Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu
Data science is changing our lives. While the importance of data science is widely acknowledged, there are also great concerns around it. How are data generated? How can they be used to make predictions and inform insights? What can be the potential dangers of applying data science techniques? What are the social and human implications of their uses? This multidisciplinary course explores these questions through hands-on experience on key technical components in data science and critical reviews of human and social implications in various real-world examples, ranging from social science to arts and humanities to engineering. In the course, students will 1) learn basic concepts and skills in data science (e.g., crawling and visualization); 2) apply these skills in a creative project; 3) discuss social and human implications of data science, including data privacy; algorithmic bias, transparency, fairness, and accountability; research ethics; data curation and reproducibility; and societal impacts. This course encourages students to reconsider our common-place assumptions about how data science works and be critical about the responsible use of data.
Core: Data and Discovery (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Mon,Wed
The goal of this course is to introduce the students into nationalism studies and into a plethora of historical and present roots of national identities and manifestations of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe. The course will examine how selected aspects of national histories have been used (and misused) in 19., 20. and 21. century to support/justify national political programs and leaders; specifically, how a romantic picture of national history influenced the development of national identity and what role its interpretation has had in political struggles and programs of Central and East European nations. The course focuses on forces that triggered many eruptions of ethnic hatred and atrocities in Central and Eastern Europe including Holocaust, post World War II expulsion of Germans, civil war in former Yugoslavia, and most recently the nationalist aspects of conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The course will focus on Ukraine and Russia, Poland, Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, on former Yugoslavia and on independent states on its territory, and it will motivate the students to formulate a positive and cooperative prospect for the region’s future.
History (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed
This course will focus on the history of the culturally rich region of “Mitteleuropa” through analysis of the parallel evolution of Germany and the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Mitteleuropa as a region produced such important figures as Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl and Milan Kundera; historical personalities whose influence internationally is indisputable. We’ll delve into the history of the region and on the central role played by German politics and culture from the end of the 19th century, through the turbulent 20th century to the present day. Emphasis will be on the evolution of the concept of nationalism as well as on Germany’s foreign policy in the “concert of nations”, especially towards its Eastern neighbors. The aim is to achieve an understanding of the complex evolution of national entities and their interaction between the birth of the modern German state and the integration of the Visegrád countries in NATO and the European Union.
History (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed
The history of Germany in the twentieth century offers rich material to explore various approaches to organizing modern society. Beginning with Imperial Germany in 1900 and moving forward to today’s reunited Germany, we will look at different ways in which the relationship between the state and the individual, and relationship between politics, economy, and society developed over five different political systems. We will interrogate how these institutional arrangements were envisioned and structured and how they were experienced in everyday negotiations. In this course, principle narratives and events will be situated in a European and global context, allowing us to place the concept of German modernity in a comparative framework. Lectures will provide an overview of Germany in the twentieth century; readings and in-class discussions will explore different approaches to analyzing German history and society. During museum visits and walking tours, we will analyze contestations over the various attempts to integrate – both in concerted efforts to memorialize as well as to forget and erase – Germany’s oft-problematic pasts within the narrative of Germany’s present.
History (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Thu
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Thu
The principal aim of this course is to familiarize students with the history of British art from the Stuarts to the early Victorian era. Teaching will be conducted entirely on sites in London or its immediate vicinity. The course will begin with the elite patronage of the Stuart court and end with the development of public institutions of art from the mid-eighteenth century. The social significance of portraiture, the cult of antiquity, the art market and the rise of landscape will all be studied as themes. There will be a strong emphasis on the European sources of British visual culture and the emergence of a distinctive national tradition of painting from Hogarth through to Turner.
Art History (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks