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 M.A. in North A...  
 Course

North American Studies

M.A. in North American Studies (2015 study regulations)

0024e_MA120

  • History (Module B): North American History before 1865

    0024eA1.2
    • 32413 Seminar
      History of the Body in Colonia America (Sebastian Jobs)
      Schedule: Di 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-15)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      The focus on the human body as an object of research has become a common part of historical research. In this class we will explore how bodies in the setting of colonial North America took on various meanings, how they were the site of social control, conflict and change, and how we can write a history of colonial bodies. Topics include (but are not restricted to) the history of medicine, sexuality and gender history, and the history of racism and slavery.

    • 32414 Advanced seminar
      Diseases in Early America (Sebastian Jobs)
      Schedule: Di 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-15)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      The COVID-19 pandemic has been a reminder of the power of diseases have had over the lives of people for the past centuries. This seminar will concentrate on how concepts of health and disease have changed over time in Early America. We will examine how cultural, social and political institutions and norms shaped how people viewed diseases and what strategies they used to respond to them. Based on both primary and secondary reading, we will explore the interplay between cultural and social responses (and actors) and the ways in which knowledge was created about diseases.

  • History (Module C): North American History after 1865

    0024eA1.3
    • 32411 Advanced seminar
      U. S. Foreign Relations in the Twentieth-Century History (Jessica Gienow-Hecht)
      Schedule: Do 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      Topic: In the grand scheme of international history, the twentieth century has been turbulent, violent and contradictory. Declared as the “Century of the Child” and alternately labelled “short” (Hobsbawm), “American” (Luce), or “genocidal” (Levene), it has produced tremendous technological progress, mass migration, the shrinking of geographical distances along with great human tragedy, socio-political upheaval, and conflicting cultural trajectories the world over. Two world wars, a “cold” war that set much of Southeast Asia aflame, several arms races, countless peace treaties, and an exploding governmental bureaucracy dedicated to managing U.S. relations with the world beyond its borders turned what was originally a marginal executive occupation – diplomacy – into a key competency. Furthermore, new U.S. actors with individual agendas and a growing appetite for influence appeared in the international arena, including doctors, tourists, scientists, and pop stars. On a broader level, rapid industrialization, bursts of nationalism, the encounter with anticolonialism, the clash between democracy, socialism, and religious fundamentalism, along with economic globalization have profoundly affected the U.S. nation’s experiences abroad and the resulting historical memory. We will evaluate some of the most recent historical writings on the history of U.S. foreign relations in the twentieth century in order to provide a state-of-the-art assessment of where that research stands and develop an in-depth foundation of knowledge for the period, all to examine the legacy of U.S. 20th-century foreign relations for the contemporary world. Course: The seminar seeks to fulfill two objectives: first, we will spend a significant amount of time considering some of the most recent literature dedicated to the history of U.S. foreign relations. Historians have identified peculiar factors informing U.S. foreign relations as well as particular ways and perspectives to examine foreign relations history. These include the role of specific groups in foreign relations, postcolonialism, the Cold War, globalization, civil and human rights. But none of these was generic to the United States. What cocktail, we’ll ask eventually, made the twentieth century a peculiar American experience? Second, we will try to understand the legacy and implications of U.S. foreign relations for today and discuss whether there are particular lessons for the impending future. This introductory course (Seminar) constitutes the first part of Module C. While it is designed as a broad introduction to the period by looking at a general theme, the second part (The US and and China) zooms in on a specific topic, offering students the opportunity to do primary source research and write a paper. Both parts are scheduled back-to-back (Thur., 4-6pm, 6-8pm), and students required to cover the entire module are encouraged to enroll in both courses simultaneously. Students wishing to compose a full research paper (Hausarbeit) at the end of the term are strongly encouraged to do so in the second part (Hauptseminar) of Module C (Tues., 6-8pm).

    • 32412 Seminar
      From Opium to Lithium: The U.S. and China, 1800s to today (Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Ines Eben von Racknitz)
      Schedule: Do 18:00-20:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      Numerous contemporary observers believe that the Sino-U.S. relationship constitutes the — or at least one of the most important — relationships of our time. But to what extent is that really so, and what does it mean? This course provides a historical review of Sino-U.S. relations since the 19th century all the way up to the present. We will concentrate upon a series of sociopolitical, military, and cultural key events such as the Opium wars and the Boxer Rebellion, the Korean and the Vietnam wars, détente during the era of Mao and Nixon, Sino-American migration and mutual perceptions. We will also discuss major contentious debates in the field of Sino-U.S. history, notably in the area of diplomacy and migration. The goal of this course is to help students acquire and develop critical knowledge, queries, along with the ability to understand and assess the nature of Sino-U.S. relations today by way of historical analysis. Reading material includes Dong Wang, The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, 2nd Edition (2021)."

  • Culture (Module A): History of Ideas in America and Theories of American Culture

    0024eA2.1
    • 32110 Lecture
      Discourses and Practices of Colonization and Settlement (Alexander Starre)
      Schedule: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      “In the beginning, all the world was America,” John Locke proclaimed in his Second Treatise on Government (1689-90). But when and where does “America” begin? This lecture course deals with colonial societies and intercultural contact zones in North America between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. We will look at competing European settler cultures, practices of intercultural conflict and intermixture, as well as interdependent socio-economic, aesthetic, and ecological transformations in early modern times (shifting perspective from a Europe-centered narrative of “discovery” to a postcolonial account of conflictive hybridity). Topics include: Early European New World writings (Bacon, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Las Casas, De Vaca, etc.), the first British descriptions of Virginia and New England (John Smith, Thomas Harriot, William Bradford, Thomas Morton), Puritan writings both orthodox and heterodox (John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, Edward Taylor, Anne Bradstreet, and others), Indian captivity narratives and missionary tracts (Mary Rowlandson, John Eliot), ideas and institutions of slavery and freedom (John Woolman, Phyllis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano), intellectual shifts in the late seventeenth century and in the context of the Great Awakening (Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Chauncy, Benjamin Franklin).
    • 32111 Advanced seminar
      Early America Now (Alexander Starre)
      Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      The presence of early American culture still looms large in the contemporary United States: from the New York Times “1619 Project” to Disney’s Pocahontas and to the collective myth of the “city upon a hill” in American political rhetoric from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. This course has two objectives: In the first part of the course, we will sample some of the most influential and innovative recent scholarship in cultural, literary, and historical studies that usefully revises and expands earlier accounts of colonial era. In the second part, students will work on a selection of twentieth- and twenty-first century primary sources (television series, films, novels, visual art, speeches, and other media) that explore the present meaning of the distant American past. Final selections for this second part will be made collectively in class.  -----

      Please note: This M.A.-level seminar ties in closely with Dr. Starre’s lecture course “Discourses and Practices of Colonization and Settlement in North America.” It is recommended to take both courses in conjunction (and thus complete Culture Module A).

  • Culture (C) – Cultural History of Specific Media and Aesthetic Forms of Expression

    0024eA2.3
    • 32112 Lecture
      American Culture after World War II (Frank Kelleter)
      Schedule: Di 16:00-19:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-15)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Following requests from course evaluations, my lecture courses in the winter semester are again listed as three-hour “Vorlesung mit integriertem Tutorium.” However, participants will gain credit on the basis of the regular (two-hour) lecture slot; attendance of the additional academic hour (“tutorial” with further time for Q&A) is optional.

      Please make sure to read the Course Descriptions (Syllabi) before the beginning of the term! You can download them from the “Teaching” section of my JFKI website or from the Blackboard sites of my courses. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.  

      Comments

      Emerging from World War II as a world power, the United States faced numerous problems of cultural self-definition in the second half of the 20th century. The Cold War produced not only an ideology of international leadership but also new anxieties about America’s social identity and the nation’s changed position in the world. Topics discussed in this lecture course include: the arrival of a postindustrial economic order, the decline of New Deal liberalism, postmodernist aesthetics, the New Hollywood, and the interrelated emergence of the New Left and the New Right. In the early 21st century, many of these developments have been radicalized under the conditions of military hegemony, globalized capitalism, corporate anti-statism, neoliberal governance, and catastrophic ecological transformations. Our lecture course focuses on select phases and moments of cultural production between 1945 and 2025, when American novels, poems, films, and TV shows often defined the state of the art in their respective fields. We will concentrate on literary sources (especially poetry and fiction), sociological writings, political documents, cinema, television, and other cultural fields.

      The lecture course serves as “Vorlesung” of Culture-Module C (Kulturgeschichte einzelner Medien und ästhetischer Darstellungsformen) in the M.A. program. Registration: All participants should be registered via Blackboard and Campus Management by the first session. If you cannot register online, please contact Prof. Kelleter before the beginning of the term. Requirements and Organization: See Syllabus and Course Description in the “Teaching” section of Prof. Kelleter’s JFKI website or on Blackboard (go to “Kursmaterial”; you may have to click on “open Syllabus here” to download it; if this doesn’t work, try a different browser: students have reported problems with the Chrome browser). Please note that this course is listed as a three-hour “Vorlesung mit integriertem Tutorium.” However, participants will gain credit on the basis of the regular two-hour (4-6) lecture slot; attendance of the additional hour (“tutorial” with further time for Q&A, 6-7) is optional. First session: April 15.

    • 32113 Advanced seminar
      Post-Classical Theory (Frank Kelleter)
      Schedule: Di 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-15)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please make sure to read the Course Descriptions (Syllabi) before the beginning of the term! You can download them from the “Teaching” section of my JFKI website or from the Blackboard sites of my courses. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

      Comments

      This seminar serves as “Hauptseminar” of Culture-Module C in the Master’s degree program. We will study different types of cultural theory that have emerged after the “classical” paradigms of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, orthodox Marxism, and their poststructuralist inflections. Our introductory sessions will survey several developments from the 1970s-2000s (revisionary Marxism, field theory, actor-network-theory, systems theory). Additional topics (to be chosen and prepared by students) can include, but are not limited to, later or other paradigms such as poststructuralism (e.g., Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida), affect theory (e.g., Lauren Berlant, Kathleen Stewart, Sara Ahmed, Margaret Wetherell), post-critique and new formalism (e.g., Rita Felski, Caroline Levine), new queer theories (e.g., José Esteban Muñoz), trans theories (e.g. Jack Halberstam, Paul Preciado), media archaeology and media ecology (e.g., Lisa Gitelman, Katherine Hayles, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin), post-cinema theories (e.g., Shane Denson), seriality studies (the JFKI’s own Popular Seriality Research Unit, e.g., Kathleen Loock, Maria Sulimma, Daniel Stein, Ruth Mayer, Frank Kelleter), contemporary aesthetic theories (e.g., Sianne Ngai), critiques of postfeminism (e.g., the Judith Butler-Nancy Fraser debate, Catherine Rottenberg), black feminism and intersectionality (e.g., Combahee River Collective, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw), theories of neoliberalism (e.g., David Harvey, Wendy Brown), critical university studies (e.g., Christopher Newfield), critical whiteness studies (e.g., Claudia Rankine, David Roediger), Afropessimism and philosophies of blackness (e.g., Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten), black Marxism (e.g., Angela Davis, Cedric Robinson, Karen and Barbara Fields), contemporary theories of neofascism (Alberto Toscano, David Neiwert, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, George Hawley, Simon Strick), or any other new publication or trend you would like to discuss.

      Unlike Prof. Kelleter’s lecture course, this seminar will be largely student-driven; more than half of our sessions will be designed and moderated by the participants. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with potential course material (theoretical paradigms and texts) before the first meeting, when all participants will be asked to propose and sign up for one session topic (theoretical paradigm and/or set of texts; compare Syllabus). Registration: All participants need to be registered via Blackboard and Campus Management by the first session. If you cannot register online or cannot attend the first session, please contact Prof. Kelleter before the beginning of the term (no later than April 11). Before our first meeting, all communication about and within this class will be channeled through the course’s Blackboard site, so make sure you are registered there. Organization: Please download the Syllabus and Course Description (with a description of all course requirements) from the “Teaching” section of Prof. Kelleter’s JFKI website or from Blackboard (go to “Kursmaterial”; you may have to click on “open Syllabus here” to download it; if this doesn’t work, try a different browser: students have reported problems with the Chrome browser). Please read the Syllabus/Course Description carefully! It contains detailed information on the seminar’s structure and suggestions for preparing “your” session. Note that we will finalize our class schedule in the first two meetings. This means that everyone who wants to attend this course needs to be present in the first session in order to sign up for a topic (student-run session) or have contacted Prof. Kelleter beforehand by e-mail (no later than April 11). There is no auditing this class. First session: April 15.
    • 32114 Advanced seminar
      Queer Art: New Critical Readings from the Americas (Alexis Salas)
      Schedule: Termine siehe LV-Details (Class starts on: 2025-05-16)
      Location: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      block seminar May/June

      Comments

      SCHEDULE: 

      DAY 1: Friday May 16, 10-1pm, 2-3pm  


       

      DAY 2: Friday June 13, 10am-2pm, 3pm-5pm


       

      DAY 3: Friday June 20, 9am - 6pm 


       

      DAY 4: Friday, June 27, 3-6pm


       

      This block seminar coincides with the Terra Symposium and takes place over four days, three of which are in person, one of which is virtual. In this seminar, we survey the state of research by reading and meeting with theorists and practitioners as well as approximate local histories by visiting special collections and taking inventory of archives and resources. The first day will be devoted to student presentations on new queer art theory. The second day we will visit the archive and participate in the workshop titled “Introduction to Archive Work” at the Schwules Museum and then see their current exhibition. The third day will consist of Terra Symposium. The fourth and final day will be dedicated to student Research Presentations and workshopping of papers. A large part of the content will be determined by student interests. In principle, we engage with queer art practices of the Americas (North + Central + South America + the Caribbean) which challenge heteronormative, cis, settler colonialist, Western, and patriarchal frameworks of bodies, histories, and ideas. Using tools from queer theory, Latin American and Latinx studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, critical race studies, as well as media and visual culture studies; we discuss works of performance art, craft, and conceptual practices. Please write Student Assistant: Emma Gerritsen beeg99@zedat.fu-berlin.de with questions.


       
    • 32115 Advanced seminar
      Network Nation: Media Change and Media Theory in North American Culture (Martin Lüthe)
      Schedule: Mo 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-14)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      This seminar aspires to introduce students to the history of media change in the United States. Starting from the assumption that media matter – and have mattered – in the United States (and beyond), we will explore and discuss the changing media ecologies in U.S. history, beginning with the American Revolution and all the way through to the 21st century. Not only, but also, in light of the recent debates in the context of the digital turn, we will re-visit crucial moments in the history of United States decisively from the vantage point of media history and media theory. Beginning with Bernard Bailyn’s ideas regarding the American Revolution as the result of printing technologies (and the medial form of the pamphlet) all the way up to Katherine N. Hayles’ “Writing Machines” and contemporary debates in the context of the post-human era, this seminar will hopefully provide a space for us to think critically through the media/history nexus. ----- As credit requirements depend on the number of students enrolled in the class, we will discuss them in the first session of the summer term.

  • Literature (Module A): Literary History

    0024eA3.1
    • 32212 Advanced seminar
      "Writing Nature": Environmental Ethics in North American Literatures (Stefanie Müller)
      Schedule: Mi 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      If you want to participate in and receive credits for this class, please take note of the following conditions for participation: 1. Register on Blackboard for this class as soon as possible so that you access to the material that we will discuss in session one (April 16). 2. The shopping period is limited to week one. You must commit to the class by our second meeting.

      Comments

      The tradition of nature writing in the United States is classically said to begin with Thoreau: a young white gentleman seeking solitude in nature, apart from the hustle-bustle of the market revolution. As traditions tend to do, this narrative has shaped the development and the study of the genre, and for a long time, white male writers dominated the canon. In this class, we will explore an alternative tradition to get a better understanding of the development of nature writing in the 20th and 21st century. We will discuss texts by Camille Dungy, Rebecca Solnit, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, and many others, with an eye to how they write within and beyond the tradition. We will consider them also as memoirs and briefly delve into the theory on life writing. Moreover, we will pay special attention to the land ethics (and sometimes water ethics) that emerge from the texts: the relationship to non-human environments they describe. For this purpose, we will also discuss more theoretically minded texts, such as by Max Liboiron and Kyle Powys Whyte.

  • Literature (Module B): Literary Theory

    0024eA3.2
    • 32213 Advanced seminar
      Theories of Violence (Birte Wege)
      Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please note: Most of the texts to be discussed in this class have content that can be triggering, especially references to and depictions of graphic violence, including sexual and racial violence. We will address this in class at the beginning of the semester.

      Comments

      How do we define the boundaries of what is labeled as “violence,” and how has our characterization of it changed over time? What are the effects of violence on victims, perpetrators, and witnesses? How does violence shape a society that permits it, or is even governed by it? And, what means has literature found to engage this topic? These are some of the central questions we will explore in this seminar. To this end, we will read a number of key theoretical texts across a range of disciplines, by thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Walter Benjamin, amongst others. We will combine these readings with literary texts thematizing depictions of the many facets of violence, including war, piracy, domestic abuse, and racialized and gendered violence.

    • 32214 Advanced seminar
      Women Writers in the American Renaissance: Authorship, Genre, Place (Stefanie Müller)
      Schedule: Do 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Additional information / Pre-requisites

      This is a short and reading-intensive class. If you want to participate and receive credits for it. please take note of the following conditions for participation: 1. Register on Blackboard for this class as soon as possible so that you access to the material that we will discuss in session one (April 17). 2. The shopping period is limited to week one. You must commit to the class by our second meeting. 3. We will discuss excerpts from longer texts during the first half of the semester, but during the second we will also discuss two book-length texts: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Norton Critical Edition) and Stoddard, The Morgesons (Penguin edition).

      Comments

      In this class, we discuss fiction and non-fiction by women writers from the 1830s to the 1860s, a period that is often referred to as the American Renaissance. As those students who took my previous lecture on the American Renaissance know, the term and the scholarship that it initially motivated, largely ignored female-identified writers and the genres in which they were particularly successful. As a counterpoint, this class will attempt to provide a small sample of the great variety of writing by women that was available in the literary market and in the process once more alert students to the emergence of particular genres and modes, such as the domestic novel and the sketch, sentimentalism and realism, during those decades.

    • 32210 Seminar
      Shape, Pattern, Style: Formalism and American Literature (James Dorson)
      Schedule: Di 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-15)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      Recent literary criticism has seen a return to form. Questions like “What is form?”, “What is formalism?”, and “Is it useful?” have transformed recent debates over the significance of literary form, departing from prevailing views of form and formalism as simply ideological mystification. Taking our cue from this renewed interest in form, this class examines the return to questions of form today through readings of twenty-first-century New Formalism alongside some of the most influential formalist criticism of the past century, including Russian Formalism and the New Criticism. We will ask what is “new” about recent formalist criticism as well as what it means to read for form in literary texts. The aim of the class is both to provide a historical overview of formalist criticism from the early twentieth century until the present and to provide a better understanding of what makes literature a distinct form of discourse. While the class will primarily be centered around discussions of theoretical texts, we will also read poems and stories by American writers who either influenced or were influenced by formalist criticism, including Henry James, T. S. Eliot, Shirley Jackson, and Vladimir Nabokov.

    • 32211 Seminar
      The Native American Literary Renaissance (Stefanie Müller)
      Schedule: Do 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Additional information / Pre-requisites

      This is a short and reading-intensive class. If you want to participate and receive credits for it. please take note of the following conditions for participation: 1. Register on Blackboard for this class as soon as possible so that you access to the material that we will discuss in session one (April 17). 2. We start our discussion of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony on April 24, which means you need to start reading before the beginning of classes. 3. The shopping period is limited to week one. You must commit to the class by our second meeting.

      Comments

      The phrase “the Native American Literary Renaissance” refers to a period in which Native American writers published an unprecedented number of works of literary fiction, and specifically novels, as well as non-fiction, and poetry. This period begins in 1968, with N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, and continues well into the 1990s. Coined by Kenneth Lincoln in the 1980s, the phrase is a reference to the European renaissance as much as to the antebellum renaissance defined by F.O. Matthiessen – and it is not without critics. The goal of this class is to interrogate this periodization itself, to understand its basis and what may motivate writers and scholars to cling to it. Moreover, we will read and discuss fiction and poetry by representative writers as well as discuss scholarly writing on Native American literary theory.

  • Literature (Module C): Literary Text Analysis

    0024eA3.3
    • 32211 Seminar
      The Native American Literary Renaissance (Stefanie Müller)
      Schedule: Do 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Additional information / Pre-requisites

      This is a short and reading-intensive class. If you want to participate and receive credits for it. please take note of the following conditions for participation: 1. Register on Blackboard for this class as soon as possible so that you access to the material that we will discuss in session one (April 17). 2. We start our discussion of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony on April 24, which means you need to start reading before the beginning of classes. 3. The shopping period is limited to week one. You must commit to the class by our second meeting.

      Comments

      The phrase “the Native American Literary Renaissance” refers to a period in which Native American writers published an unprecedented number of works of literary fiction, and specifically novels, as well as non-fiction, and poetry. This period begins in 1968, with N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, and continues well into the 1990s. Coined by Kenneth Lincoln in the 1980s, the phrase is a reference to the European renaissance as much as to the antebellum renaissance defined by F.O. Matthiessen – and it is not without critics. The goal of this class is to interrogate this periodization itself, to understand its basis and what may motivate writers and scholars to cling to it. Moreover, we will read and discuss fiction and poetry by representative writers as well as discuss scholarly writing on Native American literary theory.

    • 32212 Advanced seminar
      "Writing Nature": Environmental Ethics in North American Literatures (Stefanie Müller)
      Schedule: Mi 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      If you want to participate in and receive credits for this class, please take note of the following conditions for participation: 1. Register on Blackboard for this class as soon as possible so that you access to the material that we will discuss in session one (April 16). 2. The shopping period is limited to week one. You must commit to the class by our second meeting.

      Comments

      The tradition of nature writing in the United States is classically said to begin with Thoreau: a young white gentleman seeking solitude in nature, apart from the hustle-bustle of the market revolution. As traditions tend to do, this narrative has shaped the development and the study of the genre, and for a long time, white male writers dominated the canon. In this class, we will explore an alternative tradition to get a better understanding of the development of nature writing in the 20th and 21st century. We will discuss texts by Camille Dungy, Rebecca Solnit, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, and many others, with an eye to how they write within and beyond the tradition. We will consider them also as memoirs and briefly delve into the theory on life writing. Moreover, we will pay special attention to the land ethics (and sometimes water ethics) that emerge from the texts: the relationship to non-human environments they describe. For this purpose, we will also discuss more theoretically minded texts, such as by Max Liboiron and Kyle Powys Whyte.

    • 32214 Advanced seminar
      Women Writers in the American Renaissance: Authorship, Genre, Place (Stefanie Müller)
      Schedule: Do 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Additional information / Pre-requisites

      This is a short and reading-intensive class. If you want to participate and receive credits for it. please take note of the following conditions for participation: 1. Register on Blackboard for this class as soon as possible so that you access to the material that we will discuss in session one (April 17). 2. The shopping period is limited to week one. You must commit to the class by our second meeting. 3. We will discuss excerpts from longer texts during the first half of the semester, but during the second we will also discuss two book-length texts: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Norton Critical Edition) and Stoddard, The Morgesons (Penguin edition).

      Comments

      In this class, we discuss fiction and non-fiction by women writers from the 1830s to the 1860s, a period that is often referred to as the American Renaissance. As those students who took my previous lecture on the American Renaissance know, the term and the scholarship that it initially motivated, largely ignored female-identified writers and the genres in which they were particularly successful. As a counterpoint, this class will attempt to provide a small sample of the great variety of writing by women that was available in the literary market and in the process once more alert students to the emergence of particular genres and modes, such as the domestic novel and the sketch, sentimentalism and realism, during those decades.

    • 32213 Advanced seminar
      Theories of Violence (Birte Wege)
      Schedule: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please note: Most of the texts to be discussed in this class have content that can be triggering, especially references to and depictions of graphic violence, including sexual and racial violence. We will address this in class at the beginning of the semester.

      Comments

      How do we define the boundaries of what is labeled as “violence,” and how has our characterization of it changed over time? What are the effects of violence on victims, perpetrators, and witnesses? How does violence shape a society that permits it, or is even governed by it? And, what means has literature found to engage this topic? These are some of the central questions we will explore in this seminar. To this end, we will read a number of key theoretical texts across a range of disciplines, by thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Walter Benjamin, amongst others. We will combine these readings with literary texts thematizing depictions of the many facets of violence, including war, piracy, domestic abuse, and racialized and gendered violence.

    • 32216 Seminar
      Multimodal Literature (Lea Espinoza Garrido)
      Schedule: Di 14:00-16:00, Di 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2025-06-03)
      Location: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please note: The first session will be on June 3, but students will already receive a reading list and some additional material in April. They are encouraged to complete the majority of the reading prior to our first session.

      Comments

      Multimodal literature employs multiple semiotic modes – such as text, image, sound, spatial design, or digital interactivity – to construct meaning beyond the limits of traditional print literature. This course explores how multimodal texts function by examining the interplay between these modes and their impact on storytelling, reader engagement, and interpretation. Our primary readings will include a diverse range of works, from graphic novels and hybrid prose to digital poetry and experimental fiction. By analyzing these texts through the lens of narratology and multimodal theory, students will develop a critical framework for interpreting and discussing multimodal storytelling. The course aims to equip them with the analytical tools necessary to approach literature in an increasingly media-saturated world by fostering both theoretical knowledge and practical close-reading skills across multiple literary genres and formats. Readings will include (excerpts from) works by Douglas Kearney, Alison Bechdel, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Dodie Bellamy, Kathy Jetn¯il-Kijiner, Collier Nogues, Danez Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Anne Carson, and others.

  • Politics (Module B): Institutions, Actors, and Processes

    0024eA4.2
    • 32510 Seminar
      International Order in Crisis? (Lora Anne Viola)
      Schedule: Di 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-22)
      Location: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please note that the first session will take place on April 22nd.

    • 32512 Advanced seminar
      Canadian Foreign Policy (David Bosold)
      Schedule: Do 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      In this class, we will analyze bilateral and multilateral aspects of Canadian Foreign Policy. This will include Canada’s diplomatic network across the globe, defense policy and the country’s trade policy. After a brief overview of the history of Canada’s external relations – starting with the emancipation from British rule and the country’s participation in World Wars I and II – the seminar will primarily focus on recent events (post-1990). Institutionally, we will examine the role of the Prime Minister, of ministries (GAC, DND), and the House of Commons in shaping Ottawa’s outlook on the world. Four case studies will highlight the intricacies of the bilateral relationship with the US: (i) Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic (Arctic Council and NATO), (ii) trade (USMCA/NAFTA and CETA), (iii) migration (STCA), (iv) natural resources and energy (electricity, oil, gas, minerals). The class will also include a practitioner session with Canadian diplomats.

    • 32513 Advanced seminar
      Roots, sites, and drivers of far-right contestation of liberal democracy in the US (Julia Simon)
      Schedule: Mi 18:00-20:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: Online - zeitABhängig

      Comments

      During the past months, far-right contestations of liberal democracy in the United States have become plainly visible and especially far-reaching. Significantly, many initiatives – some of which may be outright illegal – have been promoted by the new administration itself. The seminar will provide an overview of the ongoing illiberal and authoritarian initiatives and offer a range of theoretical perspectives through which they can be systematically processed and understood. On the one hand, this includes a focus on the specificities of the role that Donald Trump and the Congressional Republican Party play. On the other hand, the seminar will cast light on the broader and longer-term developments in which current national decision-makers and institutions are embedded. The seminar thus maps the far-right political landscape in the US and zooms in on various actors including far-right sheriffs, interest groups, female activists, and podcasters as well as fundamentalist religious organisations, paramilitary groups, and misogynist online communities. Based on a range of methodological approaches we will study and discuss their historical roots and the particular narratives, resources, and strategies they deploy to contest the pluralist democratic political order in different social and political spaces, levels of government, and policy fields. In addition, we will reflect upon their commonalities and on how they drive and interact with broader societal processes including polarization, political radicalization, and far-right mainstreaming.

  • Politics (Module C): Political Domains / Policy Research

    0024eA4.3
    • 32512 Advanced seminar
      Canadian Foreign Policy (David Bosold)
      Schedule: Do 08:00-10:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      In this class, we will analyze bilateral and multilateral aspects of Canadian Foreign Policy. This will include Canada’s diplomatic network across the globe, defense policy and the country’s trade policy. After a brief overview of the history of Canada’s external relations – starting with the emancipation from British rule and the country’s participation in World Wars I and II – the seminar will primarily focus on recent events (post-1990). Institutionally, we will examine the role of the Prime Minister, of ministries (GAC, DND), and the House of Commons in shaping Ottawa’s outlook on the world. Four case studies will highlight the intricacies of the bilateral relationship with the US: (i) Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic (Arctic Council and NATO), (ii) trade (USMCA/NAFTA and CETA), (iii) migration (STCA), (iv) natural resources and energy (electricity, oil, gas, minerals). The class will also include a practitioner session with Canadian diplomats.

    • 32520 Modul
      Lecture Series: US Foreign Policy in Turbulent Times (Lora Anne Viola)
      Schedule: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-23)
      Location: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please note that the first session starts on April 23rd, 2025.

      Comments

      This guest lecture series explores the challenges and uncertainties of U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration. With a focus on recent issues—including shifting security alliances, imperial ambitions, tariff wars, diplomatic unpredictability, and the erosion of traditional norms—this series examines how the administration's “America First” approach is reshaping the transatlantic relationship. Leading scholars and commentators will discuss the impact of abrupt policy shifts, strained relations, and evolving great-power dynamics. The lecture series is being offered as a credited course, but it will also be open to the university public.

  • Sociology (B) - Social Systems, Institutions and Organisations – Meaning and Function

    0024eA5.2
    • 32610 Seminar
      Digital Platforms, Data, and the Gig Economy (Markus Kienscherf)
      Schedule: Do 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      In this seminar, we will take a critical look at the relations between data, digital platforms and the gig economy. We will examine the business models of digital platforms, look at their impact on labor conditions and processes, and situate the emergence of the gig economy in a broader historical and political-economic context.

    • 30224a Advanced Seminar
      Sociology of Insurance (Sebastian Kohl)
      Schedule: Termine siehe LV-Details (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      Despite a few calls from classics like Tönnies or Luhmann for a sociology of insurance, it has never fully developed when compared to the sociology of banks or public welfare. This is surprising given the size of the private insurance sector in modern economies and its many links to social institutions such as the family, property or general welfare. This seminar offers both a historical introduction into the rise of modern insurance as a social phenomenon and into ways of thinking about insurance sociologically. Themes covered in the seminar include: religion and insurance, race and insurance, public welfare and private insurance, climate change and insurance. Methodologically, the seminar often follows a historical-comparative approach.

    • 32611 Advanced seminar
      Colonialism, Hereditary Racial Slavery, Patriarchal Economic Organization - The Roots of Transatlantic Capitalism? (Robin Jaspert)
      Schedule: Termine siehe LV-Details (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      block seminar in June with two additional online sessions

      Comments

      Colonialism, Hereditary Racial Slavery, Patriarchal Economic Organization: The Roots of Transatlantic Capitalism?

      The scope with which we choose to analyse socio-economic systems is based on our understanding of how these constellations came into being. Same holds true for capitalism, whose origins have been fiercely debated for as long as the system has prevailed. And there are various schools of thought competing about the correct interpretation of this history. Many liberal and critical traditions share an understanding of the emergence of capitalism as rooted in the intertwined developments of the rise of the enlightenment tradition, the development and industrialisation of the European systems of production, early state formation and land enclosures in 18th century Great Britain. Among historians and historical materialists, it is mostly unchallenged that these developments were indeed central for the emergence of capitalism and still shape its logics of accumulation, production, reproduction and ideology until today. However, there is more to the story of the rise of capitalism than that. It is a limited and thus analytically potentially limiting perspective to conceive of the fundament of capitalism as just the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the workers in early industrializing Great Britain.  -----

      To unravel which other conditions and systems have been foundational to the rise of capitalism we adopt a longue durée historical perspective focusing on historical literature. Starting in the mid-14th century, we engage with the intertwined histories of the emergence of capitalism, hereditary racial slavery, colonialisms and patriarchal economic systems. We critically discuss the workings of these systems of systematic, racialized, patriarchal, exploitation, domination and oppression seeking to understand the role they played for the rise of capitalism. Based on this historical perspective we engage with theoretical and empirical analyses of contemporary capitalism. The aim of this course is to jointly establish a critical understanding of the emergence of these systems as well as their shadows and continuities in today’s capitalism.  ------

      Central questions:

      -          What were the inner logics of colonialism, hereditary racial slavery and patriarchal economic organization when they emerged?

      -          Were they necessary preconditions for the rise of capitalism?

      -          What are their continuities?

      -           How can critical scholarship be mobilized to build a nuanced analysis of these systems in contemporary capitalism? -----

      Recommended Readings:

      Folbre, Nancy (2020): The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems. An Intersectional Political Economy. London: Verso. -----

      Morgan, Jennifer L. (2021): Reckoning with Slavery. Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Durham: Duke University Press. -----

      Williams, Eric (2022): Capitalism and Slavery. London: Penguin Classics. -----

      Proof of Participation & Examination

      Next to regular engagements with the literature provided, every participant will have to take on two particularly active roles in order to get their active participation certified. Every participant will have to take the role as a Text Expert and as a Discussant once – but for two separate sessions. You will never always be a team of at least two participants. -----

      Text Expert: For one chosen session you will act as a text expert. This job entails that you have profoundly engaged with the primary literature of the session and are knowledgeable abouts its content. This does explicitly not imply that you have to understand everything and give a PowerPoint Input (please refrain from doing so), but I expect that you have seriously engaged with the text and taken notes on its central thesis, its relation to other topics covered in the course and are able to share and discuss questions and critical remarks that came to your mind during the reading. It is particularly fruitful also to note questions that you have to the text. Furthermore, you are expected to have engaged with the additional reading and bring some of the debates covered into the general discussion. -----

      Discussant: For one chosen session you will act as a team of discussants. This job entails that you have profoundly engaged the primary literature and prepared a discussion paper of approx. 1.000 words if alone or 1.500 words if you write with two persons (+/- 10%). The discussion papers have to be uploaded at latest until 6 o’clock PM the day before the session. The papers should go beyond the text and not reproduce its contents. You can think of the discussion paper as an exercise to engage with aspects / debates / questions touched in the primary literature more freely and i.e. discuss them critically / in relation to other scholarship. You are free to choose which aspects, hypotheses, or connections with other course contents or exterior theoretical and empirical debates you want to focus on within your discussion paper.  The papers are intended to kickstart a discussion in the group that you are expected to actively participate in. The discussion papers will be made available to the other course participants, and you will have maximum five minutes to briefly introduce your argument (approx. after half of the session) and start the discussion.   -----

       

      In case you need a proof of examination and full credit for the module you are expected to write a term paper of 5.000-6.000 words. Please do only hand in papers via mail and in PDF format in an easily readable format (i.e., Times New Roman, 12, formatted in justified text, line spacing of 1.5 cm) with coherent referencing (style choice is yours). While you can freely choose a topic, as long as it has some connections to the debates and the literature covered in the course, shortly introducing the topic via mail, and considering the feedback from the instructor is mandatory. If you are not sure what to write about, or if your ideas need a short discussion or feedback: please feel always free to get in touch – also with early-stage ideas. -----

      General Remarks:

      Unfortunately, the university is a space where systems of domination such as patriarchy, racism, class, able, and others influence the way we interact with each other. To counter these potential dynamics and make this class a space where everyone wants to and can participate, I call upon a collective as well as an individual sense of awareness and responsibility. Furthermore, I will use quoted lists of speakers if needed and provide the following systems for feedback in case you feel unfairly treated by the instructor, or observe racist, sexist, classist or ableist (or really any other discriminatory) behaviour and dynamics in the course:

      A.     You can always write me a non-anonymous mail from your FU-address.

      B.      At the end of each session there will be an opportunity to speak out (time is rather limited though).

      C.      You can always write me an anonymous mail (simply use any mail provider and a nickname not connected to your real name)

      D.     I will share a pad in the online learning environment that is visible to all participants of the class. You can either use it anonymously or non-anonymously. I will have a look at it before every session. Please use responsibly.

      I made the experience that these mechanisms are able to improve the learning environment. If you feel anything else is necessary or useful in order to feel safe and sound in the seminar, please do let me know (in some of the ways mentioned above). Furthermore, please have a look at the Code of Conduct released by the institute:

      https://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/information/code_of_conduct/index.html

  • Sociology (C) - Investigation of Social Processes - Problems, Conflicts, Crises

    0024eA5.3
    • 32605 Basic Course
      Becoming Queer: Towards a Queer Epistemology of Queerness and Gender in Sociology (Alexander Niessen)
      Schedule: Fr 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-25)
      Location: 319 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      Theories of gender and sexual identities have become a central element of sociological theorizing. As academia became more open to groups previously barred from participation in the study of society, a growing number of experiences and viewpoints has contributed to understanding society more comprehensively. Beyond being more attentive to real experiences of real people, the development of critical queer and gender theories has also offered a new methodology of critically assessing the ways in which we describe and understand the social world we live in. Throughout the semester, we will attempt to not only identify some of the crucial innovations in sociological theory and practice, but students will also have the opportunity to critically assess the epistemological implications of these shifts in their historical context. How has the study of gender and sexuality become so pronounced? How can we engage with research from a critical, intersectional, queer sensitive perspective? What are gaps in the way we theorize society, even if we aim at being more inclusive? How are the social institutions we take for granted connected to the ways in which we are describing the world? Students will have the opportunity to engage not only with queer and gender theories, and assess these theories from an intersectional perspective. Together, we will look at the way knowledge is constructed and what certain paradigms mean for the larger academic and societal contexts in which we operate. Eventually, this will not only add necessary context to the most pronounced social and academic debates, but it will also help to make our research more impactful, precise, and relevant to a world caught between turmoil and emancipation.
    • 326112 Advanced seminar
      Understanding the Rural Heart Land (Harald Wenzel)
      Schedule: Mi 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 340 Hörsaal (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      The outcome of the recent presidential elections provides additional motivation to investigate the rural heartland of the United States which overwhelmingly has voted for Donald Trump. But this will not be another study of Trumpology, but rather a reckoning with the everyday problems of rural America which served as a basis for vote-winning dystopian interpretations. These problems are multi-facetted – they pertain, e.g., to industrialized agriculture, deindustrialization/globalization, multiple forms of “desertification” (regarding health, food, media, religion, education – and erosion of soil proper), immigrant labor and depopulation. -----

      This course will try to get detailed insight into some of these problems to see how they reverberate on an individual and (middle) class level. This has to be done on the explicit background of a deteriorating climate crisis which has been pounding the population vehemently, particularly during extreme weather events, floods, droughts and fires. -----

      To make yourself familiar with the topic I recommend reading:

      Arlie Hochschild 2024, Stolen Pride. Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right. New York: The New Press

  • Economics (Module B) - US Domestic Economic Policy

    0024eA6.2
    • 32711 Seminar
      US Economic Policy - Case Studies (Christopher Prömel)
      Schedule: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-16)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      This course explores key issues in contemporary US economic policy. The class combines a 2-hour introductory module, followed by a 2-hour seminar session during which we will discuss specific, empirical case studies. Attendance of both classes is mandatory. Students who have acquired only little or no knowledge in econometrics during their undergraduate studies are advised to acquire the necessary knowledge in econometrics prior to taking this course. Students in North American Studies who have acquired only little knowledge in economics during their undergraduate studies are advised to acquire the necessary knowledge in economics prior to taking this course. Topics to be covered will include poverty and inequality, fiscal policy, labor market policy, health policy, racial and ethnic discrimination, taxation, education, and political economy. Course requirements: The requirements are active participation, in-class presentation of one of the required readings and a final exam. The class will be taught in English. Please register for the course 32710-S25. As soon as the registration period has ended you will be added to the second part of the module (32711-S25.) Attendance at the first session is mandatory.

    • 32710 Advanced seminar
      US Economic Policy (Max Steinhardt)
      Schedule: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-14)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      This course explores key issues in contemporary US economic policy. The class combines a 2-hour introductory module, followed by a 2-hour seminar session during which we will discuss specific, empirical case studies. Attendance of both classes is mandatory. Students who have acquired only little or no knowledge in econometrics during their undergraduate studies are advised to acquire the necessary knowledge in econometrics prior to taking this course. Students in North American Studies who have acquired only little knowledge in economics during their undergraduate studies are advised to acquire the necessary knowledge in economics prior to taking this course. Topics to be covered will include poverty and inequality, fiscal policy, labor market policy, health policy, racial and ethnic discrimination, taxation, education, and political economy. Course requirements: The requirements are active participation, in-class presentation of one of the required readings and a final exam. The class will be taught in English. Please register for the course 32710-S25. As soon as the registration period has ended you will be added to the second part of the module (32711-S25.) Attendance at the first session is mandatory.

  • Current topics and research fields in North American Studies 1

    0024eA7.1
    • 15482 Seminar
      Police and Prison Abolition in the Americas (Markus Hochmüller Markus Kienscherf)
      Schedule: Do 12-14 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: Garystr.55/C Seminarraum (Garystr. 55)

      Comments

      This seminar examines practices of policing and punishment from an abolitionist perspective. The seminar, first, provides a historical overview of abolitionist scholarship and activism from the anti-slavery movements to radical contemporary perspectives on state and society. In a second step, we discuss topics including policing and militarization; mass incarceration; urban marginality; racism and gender-based discrimination; violence and criminalization; and authoritarian neoliberalism. We will draw on case studies from the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean and advance an intersectional analytical perspective (informed by postcolonial security studies, critical theory, gender studies, critical theories on race and ethnicity, and abolitionist modes of resistance and democratic reconstruction).

    • 32613 Advanced seminar
      Police and Prison Abolition in the Americas (Markus Hochmüller, Markus Kienscherf)
      Schedule: Do 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: C Seminarraum, Garystr. 55

      Information for students

      Register for this seminar under 15482

  • Current topics and research fields in North American Studies 2

    0024eA7.2
    • 15482 Seminar
      Police and Prison Abolition in the Americas (Markus Hochmüller Markus Kienscherf)
      Schedule: Do 12-14 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: Garystr.55/C Seminarraum (Garystr. 55)

      Comments

      This seminar examines practices of policing and punishment from an abolitionist perspective. The seminar, first, provides a historical overview of abolitionist scholarship and activism from the anti-slavery movements to radical contemporary perspectives on state and society. In a second step, we discuss topics including policing and militarization; mass incarceration; urban marginality; racism and gender-based discrimination; violence and criminalization; and authoritarian neoliberalism. We will draw on case studies from the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean and advance an intersectional analytical perspective (informed by postcolonial security studies, critical theory, gender studies, critical theories on race and ethnicity, and abolitionist modes of resistance and democratic reconstruction).

    • 32613 Advanced seminar
      Police and Prison Abolition in the Americas (Markus Hochmüller, Markus Kienscherf)
      Schedule: Do 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: C Seminarraum, Garystr. 55

      Information for students

      Register for this seminar under 15482

  • Colloquium North American Studies

    0024eA8.1
    • 30232 Colloquium
      Colloquium Sociology (Sebastian Kohl)
      Schedule: Do 14:00-16:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      The colloquium addresses students who are preparing their master thesis and equips them with some basic knowledge on questions of research design. Students will learn how to write a research proposal and will mainly be given a forum to present and discuss their work in progress in order to receive feedback.

    • 32215 Colloquium
      M.A. Colloquium Literature/Culture (James Dorson)
      Schedule: Di 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-15)
      Location: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      This colloquium is primarily designed for M.A. students getting ready to write a thesis and complete the same within the next semester. If you are not ready to prepare yourself for this task, you should not yet sign up for this course.

    • 32410 Colloquium
      M.A. Colloquium History (Jessica Gienow-Hecht)
      Schedule: Mo 16:00-18:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-14)
      Location: 201 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Comments

      This research colloquium is primarily designed for M.A. students preparing to write a thesis and complete the same within the current or the following semester. Beyond that, all students interested in history and related issues are welcome to join lectures and text-based discussions. The colloquium has four purposes: 1. Guest Lectures feature a diverse number of guest speakers presenting their own research 2. Text Workshops provide the opportunity to explore and discuss, recent key texts in history, with a particular focus on North American history. 3. M.A. thesis Workshops meet several times in small group sessions, allowing M.A. thesis candidates to discuss writing and research skills as well as the progress of their research. 4. Excursions offer the opportunity to leave the classroom to visit workshops, places of interest and/or attend presentations.

    • 32515 Colloquium
      M.A. Colloquium Political Science (Lora Anne Viola)
      Schedule: Mo 12:00-14:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-14)
      Location: 203 Seminarraum (Lansstr. 7 / 9)

      Information for students

      Please note that the first session on April 14th will be held online.

      Comments

      The MA colloquium reviews key concepts in research design, including crafting a good research question, writing a compelling literature review, and selecting strategies for empirical analysis. The majority of the course is devoted to student workshopping of their thesis projects. During the colloquium students will present drafts of their own work and provide constructive feedback on the work of their peers. The course is designed for students who already have a thesis topic and are ready to develop a research plan. There is no hybrid option and students have to be present for the entire semester.

    • 32712 Colloquium
      MA-Colloquium Economics (Max Steinhardt)
      Schedule: Do 10:00-12:00 (Class starts on: 2025-04-17)
      Location: Raum 233

  • Modules w/o courses in this semester

    7 Modules
    • History (Module A): North America and Its Position in the World 0024eA1.1
    • Culture (Module B): Cultural Analysis of Nationality and Diversity 0024eA2.2
    • Politics (A): Theories and Methods of Political Science 0024eA4.1
    • Sociology (Module A) - Sociological Theories of North America 0024eA5.1
    • Economics (Module A) - Historical Dimensions of North American Economic Policy 0024eA6.1
    • Economics (Module C) - US Foreign Economic Policy 0024eA6.3
    • Current topics and research fields in North American Studies 3 0024eA7.3