Moodle UDE

The seminar focuses on the post-reform period and is organized around the theme of consumption. Consumption is often dealt with in the economic sense, as the other side of production and a portion of GDP. Our interest in this term and its application to Chinese society concerns its sociological meaning, which relates to the use and using up of things (Warde 2005).   This approach provides both a thematic guide and a theoretical angle with which to examine key developments in contemporary Chinese society as well as the social practices and institutions therein. The course’s topics include the coalescence of the urban middle-class, the education system and its reforms, food security, user technology (such as WeChat), tourism, ethnicity, and gender. Pairing these topics with an overarching conceptual framework is intended to help prepare students to develop their M.A. thesis on sociological topics relating to China and East Asia. The main course material consists of recent readings in English by renowned Chinese and non-Chinese social scientists.

This course focuses on the international business and comparative management through the lens of content and cultural industry in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Globalisation, digitisation, de-globalisation as well as varieties of institutional environments provide opportunities and challenges to firms. The course uses the various segments of content and cultural industry to provide an understanding of complexities in the global economy. Cultural industries are “systems of organisations that produce and distribute cultural goods with substantive symbolic, aesthetic, or artistic value (Wang et. al., 2020)” Due to their unique characteristics, these industries produce distinctive business dynamics. Among others, East Asian cultural products, e.g., Japanese Anime and K-Pop, are the key cases to account for how international business operates. This course expects students to intensively engage in class discussion accompanied by weekly response papers and a term paper. 

This course deals with African American Vernacular English, the distinctive varieties of English used primarily by and among speakers of African background in North America. We will investigate the present-day linguistic features of AAVE, as well as the ways in which the variety is expressively employed in black speech communities. We will also spend some time exploring the history of AAVE, its source in African languages, as well as the controversial question of its possible creole ancestry. These issues will be discussed in the light of educational and applied concerns, such as teachers’ expectations and students' progress, linguistic profiling and discrimination of AAVE speakers.

This course deals with African American Vernacular English, the distinctive varieties of English used primarily by and among speakers of African background in North America. We will investigate the present-day linguistic features of AAVE, as well as the ways in which the variety is expressively employed in black speech communities. We will also spend some time exploring the history of AAVE, its source in African languages, as well as the controversial question of its possible creole ancestry. These issues will be discussed in the light of educational and applied concerns, such as teachers’ expectations and students' progress, linguistic profiling and discrimination of AAVE speakers.

Recently, the availability of textual data has increased massively. Parliamentary records, party manifestos, media articles and social media contributions are accessible and there are numerous political science research questions that can be answered analysing these data.

Within the context of policy analysis, we will focus on the policy cycle stages of agenda setting and policy formulation. The seminar uses data from party manifestos, media debates and social media discussions as examples of analysis. Drawing on theorical approaches such as salience theory and issue ownership, we will analyse what topics parties formulate in their election manifestos over the years and how media debates echo elections.  

The course introduces students to the quantitative analysis of textual data stemming from political documents. It covers most widely used methods for the empirical analysis of textual data from data pre-processing stages to the interpretation of findings. The course establishes theoretical knowledge and uses it in practical hands on sessions. We will use the R environment for the practical sessions. No previous knowledge of the programming language R is needed, as the course covers an introductory session. Everyone needs to install R and R-Studio on their own computer and use the software actively for class assignments and the project.

Migrant*innen sind sich entwickelnde Organismen. Es ist daher irreführend, psychologische Adaptation von Migrant*innen primär oder ausschließlich über migrationsbedingte Faktoren erklären zu wollen. Stattdessen ist es wichtig, normative Entwicklungsprozesse, die universell sind, von akkulturativen Veränderungsprozessen, die migrationsbedingt sind, zu differenzieren. In diesem Seminar wollen wir uns zunächst mit zentralen Konzepten der Veränderung und Entwicklung aus der Entwicklungspsychologie und dem Konzept der Akkulturation beschäftigen. Dann werden den Blick dafür schärfen, wie Entwicklung und Akkulturation zusammenhängen und wie ihr Zusammenspiel sauber untersucht werden kann. Darauf aufbauend beschäftigen wir uns mit ausgewählten Inhaltsbereichen, in denen sowohl Entwicklung und Akkulturation eine Rolle spielen.

This seminar is intended to introduce students to current issues and topical themes that dictate our collective social experience. It aims to introduce the students to a wide variety of perspectives and provides them with a sociological framework and vocabulary to understand and interpret these issues. The course is designed in such a way that it provides students with the knowledge of current social developments, encourages them to present and discuss suggested literature, and enables them to form an informed opinion about certain themes and topics. Offered in English language, this seminar is also directed at students who seek to practice and improve their English language skills and advance their academic training in an international linguistic medium.

The topic “Migration, crisis and solidarity”is highly relevant for students to comprehend recent events in and around Europe, but also in other parts of the world. The seminar focuses on this particular topic and is divided into three main parts. In Part I, we discuss why migration is a crucial topic to discuss and how sociology provides key insights into why migration happens, what conditions enable or prevent mobility, and what consequences migration has on society. In Part II, we bring in various perspectives and case studies that shows the relevance of race, gender and the question of labor in how migration is organized. In the Part III, we look into the over-used term of migration 'crisis' and understand how such a perspective comes into place. In this last section, we also discuss the relevance of transnational networks and organizations of migrants that are key to understanding solidarity among migrants-on-the-move. In the seminar, we also learn how to conduct an oral presentation on a topic and find appropriate literature for the writing of the term paper. Participants are graded based on their oral presentations and written outlines (to be submitted within a week of the presentation), as well as their term papers (to be submitted by 31-07-2023).

This is the 3rd part of a series in algebraic geometry for advance bachelor students and masters students in mathematics. Our main theme will be the cohomology of algebraic varieties, concentrating on de Rham cohomology and Hodge cohomology