Study Abroad | Berlin
Fall 2026: Academics

Course Code: Art/Architecture/Travel and Tourism 316 HIC

Instruction Language: English

The seminar delves into the perspectives of curating and creating exhibitions in Berlin, examining the past, present, and future of exhibitions centered around global pandemics and world epidemics. In concrete terms, the seminar contextualizes, focuses, and specializes in the history of exhibitions in Berlin related to the HIV/AIDS pandemic from 1981 to the present day. The course involves visiting Berlin’s institutions and archives. The class provides conversations with Berlin-based curators and artists. It allows students to explore and understand the contemporary curatorial practice of the city by visiting and analyzing different exhibitions in Berlin. The course is ideal for future researchers and cultural workers who want to explore the work of curatorial research and exhibition-making. The student’s workflow involves readings, group discussions, and curatorial writing strategies, culminating in conceptualizing an exhibition proposal as a final project about global pandemics.

Instruction Language: English

"This course examines the artistic use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its ability to create new opportunities for art, addressing questions concerning the legal and conceptual challenges of this development. Students will reflect on how AI may reshape the way we understand imagination, the concept of beauty, and storytelling. We will also think about how AI is enabling new forms of visual expression and collaboration. Additionally, the course will engage unresolved questions around legal topics such as authorship, copyright, and ownership, highlighting how current legal frameworks react – or fail to react – to machine-generated contents. Through working through case studies, theoretical and legal frameworks, participants will gain a nuanced appreciation of both the positive aspects and the limits of working with intelligent systems."

Instruction Language: English

People across the world are fighting for their right to eat and grow healthy food. This course aims to highlight the political nature of food and agriculture. Together we will explore who has access to growing food, who is profiting from industrial agriculture and which food futures are possible. Therefore, we will visit places in and around Berlin that are creating alternatives, look at examples from your home countries and explore the concepts of food autonomy, agroecology and social justice in food systems.

Course Code: German 101E HIC

Instruction Language: German

In this course, the basics of grammar and German vocabulary are conveyed and practiced to enable students to communicate in everyday situations in the German language successfully. The basics of the conjugation of verbs and the usage of articles in the German language are the subject of this course at A1 level. You will learn to introduce yourself and to form simple sentence constructions. A focus is placed on oral language skills, which are developed through interactive working methods. Topics related to German regional studies are also integrated into the course. The course is held in German. Prior knowledge in German is not required. Grammar may be explained in English where necessary. We will work with a lot with pictures, audios, a German book and useful exercises. Everyday situations will be practiced. This course is designed for students interested in learning basic German and in communicating in everyday situations.

Course Code: German 102 HIC

Instruction Language: German

At this level, you are already familiar with the most important words and grammar rules. In this course, you will continue to practice your language skills and be able to broaden your knowledge regarding various everyday situations. The main themes of this course will relate to everyday life issues and experiences to expand your vocabulary, repeat the grammar, and consolidate your communication skills.

Course Code: Asia in Berlin: Exploring Museums and Cultural Heritage, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, Session 2, Stream B

Instruction Language: English

Berlin is a multi-cultural city with a diverse cultural life and heritage. The course is designed to understand learning practices and discuss complex questions of dealing with discomforting heritage in Berlin such as human remains, restitution, objects from urban minorities or originating from the colonial period. The excursions to museums and cultural institutions present a platform for engaged debates about current challenges facing cultural heritage: e.g. nuanced solutions for restitution and decolonization, the ethical value of exhibition displays, links between academic research, artistic production and museum stakeholders. The critical debate surrounding heritage conservation includes theories of interculturality and museum studies as well as provenience research, history and concepts of educational programs. We address core conceptual questions regarding property issues, museum formations and their histories. Objects, music, religious heritage or memorialization reflect Berlin’s colonial legacies and minority histories of different communities from Asia.

Course Code: History/Anthropology/Sociology 319 HIC

Instruction Language: English

During the XIX and XX centuries, many European countries hosted the so-called “Colonial Exhibitions”, where the “brave adventurers” showed the general public exotic objects, plants, animals and individuals found in their overseas journeys. Fortunately, these practices are now seen as an archaic practice of the past. Yet, the colonial legacy is still present in the European cultural sphere. This course aims to trace and deconstruct such colonial legacies using the case studies of European and, particularly, German cultural institutions and practices. At the end of the course, students should be able to provide an answer to the question of how we can identify and solve injustices in and through cultural heritage in Europe. The course is divided into two parts. The first four weeks are devoted to laying down the theoretical foundations of decolonial studies with special attention to indigenous knowledge and practices. During the following nine weeks, these theories are tested and put into practice with different manifestations of cultural heritage in Europe, such as ethnographic objects, public monuments, human remains and underwater heritage, among others. In the process, students will receive diverse learning materials, including readings, podcasts, films, excursions, and talks from artists and experts.

Course Code: Sociology/German Studies/Anthropology/Migration Studies 310 HIC

Instruction Language: English

Berlin’s rich muselogical landscape lends itself to in-depth exploration: How are the upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries remembered and represented? How can the urban landscape be read as a myriad of dynamic sites? What do these sites, in turn, tell us about past traumas and present-day issues? This course aims to enable the students to get to know a number of Berlin museums focussing on key aspects of memory of the Second World War and Post-WWII migration, using anthropological methods. Students are encouraged to critically analyse these reprentations within larger theoretical frameworks of “self” and “other” constructions, exploring the role of museums in rendering such constructions visible.

Course Code: Law/Business 314 HIC

Instruction Language: English

This class will give an overview of the most important issues raised in international commercial litigation. The course deals with cases where an international commercial transaction has given rise to a legal dispute between the parties and where this dispute is not decided by arbitration. In such a scenario, the parties have to litigate before the domestic court of a State. This raises a number of difficult issues, a selection of which will be dealt with in the course, primarily from a European (EU) and from a US perspective. One part of the course will be devoted to the issue of international jurisdiction: In which state’s courts can the plaintiff bring his lawsuit against the defendant? What if there are several states that offer a ground of jurisdiction? Why does it matter at all whether a dispute is litigated in one state rather than in another? Can the parties in their contract choose the forum in which future claims will be litigated (forum selection)? A second part of the course will deal with a selection of specific issues that may arise in international commercial litigation: What if the court which is seized with the lawsuit regards itself as an inappropriate forum (forum non conveniens)? What if the same lawsuit is brought twice, but in different states (lis alibi pendens)? What are the so-called “torpedo claims”? Is it possible to prevent the other party from bringing a lawsuit in a certain state by way of an “antisuit injunction”? Will a judgment from the courts of one state be recognized and enforced in other states?

Course Code: German Studies/Literature 320 HIC

Instruction Language: English

Germany is well-known for its discourses on nature if we look at philosophy or if we think of environmental politics. But is there also a significant tradition of Nature Writing in the literary field (like there is in English language literature)? For a long time, scholars would have denied this and would have argued about the reasons for this phenomenon. Not until recently, there have been new academic and publishing endeavors to identify a – broken – tradition of Nature Writing in German language literature and also to acknowledge innovative contributions to the Genre in contemporary writing. In this course, we will read and discuss different concepts and different examples of Nature Writing from the time of Romanticism until today.

Instruction Language: English

This course traces the evolution of the twin discourse of ‘history’ and ‘progress’ in philosophy between 1784 and the present. We examine how the competing versions of this discourse created a powerful conceptual medium for western modernity to understand, experience, affirm, and criticize itself in exclusively temporal terms. By reading selections from Kant, Hegel, Marx/Engels, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Arendt, Fanon, Foucault, Habermas, and others, we critically explore a set of interconnected questions: Is ‘history’ identical with ‘progress’? Does ‘history,’ understood as ‘progress,’ still condition the global realities of our Anthropocene present? Do ‘history’ and ‘progress’ designate universal processes of continuous social and technological emancipation – or do they serve to justify oppression, violence, disruption, and loss? If we can learn from ‘history,’ what does it teach us, not least for political action? How do we preserve and tell the stories of social groups and individuals that were marginalized, muted, or victimized by the twin discourse of ‘history’ and ‘progress’? Are ‘canon’ and ‘tradition’ still valid notions for the humanities and beyond? For our critical genealogy, we also explore Berlin’s urban space itself as the political and cultural arena in which some of the key thinkers of the twin discourse of ‘history’ and ‘progress’ lived and thought.

Instruction Language: English

Theory emerged in the 1930s as an ambitious project to understand why the social transformations promised by Marxism had failed to materialize despite the apparent ripeness of historical conditions. In the face of fascism’s rise, the flourishing of mass culture, and capitalism’s remarkable capacity for self-preservation, the Frankfurt School developed a distinctive theoretical approach that combined philosophical critique, social analysis, and a commitment to human emancipation. This course traces how their fundamental insights—about the relationship between power and knowledge, the role of culture in maintaining social domination, and the necessity of linking theoretical work to social transformation—continue to animate contemporary critical theory while being transformed to address new conditions and challenges. Organized around four key themes—Power, Knowledge, and Subjectivity; Ideology and Culture; Critical Theory as Social Practice; and The Utility of Utopia—we pair classical Frankfurt School texts with contemporary theoretical works to understand both the continuities and transformations in critical approaches, tracing how critical theory has evolved to address new forms of domination while maintaining its fundamental commitment to human emancipation.

Instruction Language: English

Course description: This course deals with the institutional and societal resilience against democratic backsliding and the apparent decline of international human rights law worldwide. It looks at why and how some political institutions, (international) regimes, and societies are more resilient against democratic decline and others are not. It focuses on examples from within Europe, but also beyond.

Course Code: Politics, Sociology, Law

Instruction Language: English

As a leading category in contemporary public discourses and social diagnoses, the concept of “crisis” seems to dominate current talks on the most diverse global issues. Without much problematisation, both the specific ideas of “economic crisis”, “political crisis”, “environmental crisis”, and others, as well as the broader disputed concepts of “polycrisis”, “multiple crises”, “entangled crises”, etc., seem to have become common vocabulary in analyses of the present times. But what does it really mean to say that the present is in crisis? What distinguishes the so-called crises of the present from those of the past? And what futures can emerge out of a crisis diagnosis? Drawing from distinct approaches and traditions of thought, we will examine the theoretical foundations of what constitutes a “crisis” and how societies imagine, narrate, and address them. By taking a multidimensional outlook towards contemporary empirical cases, we will also reflect on how the crisis framework influences imaginaries of potential futures. Participants will therefore be encouraged to operationalise and critically examine the concept of crisis, both within and beyond academic contexts, with special attention to the empirical and intellectual implications of its employment as a narrative device. It is expected that the course can provide students with insights and tools that can inform their own research projects, academic endeavours and contributions to public debates on contemporary global challenges.

Instruction Language: English

This course focuses on how the political, cultural and economic transformations in Europe since 1989 contributed to the rise of far right parties. Using Poland and (Eastern) Germany as examples, the course focuses on three main developments: the rise of neoliberalism, accelerated cultural change and the political transformations after the collapse of socialism in 1989. Students will study cutting-edge research invistigating these trends and they will learn to find their reflections in Berlins uniquely situated cultural landscape, through excursions and the analysis of contemporary film, theatre and novels. Borrowing a phrase from Brecht’s famous play, students will ultimately recognize why the rise of the right is "resistable" and which strategies of contestation seem most promising.

Instruction Language: English

This course explores the dynamic landscape of global social movements, taking Berlin as a focal point and lens to analyze broader international trends. Students will 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, we will explore the complex historical and contemporary dynamics of social movements in and beyond Germany in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of multiple social movements shaping our contemporary world. 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. We will discuss, for instance, the cases of feminism, climate justice, queer and trans liberation, housing, peace movements and others. The first section of the course discusses theoretical approaches to social movements: contentious politics, new social movements and dynamical. The second part focuses on the ways historically global social movements produce resistance, concrete utopias and position themselves in anticolonial and postcolonial struggles. The final section discusses contemporary social movements and what their studies bring to the understanding of political action, their possibilities, their limits, and their contributions to democracy in Germany and around the world.Throughout the course, students will be able to develop criticalanalytical skills, gain historical knowledge, and engage in interdisciplinary analysis on social movements.

Instruction Language: English

"Despite current geopolitical headwinds, a sustained global effort is guiding humanity toward a more sustainable future. Through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations has outlined key areas of action to ensure equitable and healthy living for all. In today’s highly connected, globalized economy, where goods, people, and information move continuously, mobility and transportation play a central role in achieving sustainability. This seminar introduces the fundamental concepts of sustainable transportation and mobility. From localized urban travel to long- distance passenger and freight movement, participants will explore how transport systems work, learn basic planning principles, and become familiar with emerging mobility ideas and the challenges that slow the shift to clean, low-emission, and equitable networks. We will also look at how digitization, information systems, and artificial intelligence can support better planning, monitoring, and control in transportation and logistics. As an introductory, concept-focused seminar, the course lays the groundwork for understanding mobility and transportation from environmental, economic, and social perspectives. Participants are encouraged to discuss the material and relate it to their own travel and mobility experiences."

Course Code: History/Cultural Studies/German Studies/Political Studies 306 HIC

Instruction Language: English

What does it mean to live in a surveillance society? How does the digital age challenge questions regarding privacy, individuality and freedom? When does surveillance as care tip over into surveillance as control? And how does the Stasi system of vigilance prefigure contemporary surveillance culture? This course will on the one hand examine the impact of surveillance on society by looking at the multifaceted ways technologies, societies and the arts interact and, on the other hand, reflect on surveillance in a totalitarian context while comparing observation techniques in the GDR with contemporary surveillance methods. The course further encourages students to critically engage with the representation of surveillance in contemporary literature, film and popular culture and maps out important themes with regards to surveillance and its repercussions (e.g. visibility, identity, privacy and control). Furthermore, the course provides an overview of the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies and covers the latest research in the following major areas: 1. Relationship between surveillance, power and social control; 2. Histories of Surveillance: GDR and the Stasi (especially in the context of Berlin); 3. The concept of privacy; 4. Surveillance in the arts and popular culture.