three claims: that individuals live within society, that they live a biography or a personal history, and that this takes place within a distinct historical sequence. It is the sociological imagination that provides a means of mapping and understanding the relationships among these three elements, and allows us as individuals to relate our personal lives to the often impersonal social world around us. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The objectives include: Critical Analysis: Train students to critically analyze how culture and social structures both shape and are shaped by the physical environment. Spatial Awareness: Help students understand the spatial dimensions of social phenomena, exploring how territories impact social interactions and cultural expressions. Cultural Appreciation: Foster an appreciation for cultural diversity by examining how different cultures manifest within specific territories, and how cultural practices are influenced by geographic locations. Research Skills: Develop research skills by teaching students how to investigate and analyze the relationships between social structures, culture, and territory through empirical studies and literature reviews. Globalization Impact: Explore the effects of globalization on local cultures and identities. Emphasize how global forces interact with and sometimes challenge local customs and territorial boundaries, fostering critical thinking. 

This course focuses specifically on the spatial and cultural dimensions of contemporary life. It begins by exploring the historical development of the discipline and its intersections with other social sciences, then moves toward a more focused examination of how territory and culture interact within the context of consumer society. Particular attention is devoted to understanding how consumption shapes and is shaped by both physical and digital environments. Consumer culture is not approached merely as an economic phenomenon, but as a complex system of practices and meanings that contribute to the production of social identities, symbolic landscapes, and territorial imaginaries. From shopping malls and theme parks to social media platforms and algorithmically curated spaces, students investigate how consumption environments function as sites of cultural production and negotiation. Throughout the course, students engage with theoretical perspectives and empirical case studies that highlight the interplay between material culture, globalization, prosumption, and the hybridization of space. The physical and the digital are not treated as separate spheres, but as interconnected and co-constructed domains that define how individuals navigate, appropriate, and give meaning to their social worlds. By combining lectures, seminar discussions, and multimedia materials, the course fosters a critical understanding of how contemporary spatial practices reflect broader cultural transformations. In doing so, it encourages students to reflect on the ways in which space and culture co-evolve in the context of late modernity, shaping both inclusion and exclusion, identity and belonging.

This course examines the dynamics, roles and politics of culture, art and creative agency in the reproduction and transformation of society. It focuses on the ways art and artists respond to, dismantle and reimagine beyond the discursive and institutional formations that construct difference as ‘problematic’, and the injustices they give rise to. This is an empirically and practice-based course that interrogates the relationships and tensions between knowledge, aesthetics and pedagogy through examination of ground-breaking works of art and scholarship across a range of pressing social justice issues and national contexts. It is interdisciplinary, convening readings from sociology, anthropology, art history and social movement studies. Course materials are gathered across theoretical traditions of feminism, Black, indigenous and queer studies, as well as post-colonial and decolonial studies. There is no ‘textbook’ or singular approach to this area of study. Coursework requires equal measures of weekly scholarly and weekly arts-based work: it involves a variety of exercises using a range of visual art techniques, and students are welcome to experiment with sonic and performative practices for the final project. Completing work on a weekly basis is essential.