Dr. George Athanasopoulos

English B2, German A2 

Friday 12-14 
Hausvogteiplatz 5-7, Room 0323-26

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the relationship between music and migration, and its role in shaping Berlin's dynamic cultural landscape. By examining historical events such as the forced migration of German musicians before and during the Second World War, the division and subsequent reunification of the city, and the continuous inflow of creative minds from around the world, students gain insights into how these complex factors have influenced the evolution of Berlin's transcultural music scene. Berlin has a rich history of attracting artists and musicians, particularly during periods of political and social upheaval. Cases include the forced migration of musicians during the 1930s and 1940s, the post-World War II period, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 which physically separated the city, but also created a unique cultural dynamic. In West Berlin, artists sought refuge from all over the world, drawn by a sense of freedom and countercultural spirit. This influx of creative minds fuelled the emergence of experimental music scenes, including electronic and avant-garde genres. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent reunification of the city marked another significant chapter in the relationship between music and migration. Berlin reunified became a symbol of artistic and cultural freedom, attracting a new wave of musicians and artists eager to contribute to the city's evolving identity contributing to the globalization of its music scene. The convergence of diverse musical influences, driven by the ongoing influx of creative minds from various corners of the globe, ensure that Berlin remains a dynamic hub for musical innovation and experimentation shaped by the continuous flow of migration. 

Samuel Perea-Díaz

English B2

Wednesday 14-18
Please note the individual session dates: 
15.10., 22.10, 29.10., 3.11., 12.11., 19.11., 26.11., 03.12., 10.12.2025 
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

This seminar examines curatorial perspectives and exhibition-making in Berlin, with a focus on past, present, and future approaches to cultural production in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It offers a specialized and contextualized study of exhibitions in Berlin about HIV/AIDS from the 1980s to the present, examining how curatorial practices have evolved alongside shifts in public discourse, activism, and artistic production.Through visits to Berlin-based institutions and conversations with both local and international artists and curators, students will gain first-hand insight into contemporary curatorial strategies. The seminar is particularly suited for students interested in academic and curatorial research within the framework of socially engaged art practices.Coursework includes reading theoretical texts, watching relevant films, participating in group discussions, and critically analyzing artworks and exhibitions. Students will also engage with curatorial writing strategies and develop a final project: a conceptual proposal for an exhibition that responds to the HIV/AIDS epidemic within Berlin's cultural and political context.

Dr. Sasha Shapiro

English B2

Wednesday, 12-14
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

This course explores Berlin through the lens of émigré and exile literature, examining works by writers who either left Berlin or found refuge within it. Through close readings of texts spanning from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to contemporary works, students will analyze how experiences of exile, migration, and displacement shape literary imagination and cultural identity. The course moves through Berlin's key historical moments—from the Russian émigré communities of the 1920s, through the forced exile of Jewish writers, to post-war Turkish-German literature and contemporary refugee narratives. By pairing literary texts with theoretical frameworks and conducting original ethnographic research, students investigate how different waves of migration have transformed both Berlin's physical spaces and its literary landscape. Special attention is paid to how writers represent specific Berlin neighborhoods and how various communities have shaped the city's cultural geography. Through engagement with memoir, fiction, poetry, and first-hand accounts, students explore themes of memory, nostalgia, linguistic displacement, cultural adaptation, and the evolving relationship between place and identity in émigré writing.

Dr. Victoria Bishop-Kendzia

English B2

Thursday, 12-16
Eight 4-hour sessions: 16 Oct, 01 Nov (Sat!), 06 Nov, 13 Nov, 20 Nov, 27 Nov, 04 Dec, and 11 Dec 
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

Berlin’s rich museological landscape lends itself to in-depth exploration of Germany’s difficult heritage: How are the upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially, remembered and represented? This course aims to enable the students to get to know a number of Berlin museums focusing on Memory and Post-WWII migration using anthropological methods and to critically analyze them within larger theoretical frameworks of “self” and “other” constructions.  To explore the role of museums in rendering such constructions visible and therefore debatable. The course will consist of seminars in the classroom and site visits.  

Dr. Vanesa Menéndez Montero

English B2

Monday 10-12
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

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 within and through cultural heritage in Europe.The course is divided into two parts. The first six weeks are devoted to laying down the theoretical foundations of decolonial studies with special attention to indigenous knowledge and practices. During the following ten 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, and talks from artists and experts. In the introduction to Decolonial Theory, students will explore “Western rationality” as a prevailing cultural framework and examine how it is imposed and internalized by various non-European individuals, groups, and communities. Is such rationality resisted, accommodated or assimilated? This course is meant to help students reflect on those areas where actual decolonization is missing: either in museum and ethnographic collections, in the management of historic shipwrecks, in the selection and protection of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, in the planning of urban spaces and street naming or at the sound media system. Once students are aware of the injustices and inequalities behind some elements of cultural heritage in Europe, they will be capable of answering the question: Who shapes the meanings of how I think about culture and cultural heritage? 

Dr. Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz
Felicitas von Droste zu Hülshoff

English B2

Friday, 14-18 
Eight 4-hour sessions: 17.10., 31.10., 14.11., 28.11., 12.12.2025, 9.1., 23.1., 5.2.2026
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

Berlin is a multi-cultural city with a diverse cultural life and rich heritage The course is designed to foster active learning practices while advancing complex museological questions of curating Asia’s tangible and intangible culture in Berlin. The excursions to museums and cultural institutions present a platform for engaged debates about current challenges facing curatorship: 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 curatorial practice includes theories of heritage and museum studies as well as provenience research, concepts of outreach and 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.

Pablo Santacana López
Kandis Friesen

English B2

Thursday, 10-12
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

In Berlin, the institutionalization of memory continues to face ongoing challenges from anti-, non-, and para-institutional forces. This course explores the contested practices of memory-making through a cross-disciplinary approach, engaging with architecture, activism, art, and public remembrance. From 1989 to the present, Berlin's transformations reveal dynamic tensions between the built environment and the social significance of public, semi-public, and private spaces. Participants analyze how spatial politics influence what is remembered, including the removal of monuments, buildings, and the creation of "absent presences" that haunt the urban landscape. Through site visits and mixed-method research, the course engages with current memory practices and actors shaping Berlin's "memoryscape", providing tools to examine similar dynamics in other cities. It specifically investigates the implications of decisions about public remembrance on a city's history and future.

Dr. Dorian Alt, Lorena Drakula

English B2

Monday, 14-16
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

The global victory of liberal democracy is no longer taken for granted. The rise of Illiberal right-wing parties in recent years was particularly pronounced in East Central Europe (ECE). In Eastern Germany, support for the AfD has reached levels no far-right party has achieved since the 1930s. Between 2015 and 2023, Poland’s liberal institutions were significantly undermined by the ruling PiS party. And in Serbia, President Vučić’s rule has taken on increasingly authoritarian forms. This might at first be surprising given the region’s recent history. In 1989, crowds all over the region brought down authoritarian systems and cheered the advent of liberal democracy. What has caused the massive shift in public attitudes towards right-wing illiberalism in the last 30 years? How did the most ardent fans of liberalism become its harshest critics? This course explores how the specific political, social, and economic constellations after 1989 contributed to the rise of right-wing Illiberalism in (Eastern) Germany, Poland, and Serbia. The adaptation of democracy and capitalism was arguably a painful process, being experienced by many as unfair and humiliating. The dismantling of the welfare state, the transition to liberal democracy, a demographic crisis due to massive emigration, the erosion of gender equality, and constant political interference by Western institutions – the course will analyze how these momentous changes transformed democratic politics, producing new forms of right-wing populism and authoritarian visions of democracy. The course will analyze these factors using the latest theoretical perspectives on (il)liberalism and populism, while drawing on political science, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, and psychology. By combining multiple perspectives, students will gain a deeper understanding of the forces reshaping democracy and the contestation of liberal norms in contemporary Europe and around the world.Complementing these perspectives, students will also learn how to trace illiberalism empirically. 

Dr. Betiel Wasihun

English B2

Friday, 10-12
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

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.

Alexandre Nogueira Martins
Julia de Freitas Sampaio
Alexandr Lang

English B2, German A1

Tuesday, 14-16
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

This course explores the dynamic landscape of global social movements, taking Berlin as a focal point and lens to analyse 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. Presenting different approaches of studies of collective action, the course will provide a comprehensive understanding of the multiple contemporary social movements shaping our contemporary world, and it will highlight their contribution for the democratization of the world in which we currently live. Each class will connect a theoretical discussion on collective action with a case of a specific social movement, especially with cases from Berlin history with global entangled connections. 
The first section of the course is composed of theoretical texts with three different approaches to social movements: contentious politics, new social movements and dynamics approach. From the understanding of these perspectives, the students will be able to navigate the different analysis discussed in the following sections and the case studies throughout the course. The following part focuses on the ways global social movements produce resistance, concrete utopias and position themselves in anticolonial and postcolonial struggles. By discussing these concepts, the students will gain an understanding of social movements as an entry point to apprehend a society in a more comprehensive way. The third part of the course focuses on discussions of contemporary social movements and what their studies bring to the understanding political action, their possibilities, their limits, their contributions to democratization in Germany and around the world. We will discuss the cases of feminism, climate justice, queer and trans liberation, housing and other social movements. Throughout the course, students will be able to develop critical thinking skills, gain historical knowledge, and engage in interdisciplinary analysis on social movements. 

Dr. Felix Helbing

English B2

Wednesday, 10-12
Room 0323-26, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7

The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was a period of remarkable cultural transformation and social upheaval in Germany. Against the backdrop of economic and political turmoil, gender and sexual nonconformity flourished in Berlin and other urban centers, challenging traditional norms and giving rise to vibrant LGBTQ+ communities. This interdisciplinary course examines how gender and sexuality were experienced, represented, and contested in Weimar-era Germany. Drawing on a diverse array of primary sources - including theater, visual art, literature, film, and theoretical texts - we will explore how marginalized individuals and communities navigated, expressed, and politicized their identities. Key topics will include: The emergence of sexual science and the conceptualization of the "third sex", The proliferation of queer spaces, subcultures, and social movements in 1920s Berlin, Intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability, Artistic and literary depictions of gender fluidity and erotic desire, Medicalization, criminalization, and the state's response to gender/sexual nonconformity, The rise of fascism and the violent backlash against LGBTQ+ rights. Through close engagement with primary sources and cutting-edge scholarly work, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the complex, often contradictory dynamics that defined gender and sexuality in Weimar Germany. This course will equip students with the critical tools to analyze the interplay between cultural production, social movements, and the politics of identity.