Global Arc

This seminar explores contemporary Athens and its culture as a response to increasingly complex political and social dynamics, and ultimately as a characteristic example of 21st century urban culture. The financial, political, and social crisis, as well as the refugee crisis, have radically transformed the city and the culture it produces. We will discuss Athens' contemporary cultural life through specific works in different media, but also through institutions that manage and disseminate culture to audiences, both traditional and new ones emerging from the current sociocultural landscape.

Many political scientists have described India as an "unlikely democracy". This course, taught at Ashoka University, Haryana, India, will examine the ways in which the workings of Indian democracy have shaped and transformed the meaning of five institutional formations: constitutionalism, religion, the economy, caste, and the city. The aim is not to provide a conventional or comprehensive overview of Indian democracy. It is rather to provide snapshots into the ways in which the Indian democratic experience is unsettling identities, unleashing new forms of mobilization, and transforming the meaning of citizenship as Indians experience it.

According to popular imagery there are hardly two cultures that are more different than those of the Japanese and Black Americans. And yet, despite these perceived differences, for over a century there has been abundant and complex cultural sharing, borrowing, and exchange between them. This interdisciplinary course will explore this tradition from the early 20th century to the present. In addition to investigating creative cultural pairings, we will explore vexing issues that frequently appear when people with distinct histories and traditions imagine each other.

For most of the twentieth century, modernity and the terms associated with it, including modernization in politics and modernism in literature and art, were central to debates about African pasts, presents, and futures. Debated and disputed for most of the postcolonial period, modernity has either been condemned because of its association with European colonialism on the continent, or welcomed as essential to the economic development of Africa. Modernity sits at the center of a range of African debates on issues ranging from the culture of human rights, claims to citizenship, and entitlement to social and cultural goods.

Time after time, Brazil has been hailed the "land of the future". Capturing the world's attention for over five centuries of colonialism and modernization, Brazil has offered rich natural resources for extraction and diverse social and political realities for the imagination of travelers and the work of scientists, academics and artists alike. Drawing from history, anthropology, literature and the arts, this Global Seminar explores how Brazil's becomings have been represented nationally and internationally and the ways in which its peoples have evolved within or escaped and recast the frames of this imagined country.

This seminar focuses on the representation of human and non-human relationships to the land as a site of meaning making, identity formation and cultural expression. The state's geography will form the backdrop to the course as we examine how the regions' communities-First National owners to contemporary immigrants-have encountered, related to and depicted their relations to place. We'll delve deeply into the layers embedded in art-making and draw out the different critical frameworks that have shaped Australian art. Representations of the landscape form the core course theme, and we will examine these sources using different approaches.

Students will use Giovanni Boccaccio's 14thC. classic, The Decameron as a starting point from which to explore the fundamentals of storytelling and the ways in which storytelling helps us navigate traumatic experiences. Students will study Italian language and culture, collaborate virtually with Italian theater artists to develop language skills, and their own short musical theater stories. The creation of a collection of short musical theater pieces, on a variety of contemporary (or reinvented classic) themes, responding to today's pandemic and exploring the fundamental human need to tell stories will be the centerpiece of the course.

India has been described as an "unlikely democracy." As Tocqueville argued, democracy, in principle transforms all the other social forms it touches, from religion to intermediate associations. This seminar will examine the ways in which the Indian democratic experience is unsettling identities, unleashing new forms of mobilization and in the process transforming the meaning of citizenship as Indians experience it. We will ask: Is Indian Democracy moving in a more illiberal and authoritarian direction? If so, what explains this transformation? How does this transformation look in comparative perspective?

This course explores contemporary Kenya in the context of its historical positioning and modern value to Western econo-political interests, and how this translates in daily livelihoods of Kenyans. Focus is on 4 themes: 1) Kenya as home to the earliest human origins and civilizations; 2) Kenya's evolution as an "anti-socialism" capital of Western capitalism in the region; 3) The country's central position in anti-terrorism war between the West and Middle East; 4) Problematizing Kenya/Africa's image of corruption as an explanation of underdevelopment. Course is experiential. Excursions count towards final grade.

Berlin is famous for its neighborhoods (der Kiez), its history of exclusions, national unity and divisions, as well as for its atmosphere of urban cosmopolitanism. We explore ethnographically the current state of civility, hospitality, and xenophobia in the German capital, and through readings explore its states in the past. We will debate issues of Kultur, multiculturalism, integration, Islam, political party representation, East/West polarization, and immigration. Students are introduced to an ethnographic approach to knowledge production.