This course offers an introduction to bilingualism, a topic closely associated with the field of language acquisition. Bilingualism can be defined and studied in different ways, focusing on either bilingual speakers or bilingual societies. We will look at both, including the multiple societal and cognitive aspects of bilingualism, its relationship with biculturalism, as well as current developments in bilingual education. The course is recommended to both bilingual and monolingual students and those who plan to live or work in a multilingual/multicultural environment.

Behind Bars: American Prison Literature

R12 S05 H81

Sept. 1: 9-10:30, 12:30-2:00, 2:30-4:00, 4:30-6

Sept. 2: 9-10:30, 12:30-2:00, 2:30-4:00, 4:30-6

Sept. 3: 9-10:30, 12:30-2:00, 2:30-4:00, 4:30-6

Sept. 5: 9-10:30, 12:30-2:00

The vastness of American prison literature testifies to many ills in American society. Among these are the Puritan need for old-testament punitive retribution, including the notion that solitary confinement would bring about penitence (yes, that’s where the term “penitentiary” originated.) Race and racism in the penal system, the “war on drugs” the privatization of prisons, the irony that the “land of the free” has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate are among the issues we will explore.

Students should purchase the following:

Caryl Chessman, Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story (1948, rpt. 2006)

Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison (1991)

Fauziya Kassindja, Do They Hear You When You Cry (1998)

James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (2017)

Ashley C. Ford, Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir (2021)

The following are useful supplementary materials:

https://www.criminaljusticedegreehub.com/literary-works-penned-in-prison/

https://nicic.gov/history-corrections-america

https://www.statista.com/topics/1717/prisoners-in-the-united-states/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/an-artist-on-how-he-survived-the-chain-gang

Sam Cooke, “Chain Gang” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRyDlVOE86U

https://www.vera.org/blog/dispatches-from-germany/what-german-prisons-do-differently

Thursday, 1 September

9:00-10:30: Introduction to the class, prison writing, American prisons and prison writing. Begin Caryl Chessman.

12:30-2:00:  Caryl Chessman, Jack Henry Abbott: Introduction, student talks.

2:30-4:00: Discussion, writing, talks on Chessman and Abbott.

4:30-6:00: Discussion, writing, talks on Chessman and Abbott.

Friday, 2 September:

9-10:30 Finishing Jack Abbott, beginning Fauziya Kassindja. Immigration and American law; gender-based violence, essential similarities and differences between these two writers

12:30-2:00 Discussion, writing, talks on Abbott and Kassindja.

2:30-4:00 Discussion, writing, talks on Abbott and Kassindja.

4:30-6:00 Discussion, writing, talks on Abbott and Kassindja.

Saturday, 3 September

9:00-10:30 Introduction to Forman’s writing; theories about race and racism in the American criminal justice system. If time, look at Michelle Alexander’s writing (The New Jim Crow) or a summary of it.

12:30-2:00 American law, Jim Crow, Forman in context.

2:30-4:00 Discussion, writing, talks on Forman.

4:30-6:00 Discussion, writing, talks on Forman.

Monday September 5

9:00-10:30 Introduction to the effects of prison on families and on woman.

12:30-2:00 Discussion, writing, talks on Ford .

Welcome to the seminar "British Modernism"! In this Moodle you'll find the material you will need for the semester. Students are however also required to obtain their own copy of Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. 

Learning Objectives

Students will learn to construct two-dimensional design sketches with basic elements of a CAD programme. In addition, three-dimensional modelling of systems, based on these two-dimensional sketches, will be learnt. Based on CAD-modelling, the participants will learn to create a processed link
of the recorded data for the analysis of structures from the data base of the CAD-programme. The students will learn the automatic generation of input data for computing programmes, based on the data recorded in the CAD-modelling. The covered topics will be enlarged upon by rendering practical examples.

Ever since the colonial period, the American college campus has been more than an architectural space. As the historian Paul Venable Turner has argued, the American campus encoded forms of an idealized national community as well as utopian social visions. Modes of inclusion and exclusion as well as cultural hierarchies have also evolved along with colleges and universities in America.

This course will delve into the imaginaries of the American college campus by surveying the genre of the campus narrative in novels, in films, and on TV. Students will survey the genre, highlighting the narrative, ideological, and spatial dimensions in campus novels by Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Chabon, Elif Batuman, Christine Smallwood, and Brandon Taylor. Moving across to filmic narrative, the course will inquire into recent popular depictions ranging from Wonder Boys (2000) and Dear White People (2014) to the Netflix show The Chair (2021). Our conceptual framings will include the history and development of American higher education, the recent rise of “critical university studies”, as well as the ongoing campus culture wars, which are often fueled by conservative and right-wing media.

“China’s economic invasion of Africa” (The Guardian, February 6^th 2011), “China’s ambitious bid for Southeast Asia hegemony” (DW, December 24^th, 2019), “China in Latin America: partner or predator?” (The South China Morning Post, May 25^th 2019). These are just few examples of titles that can be found on the web and that tell us something about the way the media portray China’s forays abroad as well as its increasing involvement in many developing countries. With its initiatives aimed at trading with the rest of the world and obtaining precious resources for its development, the Chinese presence in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia and South-East Asia in fact has been causing for about two decades restless sleep in the so-called “Western world”, which sees its supremacy being eroded by China’s increasingly active role abroad.

China’s moves in the developing world must surely be kept under scrutiny, as well as those in the so-called “developed countries”. To achieve this objective, it is certainly necessary to acquire knowledge of China’s historical path - and in particular the phases that led the country to expose itself to the rest of the world. This is the first objective of this course, which will allow students interested in international relations, history and / or contemporary China to learn about some fundamental aspects of China’s very recent history and of its presence and activities abroad. The second objective of the course, on the other hand, has a more “critical” character. It invites students to develop an attentive eye on how the Western media view and comment on China. To achieve this goal, the course will introduce the first rudiments of media analysis, inviting at each unit to practice an analysis of media coverage on the Chinese presence abroad.

“China’s economic invasion of Africa” (The Guardian, February 6^th 2011), “China’s ambitious bid for Southeast Asia hegemony” (DW, December 24^th, 2019), “China in Latin America: partner or predator?” (The South China Morning Post, May 25^th 2019). These are just few examples of titles that can be found on the web and that tell us something about the way the media portray China’s forays abroad as well as its increasing involvement in many developing countries. With its initiatives aimed at trading with the rest of the world and obtaining precious resources for its development, the Chinese presence in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia and South-East Asia in fact has been causing for about two decades restless sleep in the so-called “Western world”, which sees its supremacy being eroded by China’s increasingly active role abroad.

China’s moves in the developing world must surely be kept under scrutiny, as well as those in the so-called “developed countries”. To achieve this objective, it is certainly necessary to acquire knowledge of China’s historical path - and in particular the phases that led the country to expose itself to the rest of the world. This is the first objective of this course, which will allow students interested in international relations, history and / or contemporary China to learn about some fundamental aspects of China’s very recent history and of its presence and activities abroad. The second objective of the course, on the other hand, has a more “critical” character. It invites students to develop an attentive eye on how the Western media view and comment on China. To achieve this goal, the course will introduce the first rudiments of media analysis, inviting at each unit to practice an analysis of media coverage on the Chinese presence abroad.

This course is seminar accompanying the Praxissemester. It is designed for students studying either HRSGe or BK. 

This course offers an introduction to official as well as unauthorized discourses of climate change and environmental activism in semiotic landscapes. Combining approaches of multimodal (critical) discourse analysis, social semiotics and linguistic landscape studies, the course aims to encourage students to engage critically with the most recent theoretical frameworks and methods to examine the semiotics of environmental change in public space.

Since environmental issues are found at the intersection of ecosystems and human social systems, we will raise questions like: How is climate change discourse realized in semiotic landscapes? How does it transform urban spaces and, reciprocally thinking, how do semiotic landscapes contribute to our understanding of environmental change? How can we read environmental discourses in public space? How is environmental change semioticized by different actors? Which semiotic practices and tactics constituting climate change discourse are used in public space? What kind of meaning-making is established by environmental activists? How does environmental activism contribute to discourses of environmental change and sustainability?

To apply the theoretical insights, students will experience hands-on fieldwork as they collect data in urban places. If you cannot be certain about committing to these activities, please do not register for this course.