| Anthropology as Cultural Critique | ANTH 214 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to anthropology, a discipline that has historically produced knowledge of "other" cultures on the basis of fieldwork. In recent decades, a critical anthropology has come to question both the concept of culture and the task of cultural representation. At the same time, the geographical, theoretical, methodological, and thematic scope of anthropological research has expanded. In this course, various anthropological theories and methods will be discussed in light of these recent debates with readings on different parts of the world, including Turkey. For their final project, the students will have the option of writing a paper based on anthropological research. |
| Anthropology of the Global City | ANTH 251 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | While known for their work in rural settings, anthropologists have long conducted field research in cities. This course will introduce students to urban anthropology and trace the development of the field, focusing in particular on current theoretical and methodological concerns in ethnographic studies of the global city. While the course will provide a comparative perspective on global cities, students will have the opportunity to undertake a fieldwork project of their own in the city of Istanbul. |
| Local Cultures, Global Forces | ANTH 255 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In the new millennium, we are faced with an increasingly globalized economy and culture. This course will seek to lay out the global forces that create this new world order/ disorder and address their unequal impact on particular localities. Institutions that shape the global economy (e.g. IMF and the World Bank), international non-governmental organizations that seek to raise global awareness (e.g. Greenpeace), as well as local organizations that problematize the effects of globalization will be discussed together with the theoretical underpinning of the changing sense of place and time created in these processes. Students will be asked to do research on local, national, and global responses to the different ecological, economic, social, and political aspects of globalization. |
| Material Culture | ANTH 320 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the meanings various artifacts?from pictures, photographs and exhibits to food, clothing and money -- acquire in different social, historical, and political contexts and the ways in which these meanings are contested by a variety of social actors. Special emphasis will be given to the ways in which we relate to the past through the use of material culture. Questions that will be addressed include: Do commodities and other items of material culture merely fulfill human needs, or are they also symbols that reveal certain things about their users? What kind of light can items of material culture shed on matters of social structure and inequality, values and morality, or processes of change at particular historical moments? How is material culture used in the service of representing, remembering and forgetting the past? What constitutes ''heritage'' and who owns it? How should ''heritage'' be preserved, displayed, remembered? How is cultural heritage packaged and marketed in the context of tourism and how does tourism change the meaning of material culture and cultural practices? |
| Anthropology of Migration and the City | ANTH 321 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Migration stands out as one of the most characteristic and complex features of the 21st century as more people than ever, coming from increasingly more disparate places, are migrating to new destinations for a greater variety of reasons and under distinct circumstances. A shared aspect though is that most of these migrations are urban in nature, being concentrated in cities attracting human, financial and other flows from across the globe. This course explores how anthropological research is engaging with these new trends in global migration and urbanism, by focusing on different theoretical and ethnographic discussions around some of the key concepts emerging in the literature, including: global cities, super-diversity, urban encounters, contact zones, everyday multiculture, everyday cosmopolitanisms and conviviality |
| Anthropology of the Body | ANTH 326 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The biological body has an undeniable physicality, yet at the same time, our experiences of our bodies and the ways in which we make sense of those experiences are inevitably embedded in and defined by the social. Taking an anthropological perspective and paying attention to both discursive and phenomenological approaches, this introductory course will investigate the ways in which the body has been observed, classified, experienced and modified in different cultural contexts and disciplinary regimes. |
| Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality | ANTH 340 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Throughout the 20th Century, anthropologists have studied the diverse constructions of gender and sexuality in human societies around the world. Researching the ways in which understandings of gender and sexuality are constitutive of people’s self understandings, religious beliefs and practices, constructions of kinship and family, the state, economic life, cultural practices, as well as political discourses and practices has been central to contemporary anthropology. This course covers anthropological studies and debates on gender and sexuality through a diverse selection of readings, visuals and ethnographic films. |
| Anthropology of Development Social Change and Social Justice | ANTH 350 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The global expansion of the sphere of neoliberal market economy put the debates on development and social justice at the center of studies in social sciences. With the rise of global capitalism, developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey have experienced a remarkable economic growth in the last 20 years. However, this fast economic growth comes along with its downsides such as the dramatic rise in income inequality, violation of human rights, suppression of unionized workers, worsening conditions at work, and unemployment. In this social and political context, through a close examination of various ethnographic cases, this course aims to introduce major theoretical and critical approaches to global capitalism, development, social change, and social justice. |
| Migration and Citizenship | ANTH 354 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar will inquire into the global movement of people in relation to the increasingly variegated definitions and practices of citizenship. Through ethnographic accounts of border-crossings around the world, we will pay particular attention to the everyday experiences of migrants on the one hand, and to the political, cultural and legal discourses of citizenship that shape and constrain those experiences on the other. We will assess the significance of the spread of global capitalism and of transnational legal norms in relation to the changing relationship between state sovereignty, immigrants, and citizenship. We will also pay attention to the ways in which hierarchies of class, ethnicity and nation find expression in the politics of international migration and citizenship. |
| Etnographic Approaches to Law and Conflict | ANTH 413 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The ways in which conflicts are understood and acted upon show a significant degree of variation from one social context to another. In this course we will explore the cultural processes that create this variation. We use ethnographic material that is often the result of at least a year of field work, where the researcher observes and participates in the social and cultural life of the particular group. We will read ethnographies about a diverse set of contexts such as Mexico, Iran, Turkey, New Guinea and urban America. Main questions that inform class discussions are; what are the different notions of justice -including fairness, equity etc.- deployed in different cultural contexts? What is the relation of these different notions to the particular methods and mechanisms of resolving conflicts? How are these meanings and practices of justice related to the re-making of structural hierarchies-such as gender, age, status- in the given collectivity? |
| Anthropology of the State | ANTH 415 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute and question the nation-state. It draws on perspectives on the state developed within other disciplines. Simultaneously, a distinctively anthropological understanding of the state is articulated by focusing on systems of meaning and belief; personhood and agency; everyday practices; and persistent structures and emergent forms. The course also examines how institutions which are considered to define the modern state, such as citizenship, sovereignty, territoriality, secularism, and violence, are manifested in and represented by ethnographic research and writing. |
| Anthropology of Affect | ANTH 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the realm of the intangible and the unseen to think through 'vibes', 'energies', and `sentiments' that are associated with situations in which cultural formations are blocked, suspended or mobilized. The task at hand is to attend to the ways in which non-cathartic states of feeling create affective spheres that mobilize public opinion. Building up on a multiplicity of resources ranging from visual material, Marxism, critical race theory, queer studies, feminism, psychoanalysis, and ethnographies of militarism, the course explores a domain of politics where that which is repressed is denied further by or returns in spectral forms in cultural memory. The course aims to stimulate reflection on affective concepts in the ethnographic contexts where they seem most at stake to explore the intersections of gender, race, labor, and militarism and to problematize the nationalist processes of fact and memory building. |
| Anthropology of Hope | ANTH 428 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In social theory, popular discourse and everyday practice, hope is often an assumed or desired sentiment but albeit one that is rarely seen as being in need of critical elaboration. This course takes hope as a key category of social analysis. It first compares different historical approaches that locate in hope the utopian spirit of times of revolution and certain religious doctrines that link hope to faith in the face of experiential misery. It then delves into contemporary ethnographies that engage with theories of affect as they pertain to hope. How does hope relate to other affective states such as desire and optimism (hope’s presumed affines) and melancholy and despair (its presumed opposites ?) Under what conditions does hope become cruel? Building on a critical tradition in social theory, it also assesses the potential role of hope in progressive politics and thought as a method of critique. |
| Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) | ANTH 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Geographic regions such as the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) are human constructions based on ideas about space and difference, rather than naturally existing categories. This course starts with a critical analysis of the making of the MENA region, which covers about 25 countries from Morocco to Iran, as a historical and political process. In an effort to move beyond the predominantly Orientalist constructions of this region in mainstream discourses, we will read critical ethnographic studies of the historical, political and cultural processes that have shaped human lives in this diverse cultural space. |
| Social Mobilization, Resistance and Protest | ANTH 465 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will expore the nature of social protest in various parts of the world. It will examine the dynamics of massive revolutionary movements, and yet also the challenges of understanding diverse and less-publicized forms of protest and mobilization. We will examine forms of protest related to human rights, labor conditions, indigenous mobilization, ethnicity and nationalism, religion and gender in the context of increasing globalization. The course will both explore particular case studies of mobilization as well as introduce students to key questions about the role of culture, memory, mass media, and other forces in the making of social mobilization. |
| Ethnography: Fieldwork and Writing in Antropology | ANTH 468 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ethnography has been the main method of research and writing in anthropology. This course provides an in-depth reading of classical and contemporary ethnographies addressing a wide range of theoretical and political questions regarding the ethnographic experience and text. |
| Anthropology and History | ANTH 469 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What happens when anthropologists take up history? The recent interest of anthropology in history will be examined in this course through the close reading of a selection of contemporary ethnographies (books produced by anthropologists on the basis of field research). |
| Anthropology of Europe | ANTH 471 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Anthropology is conventionally perceived as the study of non-European societies, however, recent critical approaches have stressed the importance of turning the anthropological gaze to western societies, and in particular, of ''provincializing Europe.'' Through recent ethnographies of different nation-states and social spaces in Europe, the course will examine historical and contemporary constructions of ''Europeanness,"; debates over multiculturalism, cultural citizenship and ''Islamaphobia''; migration and ethnicity; and the uneasy relation of Eastern Europe and postsocialism to Western Europe an the EU |
| Civic Involvement Projects I | CIP 101 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | These are team projects that require volunteer work of the individuals with a civic organization. Students choose themselves a particular issue and a related project that they would like to work for. Passing the course depends on the dynamics of the projects and the evaluation of the supervisor students of the projects together with the approval of the Project Coordinator. |
| Conflict Analysis and Resolution | CONF 300 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the field of conflict analysis and resolution. It introduces students concepts, and theories on why and how conflicts at various levels emerge, how they escalate, the consequences of conflicts, how they can be prevented, and possible constructive ways to address them. Throughout the course students will have an opportunity to discuss past and contemporary examples of inter-personal, inter- group, intra- and inter-state conflicts. |
| Conflict Resolution Practice | CONF 431 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides both a framework and experience for integrating theory and practice in conflict resolution. Reviews types of practice and theories of intervention and change, discusses the analytic process of conflicts before interventions and assessing the impacts of interventions and the conflict. Students will experience third party options for intervention, in a variety of types of international conflicts including way to build trust among parties for obtaining and implementing agreements. |
| Theory and Practice in Cultural Studies | CULT 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to some of the most important theoretical trends of 19th and 20th century literary and cultural studies. A broad survey of this field will encompass culturalism, structuralism, poststructuralism, marxism, feminism and postmodernism, among others. In addition to different theoretical perspectives on culture, the course will offer a selection of case studies ranging from soap operas to popular music, from detective novels to cartoons. |
| Popular Culture and Everyday Life | CULT 222 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will trace the emergence of the concept of popular culture linked to the rise of the mass media. Problematizing the distinction between "high" and "low" culture, the course will use selected case studies of diverse cultural products to illustrate current issues and debates in the study of popular culture and everyday life. |
| Consumption, Food and Culture | CULT 223 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this course is to explore the complex interrelations between food and culture, focusing on the questions of how people in different world socio-historical contexts learn and accept to eat and cook food differently, and how the social purpose of food consumption has changed hierarchically, spatially and temporally, entailing different social and cultural meanings. To this end, the course is organized around two main axes: (i) the diffusion and transformation of eating and cooking practices parallel to world-historical changes, and (ii) food consumption patterns and their relation to social hierarchies. Some of the themes to be covered in this class are the cultural and social significance of eating-out, gendered aspects of food practices, the emergence and evolution of "national" and "ethnic" cuisines, cultural and social histories of certain food products such as sugar, coffee and Coca-Cola, culinary transformations and interactions across the world in a historical perspective, homogenization of diets on a global scale, and the historical development of rituals and manners associated with food consumption. |
| Advertising and Culture | CULT 225 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Culture is a crucial variable in the advertisement business. Conversely, advertising has shaped contemporary cultures and economies. This course will explore the history and place of advertising in today's world, on the one hand, and the place of "culture" in advertisements, on the other. Particular emphasis will be placed on representations of social class, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, race, and national identity in advertisements. Case materials will be drawn primarily from contemporary Turkish advertising, with additional examples from other time periods and other countries. |
| Introduction to Media Studies | CULT 230 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This introductory course is designed to explore the social, cultural and economic dimensions of the significance of contemporary media in our everyday lives. Situating media in the broader historical context of its development, the course will investigate processes of production and consumption. Key concepts and debates within media studies will be discussed by way of topical examples. In addition to topics such as journalism, advertising and consumer culture, the course will deal with the question of ownership structures. The overall aim of the course is to help students enhance their media literacy skills and to develop a more critical and informed awareness of their relation to and use of contemporary media. |
| Topics in Turkish Cultural Studies | CULT 299 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This introductory course addresses current issues in the field of Turkish Cultural Studies.The specific focus of the course will be announced each semester that it is offered.Topics and approaches may be drawn from anthropology, history, literature, sociology or visual studies. |
| Youth Culture | CULT 322 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will focus on youth culture viewed within the wider frame of age and generation. It will ask, how have youth and youth culture been defined and theorized historically? What challenges does the study of youth culture pose in a transnational world? The course will also investigate how youth culture (and generational identity) have been studied in Turkey. It It will include a unit in which students undertake a research project of their own on youth culture and/or generational identity in Istanbul. |
| Humans and Clones | CULT 324 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to investigate into the 'human question' by studying a number of philosophical and literary texts as well as films that engage in defining and/or problematizing humanness. Throughout the term we will try to see at what moments in history the 'human question' gains prominence and under what circumstances human is pronounced dead, defined as useless, insignificant, or valorized and sanctified. |
| Media Worlds | CULT 325 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to explore the cultural/political changes brought about by transnational media expansion. We will seek answers to such questions as: How do transnational media participate in the (re) making of national and local cultures? How do hegemonic media texts intersect with real lives of people in different parts of the world? What kinds of cultural spaces do they create for resistance, subversion and appropriation, and for whom? The organizing framework of the course will be based on three broad headings: a) transnational media and emergent geographies of power and marginality b) media production and cultural production c) mediation of hegemonic meanings and cultural politics. |
| Postcolonial Theory and Its Discontents | CULT 327 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Postcolonial theory is the body of scholarship that tackles the heritage and current impact of multiple waves and types of colonialism. In this course students will be introduced to the presumptions of this scholarship, its central questions and shortcomings. We will also explore the relationship of post-colonialism to feminist and post-structuralist theory. The course is designed to facilitate students' engagement with these different empirical and theoretical approaches in the light of their experiences and ideas. |
| Gender and Nationalism | CULT 342 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The 20th century has been a century of nationalisms and wars (both hot and cold). Scholars, particularly in the decade, have shown the centrality of gender and sexuality in the imagining of national communities, the invention of traditions, and the conduct of wars. Through books, articles and films, the course will explore the interconnections between gender, nationalism and militarism in different parts of the world in the past century. |
| Urban Spaces and Cultures | CULT 355 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | How do we begin to understand the differences, commonalities, and interconnections between 'World Cities' - such as Cairo, New York, Istanbul or Singapore? This course will provide a critical guide to the diverse ideas, concepts and frameworks used to study such cities. It will explore how city spaces and cultures are constituted, divided and contested, by focusing such topics as: colonial landscapes of power and exclusion, modernist projects of urban renewal and dislocation, 'post-modern' spaces of spectacle and consumption, ghettoes of affluence and poverty, ethnic divisions of labor and informal economies behind the facades of the global capital. |
| Consumer Society and Cultures | CULT 360 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will discuss key issues of contemporary consumer society, and the social and anthropological theories which help us understand consumer aspirations. What are the origins of our global consumer society, and its current inequalities? Key themes will include the symbolism of goods and material culture in shaping social relations of status and power. We will discuss specific fields of consumption, such as style and fashion in clothing, life-style shopping; home-making through practices of consumption. Consumerism is also politics, and we will discuss how gender, class and ethnic identities are linked to consumption practices. |
| Oral History | CULT 361 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will introduce students to the study of oral history. Oral histories are spoken memories about the past recorded by oral historians in a dialgue with individuals providing testimony. The study of oral history allows us to examine events and experiences not recorded by history (based on the study of written documents), as well as to analyze and interpret the meaning of events and experiences to individuals in the present. In this course, students will learn the techniques of doing oral history, read selected case studies, and conduct an oral history project of their own. |
| Memory Studies | CULT 362 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In recent years, memory has become one of the most widely debated issues in the social sciences. While modernity focused largely on the future, how do we explain the enormous preoccupation with the past in the postmodern era? This course will pose some answers to this question. Beginning with a look at the way memory operates, the course will review major debates on memory in diverse fields such as psychology, sociology, and history. It will then focus on particular themes, including memory's relationship to place, identity, trauma, narrative, commemoration, media and the body. The course will rely on a number of case studies, including studies of memory in Turkey. |
| Topics in Memory Studies | CULT 364 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course addresses issues in the growing field of memory studies. The specific focus of the course will be announced each semester that it is offered. Topics and approaches may be drawn from anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, history, literature, memory studies, psychology, sociology, and visual studies. |
| Globalization and Health Inequalities | CULT 368 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces recent theoretical perspectives and ethnographic work which explore how the political and medical authorities as well as the lay people, discuss the effects of globalization and global encounters on health inequalities, and how the global and local health policies address these inequalities. It covers such topics as the role of global health institutions in addressing the health inequalities, tensions between states’ priorities and global impositions in defining and applying health policies, competition between biomedicine and alternative medical systems, local interpretations of global medical technologies and local conceptualizations of global epidemics. The course also includes nuanced approaches to the global and local ethical issues around the body, gender, life, illness, birth, death and pharmaceutical industry |
| Political Ecology and Society | CULT 384 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The broad goal of this course is to cultivate a critical theoretical understanding of the relation between the society and nature, and develop a nuanced perspective of thinking about environmental problems. More particularly, the objectives of this course are: 1) To locate environmental politics within the context of broader social, political and economic dynamics; 2) To learn about alternative forms of being and knowing that challenge common anthropocentric thinking; 3) To develop familiarity with the political ecological dimension of the global and local environmental problems, policies, and social movements. |
| Turkish Culture: Critical Perspectives | CULT 391 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What is "Turkish Culture"? Who defines it? Who and what does it include, and not include? What is the relationship between culture (or cultures) and national identity? Asking these questions and others, this course will look at various anthropological, historical, political and literary texts in an effort to critically analyze changes and continuities in the meaning and scope of "Turkish Culture" since the late Ottoman period. |
| Independent Study | CULT 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list and forms of evaluation. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Honors Project | CULT 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In their fourth year of study, each Cultural Studies major will propose and complete a one-semester project related to her or his field of concentration. The form of this project will vary depending on the student's interests and concentration, ranging from textual, ethnographic or visual approaches and methodologies. All stages of the project must be approved by the student's project advisor. |
| Science, Technology and Culture | CULT 420 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course studies the social, cultural, and institutional contexts of science and technology, using the perspectives and methods derived from the social sciences and the humanities. It examines the assumptions about the neutrality and autonomy of science and technology, the distinction between the natural and the artificial, the social construction of knowledge, expertise and authority, and the relationships between human values, science and technology. The links among science, technology and the organization of time and space, as well as the changing conceptions of the self are discussed as critical dimensions of modernity and postmodernity |
| Digital Humanities | CULT 421 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Digital Humanities is a catch phrase of 21st century; since 2000, more and more Digital Humanities projects received funding, many archives and collections are digitized, and even PhD programs and institutes are build. This course offers an understanding of `digital humanities' by taking a look at its first years, its historical development and the continuing academic discussions around it. Besides theoretical discussions of digital humanities, prominent digital humanities projects will be reviewed and discussion sessions will be devoted to the main areas of production within the digital humanities, such as text analysis, digitization, data management and visualization. The focus is on the usefulness of this type of practical humanities research and how humanities questions can be translated to the computational methods of digital humanities in a successful way. |
| Modernism/Postmodernism | CULT 432 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Modernism and postmodernism have been two of the dominant trends of the 20th century in fields ranging from literature to visual culture and beyond. This course will explore some of the debates around modernism and postmodernism through theoretical texts as well as through works which have influenced or have been influenced by the course of these ideas. |
| Advanced Cultural Theory | CULT 434 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines different conceptions of culture, the debates about cultural studies as a discipline, and the contemporary modes of cultural analysis through in-depth readings of the writings of several major thinkers of the twentieth century. It provides an introduction to such approaches as Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, and psychoanalysis as well as an opportunity for critical engagement with the thoughts of such influential cultural theorists as W. Benjamin, T. Adorno, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, L. Irigaray, J. Butler, and S. Zizek. |
| Representations of Violence | CULT 435 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Much attention has been devoted in recent years to understanding violence. As creative works have sought to document violence and understand its causes, accurate description and representation have often been deemed necessary to the process of healing and the prevention of future violence. This emphasis on describing and representing violence can, however, end up recreating in text or image another form of violence. Analyzing and critiquing hate speech or violent pornography, for example, may also mean repeating it. Making someone understand the experiences of war and other atrocities requires a certain art in representing the violence; the more explicit the image or text, the more one is made to feel the impact of the violence. At what point do such representations end up perpetrating violence as they aestheticize it? And more importantly perhaps, can these works also suggest solutions to violence? This course will explore answers to these questions through theoretical works, as well as through textual and visual representations of violence. This is a research seminar and requires the active participation of students in presentations and class discussions. Graduate students are also expected to carry out original research towards the final paper. For the possibility of taking this course at the graduate level see CULT 535. |
| Gender and Media | CULT 446 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Media in all its forms – print, Internet, television, music, etc. – are a major force in creating and inventing reality for the world. This course addresses how our ideas about sex and our identities as men, women, and sexual beings are constructed, contested and subverted in different sites within media culture. It explores the complex relationships between media texts, their production as well as consumption. In addition to engaging with various theoretical perspectives, it also aims to acquire students with a working knowledge of critical viewing and deconstruction methodologies by participating in small teams which focus on different media genres (these might include children’s cartoons, the soap opera, music video, talk shows, etc.) |
| Harem Fictions: From Montesquieu to Mernissi | CULT 449 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Is harem a space? Is it an institution? What notions of gender and sexuality are affiliated with and informed by the notion of harem? This course investigates the cultural work of harem as represented in several socio-cultural and historical contexts, through reading some historical essays on harem; then moving onto a series of European texts, paintings, photographs, fashion, and films. |
| Nation, History and Culture in Museums | CULT 451 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course investigates the relation of the museum to modernity and its role in negotiating history, culture and nation. It highlights the role of certain selected objects in remembering history and interpreting culture. In light of the readings and museum visits, students will discuss how the museum represents the notions of heritage, and how it contributes to the reconstruction of collective memory. |
| Myth, Art and Politics | CULT 452 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The notions of "myth" and "mythology" acquired a new meaning at the end of the 18th century. This "invention" of myth has given birth to the field of comparative mythology. As the cradle for the Romantic dreams of a "new mythology", it became a constant reference for the theories and philosophies of art in the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, it has become the vade mecum of Nazi politics. The course explores this modern concept of myth through a number of texts where the same questions are broached from different perspectives. It also aims to examine how the philological invention of myth presides over the self-invention of ''ethnographic'' nations and nationalisms. |
| Spaces of Migration | CULT 453 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores how migratory movements and attempts at their regulation produce space as well as scale, and reviews the theoretical constructs (such as transnationalism and translocalism) that account for the emergent spatialities of migrant connections. Topics to be covered include how migrants make place and negotiate home in their everyday lives, how experiences of localization vary among cities, how life in camps may deffer from or resemble life in the city, how states undertake spatial strategies to deter migrant flows (including excision of territories, pushbacks of border- crossers and creation of 'hotspots'), how migration routes come into being (including through smuggling networks), are governed and closed off to be re-channeled elsewhere, and what moral geographies correspond to processes of migration by assigning social legitimacy to particular mobilities. |
| Cultures of Migration | CULT 454 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course investigates forms of culture that arise out of migration. In rap music, internet blogs, puppetry and bilingual theater, as well as in the more traditional genres of literature and poetry, the course looks at how migrants and their descendents use cultural work to explore questions of identity, citizenship and community. The course may include work by migrants in and across Europe, the Americas, Asia or Africa; it will also look at the transnational connections migrants make among these different spaces. Students are encouraged to discover and analyze new cultural production in any media, using the theoretical resources developed over the semester. |
| Cultures and Politics of Law Reform | CULT 460 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Law reform is often seen as a technical issue that involves the transplantation of existing 'successful' models into new social contexts. Our course begins with a theoretical questioning of this common sense view of 'models' and 'prescriptions'. We will try to rethink the context of law reform as a field of social relations that enable multiple actors to construct a variety of cultural meanings and enter into power struggles with each other. Our discussions will revolve around case studies - from Turkey, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America - that involve particular proposals and actions of law reform. We will examine the actors, their interests, the cultural idiom through which they transmit those interests, and what emerges out of their contestations. In this way we will try to develop a dynamic, culturally and politically informed understanding of law reform. |
| Postsocialism | CULT 462 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine how experiences of communism in different contexts in Eastern Europe were lived, how they are remembered, and how they bear on present processes of "transition" and European integration. Topics include: collectivisation and privatisation; nationalism, internationalism and minorities; women and work; models of development. |
| Advanced Topics in Cultural Studies I | CULT 491 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course addresses current issues in the field of Cultural Studies at a level appropriate for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. The specific focus of the course will be announced each semester that it is offered. Topics and approaches may be drawn from anthropology, history, literature, sociology or visual studies. |
| Advanced Topics in Cultural Studies II | CULT 492 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course addresses current issues in the field of Cultural Studies at a level appropriate for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. The specific focus of the course will be announced each semester that it is offered. Topics and approaches may be drawn from anthropology, history, literature, sociology or visual studies. |
| Thematic Approaches to Contemporary Turkish Culture | CULT 493 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Based on readings of urban space as well as analyses of visual and written texts, this course will trace and map current cultural dynamics and ambivalences of contemporary Turkey. Each semester the course will be structured around a different theme, emphasizing the ways in which politics and culture are articulated in present-day Turkey. |
| Games and Strategies | ECON 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Examples and formulation of games, solution concepts: games with sequential moves, backward induction, games with simultaneous moves in normal form, Nash equilibrium, mixed strategies, subgame perfect equilibrium; prisoners' dilemma games, games with strategic moves, games with asymmetric games, games with strategic moves, games with asymmetric information, collective-action games, evolutionary games, voting, bargaining, bidding concepts of game theory. Applications to law, government, politics, diplomacy, business, management and economic behaviour. information, collective-action games, evolutionary games, voting, bargaining, bidding. |
| Macroeconomics | ECON 202 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Basic concepts of accounting and determination of national income. Classical theory of output and employment, determination of national savings, investment and consumption. Theories of economic growth. The balance of payments, exchange rate systems, trade and financial flows; monetary and fiscal policy; labour market adjustment at the macroeconomic level; inflation and anti-inflationary policies. |
| Microeconomics | ECON 204 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Consumer theory and demand; production, costs and supply; analysis of market structure; welfare, market failures, imperfect information and the role of the government in a market economy. |
| Econometrics | ECON 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Simple linear regression, least squares, generalized least squares; goodness of fit; prediction; inference, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing; empirical modeling of economic theory; introduction to econometric packages. |
| Game Theory | ECON 310 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Noncooperative games in extensive and normal forms solution concepts and refinements, rationalizibility; games with perfect information, behavioural strategies; incomplete information, Bayesian-Nash equilibrium, sequential rationality; cooperative games, games in coalitional form, convex games, balanced games : core, Shapley value, nucleolus; bargaining; coalition structure games; applications. |
| Behavioral Economics | ECON 312 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course is based on a set of questions or puzzles related to economics, and then discusses their importance. The course also involves some instructive quick experiments to illustrate how individuals' behavior deviates from the standard model. These experiments make students effortlessly identify the systematic deviations from the standard theory and understand the limitations of the existing models. Behavioral models that use insights from psychology are introduced to explain the puzzle and applied to illustrate new insights and predictions with a debate about the weaknesses of behavioral models. |
| Public Economics | ECON 320 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Fundamental theorems of welfare economics; theories of government; public goods; externalities; public choice; income redistribution; taxation, income distribution and efficiency; public production, incentives and the bureaucracy; privatization. |
| Education Economics and Policy | ECON 321 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The role and value of education in the economy; human capital accumulation and economic growth; private and public financing of education; private and social returns to education; schooling quality and educational production; access to education; signaling; non-pecuniary benefits of education; income distribution, equality and social cohesion; performance management and indicators in the education sector, public intervention tools (vouchers, conditional cash transfers, loans). |
| Health Economics and Policy | ECON 322 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Introduction to the efficiency and ethical issues involved in distribution of health care. Cost-benefit and cost effectiveness analyses to evaluate public and private sector health policies. Exploring the link between health and nutrition. Health insurance policies, quality assurance and the role of the government and professional organizations in provision of health services. |
| Energy and Environmental Economics | ECON 323 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course equips students with skills and methodologies to analyze energy markets and issues related to the environment. It addresses topics such as energy markets, pricing and competition in energy markets, regulation in energy markets, energy markets in developing countries, environmental policies, market failure, public policy and environment, the efficient and optimal use of natural resources, and climate change. |
| Industrial Organization | ECON 330 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Perfect competition; monopoly; price discrimination; oligopoly; markets for homogeneous and differentiated products; strategic behaviour and entry barriers; advertising; quality; vertical relations; network effects; competition law and policy. |
| Economics of Information | ECON 335 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In many economic situations, economic actors do not have the full knowledge of the economic environment they are in and/or the actions taken (or will be taken) by the other actors. Often some actors have better (or more) knowledge than others. There are dramatic effects of these ''information asymmetries'' on the functioning of the markets and the formation of economic institutions in the society. This course offers a coherent framework to think about these problems. The topics covered include decision making under uncertainty (expected utility theorem, attitudes towards risk), adverse selection, signaling, moral hazard, theory of incentives and contracts, principal-agent problems, incomplete contracts, mechanism design as well as many applications such as price discrimination, efficiency wages and unemployment, credit markets, entrepreneurship, partnerships, hold-up problems, property rights, herd behavior and information cascades, reputation, auctions, matching, and optimal taxation. |
| International Economics | ECON 340 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | International trade: comparative advantage and gains from trade; technology and trade; specific factors and income distribution; factor endowments and trade; free trade, protection and national welfare; market imperfections and trade policy. International finance: the balance of payments; exchange rate and foreign exchange market; money, interest and exchange rates; capital mobility and fiscal and monetary policy. |
| Corporate Finance | ECON 341 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Corporate governance, corporate debt and determinants of debt capacity, convertible debt, credit rationing, equity contracts, the decision to go public, monitoring by large shareholders, takeovers. |
| International Finance | ECON 345 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Basic concepts, tools and facts needed for the macroeconomic analysis of open economies: national income accounting and the balance of payments; the relationship between interest rates and exchange rates; the behavior of prices, interest rates, nominal and real exchange rates and output under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes and different international capital flow systems; financial crises and international macroeconomic interdependence. |
| Global Finance and Multinational Corporation | ECON 346 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Multinational Corporation (MNC), an analysis of current global financial issues including global imbalances, and country risk ratings. Special emphasis will be placed on the way the modern MNC organizes its activities and on the analysis of the incentive mechanism of MNCs. While the course focuses on understanding the basic theory behind these issues, it also examines empirical evidence and examples of firms' real world activities with the goal of preparing a student for a career dealing with financial decision making in an international environment. |
| Essentials of Project and Infrastructure Finance | ECON 347 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course equips students with skills and methodologies to analyze large-scale investment projects, decide on the feasibility of a project, calculate economic cost and benefits of the project and understand various ways of financing large-scale investments. It addresses topics such as the funding sources, business strategy, debt capacity, the problems of partners, hedging political risk, conceptual foundations of cost-benefit analysis and its alternatives, dealing with uncertainty and the social discount rate. Topics include discussions of case studies and lessons from experiences in Public -Private Partnerships. |
| Financial Institutions and Markets | ECON 350 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Money and interest rates; portfolio choice, behavior of interest rates and risk; foreign exchange market; financial institutions, banking industry; central bank and monetary policy; money supply process; determinants of money supply and tools of monetary policy; international financial system; monetary policy in open economies; demand for money; money and inflation. |
| Advanced Macroeconomics | ECON 360 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Economic growth, business cycles: real business cycles, Keynesian theories of business cycles, nominal rigidities; consumption: life-cycle and permanent income hypotheses, interest rates and savings; investment: cost of capital, the effects of uncertainty; government debt; unemployment; inflation and monetary policy. |
| Advanced Microeconomics | ECON 370 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Individual and social choice, uncertainty; core and competitive equilibrium; fundamental theorems of economics; partial equilibrium, cost-benefit analysis; topics in economics of information, dynamic competition, auction theory; topics in cooperative microeconomics network economics; topics in mechanism design |
| Topics in Macroeconomics: Emerging Market Macroeconomics | ECON 391 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Issues in and problems of emerging economies; exchange rate determination; problems of capital flows; money and prices; financial institutions in emerging markets; financial crisis fiscal and monetary policy; stabilization programs; foreign investment |
| Independent Study | ECON 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list and forms of evaluation. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| History of Economic Thought | ECON 400 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Introduction and early beginnings: ancient and medieval economic thought; mercantilism and the dawn of capitalism; the classical period, Adam Smith, David Ricardo; reactions and alternatives to classical theory, Karl Marx and scientific socialism; neo-classical school Keynesian and post-Keynesian theories; monetarist theories. |
| Applied Econometrics | ECON 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this course is to provide students with state of the art econometric methods for empirical analysis of micro data (individuals, households, firms etc.). Issues related to specification, estimation and identification of different models with cross-section and panel data will be studied. The course has an emphasis both on the econometric techniques and their applications to different topics. Students are expected to read assigned papers and undertake numerous practical assignments using a modern econometric software package. |
| Economic History | ECON 403 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | History of economic change and institutions from the Medieval Era onwards: key transformations that led to the industrial revolution; the impact of these transformations on economic, social and political life and global hierarchies. |
| Law and Economics | ECON 405 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The legal system can be viewed as a set of rules governing social and economic interactions and conduct in a society. This course analyzes whether and how the legal system promotes social welfare and efficiency of economic activity, and offers the student an alternative, economic perspective on law. It applies microeconomic theory to the analysis of several subfields of law, such as property law, contracts, tort law and legal processes. It introduces the student to the economics of law enforcement and to the trade offs the society faces in controlling crime and punishing offenders. |
| The Political Economy of European Integration | ECON 407 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at providing the students with a basic understanding of the interaction between politics and the economy in the integration of European. The course will first underline the historical and socio-economic context of European integration in the aftermath of World War II. Second, the course will focus on the dynamics of markets and government policies as they shape one another in the newly emerging institutional framework of EC and EU. Third, the course will analyse the challenges for the European economies and polities in present day global economy and increasingly volatile international relations with their newly developing alliances and institutions |
| Competition and Regulation | ECON 412 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Competition law and policy in Turkey and the European Union; agreements and concerted practices; vertical restraints; abuse of dominant position; competition and regulation in the telecommunications and energy industries: privatization and liberalization; universal services; models and contracts that encourage public-private partnerships in investments |
| Applied Macroeconomics | ECON 414 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Macroeconomic policy in developed economies; problems and issues of developing economies; the international financial system; globalization and macroeconomic policy in emerging economies; European economic integration and enlargement of the EU; economic and legal institutions and business ethics; evaluation of economic performance. |
| Growth and Development | ECON 420 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Basic features of modern economic growth; theories of economic growth: neoclassical growth model, endogenous growth models, convergence of income levels political economy of development and economic growth; growth and inequality; poverty and undernutrition; population growth and development; rural-urban interaction and growth; role of factor markets in economic development; international trade and growth. |
| From Plan to Market: Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe | ECON 422 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analysis of the events that took place after the fall of the Wall in 1989 in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. At this point in time, these countries set forth on a dramatic transformation of their economies, from a centrally-planned with a huge hierarchy directing most economic activity, into market economies. Sweeping reforms are carried out, including privatization of large numbers of state-owned companies, development of new legal systems and creation of new financial institutions. The course studies the very challenging undertaking task of creating new market economies from scratch, a process which is still not complete fifteen years later. |
| Economics of the Welfare State | ECON 423 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Theories of social justice; origins and evolution of the welfare state; insurance theory and social insurance; cash benefits (unemployment insurance, health insurance, disability insurance, poverty relief, pensions); non-cash benefits (education and health services); targeting and conditionality; financing the welfare state; current controversies; welfare policies in Turkey. |
| Welfare Economics | ECON 424 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Competitive price mechanism and its welfare properties. Economic justice; public goods; social welfare functions; Arrow's impossibility theorem; Sen's liberal paradox; voting and aggregation rules. Applications and discussion topics include privatization and allocation of resources for national defense. |
| Topics in Political Economics | ECON 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analysis of selected topics in political decision making processes, based on economic theory. Special political science topics selected by the instructor will be analyzed in depth. |
| Labor Economics | ECON 430 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analysis of labor markets in relation to determination of wages, conditions of work, the distribution of employment; the market demand for labor and the supply of labor; discrimination wage, salary differentials, compensation schemes; job mobility and migration; power in trade unions; the collective bargaining system; government intervention in the labor market. |
| Topics in Economics of Globalization and Development | ECON 440 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Special topics selected by the intructor from a list, including: The international trading system; the actual conduct of international trade, and the opportunities and constraints faced by developing countries; conditions and implications of participating in modern international markets; trade and captial account liberalization; the instruments and scope of trade policy and business strategy at the international level; the role of the IMF and the World Bank in developing economies; issues in Latin American and in Asian economic development. |
| Microeconomics of Banking | ECON 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In all countries, financially advanced or otherwise, financial intermediation is mostly carried out by banks. The course aims at explaining the need for financial intermediation and functions of banks by emphasizing the importance of uncertainty and developing an asymmetric information theory of financial intermediation. In the first part of the course, the focus will be on the bank as an institution. Industrial organization approach to banking and lender/borrower relation are examined. The second part deals with the macroeconomic consequences market imperfections, i.e. financial crisis. The justification for public intervention to deal with the problems caused by the inherent instability of the banking system and globalization are discussed in the last part. |
| Advanced Microeconomic Theory I | ECON 481 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Consumer and demand theory, production and theory of the firm; competitive markets, partial and general equilibrium theory. This course is offered simultaneously as a graduate seminar, see ECON 501. |
| Advanced Microeconomic Theory II | ECON 482 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Choice under uncertainty; basic game theory; imperfect competition, strategic interaction, entry; adverse selection, signalling, screening, moral hazard; mechanism mechanism design; general equilibrium under uncertainty; axiomatic and coalitional bargaining, cooperative models. This course is offered simultaneously as a graduate seminar, see ECON 502. |
| Advanced Macroeconomic Theory I | ECON 483 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Traditional and endogenous growth theories real business cycles, overlapping generation models. This course is offered simultaneously as a graduate seminar, see ECON 503. |
| Advanced Macroeconomic Theory II | ECON 484 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Real and monetary issues in the open economy, unemployment, models of consumption, investment, money, monetary and fiscal policy. This course is offered simultaneously as a graduate seminar, see ECON 504 |
| Advanced Quantitative Methods | ECON 485 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Linear algebra; probability theory, random variables distributions, hypothesis testing, asymptotic distribution theory, estimation. This course is offered simultaneously as a graduate seminar, see ECON 505 |
| Advanced Econometric Theory | ECON 486 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Classical linear regression model, generalized least squares generalized method of moments, qualitative dependent variable models, time series analysis. This course is offered simultaneously as a graduate seminar, see ECON 506. |
| Matchings and Markets | ECON 488 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Game theoretic analysis of the matching of individuals with other individuals or items, typically across two sides, as in marriage, university placement, employment, housing. Competitive cooperative solutions: existence, optimality order structures, constructive procedures; strategic properties; auctions, mechanisms; institution and market design. |
| Topics in Economic Theory | ECON 491 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Advanced issues and models in microeconomic theory. |
| Seminar on the Turkish Economy | ECON 492 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Different development strategies such as import substitution and import promotion; current economic issues in Turkey(from 1923 until present) |
| Understanding Chinese Economy | ECON 493 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide insights into the development and workings of the Chinese Economy and its impact on the World. The topics will cover the economic reform process which made China a major player in the World Economy; the current macroeconomic, financial, and industrial environment; the industrial and technological policies; the foreign policy of China. Chinese politics, as well as its culture and history will also be covered as important background elements of economic life. |
| Introduction to Film Studies | FILM 231 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The cinema as the art-form of the 20th century, taking over from the 19th century novel. Film-making in the context of a "culture of time and space". The basic techniques and processes of film-making. Expanding material possibilities. Cinematographical languages. Diverse and shifting conceptions of the cinema in relation to other discursive forms. Works embodying major moments of film history, to be screened and analyzed in relation to the writings of central film theorists. |
| Approaches to Film Studies | FILM 331 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In 1896, when Auguste and Louis Lumiere held the first public screening of film in Paris, most people imagined that the new invention would be directed towards scientific research rather than the establishment of an entertainment industry. As a viable commercial product cinema soon became a contender for the status of the new century's first original art form. This course will introduce the art, aesthetics and politics of film. It will focus on the particular social and historical context of movies. The course will cover major breakthroughs and significant genres in cinema, as well as different topics, such as style and meaning, elements of film narrative, techniques of film production. The scope will be international and topics will be organized along a historical trajectory. |
| Critical Perspectives on Turkish Cinema | FILM 335 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to engage in a critical investigation of the historical development of Turkish cinema in relation to the transformation of Turkish society. Introducing students to major works of Turkish film history, we will examine some of the key generic, thematic and stylistic preoccupations of Turkish cinema |
| International Cinemas | FILM 345 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | International Cinemas presents an introduction to a variety of films from a range of (inter/trans)national contexts. The course offers ways of understanding these films through historical frameworks, theoretical discussions, and aesthetic analysis. International Cinemas starts with the study of classical Hollywood and European cinema and how they establish certain codes of narrative, narration and style. Then, it will move on to the discussion of various cinemas ranging from Taiwanese to Iranian, movements such as Third Cinema and Chinese Fifth Generation, and filmmakers who speak through a transnational voice such as Wong Kar Wai and Fatih Akın |
| Topics in Film Studies | FILM 390 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This introductory course will cover major subjects and issues in cinema. Specific topics will vary, but may include studies of directors and screenwriters, genres, historical movements, critical approaches, and themes |
| Anthropology and Film | FILM 424 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | How are cultural, political, and historical realities represented in ethnographic, documentary, and fiction films? This course will explore the critical relationship between our knowledge of the world and visual representation through films and theoretical, ethnographic and historical readings. |
| Vision, Representation and Cinema | FILM 432 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Cinema is the art of the 20th century. Though its birth goes all the way back to the 19th century it is, in this long century that cinema has been the medium of high and low art, the medium of propaganda and popular culture. The show and entertainment business of the last century and the consumer culture came out has both contributed to and benefited from the cinema. On the other hand, cinema has transformed the visual culture dramatically as a matter of visuality. It is after the introduction of the movies of the 1920s that human understanding of visuality has taken a radical shift as a consequence of cinema's relation to various aspects, such as psychoanalysis In this regard cinema might be taken as the basic art of the past century with none of the realms of art and social life being ignorant to it. The course will expose the students to the reality both produced and transformed in cinema. Each week a certain field, such as history, politics, psychoanalysis, gender, marginality, will be selected and accordingly films will be analysed to find out how the reality of that specific area is represented. On the background the students will discuss and analyse the basic concerns and concepts of modernity. The course, in this context, will conjointly survey the history, problematics and arts of the past century as well as the adventure of cinema as a technique and art. |
| Documentary: Context and Practice-I | FILM 435 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Since the mid-1800s, people have used still images (photography) and since 1890s, moving images and later sound (film) to represent reality as they perceive it and/or as they choose to represent it. The history of non-fiction film or documentary cinema, is a series of experimentations in the representation of reality. Since the beginning, with these experimentations, debates about ethical, aesthetic, political issues in representation have been unfolding. This course will offer a critical look at the historical development of non-fiction film forms and modes. We will cover documentary theories and criticism, and related issues including ethics and problematics of representation. Students will work on a series of short video exercises and write a series of short responses to the films and the readings. At the end of the semester, students are expected to submit a term paper and a proposal for a project to be implemented next semester. |
| Documentary Context and Practice-II | FILM 436 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a continuation of VA 435, where we have looked at the historical development of non-fiction film forms and modes, major theories, and related issues including ethics and problematics of representation. This semester our focus will again be two-fold. Through recent documentaries, we will be looking at the current issues and debates in the world of non-fiction filmmaking, as well as practical challenges faced by filmmakers. Throughout the semester, various filmmakers will be invited to present and discuss their work. On the practice side, each student will have an opportunity to experiment with representation of reality by making a short non-fiction film and presenting it at various stages in a workshop format. |
| Psychoanalysis and Film | FILM 452 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | It is often observed that the institutions of psychoanalysis and cinema are roughly the same age. This course investigates the ways in which film theory and criticism have been influenced by psychoanalysis and explores the ways in which psychoanalytic theories have informed cinema, either through film form or through plotting and characterization. The course will provide a working understanding of fundamental psychoanalytic concepts and will offer exercise in psychoanalytical film analysis. Each lecture will begin by the screening of a film, proceed by discussing a psychoanalytic concept and conclude by a focus on the intersection points of the readings and the films. By the end of the course, the students will be able to develop their own ideas about film in relation to these theories and apply them to further examples. |
| Myths of Gender | GEN 341 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | How have we developed our ideas of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man? How do these ideas change historically and from one society to another? Asking these questions and others, this course aims to develop a critical awareness of how gender and sexuality have shaped and have been shaped by political, religious, economic, scientific, and cultural practices and discourses in different parts of the world, including Turkey. |
| Topics In Gender & Sexuality Studies | GEN 343 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course addresses historical and contemporary issues in gender and sexuality studies. The specific focus of the course will be announced each semester that it is offered. Topics and approaches may be drawn from anthropology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, performance studies, sociology, and visual studies. |
| Gender and Migration | GEN 383 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to global migration processes through a gendered lens by looking at how roles and identities linked to one’s sex, gender and sexuality shape, and are shaped by, migration causes, conditions and experiences. Topics to be covered include feminization of global migration; care migration, masculinities and migration; sexual and gender based violence, trafficking and asylum; sex and marriage migration and shifting intimacies |
| Independent Study in Gender Studies | GEN 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of gender studies that is not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list and forms of evaluation. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Gender and Politics | GEN 410 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the relationship between gender, culture and politics. It offers a the oretical survey of the role of gender in shaping definitions of the political and practices of citizenship and participation. Through the discussion of concrete examples representing a diversity of cultural, social and political contexts,the course opens up to discussion gendered social and political mobilizations , identity politics, the interaction between the personal and the political, and different forms and spheres of doing politics ranging from the everyday to transnational, face-to face to digital encounters. The course also critically assesses the sociopolitical ramifications of institutional and national gender policies and cultural political perspectives regarding changing gender relations. |
| Gender in the Middle East | GEN 441 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces the key issues and debates in the study of gender in the Middle East. It aims to provide a gendered analysis of the prevailing discourses, ideologies and social movements in the region and to equip students with skills and methodologies to analyse the shaping of the gender identities in relation to social, political and cultural processes from the late 19th century to the present. The course also aims to link the historical questions and issues regarding gender to contemporary discussions and discourses on femininities and masculinities in the Middle East. Core topics include the interconnections between feminism and nationalism , the veiling debate, women’s agency, Islamic feminism, masculinities, and politics of sexuality during and after the Arab Spring. |
| Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence | GEN 442 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | 20th century has been ''a century of wars, global and local, hot and cold? (Catherine Lutz). The course explores the different ways in which war and political violence are remembered through a gender lens. Central questions include: what are the gendered effects of war, political violence, and militarization? How have wars, genocide and other forms of political violence been narrated and represented? How do women remember and narrate gendered violence in war? How are post-conflict processes and transitional justice gendered? What is the relationship between testimony, storytelling, and healing? How is the relationship between the ''personal'' and the ''public/national'' reconstructed in popular culture, film, literature, and (auto)biographical texts dealing with war, genocide, and other forms of political violence? How are wars memorialized and gendered through monuments, museums, and other memory sites? Besides others, case studies on Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, and Argentina will be used to elaborate the key concepts and debates in the emerging literature on gender, memory, and war. |
| Gender and Sexuality in Turkey | GEN 444 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will explore a wide variety of texts ranging from academic, literary and political writings to films and documentaries on gender and sexuality in Turkey. Topics include the evolution of the feminist movement from the late nineteenth century till today, the experiences and narratives of masculinity, violence against women, virginity debates, the interconnections between gender and nationalism, religious and state discourses on the body, the politics of secularism and Islam, the writings and experiences of minorities, politics of sexuality and queer politics. |
| Men and Mesculinities | GEN 480 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to be study of men as gendered social beings and masculinities as learnt, reproduced or challenged performances. Topics include an interdisciplinary examination of social and personal meanings of masculinity; variety of male experience by social class, race, sexuality, and age; emerging as boys/men;and public discourses and representations about changing masculinities. |
| History of Photography and Moving Image | HART 213 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will review the invention of photography and film in the context of different arguments concerning the history of representation and representational practices. In what ways were photography and film new? In what ways did they serve contemporary interests? What, if anything, do photography and moving image practices share? The work of different historians of film and photography will be reviewed, as well as a range of work by photographers and film-makers which has been judged to be important in those histories. |
| Classical Mythology in Art | HART 234 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is intended as an introduction to Greek and Roman mythology. The aim is to acquaint students to the major mythological characters and stories. Greek and Roman gods, goddesses, demigods, heroes and their stories have employed and interpreted in works of art, literature, and music throughout centuries. This course aims to offer a basic yet solid background to students who wish to have a better understanding of such reflections in various fields of cultural production. Without disregarding the religious and ritual aspects of mythology, this course focuses on the characters and the stories themselves rather than theory. Following the trail of Ovid, the course will explore how myths were used in the visual arts. |
| From Modern to Contemporary Art | HART 292 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a historical survey of art practices from the late 19th century to the contemporary era in the Western art world, with a focus on major trends, such as Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Abstract Art, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism. Introducing the historical and cultural context that influenced the transformation of artistic expression, the course equips students with an understanding of the concept and visual expressionof the avant-garde within a diversity of mediums from painting and sculpture to performance, installation and participatory practices. |
| Contemporary Art | HART 293 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course is an overview of the main currents in contemporary art starting from the 60's to the late 90's, set against political, social and technological developments of the world. It's a comparatively study of 60's-70's American and European art movements, and explores the art in the 80's Post-Modern area. The course later converges on the 90's Global art practices and their effects to recent developments within the artistic and social realm. |
| Renaissance Art | HART 311 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is intended as a introduction to the aesthetics and representational practice of the Early Renaissance. It examines and discusses how a bold vision of humanity coupled with revolutionary experiments in the visual arts set the foundations of the Western canon. |
| Renaissance Visuality II (Cinquecento) | HART 312 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is intended as an introduction to the art, aesthetics and representational practice of the High Renaissance and Mannerism in Italy. It examines and discusses how a bold new vision of humanity coupled with revolutionary experiments in the visual arts established the foundations of the Western canon. |
| Women Artists | HART 320 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to works by women artists that practice(d) in the field of visual arts, in the 19th and 20th centuries. It covers art historical areas from Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism to Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art & Feminist Art of the 1960's onwards. It focuses on women artists whose fame had/has already been established during their own life times. This course aims to provide students with an understanding of visual and cultural aspects of modern and postmodern art approached through the study of women's works. It also gives them an insight into the conditions of art practice for women before and at the start of the feminist art movement. |
| Art and Power | HART 323 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the role of art and architecture in the representation of political power and ideology. Students will have the opportunity to examine and discuss such topics as imperial imagery, iconography of architecture, and dynastic symbolism. The course will cover a broad range of examples from ancient Egypt, Rome, Byzantium, medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the Ottoman Empire. Some lectures will take place at sites in Istanbul. |
| The Imaginary of the Middle Ages in Modern Art and Popular Culture | HART 330 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the appropriation and reenactment of imaginary concepts and forms of ?the medieval? in modern art and popular culture. It discusses selected works of art, architecture, literature, and cinema from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Where appropriate, as with the Bayeux Tapestry and the Overlord Embroidery, medieval sources of inspiration will be brought into the discussion to problematize the relationship between the imaginary of the Middle Ages that was appropriated and reenacted, and the dynamics behind the production of the medieval work of art. In cases where connections are not immediate (the works of J. R R. Tolkien), or where the source of inspiration is itself imaginary (the Legend of King Arthur), the emphasis will be on different modes of the imaginary at play in medieval and modern contexts. |
| Heavenly Spires: Introduction to Medieval European Art and Architecture | HART 333 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The art and architecture of the Middle Ages in Western Europe from the time of Charlemagne until the Late Gothic era. The spread of indigenous Germanic traditions, and the eventual demise of Roman culture. Charlemagne's renovatio as the threshold of both an ordered society and a new age of faith. Churches and monasteries proliferating in Carolingian and Romanesque Europe as new centers of learning and art. The subsequent shift of the economy from the countryside to the growing cities, leading to a new cultural milieu displaying unprecedented responsiveness to the material world. The contrasts between the realism of Gothic imagery and the highly stylized, almost abstract forms of the Romanesque; between the bright interiors of the new soaring cathedrals that rose over the skylines of medieval cities, and the dark, massive structures of the preceding era. Gothic cathedrals as the most impressive symbols of this High Medieval moment. For the possibility of being taken as a graduate-level taught course, subject to extra readings and other requirements, see HART 533. |
| Roman Art in Context | HART 334 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to present a survey of Roman art in its archaeological, historical, cultural and social context. Rather than a simple presentation of aesthetically pleasing art objects, the course questions and scrutinizes the peculiar visual language created and conveyed by images. The following questions are discussed: What do we mean by Roman art and what artistic media does it include? How does it relate to Greek art? How did the Romans express power and political agenda through art? How did they express pleasure or self-image? While the presentation of the material is chronological for better understanding, the approach is contextual and thematic. Particular attention is paid to the understanding of the different media, which comprise portrait and relief sculpture, sarcophagi, wall painting, mosaics, and minor arts, such as gems. Students are expected to learn the basics of Roman art and take the first steps in questioning its historical value. |
| Art in the Age of Transition (from Renaiss. to Early Modern) | HART 392 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to equip the student with the knowledge of the art movements and schools appeared in the post-Renaissance period. The period covered stretches from the 17th to the end of the 19th century. In this framework the counter reformation, baroque art, the rococo, the century enlightenment period and its visuality, and the experimental movements of the 19th century will be reviewed. The artists such as Dürer, Holbein, Bruegel, ElGreco, Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Watteau, David will be considered. |
| Art in the age of Revolt: Early Modernity | HART 411 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to consider what has counted as modern in art since --and before-- the advent of the avant-garde in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. The changing relations between notions of modernity and the aims of artists and their works is reviewed. The significance of movements in art, such as romanticism, realism, impressionism, and post-impressionism, towards the development of `modern art' is assessed. Students may expect to consider works by key artists such as Delacroix, Ingres, Turner, Constable, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh. Notions of modernity and modernism in art will be examined as part of a consideration of the aims of modern art, social, political or otherwise. |
| Visual Arts in Turkey | HART 413 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | “Visual Art in Turkey” is an overall historical survey on Turkish visual arts from the late 19th century to the present. Framing issues of tradition, modernity, postmodernity, contemporaneity within a chronological trajectory, the course aims to introduce students to the changes in artistic production in relation to cultural changes in Turkish society in the 20th century. Historical and cultural shifts relating to artistic identity, artistic trends, and artworks are taken into focus to reflect the transformation of the artistic sphere and visual culture in modern Turkey. |
| Post 60 Turkish Art | HART 414 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The post-60 period in Turkey is open to an immense transformation at the levels of the social, cultural and the political. The period witnesses the birth of the popular culture and the emergence of the civil society as a relatively autonomous body. The art produced in this period is prolific and varies in style. The course will discuss the 1960-2000 period in Turkey with particular emphasis on the determining social and cultural changes. |
| Art Project at the Museum | HART 424 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this one credit course is above all to use the educational potential of an important exhibition held in Istanbul (at Sakıp Sabancı Museum or elsewhere). It aims to provide students with knowledge on a given art history / history topic based on the closer study of ‘’the authentic works’’ displayed at the exhibition (although the lecture material will not be limited to exhibited works) while guiding them towards the completion of a museum practice-oriented project. |
| Art & History at the Museum | HART 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is above all to seize seize the opportunity of an important museum exhibition held in Istanbul (at SSM or elsewhere) by using its educational potential: The course will not only be based on ''although not limited to' the exhibition material, it will also be taught at the museum. This course aims to provide students with knowledge on a given art history/ history topic based on a closer study of ''the real works'' displayed at the exhibition but also based on the design and implementation of museum practice-oriented projects that will be integrated in the museum educational activities. The topic of this course will change each time it is offered since it depends on the opportunities provided by ongoing exhibitions in İstanbul |
| Leonardo and Michelangelo: Heroes of the Renaissance | HART 426 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course looks at the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti, the two protagonists of the High Renaissance whose fame has assumed mythical proportion over the centuries. The work of these artists will be analyzed against the cultural and intellectual background of sixteenth-century Italy. Issues discussed include the philosophical and scientific inquiries that defined the humanist discourse, new challenges of knowledge, and rise of the mercantile aristocracy. The focus of the course will be on the impact of these developments on the arts and the re-definition of the Renaissance visual code. Leonardo's analytical scrutiny and Michelangelo's sweeping vision are two opposites that epitomize the new visuality. The class will analyze major works of the period to understand the development of their respective styles and their impact on the artistic scene. The course will conclude with an examination of the myth of Leonardo and Michelangelo, its reception and relevance today. |
| The Dome of Gold : The Art of the Byzantine Empire | HART 431 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the art and architecture of the Byzantine Empire from its beginnings in the sixth century until its end in 1453. The story of Byzantium begins with emperor Justinian's attempt to revive the glory of ancient Rome in Constantinople. This was short-lived, as ethnic and political upheavals in the following centuries set the eastern empire on a path of decline into the status of a medieval principality. Austere saints in dim candlelit interiors replaced the festive images of salvation that had adorned the walls of Justinian's dazzling bright churches. Despite this inclination toward mysticism, links with Antiquity were not severed, and a profoundly classical humanism came to permeate even the strictest and most transcendental of Byzantine mosaics, ivory plaques, illuminated manuscripts, or icons. It is no accident, therefore, that even under the Paleologue dynasty, there should have been a true classical revival which anticipated the Italian Renaissance. |
| Post-1945 American Art | HART 432 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Most of the modern issues under discussion and the cult of modernist, experimental art are an outcome of the American art produced in the post-1960 period. Initially, the course will introduce an overview of the New York School Painting, Minimalism and Pop Art at large. Subsequently, the post-1960 art movements such as Body Art, Performance Art, Electronic Art, Feminist Art, New Expressionism and Appropriation Art will be discussed with respect to the social and political background of the period. |
| Art and Architecture of the Medieval Mediterranean | HART 434 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides a comparative survey of the medieval art and architecture (3rd - 13th centuries) of the Mediterranean basin. The history of medieval art and architecture has been traditionally divided into various (Late Antique, Early Christian, Islamic, Romanesque, Gothic, Jewish) compartments by temporal, stylistic and geographic lines. One aim of this course is to challenge such divisions by focusing on the larger Mediterranean basin in comparative light, and introducing continuities, interactions, contacts and conflicts that render the above categories obsolete. Another aim is to challenge the established practice of art and architectural history by focusing, instead of the form alone, on the comparable circumstances under which art and architecture were produced. |
| Designing the Nation. Art and Nationalism | HART 444 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the role of the visual arts and architecture in nationalist ideologies. The first part of the course is an introduction into visual representation, style, iconography, and symbolism. Examples used include a comparative study of public and imperial imagery of ancient Rome, Napoleonic Europe, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The main part of the course focuses on subject matter, idioms and aesthetics systems in official architecture, public monuments and the fine and decorative arts perceived as representative of a nation's origins or cultural affiliation: from revivalist idioms (Gothic to Renaissance and Byzantine to Ottoman) to themes and idioms drawing from history, myth and folklore. The lectures will concentrate on case studies from Central Europe and the Balkans, but will include an overview of developments in the visual arts and architecture of England, Germany, France, Russia, and Turkey. |
| Caravaggio | HART 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Caravaggio was one of the greatest artists of all time. He was also one of the most controversial. Nicolas Poussin once said of Caravaggio that he came into the world to destroy the art of painting. Artist, convicted murderer, and adventurer, Caravaggio was offensive and provocative in art as in life. His drunks and thugs impersonating saints set in Rome’s filthy alleys and seedy taverns shook the art world to the core. Caravaggio sneered at classicism and the canons held sacred since the Renaissance and chose to rely on natural observation instead. This course focuses on issues of style, content, and patronage to understand Caravaggio’s art and its deeper implications. Was his rejection of refinement a criticism of the excesses of the church? Was it an appeal by the embattled Roman church to the poor and underprivileged? Or was it simply a radical avant-garde statement for its own sake? |
| Bauhaus | HART 480 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | For one extraordinary moment between the two world wars creativity was set free from social bonds and bold experimentation in the arts echoed revolutionary changes in technology and society. At the vanguard was Bauhaus, the school and movement that merged art, architecture, and design into a style free from the bonds of history and national boundaries. Bauhaus was truly an international art for a new age. This course looks at the key moments in the history of Bauhaus against the cultural and intellectual backdrop of interwar Europe and treats them within the wider context of modernism. It covers a variety of related art, architecture and design movements starting briefly with an overview of the origins of modernism in the work of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau and concluding with important movements such as Constructivism, Cubism, De Stijl, New Objectivity, Suprematism and Futurism. |
| Principles of Atatürk and the History of the Turkish Revolution I | HIST 191 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This basic, comprehensive survey of the politics, economics and sociology of Turkish modernization begins with a review of the pressures building up on the Ottoman Empire, and the recurring confrontations between the conservative and the reform-minded wings of the ruling elite, through the 17th and 18th centuries, dovetailing into the challenges confronting the porte under Selim III and Mahmud II. The long drawn-out tragedy of the Turkish 19th century, comprising: a context of continuing retreat and territorial contraction, as well as of deepening despair, summed up as a non-colonial pattern of incorporation; the complicated relationships between the Great Powers and the various Balkan nationalisms; the initial introduction and the subsequent expansion of modernization agendas from the top down; the interplay of political and economic factors, and of local vs international forces, in the major crises of the 1830s, the 1850s, and the 1870s; the course of restructuring in the legal, administrative, educational, fiscal and economic spheres; the ancien régime complexity set up by Tanzimat dualisms; the Ottomans' ambition to modernize and to be recognized as modern (and hence of being admitted into the Concert of Europe); the gradual emergence of a state of law, and the replacement of the First Constitution's abortive liberalism by the resurgent authoritarianism of the Hamidian era. |
| Principles of Atatürk and the History of the Turkish Revolution II | HIST 192 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The''revolution vs empire''dilemna faced by the Young Turks in 1908 ,continuing into:the intellectual ferment of the first two decades of the century ;the impact of the Balkan Wars and of Gallipoli on Turkish nationalism; the beginnings of an Anatolia -oriented populism;the fatique and despair of 1918-19 ,and the call to mobilize for one last struggle ;the forging of a new leadership and of a program of resistance ; and the role of local and national elements in the grand alliance for independence.From 1923 onwards,attention shifts to : economic reconstruction; the ''smashing the idols'' refoms of the 1920s and early 30s;education,history, archeology,folklore,and the construction of a new national identity;the Great Depression and the shift to a more statist economic policy; the difficulties of the war years; and the 1946-50 transition to parliamentary pluralism.In conclusion ,the course raises some broad analytical questions : the Kemalist revolution in comparative perspective; the emergence and development of a ''catching up agenda'' in a non -colonial context;the pragmatism and empiricism of Kemalism contrasted with other (later)examples of national developmentalism; the prospects for Turkish democracy on the threshold of the 21st century. |
| History of the Twentieth Century | HIST 205 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The first half of the 20th century witnessed catastrophic destruction through world wars and genocides; its third quarter, in contrast, became a period of unprecedented stability and affluence; this, however, gave way to yet another phase of collapse and epochal change that marked not only the end of the century but perhaps also the end of the entire Modern Era. This course proposes to look at all this social and political tumult, as well as the accompanying history of culture, ideas, art and science, through the works and overlapping yet diverging interpretations of some its major observers and commentators. |
| Renaissance and Reformation Europe | HIST 221 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | European society and art c. 1300-1600. The cultural underpinnings of the transition from a horizontally organized world of regional civilizations and their relatively isolated great traditions, to a more vertically organized modern world-system. Individualism and its manifestations. Aspects of wealth and public space in the maritime city-states of Italy. Religious and civic humanism. Concentrations of talent in architecture, painting and sculpture from Florence to Rome and Venice. The Church from the late Middle Ages into the Early Modern Era. Critical independence, the printing press, and anti-clericalism. Luther at Worms: authority vs the individual conscience. The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Mannerism and the Baroque in Italy, Germany and northern Europe. |
| Women in Pre-Modern Societies | HIST 223 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In recent decades, the feminist challenge to a male, ruling class dominated genre of history-writing from above has moved quickly from the 1960s' paradigm of women purely as "victims of patriarchy", through underscoring women's scope for autonomous counter-activity, to extricating "herstory" from "history" as virtually the only true and valid account. Today, though a re-integration is under way, focusing not on a separate "women's history" but on women in history - or even better, on historical women, whose real lives may be seen to have comprised a dimension of sharing and co-existence as well as a dimension of oppression and resistance. In HIST 223, all such issues and debates form part of the theoretical background that frames an empirical investigation of women's position, roles, and modes of activity in kin-based societies, in the early empires of Antiquity, in India and the Far East, in Greece and Rome, in medieval Christendom and Islamdom and in the Ottoman Empire. |
| History Goes to the Movies | HIST 227 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Contrary to popular belief, historical "facts" do not speak for themselves, but are structured into different interpretations which acquire even greater degrees of autonomy as we move from scholarship to art. The course will revolve around a number of movies grouped around (a) themes ranging from war to religion or from royalty to peasant life; (b) periods ranging from Biblical times to World War II; (c) geographies extending from China to the Americas; and (d) production traditions ranging from Cinecitta to Hollywood. In each case, discussion will cover the historical period, event(s) or process(es) that the movie focuses on, as well as the role of the film-maker's vision in constructing that representation. |
| The Medieval Hero, East and West | HIST 233 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Designed as an introduction to reading and analyzing epic narratives, this course focuses on four such key types of works re-introduced in writing during the Middle Ages : the Shahnama, the Oghuznama, the Alexander Romance, and the Arthurian Legends. Introduced at the outset will be the main themes and narrative tools employed in the construction of epics; the common features which make a “hero”; and the relevant historical contexts. These will then be brought to bear on a close examination of the works in question, with the final case study of Alexander and the Romances serving to explore the common aspects of “Eastern” and “Western” epics and heroes. The course will conclude with a discussion of the afterlife of these epics. |
| The Age of Revolution 1789-1848 | HIST 242 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | European society and art at a time of cataclysmic transformation, involving both the Industrial Revolution the creation of the material foundations of modern welfare, and the French Revolution and the forging of the political and cultural structures of mass democracy. The old regime, the Enlightenment, and the storm. Classicism, romanticism, realism. The art market and the reading public. Studies of genres, artists and works including Hogarth, David, Goya, Constable, Delacroix, Courbet, Turner; Wordsworth, Coleridge Blake, Shelley, Keats, Byron; Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner; the rise of the novel. |
| Men, Ships and the Sea | HIST 245 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The history of shipbuilding and seafaring offers fascinating insights into the interaction between ecologies, technologies, incentives and ambitions, knowledge, production, and lifestyles. Human societies inhabiting coastal areas have developed various ship types both by way of utilising the available materials, and in order to cope with the specific problems posed by different seas or oceans. As a complicated piece of machinery, each such ship generates multiple technological demands on different sectors; it also becomes a part of dense patterns of human existence, comprising routes, movement, trade, exploration, and migrations. Combining social with technological history, the course proposes to explore these and other themes through the prism of five major ship types : a Mediterranean galley; an 18th century ship-of-the-line; a tea clipper; a dreadnought; and an ocean liner from the gilded age of transatlantic travel. |
| The Süleymanic Era | HIST 285 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to analyze the political institutions and social organization of the Ottoman Empire at the time of its greatest impact in world history. The evolution of political ideas and institutions and the articulation of internal social mechanisms will be studied across the full spectrum of Ottoman involvement in European and Asian affairs - in diplomacy, warfare and trade as well as ideological and cultural contacts and interactions ranging from Renaissance Europe to flourishing Asian empires. |
| Episodes in the History of Science I | HIST 315 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course will begin with a quick survey of history of science from Antiquity to the present. It will then concentrate on the main aim, which is to try to have a better understanding of the emergence of the new science in central and western Europe following the Renaissance era. What are the cultural and social factors which helped this breakthrough, how did the results affect people's lifestyles and political views, and why did it take so many centuries for the scientific method to penetrate the Ottoman realm? These and other subjects will be discussed in a collective manner, many items will be assigned to students for deeper study, and new findings will bring important contributions to our understanding. |
| Episodes in the History of Science II | HIST 316 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A sequel to HIST 315, which pursues the story of the further development of the sciences and their impact on society from the middle of the 19th century to the present, covering, together with the West, the history of science in both Ottoman and Republican Turkey. As in HIST 315, an episodic treatment requiring extensive student participation throughout. |
| Revolutions in History | HIST 323 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What is a revolution? Are revolutions necessary and inevitable, hence universal? Is their balance sheet all positive or all negative ? Why, after an enduring revolutionist legacy, are revolutions being so strictly questioned today? Does "the end of history" mean "the end of revolutions" ? The course proposes to tackle these and other questions from a standpoint situated outside both the revolutionary and the anti-revolutionary discourses that have long dominated the intellectual scene. Attempting to construct a new, critical historiography of the subject, it draws on the evidence provided by a number of case studies on the English, the French, the Russian, the Kemalist and the Chinese revolutions, and works its way through a number of thinkers ranging from Burke and Tocqueville through Marx to Brinton, Skocpol, Furet or Hobsbawm, in order to problematize themes like the link between revolutions and modernity, the time-space distribution of revolutions, "normal" and "abnormal" politics, crises of legitimacy, the dialectics of leadership and mass support, stages of revolutionary action, violence and demonstrations of punishment, the radicalization and militarization of revolutions, European and non-European revolutions, and the alignments and legacies of revolutions. Also see HIST 623 for the possibility of being taken simultaneously as a graduate seminar subject to extra conditions and requirements. |
| A History of North America up to the Reconstruction Era | HIST 324 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is mainly a history of the English colonies and of the United States of America up to the third quarter of the 19th century. Topics to be dealt with include : Old and New World societies; what "discovery" entailed; exchange and transfer of people, germs, animals, plants and technology; Spanish vs English colonization; New England vs the Chesapeake Bay colonies; the importance of being Puritan; European rivalries and native alliances; England and the colonies; the Navigation Acts; indentured servitude and slavery; the American Revolution; the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; the initial growth and expansion of the United States; the North-South divide; religious / social reform and party politics; the debate over slavery vs Abolitionism; "states' rights" and the Civil War of 1861-1865. |
| Latin American History and Culture | HIST 326 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a historical survey of the Latin American continent, organized around instances of encounter, disruption, exchange and creativity. Major themes to be dealt with comprise : colonial encounters and legacies, including especially the Columbian Exchange; the dynamics of slavery and slave societies; post-independence processes of nation-building; Latin America's post-/neo-colonial relationship to the United States; the 20th century predicaments of the region, ranging from dictatorships to genocide, from racism to modern day slavery and police violence. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the course surveys the literature as well as the film, music, literature and policy produced within the region, students will be exposed to ways of thinking about Latin American culture and society, as well as to how Latin American artists, writers and intellectuals represent their nations and cultures to themselves and to the world |
| Early Islamic History : A Survey | HIST 331 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course covers the period from the emergence of Islam to the end of Abbasid rule in Baghdad, and focuses on the central lands of Islam. After a chronological review of the political processes of expansion, state-formation, and decentralization, various aspects of social and intellectual life are examined. Topics to be covered include : the question of unity and diversity in Islamic history; the development of the religious sciences, law, political thought and philosophy; social hierarchies in theory and practice; and economic life and thought. For the possibility of being taken as a graduate course, subject to additional readings and work requirements, see HIST 531. |
| Islamic History: the Middle Period (c.945 - 1500) | HIST 332 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A continuing survey of Islamic history from around the middle of the 10th century, comprising: the deepening crisis of the Abbasid caliphate; mass conversions to Islam among non-Arab peoples (including the Karakhanids as well as the Volga Bulgars); the triumph of the Seljukid war-leadership over the Ghaznavids, and from 980 the overrunning of East Iran, then Mesopotamia, and eventually Asia Minor by this new Turkish warrior nobility. A first external shock in the form of the Crusades. With the breakup of the Greater Seljukids, the emergence of a series of independent Seljukid successor sultanates in Anatolia, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Kirman and Iran; the triple division of the caliphate itself (between the Abbasids in Baghdad, the Fatimids in Egypt, and the Umayyads in Spain). A second external shock of the Mongol conquest. Finally, the rise of the Mamluks in Egypt, the Ottomans in northwest Anatolia and Rumelia, and the Safavids in Iranian space. |
| The Gunpowder Empires of the Islamic World, ca. 1450-1800 | HIST 335 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course focuses on the so-called gunpowder empires of the Islamic world of the early modern era, i.e. the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India and Safavid Iran. As part of a universal trend, it was this age when much of the current territorial, confessional, political, social and cultural boundaries dividing the Islamic world were set up. The course consists of three units. After an introduction, first it focuses on the political history of these polities, compares them with each other from various aspects, including religion, administration, the military, economy, trade, the role of and attitude to minorities, as well as various facets of culture. Lastly it revisits these issues by way of a critique of decline narratives related to the Islamic World. It discusses Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal history not only as comparative but also as connected phenomena. |
| History of Central and Inner Asia | HIST 336 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course surveys the history of Central and Inner Asia (the territory of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, Kirgizstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as Mongolia and Northwest China) from the beginnings to the present, also including in the discussion the East European steppe region when appropriate. While it looks at this vast geographical space as part of various imperial configurations (the Hun, Türk, Kazar, Mongol, Timurid, and Russian Empires, as well as the Muslim Caliphate and the Soviet Union), it discusses local historical processes and dynamics, addressing the question of in what sense the region can be considered a separate historical-geographical entity. |
| War and Society II : The Military Revolution and the Genesis of the Modern State | HIST 341 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is the second in a series of five "period" courses revolving around the general theme of the social roots and determinants of warfare, and the impact of war on society. The series as a whole is designed to contribute to both the war-and-peace and the state-formation and state- theory dimensions of the SPS degree program, while this course in particular focuses on the second major threshold problematized by the new military history: the European development and crystallization of the modern state. Readings, ranging from Geoffrey Parker and Michael Howard, to Gabor Agoston and Rhoads Murphey, draw heavily on Charles Tilly's notion of "war-making and state-making as organized crime", as well as the literature on the "military revolution", which is seen as a new way of organizing fighting with gunpowder weapons. Crucial in this regard was the invention of a close-order infantry drill, though developments in siege and naval warfare were also important. This then impacted in all directions, transforming warriors into soldiers in order to effect one of the greatest homogenizations of modernity: armies in uniform, bearing standardized weapons, using standardized ammunition and undergoing constant training in order to achieve clockwork precision in carrying out standardized commands -- the same kind of mechanical precision that was overtaking the sphere of production through the division of labour in Adam Smith's manufactories. It also engendered enormous costs, forcing state apparatuses into functional specialization, bureaucratization, and the creation of national tax systems in order to pay for the supply lines and systems required by modern warfare. There were social consequences (in the form of process analysis); also existential consequences for non-European societies, including the Ottomans, who like a few other pre-modern empires were faced with the-do-or-die question of "importing the European army." |
| Diplomatic History of the Modern Era I (1815-1950) | HIST 348 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An overview of international politics and diplomacy from the Settlement of Vienna to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Weekly sub-themes to be pursued as issues both in diplomatic and military history, and in international law, include : (1) A general introduction focusing on the transformations wrought by the French Revolution; (2) the Congress of Vienna; (3) the Age of Restoration; (4) the Eastern Question and the Crimean War; (5) the Paris Conference and settlement; (6) the age of nationalisms and national unification; (7) the age of imperialism, and the emergence of permanent alliances or ententes; (8) World War I and the various treaties of Paris; (9) the League of Nations; (10) revisionism in Central Europe; (11) World War II and the birth of the UN; (12) de-colonization; (13) the onset of the Cold War. |
| Diplomatic History of the Modern Era II (1945-2004) | HIST 349 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Aims to provide an overview of international developments from the Potsdam Conference down to the current issues of globalization and the emergence of USA as the only world power. Topics dealt with include : the origins of the Cold War; NATO and the Warsaw Pact; regional wars (Korea, Vietnam) and other crises (Berlin, Cuba, the Middle East); ); the partial thaw of the 1970s; the SALT agreements; the Third World and the Non-Alignment movement; the Helsinki Summit of 1975. Escalating tensions from the late 1970s into the 1980s (renewed nuclear buildups, together with crises in Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia- Somalia). The disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. A new era of diplomatic and military instability, marked by US unilateralism, the emergence of China as a new power, the EU as another global player, continuing problems in Russia, "failed states" in the Third World, and global terrorism. |
| History of a City I : From Byzantion to Constantinople | HIST 370 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | ''A city capable of absorbing everything,'' is how the famous French historian Maurice Aymard described Constantinople / Istanbul in the 1970s. HIST 370 is designed to take students through the first two thousand years of this many-layered history, starting with a modest colony established by the Greek polis of Megara, growing through a crucial choice made by Constantine early in the AD 4th century into ''New Rome'', then rising and ultimately falling, in 1453, with the fortunes of the Byzantine empire. A historical introduction on these and other key phases will be followed by in-depth lectures many of which will be delivered on site in the course of study trips to leading Byzantine locations and monuments. A minimum of two such lecture hours per week will be complemented by intensive discussion sessions. For the possibility of taking ''History of a City I'' as a graduate course, subject to additional readings as well as research and writing requirements, see HIST 570. |
| History of a City II : Ottoman Istanbul, 1450-1900 | HIST 371 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Beginning with a baseline survey of conditions prevailing shortly before the siege and eventual capture of Constantinople by Mehmed II in 1453, HIST 371, whether taken independently or as a sequel to HIST 370, is designed to take students from Ottoman Istanbul's initial re-building and repopulation, through its 16th century efflorescence as the capital of a new and resurgent empire, as well as through the manifold transformations of the 17th and 18th centuries, into the Tanzimat onset of modernity. Historical backgrounding lectures on these and other key phases or developments will be complemented with other, on site lectures in the course of study trips to leading Ottoman locations and monuments. For the possibility of proceeding from the ?taught course? components of HIST 371 to primary research at the advanced graduate level, see HIST 571. |
| The Ottomans, Europe and the World in the Sixteenth | HIST 385 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Century A broad comparative perspective : political formations and societies in a century of quickened change. European ''early modern'' era compared with the Ottomans and other great Muslim empires (Safavi, Mughal), as well as with Ming China and the establishment of Tokugawa Japan. Social and political institutions; global reach of Atlantic Europe; claims, aspirations and objectives of Asian empires. |
| Late Ottoman and Modern Turkish Foreign Policy | HIST 397 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course presents a detailed survey, based on primary source materials, of (a) the foreign policy orientations that the Ottoman state was forced to adopt in the face of developments originating in the realm of the Eurocentric international relations of the last quarter of the 19th century; and (b) the foreign policy course pursued by the modern Turkish Republic from the first quarter of the 20th century. Special attention will be devoted to exploring the inner connections between Turkey's foreign policy issues, and international politics in general, as well as the continuities and discontinuities of a critical century in the history of Turkish foreign policy. For the possibility of being taken as a graduate research seminar, subject to the condition of producing a major research paper based on primary sources, see HIST 697. |
| The Twentieth Century Through Art and Literature | HIST 406 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course seeks not to familiarize students with a basic factography of the 20th century, but to guide them into explorations of the infinite variety of its human conditions -- perceived through great art, literature and films pertaining to its great tragedies, bunched for example around the horror of trench warfare; the promise and failure of revolutions; Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism; totalitarianisms and their camp systems; occupations and resistance movements; atrocities and genocides; life in the shadow of nuclear weapons; readings and meanings of the collapse of Communism; the rise, degeneration and fall of the Third World. |
| The Scientific Revolution | HIST 415 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Scientific Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries did more than explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. It also invented scientific method. Thereby it established a new way of knowing. Furthermore, it built science, which was not even a distinct, recognizable activity up to that point, into the independent and centrally important institution that it has become in contemporary society, It was only from the mid-17th century onward, that the material, social, political and cultural conditions which have become integral parts of modern science emerged. Dealing with all these and other dimensions, this course will focus especially on the interaction between scientific ideas and the context that gave birth to them. It offers a gallery of sources and methods historians of science use to understand science in the past, and introduces students to reading and analyzing scientific texts, individuals and circumstances in history. The course also aims to encourage literacy across disciplines and faculties on the history of science. |
| Nature and Empires | HIST 423 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What did empires look like on the ground? What can changing landscapes tell us about the history of imperialism or colonial societies, politics, and economies? How did local environments aid or constrain particular forms of empire? How did the study and use of nature contribute to the conquest and exploitation of foreign territories, or the expansion, administration, and upheaval of colonial regimes? This course will survey the recent scholarly literature on the global environmental history of empire, with emphasis on Early Modern and Modern European colonies. Special attention will focus on the environmental aspects of the reciprocal relationship between science (especially medicine, natural history, geography, and anthropology) and the making and unmaking of empires. |
| Family, Childhood and Gender in European History | HIST 424 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Historical and cultural studies have previously discounted the history of the ''private life'', such that takes place within the intimate sphere of home. In that respect, women and children as individuals, and family, as a social entity were kept out of research and analysis for a long time. In the 1960s, however, social history had a pioneering and remarkable role as a major authority to change the status quo. Gender, childhood, and family came to be considered as significant sites of analysis and the consecutive decades brought about the formation of them into significant fields of inquiry. History of family, history of childhood, and gender history grew considerably in time and the last three decades have produced discrete historical studies that provide richly detailed accounts on these issues. Parallel with this trend, this course will specifically focus on family, gender, and childhood in Europe in order to provide an alternative version of studying European history. |
| The History of Childhood and Youth in Modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire | HIST 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is devoted to comparative perspectives on the cultural, social, economic, and political history of childhood and youth in both 19th century Europe and the Ottoman Empire. More specifically, it will focus on how children as historical actors played a role in the history of their communities. An introduction on children in historiography will be followed by explorations of : European and Ottoman childhood(s) before the modern era; the ''discovery'' of childhood and youth in modern times; families and child-rearing; motherhood and fatherhood; policies and practices relating to education; policies and practices relating to Ottoman child labor; crime, criminalization, and juvenile delinquency; mechanisms of constructing adolescence; the sexuality of childhood and youth; orphans and non-family environments of growing up. The course will conclude with a preview of childhood and youth issues in modern Turkey. |
| Education, Literacy, Printing | HIST 427 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The history of education and literacy in Islamic and Ottoman societies from around 1400 to 1800 will be studied in comparative perspective. Topics will include : conceptions of reading and education in pre-modern societies; elite readers and elite reading matter; the diffusion of literacy and publishing; the social and political conditions for widespread printing in Tokugawa Japan; comparisons between pre-1800 modes and levels of literacy in the Russian and Ottoman empires. |
| Introduction to Byzantine History (AD 300-1453) | HIST 431 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the society, politics, and culture of Byzantium. It covers the transformation of the Late Roman through the East Roman into the Byzantine empire, the role of the Byzantine church, the changing political, military, and economic fortunes of the empire over the centuries, as well as the everyday life of various social groups (including peasants, soldiers, monks, artisans, and women). Byzantium will be treated not in isolation, but in a broader world-context comprising its neighbors and political rivals, and focusing especially on its relations with the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, the Balkan Slavs, and contemporary Muslim powers. Readings will include a variety of printed primary sources in translation together with selections from the standard secondary literature. |
| Medieval Europe: A Social and Economic History | HIST 433 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Introduces the student to the basic shape and some fundamental problems of the European Middle Ages, and simultaneously to the works and ideas of a number of leading Medievalists. Topics dealt with include: a retrospective on the Renaissance and Enlightenment construction of the Middle Ages as part of a Eurocentric periodization. Axes of comparison between Ancient and Medieval civilization. Medieval Europe as a type of peasant (or tributary) society. Kingship and lordship; state-formation and class-formation. Paths into manorialism and serfdom. Determinants and patterns of fief distribution. The remoulding of old into new social classes. Factors accelerating the rise of private lordship. Church and state in the definition of Medieval society. Debates over "feudalism", and over comparisons between European feudalism and the Ottoman timar system. Processes and problems of High and Late Medieval history. Towns and trade. Forms of rent in transformation. From" feudal" to "national" monarchies: the growth of state power. |
| Russian History I : Tsarist Russia (from the 17th Century to 1917) | HIST 434 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a survey course on the general history of Russia from its early beginnings with the Muscovite state until World War I. It will begin with a general discussion on the geographical characteristics of Russia and the cultural peculiarities of the Russian population. Here the emphasis will be on the Eurasian dimension or character of the Russian lands. Strictly historical lectures will begin with Muscovy over 1450-1598, and will continue into the ''Time of Troubles,'' leading to the rise of the Romanov dynasty.The next issue will be the modernizing efforts of Peter the Great, and the political and social effects of these Petrine reforms (1682-1740). In the course of reviewing the policies of ''enlightened reform'' pursued by Catherine the Great (1762-1796), Russian expansionism against Poland and the Ottoman empire, as well as popular reactions such as the Pugachev Rebellion (1773-1775) will also be taken into account. Over the period between 1801-1855, the Napoleonic wars (1805-1815) and their impact, autocratic conservatism, and the Crimean War (1853-1856) will be highlighted. For the second half of the 19th century, attention fill focus on the emancipation of the serfs (1860), other administrative reforms and economic development accompanying expansion in Central Asia and Far East, and the emergence of a revolutionary opposition. The turbulent period of 1890-1914 will be discussed in terms of rapid industrialization, general poverty and popular unrest, defeat in the Russo-Japanese war and the subsequent 1905 revolution. The last weeks of the course will be devoted to World War I and the coming of the 1917 February and October revolutions. |
| History of The Modern Middle East | HIST 436 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey designed to introduce students to the basic themes and problems of Middle East history from the Ottoman conquest to the Oslo Peace Process, with special emphasis on the period from the late 18th to the late 20th century. The establishment of Ottoman rule over the Arab lands; Arab-Ottoman society and culture; European expansionism beginning from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt; the impact of the West in general; the coming of modern, reforming governments; the rise of the intelligentsia, of nationalism, and of Islamic revivalist modernism (salafiyya); Constitutionalism and constitutional revolutions in Iran and the Ottoman Empire. The collapse of the Ottoman order; imperialism and the zenith of European power; Arab struggles for independence; consolidation of the Yishuv and the birth of Israel; collapse of the European empires; the radicalisation of Arab politics; Nasserism, Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq, the Iranian Revolution, and the Israeli-Palestinian question. |
| Empires, Nations, and their Aftermath: Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries | HIST 437 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will introduce the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe through the prism of nationalism. First, attention will be paid to the relationship between nation and empire, specifically in the cases of the Habsburg and Russian empires. Themes addressed will include how empires incorporated, divided or excluded heterogeneous territories and peoples, and how the existence of multi-ethnic empires influenced nationalism and national movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Students will be encouraged to discuss parallels with the Ottoman case. The second main topic of the course concerns the role of nationalism in the breakup of empires, as well as the fate of their legacy in the form of the resulting successor-states. In other words, this part of the course will deal with the emergence of nation-states and the survival of nationalism in inter-war Europe, including the rise of National Socialism. Finally, without accepting the often-emphasized similarities of the dissolution of the Soviet Union with that of the Russian, Habsburg or Ottoman empires, the course will conclude with reflections on the role of nationalism in and after the collapse of the Communist bloc. |
| The Economic History of the Middle East Since World War II | HIST 438 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A critical overview of the processes of economic growth and transformation in the Middle East from World War II to the present. Countries to be studied include Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, the Arab states of the Arabian Peninsula, Iran and Turkey. |
| Christians In The Ottoman Empire | HIST 439 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course offers to examine the history and condition of Christians -- a majority of whom were the Greek Orthodox people (Rum) -- in Anatolia and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire. From some basic concepts of non- Muslim historiography (such as zımmi or millet), the course will move to the various ways in which historians have interpreted the Christian presence under Ottoman rule. Byzantium as a state was very closely associated with Orthodox Christianity and the Greek language. What did its demise mean for Orthodox Christians and their institutions ? How did Ottoman social, economic and administrative structures absorb and influence Christians; in turn, how did they participate in producing and re-producing the imperial framework ? Special attention will be paid to : communal life and institutions, the place of Christians in Ottoman administration and imperial networks, the Phanariots, the rise of the Greek bourgeoisie, the emergence of the Greek nation-state, Greek education, and the contribution of Christians to Ottoman urban space and architecture. |
| The Enlightenment World | HIST 441 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is an upper-level seminar course dealing with the intellectual history of the 18th century, covering aspects of the Enlightenment, as well as its wider reception, in France, Germany, Italy, and the British Isles. It examines the development of ideas on philosophy, religion, ethics, law, the economy, politics, and society, which had an impact on the historical arena at this time. It is intended to enable students to acquire a sound knowledge of the key figures of the European Enlightenment movement; to develop an overall grasp of the contribution of the European Enlightenment to the fields of literature, science, philosophy, and political and ethical theory; and to acquire an up-to-date understanding of modern critical historiography on the Enlightenment. |
| War and Society IV: World War I and the Ottoman Empire | HIST 443 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | As the watershed between the ''long 19th'' and the ''short 20th century'', the Great War cuts across many national histories. In particular, it marks the twilight of empires. This course will take a close look at both the general and the Ottoman-Turkish experience of 1914-18. Aspects covered will include : the New Imperialism background; the road to war; the unfolding of military action, and the various fronts and campaigns, in Europe and elsewhere; the new war economies; the carnage at the front and various other forms of human suffering behind the lines; dimensions of ethnic cleansing; ; the impact on art and literature; social and political consequences. |
| Palestine versus the Palestinians | HIST 447 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | There is a tremendous tension between the historical evolution of “Palestine” as a territorial unit, on the one hand; and of the “Palestinians” as a people, on the other. Instead of a natural fit between identity and territory, it is as if one can only exist at the expense of the other. Why is it that Palestine resists belonging to its inhabitants? How and when did they become a “people”? And can they become a single political community, divided as they are into Palestinian citizens of Israel; “residents” of Occupied Territories, and stateless refugees? To explore these questions students are introduced to recent scholarship on the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinians that unsettles nationalist narratives and imagines alternative futures. |
| The Eastern Question, 1768-1923 | HIST 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey of the ideological, political and military processes and structurations attending, and developing through, nearly two centuries of attempts by the European Great Powers of the 18th and especially the 19th centuries to partition the Ottoman Empire, eventually designated as the Sick Man of Europe. Also see HIST 650 for the possibility of being taken as a graduate seminar subject to the fulfillment of the necessary conditions for a research seminar in History. |
| History of the Balkan Lands up to the Early 19th Century and the Onset of Tanzimat Modernization | HIST 455 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students with some initial knowledge of key Ottoman institutions, to the pre-modern history of the Balkan peoples during the Ottoman centuries. But it may also provide useful backgrounding for graduate students interested in focusing on Modern Balkan History, or on Late Ottoman and Modern Turkish History complemented by a comparative knowledge of modern Balkan dimensions. The main themes to be dealt with may include : the Balkans as a region; the Balkans on the eve of the Ottoman conquest; the Ottoman expansion into southeast and then towards central Europe; the impact of the wars of Ottoman conquest on the Balkan peoples; establishing Ottoman authority in the Balkans : the specifics of the administration and status of the Balkan territories; questions of self-rule; administrative and judicial institutions in the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman empire; agrarian relations; towns and urban society; Islam in the Balkans; colonisation and Islamisation; the organisation of the religious and cultural life of non-Muslim Ottoman subjects; questions of communal status; the cultural life of the Balkan peoples during the 15th - 18th centuries; the Balkan provinces during the 18th and the early 19th centuries; the emergence of the Eastern Question; characteristic features of the Balkan Awakenings as a cultural and economic phenomenon -- the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the genesis and specific features of Balkan capitalism, the Serbian Uprisings and the formation of the Serbian vassal principality; the Greek War of Independence and the formation of the Greek kingdom. Assessment will be based on a written paper and a final examination. |
| Ottoman Reform Movements I (1550-1839) | HIST 461 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Introduction to classical Ottoman political thought. Increasing consciousness of political and social crisis, exemplified in the writings of Kınalızade and Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli. Attempts to return to the past during the 17th century, as seen in the Kadızadeli movements and the reports of Koçibey. Early tendencies of partial Westernization in the 18th century, as reflected in the Tulip Era or the thinking of the likes of İbrahim Müteferrika and Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmet Efendi. The Nizâm-ı Cedid and the beginnings of institutional modernization (1792- 1807). Reactions against reform : Halet Efendi. The centralizing policies and reforms of Mahmud II (1808-1839), and local resistance. |
| Ottoman Reform Movements II:Political and Social Reforms (1839-1918) | HIST 462 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Intellectual and social issues that are still very much alive in present-day Turkey have their antecedents in the 19th century Ottoman empire. The Ottoman 19th century was a period where old and new, reform and reaction met and mingled, and simultaneously confronted each other. This was also a time when the empire was shaken by a series of wars and crises of disintegration. Reformist bureaucrats implemented policies intended to forestall this process, while the intelligentsia vehemently opposed authoritarian reforms. Debates around the future of the empire became most fruitful during the first four years of the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1912), when people enjoyed some degree of liberal freedom. But public discussion came to an abrupt end when the Committee of Union and Progress established its military dictatorship (1913-1918). As a whole, this ''long 19th century'' was when the institutional foundations of Turkish modernization were laid down. This course aims to introduce, discuss, and understand Ottoman reform movements and ideas of the last hundred years of Ottoman existence, based on evaluations of reformist statesmen of the Tanzimat period, of oppositional intellectuals of the 1860s and 1870s, of the conservative stance adopted by Hamidian absolutism (1878-1908), and the Young Turk reformist ideas of the last decades of the Ottoman empire (1889-1918). |
| Social and Economic History of the Ottoman Empire | HIST 463 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Over the last few decades, methodological insightsof of a comparative and inter-disciplinary nature have triggered major challenges to the textbook notion of a glorious Ottoman ''classical age'' followed by perpetual ''decline'' until the onset of Westernizing reforms in the 19th century. To be counterposed to the static nature of this traditional paradigm is a dynamic, historical treatment of socio-economic transformations and continuities over 1300-1800. Issues to be covered include : land tenure; the organization of urban production, trade, and credit relations; the challenge posed by the rise of the modern world system; family and gender relations; ethnic and religious diversity; intellectual life; popular culture and forms of plebeian protest; the mechanisms of social and political control; and relations between state and society. |
| Love, Entertainment and Daily Culture in Ottoman Poetry, 1400-1800 | HIST 465 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to explore selected topics in Ottoman poetry such as love, daily life and social gatherings, entertainment, imagined feasts. Together with themes characteristic to Divan Poetry such as understanding of love in Islamic societies, lovers and beloveds, sophism and mystical love, sexuality and worldly interactions; daily pleasures including uses of coffee, wine, opium; social functions and technical aspects of Ottoman poetry (aruz, poetic syntax, narrative styles, vocabulary) will be studied. This course introduces a variety of Ottoman poetic genres such as masnavis, ghazals, kasidas, mersiyes. At the end of the semester, students are expected to learn how to read and analyze samples of verses by major Ottoman poets written between 1400-1800. |
| Approaches to Agrarian Societies | HIST 473 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In the last two decades the social sciences have become increasingly urban-biased. While cities, slums, skyscrapers and urban dwellers have crowded the stage, peasants and agricultural life have vanished from it. This course aims to bring agrarian societies back into scholarly attention. It examines agrarian societies in the modern era from a comparative historical and theoretical perspective. Topics to be investigated include : approaches to agrarian history and sociology; typologies of peasant societies and economies; ways in which forces of commercialization, industrialization and urbanization have been imprinting themselves on agrarian lives; systems of land tenure, moral economy debates, migration, peasant resistance and agency, and representations of agrarian societies or peasants in literature, film and other art. |
| Postorientalism and Postcolonialism | HIST 475 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The term “Postcolonialism” characterizes a loosely defined field of interdisciplinary perspectives, theories and methods that deal with dimensions of colonial rule in the past and its effects into the immediate present. Venturing to deconstruct colonial discourses and representations, Postcolonial Studies has had a deep imprint on humanities and social sciences in the last decades, and familiarity with it has become crucial to handling research literature on the Middle East. Given academic developments over the last forty years, of equal importance to scholars in this field is a viable Postorientalist approach. Along with Edward Said’s path-breaking work, students will also gain insight into other dimensions of postcolonial literature, such as Subaltern Studies originating in the attempt of South Asian scholars to come to terms with the legacy of British rule. The last third of the term will focus on applying all such theoretical insights to Middle Eastern, Ottoman and Turkey studies. |
| Late Ottoman and Modern Turkish Politics and Literature | HIST 476 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course concentrates on the interaction between late Ottoman and Republican Turkish politics and literature. By analyzing literary texts that suggest particular political positions, it discusses the influence of political movements on literature and how in turn literature contributes to these movements. The course equips students with a holistic approach towards literature, politics and history as well as with a conception of the ideal political and social orders that are suggested in these works. |
| Peripheral Populations in the Ottoman Empire (1300-1914) | HIST 484 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Ottoman state considered itself to be the "protector of the ideal world order (nizâm-ı âlem)" and the center of justice. As part of this view, the Sublime Porte assumed a regulatory role towards what it regarded as the peripheral elements (such as heterodox communities, or tribal and nomadic groups) of the provincial population of the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Arab lands. In the 19th century era of reforms, adopting the ''rational order'' and ''progress'' values of the European Enlightenment led to an even further enhancement of this role. Over the 17th and 18th centuries, on the other hand, the provinces had been governed by local gentry and notables enjoying a de facto autonomy. Thus after 1774, the centralizing and regulatory policies of reforming governments created new tensions between the center and the provinces. These tensions continued well into the late 19th century. This course aims to discuss this complex relationship between the center and peripheral populations from the 15th and 16th centuries onward, focusing on topics such as the New Order (Nizâm-ı Cedîd) reforms, Mahmud II's policies of centralization and provincial resistance, the issue of frontier regions (Bosnia, Albania, Kurdistan), the problem of the sedentarization of tribal/nomadic populations, and ideological steps to integrate peripheral groups into the imperial framework (the Hamidian era and the Second Constitutional Period). |
| Minority Questions in Contemporary Turkey | HIST 485 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | First decolonization and then the end of the Cold War have led to new waves of transnational movement. Mass immigration and floods of refugees have given rise to economic, social and cultural clashes, feeding into fresh problems of ethno-religious otherization that have come to haunt even the normally most stable and tolerant democracies of Europe. Simultaneously, Turkey's EU process is bringing into question a number of minority issues that are the legacy of the transition from the multi-ethnic Ottoman empire into Balkan, Caucasian and Middle Eastern nation-states. What are these questions? Which groups are involved? How can cultural, linguistic and religious rights be applied to the relationship between majority and minority groups at the national and international levels? How can consciousness of ethnic, religious or cultural diversity be fostered and promoted as a common value? It is to such historical and contemporary problems that SPS 485 is addressed. For the possibility of taking this course at a graduate level, subject to certain additional requirements, see HIST 585. |
| Topics in Armenian History and Literature | HIST 486 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course offers an opportunity for an initial encounter with Armenian history, culture and literature. Its specific focus may change from one term to the next, depending on the visiting instructor as well as on student interest. Thus it may entail an overall survey as well as much more in-depth penetration of special issues or problems. Both the themes and approaches involved may be interdisciplinary in nature, drawing upon anthropology, sociology or visual studies, too, along with history and literature. |
| Proto-Fascism in Europe and the Ottoman Empire | HIST 487 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Situated at the junction of nationalism studies with the history of Fascism and Nazism, this course proposes to explore the formation of proto-fascism (including its various dimensions of racism, anti-semitism, Social Darwinism, radical modernism, authoritarian state-fetishism, nihilism, mysticism, the death urge and the Führer principle) in the late 19th and early 20th century -- first in its original European and then its Late Ottoman context, where it acquired secondary literature but also a number of primary sources (such as the key periodicals of the Second Constitutional period). |
| Nationalist Projects in Southeast European History | HIST 488 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The protracted decline and breakup of the Ottoman empire went hand in hand with the rise of a number of mutually antagonistic nationalisms which kept competing not only against the Porte but also against one another for political, ideological, and economic space. After initial, embryonic nation-statehood, such competition acquired irredentistic extensions. HIST 488 proposes to look at various such projects that culminated in great human tragedies in the early 20th century, the legacy of which endures to this day. Thus a brief introduction on theories of nation and nationalism will be followed by close examinations of : (1) the idea of a ''Greater Serbia'';(2) the rise of the ''Illyrianism'' (or Illyrismus) concept and the related notion of ''Yugoslavia'' in Croatia; (3) the role of state policy in the Greek megali idea; (4) Ottomanism (Osmanlılık) : an initial reaction against nationalist movements; (5) religion, ethnos, and nation in Bulgaria; (6) how ''constructed'' was the Macedonian nation; (7) the development of Albanian ''nationhood'' and the idea of a ''greater Albania''; (8) the rise and outlines of Turkish nationalism. The course will conclude with a review of nationalism and ''minorities'' questions today. |
| From Empire to Republic : Turkish Nationalism and the Nation-State | HIST 489 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A dense survey course on the making of Modern Turkey with a special focus on the ideological dimension of nation-building. Moves from multiple backgrounds (in : the broad outlines of Ottoman history; the ''long'' 19th century; the New Imperialism; Eurocentrism and Orientalism; racism and Social Darwinism), through Ottoman-Turkish elites? evolving love-and-hate relationship with the West, to the fashioning and grounding of a specifically Turkish (as against an Ottoman or a Muslim) identity in the throes of the protracted crisis of 1908-22. Makes considerable use of literature, too, to explore the myths of originism and authocthonism, as well as the ''golden age'' narratives, connected with both early and Kemalist varieties of Turkish nationalism. Also see HIST 589 for the possibility of being taken at the graduate level. |
| Texts and Constructions of National Memory II : Reading the Republican Historians | HIST 490 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A critical approach to history-writing in the Republican era. The institutionalization and professionalization of History as an academic discipline. Historical backwardness, catching-up agendas, national developmentalism, and the "Prussian way" in Turkey. Nationalism, historians, and the state. The construction of a national canon from Akçura and Köprülü, through Barkan, to İnalcık. Universalism vs particularism. History from above vs history from below. Odd men out : Reşat Ekrem Koçu, Mustafa Akdağ. Debates over Islamic, Ottoman or Turkish identities/legacies as reflected in Art History. The contrasting worlds of historians and archeologists. The apertura of the 1950s and 60s. The advent of social and economic history. Debates over imperialism, underdevelopment, and pre-capitalist modes of production. The post-60s generation in History and the Social Sciences. For the possibility of taking this course as a graduate research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major research paper, see HIST 690. |
| Popular Culture and Nationalism | HIST 491 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The popular realm of `everyday culture' is an important factor in explaining how nationalisms are produced and/or reproduced in people?s minds. This course studies how nationalism is fostered through history in popular materials such as cartoons, literary pieces, and films. In that context, it also deals with modernity, overlaps between imperialism and collapse of empires, nation building and history writing in official and unofficial realms. The focus in space and time as well as the key elements of the discussion may vary according to the instructor's choice. Special topics may include the influence of contemporary traumas in search for a mythical past, the differences between official and unofficial representations, the influence of state hegemony on different representations, popular representations of `self' and `other,' demonologies, alternative discourses in both popular narration and vision, how memories of war and trauma influence nation building at the popular realm and how and why it is different from the official one |
| War and Literature in Turkish History | HIST 492 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analyses of Turkish narratives or echoes of the Balkan Wars, World War I, the War of Independence, World War II, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam and other wars of the late 20th century. The full gamut of possible reactions to war : pain, horror, disgust; poverty, deprivation; exalted heroism; cowardice, profiteering, betrayal -- and how all this is rarely encountered as a totality in Turkish literature. Casting wars in social time and in monumental time. The question of just and unjust wars, or of "our" wars and wars that are waged "against us", and the erasures that this causes in narrating war experience. Problematizing the persistent lyricisation of warfare: why has Turkey not had any enduring pacifist of anti-militarist literary tradition ? |
| Caucasus and its Hinterland: Clans, Ethnicities and Nations in Imperial Borderlands | HIST 493 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Caucasus and its hinterland, which separate as well as connect the Pontic, the Caspian, and the Persian Gulf basins, have been a strategically important and therefore contested space since antiquity. In modern times, the region was at first fought over by the rival Muslim empires of the Ottomans and the Safavids. The entry of imperial Russia into the arena in the last decades of the eighteenth century ushered in the era of Christian predominance. The next century saw the penetration of the whole Muslim Middle East by western economic interests, accompanied by new conflicts and alignments both on intraregional and international levels. Whereas the evolution of the so-called Eastern Question that implied the settlement of the Ottoman succession parallel to Russian expansion into Transcaucasia encouraged the Christian populations of the region (the Georgians, the Armenians) to aspire to self-rule and even independence, the Muslims felt humiliated and feared a degradation of their traditional ways of life. Their reaction, beginning with the mountaineers' resistance to Russian colonization of the north Caucasus in the last decades of the eighteenth century and reaching its apex under the leadership of Imam Shamil (1834-1859), exacerbated by forced migrations of the Circassians and other Caucasian groups into Anatolia, entailed in the long run ethnic and religious violence in various forms, directed against both the neighbouring groups and the imperial centres. This development culminated in mass deportations and genocidal events during the two world wars of the twentieth century, ethnic conflict, nationalist secessionism and imperialist rivalries breaking out with new vigour in the post-Sovie era. The course will approach this complex history from the vantage point of the concept of "zones of violence", studying and discussing thereby the catastrophic experiences of the period within a multicausal framework |
| Recent Turkish Political and Social History : Impressions and Inferences from Memoirs | HIST 494 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is intended for all sophomores, juniors and seniors interested in the Ottoman everyday life of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It aims to introduce and discuss Ottoman socio-economic history on the basis of memoirs. After setting out the methodological uses and shortcomings of memoirs as a historical source, participants will have the opportunity to encounter concrete personalities and characters, their lifestyle, personal actions and drama as a part of late Ottoman history. Thus a glimpse will be provided into the recent past in terms of the complex relationship between concrete human action and impersonal historical circumstances. This course covers childhood experiences, school impressions, the social conditions of 19th century Ottoman women, commercial life, literary-artistic activities, journalistic experiences, and the everyday life of bureaucrats. Each of these issues will be treated within the context of Ottoman political and social history. |
| Nations and Boundaries in the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus | HIST 497 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | For advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students, a case-study based survey of the tortuous emergence of modern nations and nation-states, as well as of more "delayed" and "unfulfilled", therefore frustrated nationalisms, out of a matrix of ethno-confessional diversity, in the context of a decaying and disintegrating empire. The Great Powers, the new nationalisms, and the Porte. Modernization and nation-building. Converting millets into nations. Ambitions and their limits. Rival irredentisms. Claims of language, of history, of symbolic geography. Predictable tragedies : war and revolution; atrocities; forced migrations. The state experience and the human experience. The struggle for sanity and stability in contested space. Constructions of national memory and of forgetfulness. For the possibility of being taken as graduate course, subject to additional readings and work requirements, see HIST 597. |
| A History of the Cyprus Conflict | HIST 498 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course aims to provide students with a historical overview of the Cyprus question (which entered the UN's agenda as a main issue for the first time in 1954) and various twists and turns it took since the beginning of the ethnic conflict in the island through the prolonged diplomatic processes it entailed till today. |
| Major Works of Literature - Myths and Archetypes | HUM 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to teach students to do close readings and comparative analyses of a few major works of literature that have influenced their own times and continue to have an impact on our understanding of the world and its cultures. The emphasis is on imagination, feeling and expression in literature, with attention to cultural, social and political issues. Course work involves not only reading but also writing analytically and critically. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Western Art | HUM 202 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course deals with groundbreaking achievements in art and architecture. It is designed to be more comprehensive than the typical "art appreciation" courses offered elsewhere. Each lecture focuses on one work that is paradigmatic of an epoch, but will include comparisons with related works and a treatment of the historical, intellectual, and aesthetic background of the major work. Through lectures and discussions, students are given the opportunity to consider the intricacies of human creativity and the complex factors that come into play in a work of art. The course aims to assist students in developing criteria for their appraisal of the arts, as well as to stimulate them to reconsider their systems of values and to pursue their interests in the arts and humanities. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Ottoman Culture | HUM 203 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will focus on a selected few masterpieces of Ottoman artistic and literary production, picked on the basis of not only their high aesthetic qualities, but also their representativeness across different genres and historical periods. A problem-oriented approach, therefore, may and shall be woven around them, but by starting with the works themselves, and proceeding from them to explore successive and ever-expanding backgrounds, instead of creating a relatively "complete" or continuous narrative of cultural history from the outset and submerging a much larger number of works within it. As key examples to be subjected to such close "readings," the following have been tentatively opted for : From the triumphant imperial moment of the 16th century, (1) Mimar Sinan's Süleymaniye mosque and complex; (2) İznik wall-tiles at Rüstem Paşa mosque; and (3) Nakkaş Osman's pictorial eulogy of the dynasty Hünernâme; from the early 18th, late 18th, and early 19th centuries, (4) Levnî's Book of Festivals (Surnâme-i Vehbi); (5) Nedim's poetry; (6) Antoine-Ignace Melling's Hadice Sultan waterfront palace at Defterdarburnu; and (7) Itrî's musical output. It is thereby proposed to introduce students both to a whole range of modes of expression (such as monumental religious architecture, decorative programs of line and colour, the arts of the book, the ruling elite's changing "theater of life" and consumption patterns, and the conventions of composition), and to analytical perspectives on two main periods of Ottoman history with their specific power relations, socio-economic problems, ideological re-adjustments, sensitivities and outlooks. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Classical Music | HUM 204 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An initial inquiry into the post-Renaissance emergence and development of polyphonic music in Europe, including a sampling of works from the Baroque (Bach), Classical (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven), Romantic (Liszt, Chopin, Schumann), or Romantic-Nationalist (Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi) styles or periods. Based on a combination of readings and lectures on the overall historical context surrounding each composer's individual lifetime and output, with intensive listenings and musical analysis of the compositions concerned. Intended to develop a sense of music appreciation covering both the social, political, cultural, religious, and literary backgrounds or connections of great music, as well as its internal conditions and requirements (vis-à-vis notation, instruments, orchestras, performance skills and methods of composition). In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Drama | HUM 206 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to teach students to do close readings and comparative analyses of significant works of drama from the classical times to our day. The course is designed to include a critical reading of plays as well as viewing and discussion of different stage versions of the texts. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of 20th Century Literature | HUM 211 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to teach students to do close readings and comparative analyses of a few major works of literature that have influenced their own times and continue to have an impact on our understanding of the world and its cultures. The emphasis is on imagination, feeling and expression in literature, with attention to cultural, social and political issues. Course work involves not only reading but also writing analytically and critically. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Modern Art | HUM 212 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Major Works of Modern Art aims to introduce students to one of the crucial periods of Western art which is the birth, development and "triumph" of Modern Art from the 1860's to the 1960's. The primary purpose of this course however is not to stress the chronological development of modern art but rather to focus on and pursue specific art-related and cultural issues that pertain to those chosen works. Even though the masterpieces are presented chronologically, the lectures themselves are kept fairly independent and presented like a series of visits to an 'imaginary museum'. The chosen works are discussed along with comparative material to explore specific issues that are selected for each work and to illustrate earlier and later thematic developments. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of the Opera | HUM 214 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An introduction to the history of opera through detailed exposure to a selection of major works representing the development of the genre from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Presentations and assignments will be organised around whole operas and their historical significance. An initial focus will be on the ways in which diverse forms of opera incorporate themes from myth, religion, literature, and history. Opera will also be examined as spectacle and as a multi-media performance art, and from the perspectives of genre, economics, modes of production, cultural expression, and history through opera. The reception history of opera and its adaptation to other media (such as film) will also form an important theme. Introductory information will be included about the musical conventions of opera and its terminology. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of the Novel | HUM 221 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Major Works of Literature ? The Classical Novel emphasizes, by means of focusing on major texts, aesthetic and intellectual experience of reading novels as a distinct form of artistic expression. Spring 2007 offering will comprise textual analysis and critical discussion in class of works by Madame de La Fayette, Stendhal, Jane Austen, Flaubert, and Theodor Fontane. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have ompleted 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of 20th Century Music | HUM 224 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to provide a basic understanding of the 20th century western music and its conceptual progression throughout the century. The course concentrates on contemporary musical trends in relation with the changing social, political and economic issues of 20th century. The course emphasizes representative works from avant-garde to mainstream. The content of the course is not limited with the art music but also focuses on different aspects of popular traditions. These popular trends will be examined in relation to social and cultural context. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Poetry | HUM 231 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this course major works of poetry, mostly in the English and Turkish languages, will be explored comparatively in both a thematic and a chronological framework, and with a view to introduce various traditions, movements, innovations, and cultural exchanges. While the works will be analyzed in terms of poetic language and devices for a greater appreciation of the experience of reading, they will also be historically, culturally, and politically contextualized. This course will further probe the affinity of poetry with the other arts through language, sound, image, and narrative, as well as the problem of the translatability of poetry. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Asian Art | HUM 232 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is intended to introduce students to a series of major works of art and architecture from the Middle East, India, and East Asia. Its aim is to offer an idea of the ways human beings have brought their values to life across a wide area of the globe. Each week's lecture will focus on a different work, situating it in its artistic, cultural and historical contexts and suggesting the perspective(s) it offers on universal human concerns such as the relation of man to God and the natural world, ethical values, political power, and the role of art and artists in bringing all these to life. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of Short Fiction | HUM 241 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines some major works of short fiction. While the course is intended to be a close reading of a number of short stories, we will also analyze and discuss the social and cultural commentaries which these literary pieces make. To this end we will pay close attention to the pieces as literary texts and get into sustained interpretations, nuances and subtleties. In addition to the existing pre-requisite " to have completed 23 credits" for this course , a new condition will be added as "to complete SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses at least with D grade" as of the Fall semester of 2015-2016 Academic Year. Students who failed from SPS 101 and SPS 102 courses, do not have right to take this course. |
| Major Works of World Literature | HUM 261 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | World Literature aims to take students on a literary and cultural journey through fiction from four different countries: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013), a Japanese novel by Haruki Murakami; Disgrace (1999), a South African novel by J.M. Coetzee; Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), a Columbian novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Woman at Point Zero, an Egyptian novel (1975) by Nawal El-Saadawi. Through close reading of the four novels and discussions, the course helps students gain an understanding and appreciation of literature in general and of the selected authors’ countries, their histories and cultures in particular. By engaging critically with the novels, students explore, demonstrate and discuss how great writers from other countries reflect their world through their own unique, authorial and artistic modes and how their works can contribute to contemporary global cultural landscape. The course also encourages students to reflect on how studying world literature can help them as both university students and world citizens. |
| Major Works in Islamic Literature | HUM 271 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Through the close reading a number of fictional and non -fictional texts, this course will look at fundamental features and aspects of literature and literary culture through a number of genres in Pre-Modern Islamic literature, such as literary vs. real space and time, individual vs. communal aspects of literature, orality vs. written culture, fiction vs. history, didacticism and entertainment, narrative credibility, frame story, narrator and levels of fictionality, the “Other”, intertextuality, author-, work -, and audience-focused approaches to interpretation, translation, relationship between form and content, high vs. popular culture. Aside from trying to contextualize these fundamental works in their own place and time, we will consider them as part of world literature, paying attention to their reception in both the West and the East. |
| Genres and Styles of Western Music | HUM 413 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course encompasses the ''classical'' and ''popular'' domains of Western Music as a dominant cultural entity of the contemporary global world by categorizing it into ''genres'' and ''styles''. The material will be presented on diachronic lines but each strand will be developed separately in its own historical, social and artistic context along with the interaction between ''high art music'' and ''popular music''. Although some mention of the landmark events that had an impact on a given genre will be made to clarify the context, the main focus of the course is listening appreciation. The learning objective is therefore to familiarize the student with the characteristics and features of a given genre and/or style that is in use today. The students are expected to perceive music from a critical standpoint, evaluate artistic content and sort musical data input into the right channels. |
| Orientalism in Western Classical Music | HUM 414 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a Humanities course that will follow the trend currently termed Orientalism, from its first appearance in Western art in the 16th century to the early 20th century, focusing on music works and their relation and interaction to the other arts as well as the social sciences. Although it is not a theory-based music course, nevertheless, as a prerequisite, some key terms and general music knowledge are required. Besides lectures, the course will feature discussions on the given subjects, interactive work on visual and auditory materials, and excursions (concerts, museum exhibitions). |
| International Relations Theory | IR 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Surveys basic concepts and processes in international relations. The course presents competing theoretical perspectives; realism, liberalism, and radical approaches with a special emphasis on post-cold war debates. Partial theories such as foreign policy analysis, conflict analysis and resolution, and security studies are also examined. |
| Globalization and International Relations | IR 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course deals with the changing nature of international relations within the context of the process(es) of globalization. It examines a number of topics that have become crucial especially after the end of the Cold War. In doing so, it also aims at advancing our theoretical and empirical understanding of international relations by discussing (a) the economic and political dimensions of globalization, (b) the relationship between global changes and state power, (c) the crucial problems of international relations, such as poverty, security, global governce and terrorism, and also (d) the important case studies such as the American hegemony, European Integration, global economic crisis. |
| Global Civics | IR 312 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | We live in an increasingly interdependent world. Financial engineering in the US can determine employment and growth in Bursa and other parts of the world; CO2 emissions from China affect crop yields in Konya, and beyond; an epidemic in Vietnam or a nuclear leak in Japan determine the state of global public health. What is less clear is what sort of responsibilities we have towards each other. Without at least a draft of a global social contract, it would be impossible for us to navigate our global interdependence. This course reviews the current state of the world, analyzes the centripetal forces which push us together, and discusses what responsibilities we all have towards others. Various arguments for normative and technocratic frameworks will also be reviewed. |
| Global Governance | IR 341 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is about the ideas, institutions, and practices through which global politics is organized. The course has three objectives: 1) to provide an overview of the structure and dynamics of global governance in the late 20th century; 2) to raise issues related to power and justice in the contemporary global order; 3) to analyze the effects of globalization on the nature of order. We will study the relationships between states,international organizations, and non-governmental organizations on issues of international trade, collective security, peace keeping, human rights, development, environment. Questions that we will address through class readings and discussions will include: what does globalization mean for global governance; is it possible (or even desirable) to have a universal human rights regime; can a trade regime like the WTO actually lead a more just global order? |
| Turkish Foreign Policy | IR 342 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A systematic study of contemporary Turkish foreign policy making in a global context. Topics include, major issues, actors, decision making mechanisms, enduring patterns and changing orientations in Turkish Foreign Policy. Issues comprise: Greece and Cyprus; Russia and Bulgaria; Syria, Iraq and Israel; Armenia and Azerbaijan; the European Union; the UN and NATO. |
| Human Rights in World Affairs | IR 389 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the foundations of human rights theory and practice. The course analyzes what constitutes as human rights (political, economic, social, and cultural rights) and examines contemporary issues around the globe. The course will also offer a critical analysis of international human rights norms and its enforcement by focusing on major international institutions and the documents that govern the human rights regime as well as the role of states, individuals, NGOs and the media. |
| International Political Economy | IR 391 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the interaction between politics and economics on an international scale. International political economy (IPE) is a field situated at the intersection of markets and politics. Through analyzing the nature of economic and political linkages at the global level, this course focuses on varying roles of states; multilateral and domestic institutions; and, non-state actors in shaping prevalent processes in the IPE. The main goal of this course is to expose students to theoretical debates and substantive empirical issues in the contemporary IPE scholarship. In order to meet this goal, we will discuss major theoretical approaches in the IPE field and analyze substantive empirical issues in light of these approaches. The empirical issues we will study include: international monetary relations; international trade and capital flows; and, contemporary phenomena like globalization and regionalization. Overall, this course seeks to help students develop theoretical knowledge and analytical skills in the field of IPE. |
| Foreign Policy Analysis | IR 392 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course concentrates on the making and the implementation of foreign policy in theory and practice: foreign and security policy-making; case studies. |
| World Politics | IR 394 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course identifies the external processes that affect states in a multi-disciplinary approach. The students will exposed to the recent developments in international politics through a theoretical lens acquired in IR theory courses. One aspect of the course is to furnish students with the capacity to link internal/domestic developments to external events. The issues where they will be able to develop the linkage will be foreign policy making and the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy making. In that aspect, the course is mostly geared towards the liberal institutionalist school of IR. The course will focus on the impact of the international crisis on domestic structures, the concept of change and turbulence in international politics, the role of culture and identity in world politics. |
| International Conflict and Peace | IR 400 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an overview of the related fields of peace studies and conflict resolution by exploring different definitions, perspectives, actors, and tools available to practitioners and scholars. It is a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature on the causes and conditions of international conflict and peace. It examines the history and development of contending approaches to conflict and peace, their basic assumptions and methodologies, and their application to current conflict situations, with particular emphasis upon the following: peace through coercive power; peace through nonviolence; peace through world order; and peace through personal and community transformation. |
| Turkey and the Middle East | IR 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Turkey's relations with and policies towards the middle east have normally been treated as subsidiary to and less important than its relations with the main European states and the USA. However, over the last two decades they have clearly achieved vastly increased importance and autonomy: in fact, it seems safe to say that Turkey's relations with its middle eastern neighbours now constitute one of the most problematic - and potentially the most dangerous - of the diverse theatres in which Turkish foreign policy is actively engaged. This course examines Turkish policy towards the region in the context of Turkey's wider foreign policy interests and objectives, through successive historical periods, since the 1920s. It is divided into three sections: (i) the historical evolution of Turkish policy towards the region as a whole, from 1918 to the 1990s: (ii) Turkish policy towards four middle eastern actors of particular importance to Turkey: (iii) for the most recent period, Turkish policy before and after the Gulf war of 2003 |
| Turkey in Europe | IR 402 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to analyze Turkey's place in Europe from an international politics perspective. Turkey has a unique place in Europe which is shaped by its history and geography. The course will focus on the political dimensions of Turkey's place in Europe from 1945 onwards with special emphasis on the EU. This course aims to provide students with a systematic study of Turkey's position in Europe in the Cold War and the post-Cold War era. To do so, the course analyzes the basic parameters of Turkey and the European Union relations by covering the Ankara treaty, Association Agreement, Customs Union and the phases of Turkey's association with the EU. The course elaborates in detail on Turkey's EU candidacy and the accession negotiations and investigates the main obstacles to Turkey's accession and the internal dynamics within the EU towards Turkey's accession in detail. |
| Political Violence in the Post-Cold War Era | IR 403 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a course on political violence in contemporary era, as such it mainly deals with global issues like terrorism, civil war, ethnic conflict, and weapons of mass destruction. The objective of the course is first to define these problems, then to explore the causes, and the proposed solutions to them. While doing so, the course touches upon concepts like religion, nationalism, and ethnicity, and examines how these concepts can turn into major driving forces of conflict by studying some of the recent conflicts in different parts of the world. The discussion on possible solutions includes domestic policy alternatives as well as international intervention and the role of international organizations. |
| European Foreign Policy | IR 405 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to familiarize the students with the basic concepts of the European Union's foreign policy. It provides a theoretical and analytical basis for students to asses the EU's performance as an international actor. The course addresses the main European Foreign Policy actors, tools, institutions, objectives and issues. Topics to be discussed include the EU's response to contemporary challenges in world politics. |
| Turkey and the South Caucasus | IR 406 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at contributing to the ability of students to understand dynamics of Turkish foreign policy towards the South Caucasus in the post-Cold War era. To achieve its aim, the course presents an overview of Turkey’s relations with the countries of the South Caucasus namely Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The region has a strategic importance for Turkey and the course will analyze Turkey’s relations with these states from the angle of protracted conflicts and energy politics. The course will also cover the social, political and economic developments that have occurred in the South Caucasus republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as how the interests of the great powers such as Russia, the EU and the U.S. influence the dynamics of the region. |
| Domestic Sources of International Politics | IR 407 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What makes military threats effective? How do states choose partners when forming alliances and trade pacts? Why do some states gain more in international negotiations? These are some of the many questions that IR scholars have answered using domestic-level theories. This course introduces students to the most prominent theoretical mechanisms developed in this research program and the empirical evidence used to evaluate them. The topics to be covered are in both international security and cooperation. The goal is that at the end of the course students will have a framework of the main domestic actors and their influence on foreign policy. |
| International Security | IR 410 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course surveys traditional and non-traditional understandings of security by exploring a wide range of theoretical perspectives and thematic issues. The fact that international security is generally about the threat and use of force, raises questions such as: What causes war? Do regime types matter for peace? Is nuclear proliferation necessarily a threat to international stability? Would the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Turkey bring more security to itself and the region? What is terrorism and how much of a threat does it constitute for states? Through these questions, this course equips students with multiple approaches along with a historically nuanced understanding of the challenges of our times. |
| International Negotiation | IR 493 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In a chaotic international environment, negotiation is often what all stands between war and peace. In the peace time interactions negotiation is an essential mechanism to achieve constructive solutions, and mutually satisfactory agreements. International actors- states, non governmental actors, firms, and their representatives- often negotiate to settle their differences, to build new systems of interactions, and to renew trust. This course is designed to provide the students with the essentials of the art and science of negotiation. The first part of the course will introduce basic components, concepts and contexts of international negotiation. In this section, the nature of negotiation, prenegotiation, preparing for negotiation, power, strategies, and tactics, gender and the impact of culture, multilateral negotiation will constitute some of the issues to be discussed. Part two is concerned with hands-on negotiation games and simulations. The course will be conducted through lectures, participatory discussions, simulation exercises, and seminars by experienced diplomats. |
| History of Western Law | LAW 309 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Common Law and Civil Law legal systems dominate western legal thought and practice, co-existing with minor traditions such as Socialist, Religious, and Tribal/Traditional. The scope of the course is limited to legal systems, laws, and historical events which contributed most significantly to the Western/European legal culture in which we live today. It is presented in roughly chronological order, and includes selections from law codes, legal documents, and scholarly analysis of legal systems or issues. It ranges from ancient Mesopotamia through classical Greece and Rome, includes Byzantine law, the revival of Roman Law at Bologna in the High Middle Ages and birth of a common European law, and concludes with the division between the Common Law and Civil Law. |
| Comparative Legal Thought | LAW 310 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this course is to facilitate fruitful discussions among the students on a wide array of selected legal topics, allowing them to learn by comparing and exploring different approaches to identical or similar similar legal phenomena. In addition to increasing familiarity with fundamental concepts of different legal traditions in certain specific fields of law, the totality of the discussion topics covered will let the students take some initial steps toward discovering the formation process and the underlying logic of legal thought. While the course will also aim at conveying a certain amount of abstract legal information in fields such as constitutional law, contract law, human rights, business organisations' law, criminal law, intellectual property law and such, the main purpose of the course will be to therefore collectively discover the relationship between law and logic, tradition, justice, power and ideology. |
| International Law | LAW 311 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide a concise account of the basic concepts of international law. After focusing on the debate on the nature of international law and its political and historical underpinnings, it will explore the sources of international law and the relations between international and municipal law. States and governments, international organisations, companies and individuals will be examined as subjects of international law. More specific issues, such as treatment of aliens, jurisdiction, treaties, state succession, the law of the Sea, air and outer space and will examine human rights, peaceful settlement of interstate disputes, and the law of war will complete the agenda of this course. |
| Comparative Constitutional Law | LAW 312 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the similarities and differences between written constitutions that stem from diverse legal and cultural backgrounds. While the chosen constitutions may differ according to the instructor, the emphasis is on making critical comparisons between the different constitutional systems, including substantive areas such as: Judicial Review; Individual Freedoms; Separation of Powers; Centralization of Decision Making; Pluralism; and Protection of Democratic Principles. |
| Law, Business and Society | LAW 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on the complex interactions between legal, social, and business forces. Multi-national corporations influence governments; the environment is exploited and protected; people emigrate and demand more of their employers; governments try to balance business revenue and social justice. Can we say that a law ''caused'' an effect in society, or a business event ''caused'' a new law to be made? Does an effect sometimes become a cause in its own right, reinforcing an original effect? Sometimes the unintended effects of a business, legal, or social development are more important than the intended effects. We'll discuss topics including the development of the modern banking system, very large companies, how businesses relate to each other and society, how government seeks to protect people from business practices, and issues of environmental protection, free use of information (or not), and globalization. |
| Internartional Business Law | LAW 403 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the major institutions and substantive legal topics encountered by individuals and businesses acting transnationally and internationally in today's world. After a quick overview of civil law, common law, transnational and international legal regimes, it includes tort law, sales and contract law, transport, and multi-national corporations and limited companies. Some of the problems which globalization makes more critical, such as foreign investment, labour and employment, intellectual property, and corporate social responsibility and environmental issues, are raised. While ''real world' cases and materials are used extensively as examples, the course also seeks to bring out the underlying assumptions and policies of these institutions and rules. |
| Human Rights in the EU | LAW 404 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on the EU?s influence on human rights within member and candidate countries, as well as countries with which EU has set up external relations.It deals with the human rights policy and human rights acquis of the EU and studies human rights jurisdiction of the relevant monitoring bodies. Secondly, the course illuminates selective human rights problems that have been the subject of daily discussions all over Europe. Lastly, the course focuses on the human rights clauses placed in the external agreements of the EU, human rights conditionality in relation to full membership, and the role of the EU in promoting and protecting human rights in developing countries. |
| Analyzing Text and Context | LIT 212 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Whatever our profession or interests, we are surrounded by texts in our daily lives: newspapers, advertising, instruction manuals and novels, to name only a few. This course introduces the interpretive strategies necessary to be critical readers of the texts we encounter. While the emphasis will be primarily on the written word and the methods of literary criticism, the course may also take up other cultural "texts," in a larger sense, ranging from film and video to fashion and opera. In all cases, the production, reception and use of texts in specific cultural contexts will be given close attention. |
| Topics in World Literature | LIT 252 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to various topics in world literature, as well as to methods of understanding and analyzing the texts within their specific historical and cultural contexts. The specific works read in this course will change from year to year. |
| Topics in Turkish Literature | LIT 290 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will be a critical survey of the rise of fiction in Turkish literature. It is generally accepted that the novel and short story writing in Turkish literature started with the imitation of Western models during the 19th century modernization process. This course will analyze the development of Turkish fiction between 1870-1920 with the problematization of this accepted evaluation. We will scrutinize the interaction of Ottoman-Turkish fiction with the traditional genres as well as the Western impact, the role of translation and adaptation, the conflict between different approaches to fiction and the impact of the historical context through the reading of literary and theoretical texts. The course will be in Turkish. |
| Popular Literature | LIT 320 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines various forms of 19th and 20th century literature that fall outside the rubric of the literary canon. It aims to provide an understanding of what constitutes popular literature and its place in contemporary culture. It focuses on one or more popular genres such as adventure fiction, children's literature, horror, detective fiction, romance, and science fiction, offering an introduction to such topics as literary value, readership, generic conventions, narrative techniques, and adaptation. |
| Postcolonial Theory and Literatures | LIT 324 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Starting from the premise that there is no such thing as a "pure" culture, we will nonetheless try to understand what it means to belong to a particular culture. Questions of identity are frequently at the heart of good literature, and the group of works which has been classified as "postcolonial" is no exception. As we read a selection of works from the colonial and postcolonial worlds, we will explore the writers' and our own answers to key questions of identity. What does it mean to "belong" to a culture, nation, ethnicity, community or family? What kinds of identity are possible in contexts where a colonizing power has undermined traditional affiliations? We will read short stories and novels, as well as works of theory relevant to the other course readings. |
| Literature and Immigration | LIT 354 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Immigration has received much attention in the last century, usually as a "problem" or a "question" for the host country. The general term immigration is often used to talk about political exiles, economic refugees and internal migrants, as well as those who fit the classic picture of an individual or family moving permanently to a new home country. This course will look at literary works by writers who have been classified as "immigrants" to the country from which they write. While the course will take into account the linguistic, political and cultural issues these authors consider, it will also consider how the writers themselves have embraced or rejected the designation of "immigrant" and what is at stake in such a decision. |
| Literature, Ideology and Resistance | LIT 359 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on some of the major literary figures responsible for innovating literature's political role in society and redefining the responsibility of artists and critics in the twentieth century. The euphoria created by the struggles against colonization and racial and class oppression in various parts of the world led artists to reevaluate the political possibilities of literature. The study of a group of writers at the nexus of these struggles will incorporate a critical dialogue on cultural studies. Accordingly, the course puts the emphasis on the theoretical debates on how culture, ideology, 'race', ethnicity and class have been defined and/or represented. An important learning outcome is to equip the student with the conceptual tools to analyze a variety of literary texts with respect to politics, ideology and resistance |
| Imagining the City | LIT 370 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the city as a theme in such literary genres as the novel, drama, autobiography, and poetry, as well as film. From the ancient polis as a political unit to the twenty-first century metropolis, the city has emerged in literature as the antithesis to state of nature, the birthplace of modernity, the stage for social change and conflict, the locus of transition from empire to nation-state, and the meeting point of "the East" and "the West." With its inclusions, exclusions, periphery, subcultures, underground, public and private spheres, and fragmentations, the city is a symbolic system exploited widely in literature. The course may include such literary representations of the city as Balzac or Baudelaire's Paris, Joyce's Dublin, and Mahfouz's Cairo, as well as contemporary, utopian or dystopian works in world literature. |
| Creative Writing | LIT 371 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course entails an intensive study of writing techniques. The approach involves discussion, dissection and imitation. Each lecture will begin with the discussion of submitted texts by class members. The second part will involve the close scrutiny of a published text, paying special attention to matters of style and structure, word choice, mannerism, dialogue, social context, theory, autobiography, intertextuality; hence, dissection. Each week's assignment will be to produce an "imitation" of the text studied. These texts will be chosen to illustrate a variety of approaches to writing, and to raise some of the basic questions of writing. |
| Modern Turkish Literature | LIT 394 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What are the repercussions of social and political movements in Turkish literature? How is the cultural dynamism of Turkey represented on the literary plane? This course will explore modern Turkey and its literature through the works of writers such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Oğuz Atay, Adalet Ağaoğlu and Orhan Pamuk. The course will attempt to define what we mean by "Turkish national literature" by analyzing representations of gender, religion, cultural and national identity not only in works written in Turkish but also those written in a language other than Turkish (predominantly English) and published outside the borders of Turkey (Selma Ekrem, Halide Edib.) |
| Auto/biography | LIT 430 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will be an introduction to different types of self-narrative, ranging from autobiographies, biographies, auto-ethnographies, self-documentaries to autofiction. The course will emphasize the study of narrative structures in autobiography. Different autobiographical texts will be studied in their historical, social and political contexts, while we explore the impact such works have had on literary and intellectual history. In the contextof autobiographical writing, in the tensile relationship between self and society, we will analyze issues related to gender, sexuality, race, class, and religion. Possible readings include St. Augustine's Confessions, J. J. Rousseau's Confessions, Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Halide Edib Adıvar's Memoirs and The Turkish Ordeal, RolandBarthes's Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, Brenda Maddox's Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce (Or: Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom), Latife Tekin's Gece Dersleri, and Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir |
| Literary Theory | LIT 434 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed as a critical survey of modern literary theory from the middle of the twentieth century to today. It includes both primary and secondary readings on New Criticism, Structuralism and Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Marxist and Cultural Criticism, Feminism, and Post-Colonialism. Discussion will include applications of these approaches to literary texts as well as the evaluation of their methodological assumptions, consistency, and fruitfulness. Students will also be asked to read a few literary texts, using them as test cases to compare and evaluate different approaches in concrete terms. The aim of this course is not only to enhance the students' ability to read critically and to think theoretically, but also to provide an understanding of the importance of contemporary literary theory for the analysis of culture in general and the influence of literary theories on fields such as anthropology, cultural studies, history, psychology, and even law. |
| Literature and Psychoanalysis | LIT 440 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course focuses on the critical evaluation of the impact of psychoanalytic discourses on literature and literary studies and vice versa. Basic concepts of psychoanalytic theory and criticism will be covered with reference to the writings of Freud and Lacan, as well as to the later interventions by such theorists as Derrida, Zizek, Deleuze and Guattari. Students will be encouraged to develop their skills in the textual analysis of a range of literary and psychoanalytic works, considering them as distinct ways of talking about desire, fantasy, memory, madness, and the unconscious. |
| Gender and Sexuality in Literature | LIT 445 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the ways in which literature reflects, influences, creates, and reveals cultural beliefs about gender roles, identities, and sexuality by analyzing short stories, novels, poems, and plays from a diversity of eras and national traditions. Literary texts are studied in the light of major works of feminist and queer literary theories and histories of sexuality. The ways in which gender intersects with other cultural issues such as race, nationhood, globalization, and class is also addressed in the context of specific literary texts. |
| Seminar in World Literature | LIT 452 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In-depth readings of selected texts, representative of various periods and genres (ranging from ancient Greek epic and drama through early modern, modern and contemporary texts), combining close textual analysis of a set of original works with the study of multiple layers of interpretation as attempted by the existing secondary literature. |
| Advanced Topics in Turkish Literature | LIT 492 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to major works of literature that have influenced Turkish history and culture and continue to have an impact on our understanding of contemporary Turkey. Course materials combine such literary works with theoretical and historical writings on Turkey, focusing on topics such as nationalism, gender, theories of third world narratives and aesthetics in a non-western context, canon-formation and the construction of a national canon, minority literatures, and prison literature. Compared to a introductory survey course on Turkish Literature (such as LIT 394), LIT 492 encourages in-depth analyses of fewer literary works. The authors to be covered include (but are not limited to) Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Oğuz Atay, Orhan Pamuk, Adalet Ağaoğlu, Latife Tekin, Elif Şafak, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Mehmet Uzun, and Mıgırdıç Margosyan. The language of instruction is Turkish. For the possibility of being taken simultaneously by graduate students, and of fulfilling the research seminar requirements in History in particular, see LIT 692. |
| Majors: Informative Course | MJC 100 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with the degree and minor honor programs at SU and career opportunities offered by these programs. It will help students make a more informed choice about their future field of study and introduce opportunities that students may use during their undergraduate. The course emphasizes the interdisciplinarity of Sabancı University and the fact that each of our students can choose an individual route to graduation. The course is a prerequisite for major declaration. |
| Fundamental Texts of Western | PHIL 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Problems of Philosophy | PHIL 202 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to contemporary research on the central problems of philosophy such as the foundations of knowledge, the basis of morality, the existence of God, the relationship between mind and body, and the problem of free will. |
| Philosophy and Film | PHIL 224 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to discuss movies and read selected philosophical texts in search of answers to a number of interrelated questions such as: How are philosophical problems depicted and dealt with in motion pictures? How can philosophy help us understand and interpret various conceptual layers of visual narratives? |
| Moral Philosophy: Theory and Practice | PHIL 240 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to moral philosophy and its application to various aspects of human life. The first part of the course will cover main moral theories including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. The second part of the course will focus on specific issues of moral importance such as life and death decisions, our duties toward the poor and powerless, the moral status of animals, the meaning of life and how to live well. |
| Philosophy of Science | PHIL 300 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the main issues and approaches in the philosophy of science. Topics to be covered are the origins, the nature and the aims of science; the problem of demarcation; the problem of induction; the nature of scientific explanation; the rationality of science and scientific objectivity; scientific method, theories and their testing; scientific revolutions; realism/anti-realism debate; and science and values. |
| Philosophy of Social Sciences | PHIL 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the main issues and approaches in the philosophy of social sciences, with a focus on questions of methodology. These include whether social sciences employ a methodology different from that of the natural sciences; whether explanations in terms of reasons differ in any way from those in terms of causes; the nature of social reality; the relationship between individuals and social structures; the debate between methodological individualism and methodological holism; whether social sciences are value-free or not and the problem of objectivity. General approaches to be discussed are positivism, realism, the hermeneutical-interpretive and critical schools. These approaches and issues will be exemplified in the context of various social scientific disciplines. |
| Philosophy of Mind | PHIL 310 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to traditional and current topics in philosophy of mind and cognition. The first part of the course is devoted to the mind-body problem and classical responses to it like dualism, identity theory, and functionalism. The second part deals with two characteristic features of mind: intentionality and consciousness. Accounts to be discussed include representationalism and the computer model of mind, connectionism and neural networks, theories of mental content, theories of phenomenal consciousness. |
| Emotion and Reason | PHIL 313 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the relations between reason and emotion in moral cognition and cognition more generally, through the works of selected major philosophers and the findings of contemporary psychology and cognitive neuroscience. |
| Symbolic Logic | PHIL 321 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to formal logic. Topics to be covered include propositional logic and predicate logic. |
| Philosophy of Art | PHIL 322 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide both an introduction to philosophies of art and an opportunity to philosophise art, actual and perhaps imaginary: what has counted as art, for someone somewhere, as well as what might count as such. The aims of philosophy will be reviewed - such as truth, value, understanding - in the light of different works of art and different ways of understanding them. The aims, or ends, of art will also therefore be put in question. |
| Imagination and Play | PHIL 323 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course analyzes various aspects of imagination that puzzle philosophers and psychologists. It asks what kind of puzzles emerge when, for example, children pretend to be trains or to have a tea party, when we cry while watching a movie (although we know it is just fiction), when we resist imagining that killing babies on the grounds of their gender is good, or when philosophers believe to have disproven materialism by imagining a zombie (a creature that is identical to us except lacking consciousness). Special emphasis is put on pretend play which is considered to present one of the major skills of human mental development: Is children’s fantasy totally unconstrained? Do they know that they are only pretending? What is different in the imaginative capacities of autistic children? What happens when adults try to put themselves into another’s shoes? |
| Philosophy of Language | PHIL 330 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the major issues and approaches in philosophy of language in three parts: analytical philosophy of language, pragmatics, and philosophy of linguistics. The first part covers main theories of meaning, reference, and truth from Frege to Kripke. The second part covers theories of speech acts, implicature and related issues by such philosophers as Searle, Austin, and Grice. The final part is concerned with linguistic relativism, Saussure’s structuralism, and Chomsky’s generative grammar. |
| Bioethics | PHIL 340 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the ethical issues that arise in the medical sciences and related fields. Topics to be covered include utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, euthanasia, ethical issues in cloning and genetic enhancements, ethics of biomedical research, justice in the distribution of healthcare, global justice, the social and political framework of biotechnological research, and human nature. |
| Philosophy of Biology | PHIL 342 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the main issues in philosophy of biology. It begins by briefly explaining some of the fundamental matters in philosophy of science such as: scientific inquiry, the problem of demarcation, science and values, biology’s place in sciences and following these it opens up an examination of what life is. It then continues with introductions to major philosophical topics in biology such as: evolution, units of selection, genotype and phenotype, environment, innateness, epigenetics, developmental biology, genomics and phenomics, reductionism, complexity, biological laws, sociobiology and its controversies, biology and ethics. The course aims include encouraging students to discuss these topics as well as helping them to understand the main features of biology as a scientific discipline and also to familiarize themselves with philosophical problems related to methodologies of biology and its close connections with social issues. |
| Independent Study | PHIL 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list and forms of evaluation. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Epistemology | PHIL 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the central issues in the theory of knowledge. Topics to be covered include the traditional analysis of knowledge, the Gettier problem, skepticism, coherentism, foundationalism, and reliabilism. |
| Personhood and Personal Identity | PHIL 421 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course pursues a philosophical inquiry into the significance of being a `person? and the conditions of personal identity, through a critical examination of some of the major theories on personal identity and personhood developed so far. |
| European Humanism and After | PHIL 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to offer insight in the humanist tradition in Europe (Vico, 19th century's historicism, 20th century's philology), with a focus on its "reactivation" by Edward Said before and after Orientalism. This will provide the opportunity to give some hints about humanist philosophy in the 20th century as well as anti-humanist thinking (e.g. Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida). The stake is the necessity of producing a general critique of the philological enterprise in the last two centuries. |
| Science and Society | PHIL 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to study the two-way interaction between science and society. It aims to understand how science and science-driven technology change society and in turn how social factors influence them. Topics covered will include: the changing nature of scientific research, the challenges to formulating science policy in democratic societies, the comercialization of scientific research, how scientific controversies on matters of interest to the public are played out, and normative questions that these issues raise. |
| Comparative Politics | POLS 250 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this course, some of the critical tools for comparative analysis will be introduced. The units of comparative analysis can vary. Sometimes what is compared is the historical transformation on the road to becoming nation-states which may shed some light onto different political regime outcomes in various countries. Comparative analysis is done through pattern depiction, for instance, in three different countries such as Germany, Italy, and Japan that have experienced fascist regimes. Students learn to see what these cases have in common in terms of their political transformation that explains the rise of fascism in these particular cases and not in others. It is through such analyses that students equip themselves with tools towards making predictions about political regime changes. In sum, it is such tools that make political analysis possible. This course involves an analysis of the major modes of transformation and political modernization leading to various regime outcomes in the twentieth century. In the first part of the semester, the meaning of pre-modern and modern politics will be unraveled and particular state-formation and nation-building processes will be studied in the Western European context. In the second part, some of the critical features of the emerging political ideologies that accompany these processes will be studied. The third part of the course will focus on comparative electoral systems, political party structures, the dynamics among the legislative, executive and judiciary bodies of government in key West European countries throughout the twentieth century. |
| Politics of Citizenship | POLS 251 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Citizenship is essentially a product of modern politics. This course will adopt a modernist interpretation of citizenship and will look at the evolution of the concept in the aftermath of the French Revolution. We will, first, look at the geneology of the concept and relate it to the various stages of nationalism. We will, then, unravel the relationship between citizenship and democratization by referring to various approaches to the concept of civil society. |
| Rights and Their History | POLS 252 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is an investigation into the origins and development of the idea of entitlement. In the first part of the course, first moral theories that allowed for rights and right-holders will be looked at. Then the progress of rights-talk by studying the various rights (such as rights to property, work and equal opportunity) that have emerged in social history and moral theory will be traced. In so doing, we will try to expose the enrichment in the notion of a right-holder (from the individual to groups, peoples and animals). Finally, some recent (academic) debates on the import and place of rights in contemporary societies as well as in moral theory will be considered. |
| Nations and Nationalism | POLS 271 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to interrogate some of the most recent and important theorizing on nationalism and see to what extent they make sense in various empirical contexts . The emphasis of the course will be on theorizing nationalism rather than producing quasi-naturalistic explanations of its emergence, success or failure. In addition to reviewing the major theoretical accounts of nations and nationalism, the course will also discuss a multiplicity of empirical cases from Eastern Europe, Middle East, ex-Soviet Union territories and China. |
| Political Philosophy | POLS 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will opt for covering an important interface between politics and philosophy by presenting both the traditional approaches and the new challenges. The traditional approach basically addresses the history of ideas and its search for continuity in 'unit ideas'. The new challenges come from various directions including pheonemology and post-structuralism. This course will first of all include an exercise in reading of basic texts on certain themes such as political obligation by Plato, Locke, Hobbes, Mill, Rousseau and Rawls. It will then prompt the students to think about the themes and the concepts introduced in terms of their culturally specific and universal dimensions. |
| Issues and Concepts in Political Philosophy | POLS 302 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a supplemental to SPS requirement course "Pols 301 Political Philosophy". The course will be thematically organized and will explore philosophical perspectives on such concepts like, will, freedom, modernity, authority, heroism, autonomy and power. Texts from ancient as well as modern (and post-modern) political thinkers will be employed to encourage students to address issues that are pertinent not only to "society at large" but also to their own individual political practice. |
| Elections And Political Participation | POLS 303 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to political participation in its conventional and unconventional forms. The course will take various perspectives on political modernization and the role attributed to different forms of participation or the lack thereof as its starting point. Mass elections and mass political violence will be discussed more in depth from the competing perspectives of modernization and rational choice literatures. Influential texts from the relevant literature will be used to guide the discussion towards a critique of the pioneering works and towards an evaluation of the current debates in the literature. |
| Comparative Party Systems and Interest Groups | POLS 304 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to theories and facts about political parties, comparative political party systems, interest or pressure groups, and interest group systems. The objective of the course is to teach students how organized political action takes shape, and how such action influence the structure of party and interest group systems. |
| Political Ideologies in Modern Turkey | POLS 305 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will include a survey of the origins and evolution of various though currents in Turkey such as liberalism, nationalism, conservatism, socialism and feminism. While delineating these currents of thought, main ideas of some key proponents of these ideologies such as Yusuf Akçura, Ziya Gökalp, Prens Sabahattin and Ahmet Ağaoğlu will be studied. |
| Politics of Development | POLS 307 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course studies the mechanisms through which societies and governments deal with the challenge of development. Following a brief discussion of the concept of development and various historical development strategies. The course focuses on the contemporary challenges of development: Inequality (including gender inequality and the politics of (re)distribution), economic instability, corruption, political environments where informal institutions are pervasive and rule of law is weak, and the sharing of natural resources (such as oil and water.) The course will conclude with an overview of how the international dimension has influenced the politics of development by focusing briefly on the impact of the Cold War, foreign power involvement and globalization |
| Politics of Southern Europe | POLS 348 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The European countries that lie at the Southern flanks of the continent share common political, economic, and cultural aspects that set them apart from their Western neighbors. For instance, they consolidated their democracies later and, with the exception of Italy, joined the European Community around thirty years after its creation. This course will study the politics, society, and economy of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece from a comparative perspective. First, the state structure, party politics, and electoral systems of the Southern European countries will be introduced. Second, the causes, policies, and the collapse of the interwar authoritarian regimes of Salazar, Franco, Mussolini, and Metaxas will be examined. In this context, special emphasis will be given to how democracy consolidated in Southern Europe. Continuing political problems, such as Basque nationalism in Spain, the Sicilian mafia in Italy, and the Muslim minority in Greece will also be discussed. Finally, the course will conclude with the entrance of the Southern European countries to the European Community, their policies and roles within the Union, and the effects of the EU on Southern Europe. |
| Politics of South-East Asia | POLS 349 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Contemporary politics in Southeast Asia must be understood in light of colonialism, the nationalist movements that colonial rule in effect produced, and the geo-strategic imperatives of the cold war. Colonial rule defined the territorial boundaries and institutions of the modern state, nationalism provided a new political discourse and elite, and the cold war helped determine the nature of authority in post-colonial states. This course will examine the political landscape of Southeast Asia, paying particular attention to the historical conditions (colonialism, modernity, nationalism, war) which gave rise to the construction of Southeast Asia as a geo-political entity and to the boundaries and institutions of particular states. The course will focus on key themes such as: democratization and nationalism, the role of ethnic minorities, the political role of religion, etc |
| Transitions to Democracy in Eastern Europe | POLS 350 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is primarily designed to focus on the Eastern and Central European transformations to democracy. Thus, it aims to equip the students with a broad understanding of both "democratization" as a concept and how it was achieved in the post-communist Europe. Other examples of democratization in the world are also dealt within the course. |
| Dynamics of Political Change | POLS 351 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to focus on the relevant theories to political change in developing countries. The interaction between state and society and the theories that analyze political change will be studied thoroughly within the framework of the course. A theoretical structure will be drawn in order to understand the formation of diverse political structures and the dynamics of political change in several countries. There will also be specific references to the dynamics of political change in different geographica areas of the world, such as Europe, Asia and the Middle East |
| Turkish Politics | POLS 352 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will focus on the problems of consolidation of democracy in Turkey. It will begin with an historical background and then delve into analyses of the structure of the parliament, political parties, the bureaucracy, the military, and the civil society. |
| Turkish Governance | POLS 353 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The primary objective of this course is to enable students to appreciate how the Turkish State is structured and is functioning (or malfunctioning). To do this, an analytical rather than a descriptive format will be utilized. After briefly dealing with the administrative heritage, the main functions of the state will be linked to the relevant institutions, structures, together with the 'instruments' of implementation. In this context, the legislative, executive and judicial institutions and processes will be analyzed from a functional rather than a formal-legalistic perspective. Then, the principal challenges confronting the state, such as lack of professionalism and meritocracy; bureaucratic politics; reactive rather than proactive policy and decision-making; nepotism, corruption and clientelistic relations, and European Union-related harmonization efforts will be taken up. The course will be concluded with the political/administrative responses to these challenges, the attempts to make a transition from classic public administration to dynamics of governance; civil service capacity enhancement, and public administration reform. |
| Politics of Migration | POLS 354 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Global migration has vastly increased, become more diverse and challenging the territorial, cultural and conceptual boundaries. This course explores the changing face, dilemmas and opportunities of migration in both receiving and sending states, emphasizing the political aspects of migration. The geographical and temporal focus may vary according to the instructor. The course examines why people move, the politics and policies of border control in the developed receiving states (e.g., USA, Canada, Western Europe) and how domestic and/or interstate developments such as European integration have changed the nature of migration policymaking. It addresses questions of immigrant integration and diversity and studies the benefits and challenges to receiving states. Special topics include emigration and development, remittances, brain drain, the role of sending state policies on state and identity formation and an analysis of the Turkish case as an example of a state facing the challenges of both emigration and immigration |
| Constitutional Law | POLS 364 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is aiming at providing introductory knowledge and information on the Constitutional Law in general, the Turkish Constitutional Law, and the overall characteristics and conditions of the Turkish democracy as well as the basic principles of law. The course will enable the participants to understand and learn the basics of constitutional law and to empower them to comprehend, appraise and assess the democratic institutions/processes of Turkey. |
| Law and Politics | POLS 365 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is about how political dynamics shape courts and how courts, in turn, shape politics. The overarching goal of this course is to provide an introduction to judicial politics literature and explore the political determinants of judicial independence and empowerment. This course helps students understand why, when, and how courts function or fail to function as independent checks on government. In this regard, the course looks at how politics and inter-branch relations (executive and legislature) may or may not influence constitutional courts’ decisions and focuses on judicial review practices in developing democracies (including Turkey). Focusing on international /supranational courts, the course also examines the willingness of states to engage in compliance and enforcement. |
| Liberalism and its Critics | POLS 372 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | There are two sets of fundamental questions this course aims to examine. The first set questions the basis of political obligation: How does a political community get constituted? What are the criteria by which a government can be judged to be "just"? What are the conditions under which civil disobedience is not only legitimate but also necessary? Reading Hobbes, Locke and Mill will help us to answer this first set of questions. The second set of problematize the basic assumptions of the liberal political philosophers. Particularly, the categories of the "individual" and "reason/rationality" come under close scrutiny through close readings of works by the likes of Adorno, Horkheimer and Foucault. |
| Modern Dictatorships and the One-Party Period Political System in Turkey | POLS 392 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course offers an in-depth study of the one-party period and political system in Turkey, placing it in its historical and political context, and introducing primary source materials. Contrasting political alignments had already emerged in the course of the War of Independence; their extensions and ramifications are pursued through the phase immediately preceding the creation of the Republic, down to the end of the Kemalist-dominated early Republican era. The political, cultural, economic and foreign policy dimensions of this entire period are viewed as a whole, though with specific emphasis on its political organizations. The experience of 20th century dictatorships like Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or Spain under Franco are drawn upon in constructing a broad comparative framework. |
| Political Parties in Turkey | POLS 393 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Within the framework of the historical past and developments of world political parties, Turkish political parties from the past to the present day, will be analysed from a comparative perspective. This analysis will include parties' organisations, their members, their activities, and will also stretch out towards political leadership, parliamentary activities, the sociological bases of political parties, elections and election systems. The relations between parties and regimes, between party systems and party structures will be touched upon. The reasons for the establishment of the political parties in Turkey as well as their roots, will be taken up within a historical and political context, together with the way they all effect each other. The parties in Turkey, the party programs, their rules and regulations, elections in Turkey, analyses of the election results, the struggles between parties, ideologies, the influence of parties on one another, will be studied on the basis of political history and political science, and from a sociological viewpoint. |
| Independent Study | POLS 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list and forms of evaluation. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Ancient, Medieval and Early Political Theory | POLS 400 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a chronological survey of the history of ncient Greek, medieval and early modern political thought. It begins with the Greek classics and covers the medieval thinkers and ends with Renaissance and the 16th century thinkers. Given more than two millennia between the first and the last, the course aims to place each thinker within the relevant historical context linking each with the past and present day discussions thus preparing the students for a sound evaluation of later stages of political theorizing. |
| Survey Research Methods | POLS 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide an introductory exposure to survey research techniques in political science. It starts with a comparative assessment of the kind of questions survey research is most able to answer and sources of error associated with this methodology. It next clarifies different stages of survey planning and moves on to discuss questionnaire design issues. Next, the discussion focuses on sampling techniques, survey data analysis and reporting. All discussions are illustrated within the framework of a small project that is carried out by course participants. |
| Political Psychology | POLS 403 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides a broad introduction to the field of political psychology, including historical and contemporary perspectives, surveys the major theoretical approaches and reviews most important contemporary empirical findings. Political psychology, as a subfield of political science, investigates the psychological processes that influence political decision making, attitude formation, voter behavior including candidate and issue evaluations. Such processes include affective responses, information processing, group dynamics, political socialization, etc. Applications of political psychology extend from the analysis of individuals' political attitudes (e.g. candidate evaluations, prejudice towards ethnic, religious and social minorities, etc.) to elite decision making in major international crisis |
| Political Thought: Issues, Concepts, Debates | POLS 405 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to introduce some of the main concepts, theories and debates in political thought. The focus of the course is to provide a seminar in which students can wrestle with some of the fundamental questions that political scientists ask themselves. Hence, the course's aims are two-fold: To give the students a chance to familiarize themselves with major theories and debates in political philosophy, and to encourage analytical and critical skills on the subject. |
| Greek-Turkish Relations | POLS 409 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Beginning with the Greek independence in 1830, this course will first trace the development of Greek-Turkish relations in their historical, political, and ideological context and examine, in particular, the influence of nationalism on the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, the effects of the resulting myths and narratives on nation-building, and the perceptions that define identity politics. Against this background, the course will then focus on the foreign policy of both Greece and Turkey; major bilateral issues between the two countries, the effect of Cyprus and the influence of the European Union on the bilateral relations; the new geopolitical environment of the two countries in which the recent détente took rise; and policy alternatives for the near future. |
| American Politics and Government | POLS 410 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a course for senior and advanced students who are interested in the intricacies and the uniqueness of American democracy and its historical development. In addition to the analysis of American political institutions, special emphasis will be given to cultural, historical, social and economic factors that contribute to the uniqueness of the American experiment. Students who have already taken courses in comparative government and international relations will preferably be allowed to register. In the case of students of other programs demonstration of substantial interest and POLS 250 and IR 201 are prerequisites for the course. |
| Philosophical Approaches to Modernity | POLS 421 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The primary goal of this course is to provide an introduction to the problems posed by the notion of "modernity", and the different approaches that attempt to conceptualize and criticize it. The focus will be on three main philosophical approaches; critical, hermeneutical and genealogical. By relying mainly on primary sources, the course will attempt to thoroughly explore each of these understandings. The focus will be on their respective methodologies as well as on their substantive claims about the modern period. Furthermore, the course will also explore how these three approaches engage and criticize each other. |
| Politics and Culture | POLS 422 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a survey of theories that take “culture” seriously and regard it as a determining factor in the shaping of political phenomena. These are theories that emphasize the relevance of shared beliefs, ideologies, values or behavior patterns for making sense of political processes, events and institutions . The course draws on philosophical as well as empirical literature in this field. Course readings include works by Herder, Marx, Weber, Geertz, Almond, Putnam and Inglehart, among others |
| Civil Society | POLS 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course will have a twin foci: On the one hand, we will examine various theoretical formulations of the notion of civil society. We will study writings by classical liberal theorists as well as their critique from Hegelian and Marxist perspectives. On the other hand, we will engage the empirical, comparative analyses of civil society and discuss related issues of democratization, multiculturalism public sphere and identity politics. The experiences of East European and Middle East/North African countries (including Turkey's) will receive special attention. The intention of the course is to bring the theoretical and empirical aspects of the debates on civil society together in an attempt to clarify and critically appropriate this often-used but ill-understood concept. |
| Continental Political Thought | POLS 426 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a critical study of some of the key concepts and theories that underlie most of political theorizing in Continental Europe since 19th century. Special emphasis will be placed on German and French traditions. The basic aim of the course is to elucidate the historical linkages and trajectories of different strands of political thought and thus to understand the distinctive features of Continental political theory traditions. Readings include selections from Kant, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, and Baudrillard |
| Governance, Politics and Public Policy | POLS 431 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Global trends pertaining to public administration and policy process ( with particular emphasis on OECD and the EU ); challenges to government and government failure ( patronage, nepotism, clientelism, corruption ); key concepts related to the policy process ( governance, bureaucratic politics, institutional analysis, instrumental approach, rational choice, ); stages of the policy making process ( problem identification, formulation of policy alternatives, policy adoption and legitimization , implementation, evaluation ); case studies |
| Formal Modelling and Political Analysis I | POLS 434 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to provide an introduction to deductive theory and formal modelling. Topics covered include elementary decision theory, game theory and theory of social choice, with no mathematical prerequisites assumed expect high school algebra. |
| Governance of the Turkish Metropolis | POLS 440 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Course will commence with a discussion of the global metropolitan change and a conceptual framework will be developed through deliberations on key concepts. The evolution of metropolitan administration in Turkey will be taken up next with frequent reference to intergovernmental relations, functional differentiation, delivery of metropolitan services and participatory mechanisms. The evolving relations between various 'actors' on the urban scene; new types of cooperation and partnership; and new forms of accountability will be evaluated within the context of urban governance. The Turkish metropolis will then be dealt with as a decision-making center concerning the allocation of scarce resources. A discussion on issues of urban politics; sources of urban conflict, and measures to control/appease the conflict will follow. In the concluding section of the Course, various administrative-political issues will be interrelated; some select problem-areas of the Turkish metropolis highlighted, and possible solutions suggested. |
| NGO Governance | POLS 441 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The world is in the midst of a global 'associational revolution' and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) feature prominently in this process. There are many different types of NGOs, with varying goals and priorities and one major aim of the course is to de-mystify the NGO scene. In order to do this, theoretical framework will be developed at the onset relating NGOs to civil society, globalization, new division of labour in polity and dynamics of governance. NGO role in developmental work, promotion of civil society, service delivery, advocacy work will be discussed as well as challenges facing NGOs in an evolving complex world of organizational/institutional matrixes. The enhanced role for NGOs also obliges them to be responsible, efficient, ethical, transparent, participatory and accountable true to the spirit of good governance. Building NGO capacity on one hand and empowerment by levels of government on the other hand, will be taken up together. The course will be concluded with critical evaluation of select NGO work both from Turkey and elsewhere. |
| Latin American Politics | POLS 446 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course studies Latin American Politics from theoretical and empirical perspectives. First, it will provide a short introduction to the history of Latin America based on major theoretical perspectives with a particular emphasis on the second half of the twentieth century and current context. Then, it will mainly focus on major political, social and economic institutions in the region, while studying intra-regional variation in this respect as well as the common patterns. It will examine the evolution of democratic regimes, military interventions, transitions and civil society politics from an institutionalist perspective, focusing on the so-called ''third wave'' of democratization processes in the region. The course will finally explore the politics of ongoing processes of regionalization within Latin America and between Latin America and other regions of the world. The politics and ideology behind the ideal of ''Latin American integration'' will be studied in this final section. The mail goal of this course is to expose students to substantive empirical issues and theoretical debates in the contemporary scholarship on Latin American politics. |
| Conflicts in the Middle East | POLS 448 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Conflicts in the Middle East is an overview of conflicts in the Middle East. In the latter half of the twentieth century, inter-state wars, civil wars, insurgencies and terrorism in this region have increased without a comprehensive resolution of a single conflict. The focus of the course will be an analysis of the roots of these conflicts, such as inter-religious, inter-sectarian, inter-ethnic tensions and the possibilities for their resolution. Special attention will be paid to the Lebanese and Yemeni civil wars and post-World War two inter-state conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli wars, the Iran-Iraq war, and finally the last two Gulf Wars. Student simulations will explore conflict resolution issues and techniques in the Arab-Israeli peace process and post-conflict Iraq. |
| Democratic Theory | POLS 455 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course and is designed to give the student an understanding of the concept of democracy as we understand it today as well as the way in which has been perceived, articulated, and criticized throughout the history of Western civilization. In addition to familiarizing the student with and often conflicting definitions of the term, the course and will treat evolving theories of democracy and address such issues as democracy as government; representation; the state and and individual liberties. Particular emphasis will be placed on the relationship of democracy with the notions of pluralism and civil society. |
| The Politics of Authoritarian Regimes | POLS 457 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide students with a better understanding of the conceptual and operational differences between authoritarian and democratic regimes. It examines the similarities and differences among varieties of authoritarian regimes, the factors that lead to democratic backsliding and establishment of authoritarian rule, the strategies that authoritarian power- holders use for regime survival, state-society relations under authoritarian rule, the paths toward the end of authoritarian regimes, and re-democratization. |
| Analytical Approaches To The European Union | POLS 462 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to introduce the students to rational choice institutionalism as it is applied to European integration studies. Institutional configurations and their impact upon political outcomes within the study of European integration are analyzed with a focus on the analytic character of group choice, voting methods and behavior, cooperation, collective action, public goods, institutional choice and reform. First institutions are discussed as formal, legalistic entities and decision rules imposing restrictions upon utility maximizing self-interested political actors. Second, applications to our understanding of the EU enlargement, ratification and intergovernmental negotiations, European integration and governance are discussed. |
| Nietzsche | POLS 472 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on one of the seminal figures of continental political philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s thought has long been acknowledged to present one of the most trenchant critiques of modern society, science, philosophy, art and politics. His insights into the nature of truth, subjectivity and morality have been extremely influential on many of the major currents of thought of contemporary philosophy; from the phenomenology of Heidegger to the existentialism of Sartre, from the critical theory of Adorno and Horkheimer to the poststructuralism of Foucault. The overall aim of the course is to orient the students towards an in-depth, sustained critical engagement with some of the foundational ideas of contemporary philosophy and politics via a close reading of Nietzsche’s work. Issues that are of special interest include the nature of morality, ideology, politics and the state. |
| Contemporary Political Ideologies | POLS 473 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | After a discussion on the meaning and geneology of the concepts of ideology and discourse, this course will focus on orientalism, nationalism, liberalism, conservatism, fascism, Marxism as well as the notions of New Right, Islamic currents, and feminism. |
| Ethnicity and Nationalism | POLS 483 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to explore relations (or the absence of relations) between nationalism and ethnicity in different socio-political contexts. This course is designed not only for developing a comparative theoretical approach to nationalism and ethnicity, but also for attempting to make a collective enquiry into the emergence and transformation of the concept of nation, nationalism, patriotism and ethnicity through time. While surveying the classical and current theories of nationalism and ethnicity, this course also aims to address the concepts of migration, diaspora, collective memory and reconciliation as relevant concepts of social sciences. |
| European Politics | POLS 491 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to introduce the politics of the new Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of the communist bloc. Europe, a continent historically torn by divison and conflict now encompasses 38 nations that are almost all democratic in reality or aspiration and oriented towards market, rather than command economies. Given its historical and cultural commonalities, Europe is a natural unit for an area studies approach to political science. The course covers the politics of the established democracies and also concentrates on democratic transitions on the continent. Although in a limited extend, it also reflects on the politics in the European Union. |
| European Union: Politics, Policies and Governance | POLS 492 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide the students with a basic understanding of the European Union. The course will give an evolution of the idea of European unity through a neo-functionalist framework. The main focus of the course is on the emergence of the European Union and its institutions in a historical framework. The ultimate objective is to furnish students with the comprehension that the state is going through a major transformation in Europe due to the process of European integration. |
| Local Government in Turkey and the European Union | POLS 493 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A major structural change has taken place in Turkish society with the urban population surpassing the rural population for the first time in the Ottoman-Turkish continuum. The first rate of urbanization has not resulted in a parallel process of urban integration, creating serious problems in both tangible (infrastructure, housing, services) and intangible (identity, participation, civic engagement) aspects of urban space. This dual character of urban settlements in Turkey has been compounded by a strained relationship between central and local govenment in sharing of competences and resources. The strategic decision of Turkey to join the European Union (EU); the need to harmonize policies; the prevalent trends and principles in the EU in the field of local govenment have created a new urgency to critically reappraise the administrative system in Turkey. The general tendency in the EU for decentralization, deconcentration and devolution, true to the spirit of local and regional governance, has necessitated local government reform to top the reform agenda in Turkey. Within the confines of the Course, a comparative analysis of existing institutions and processes will be taken up, followed by trends and evolving patterns of local governance in both the EU and Turkey. |
| Middle Eastern Politics and Government | POLS 495 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A junior - senior level undergraduate course of comparative government and politics of the Middle East. It aims to analyze the emergence of the post World War I state system,major factors influencing political stability and change in the new states of the Middle East, with special reference to the role of religion, and oil. |
| Reform and the History of Ideas in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century | POLS 496 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The existing literature about reform in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century concentrates primarily on the the institutional components of reform. A great deal of research on the intellectual and knowledge component of reform had appeared ever since the 1860s. The time has now come to review this literature and bring it into a course constructed for that purpose. |
| Project and Internship | PROJ 300 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a non-credit, elective course that aims to foster field work experience in the student's chosen area of study. The course offers the students the opportunities to gain insights into the nuances of business and social environments; to learn about specific issues facing firms in the domestic and the global market; to improve their understanding of other cultures and societies; to foster research; to outreach to the global community. The course aims to enable students to learn about the conditions under which they would launch successful start-ups and expose them to the breadth of various issues. In order to realise these goals, the course includes experiential opportunities for students to put their new skills to work in real-world settings in line with their program requirements. A summer project or internship is mandatory for fulfilling the course requirements. |
| Guided Project I | PROJ 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is an elective course that aims to provide FASS students in particular with an upper-class introduction, under academic guidance, to thematically focused, practice-oriented research and applied experience in areas or problems of work broadly related to the Humanities and Social Sciences (such as : quantitative surveys; curriculum development and course design; teacher training; teaching at the primary and secondary school level; forms of public, community, out-reach or electronic education; cultural legacy management; exhibition design, excavation design or performance design). Such themes or problems will be changing from one semester (or year) to the next, depending on concrete opportunities for students to put their new knowledge and skills to the test in real-world settings. |
| Guided Project II | PROJ 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is an elective course that aims to provide FASS students in particular with an upper-class introduction, under academic guidance, to thematically focused, practice-oriented research and applied experience in areas or problems of work broadly related to the Humanities and Social Sciences (such as : quantitative surveys; curriculum development and course design; teacher training; teaching at the primary and secondary school level; forms of public, community, out-reach or electronic education; cultural legacy management; exhibition design, excavation design or performance design). Such themes or problems will be changing from one semester (or year) to the next, depending on concrete opportunities for students to put their new knowledge and skills to the test in real-world settings. |
| Mind and Behavior | PSY 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introductory level course on human mind and behavior, designed to provide an overview of scientific psychology. The major goal of this course is to introduce theoretical perpectives as well as the empirical findings in psychology. In doing so, the course also aims to highlight both the interaction of psychological sciences with other allied disciplines and the impact of psychological findings in applied fields. In this regard, the course will present an oppurtunity for students with different backgrounds to explore links between their own fields of interest and study and psychology. |
| Research Methods and Statistics for Psychology I | PSY 202 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces basic concepts in research methods and the scientific method, from a Psychology perspective; including experimental logic and terminology. It also introduces the basics of null hypothesis significance testing, and teaches how to use the software SPSS for basic data manipulation and analysis. |
| Research Methods and Statistics for Psychology II | PSY 304 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course continues to develop students' understanding of, and competence in, study design and data analysis. It emphasises the use of more sophisticated techniques to test more complex predictions involving multiple predictors. |
| Experimental Psychology | PSY 305 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course gives students practica experience in designing, conducting, analysing and reporting psychology experiments, in small groups. The emphasis will be on encouraging students to analyse design decisions, to minimise the influence of confounding variables, and to maximise power. The course will also give a thorough grounding in scientific writing and appropriate reporting format. |
| Cognitive Processes | PSY 310 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An introduction to the basic concepts of cognitive psychology, the course surveys areas such as perception, attention, memory and language, and thought. Empirical behavioral evidence about these areas are complemented by recent biological and neuropsychological perspectives and findings. |
| Language | PSY 314 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an overview of research on the psychology of language. Students will be exposed to a wide range of topics including language acquisition in infancy and childhood, second language learning, the neural processing of language, and language education. The course equips students with theoretical and methodological understanding of research on language and mind. |
| Memory | PSY 315 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will provide the students with an overview to the scientific study of human memory. Topics that are covered include, but not limited to, memory systems and processes; such as encoding, forgetting; memory disorders and developmental approaches. Everyday applications of memory will also be explored. |
| Attention | PSY 316 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the theories and mechanisms of attention. Topics include classical behavioral and modern neurocognitive models of attention, a brief overview of clinical impairments of attention, and the relationships between attention and other cognitive processes. |
| Learning | PSY 317 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a comprehensive introduction to the elementary forms of learning that have been the focus of research for much of the 20th century. The students learn’ the theories of learning; from habituation, classical conditioning, and instrumental conditioning to stimulus control, aversive control, and their applications to the study of cognition. The course also covers how findings from animal research relate to human learning and behavior, and touches base with the main concepts in neurophysiology offering insights into neural substrates of learning processes. |
| Developmental Psychology | PSY 320 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A comprehensive overview of contemporary developmental science, studying the contribution of a developmental perspective (changes with age) to major questions in the field of psychology, such as thinking, memory, self etc. Recurring themes would be continuity vs discontinuity of development, and nature-nurture sources of development. Research discussions include both classic and current studies within the field. Consideration is given both to biological and cultural influences on development. |
| Lifespan Psychological Science | PSY 322 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at providing students with an understanding of how life events experienced at an early time point shape behavior years later. It examines widely-held but scarcely tested assumptions of psychological theories on long-term effects on behavior, such as the effects of early development on adult life outcomes or changes in behavior from early to late adulthood. The course introduces existing long-term longitudinal studies, provides examples from popular hypotheses about long-term effects on behavior, surveys evidence on whether these hypotheses are supported and if yes, discusses which mechanisms are responsible for producing these long-term effects. |
| Infant Development | PSY 325 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an overview of many of the important aspects of infant development over the first 2 years of life. This includes the development of the cognition, perception, language, temperament, personality, and social and emotional development. It covers the current debates within the field, and emprical experiments. |
| Individual Differences | PSY 330 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to provide an individual differences perspective to major fields of study within psychology, addressing questions such as: How and why do people differ? Does personality change over time? What are the physical, mental social consequences of personalities and intelligences? Implications of a wide range of individual differences (cultural, socio-economic, learning style, skill level, gender) are discussed. |
| Social Psychology | PSY 340 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to social psychology, the study of human interaction. Social psychology is concerned with the reciprocal influence between the social environment and people's attitudes and behaviors about themselves and others. This will be a survey course, offering an overview of the important topics that comprise the field of social psychology including: social influences, prosocial behavior, group processes, gender, authority, conformity, attitude formation, aggression, persuasion and propaganda, attraction, stereotypes, and self-esteem. Emphasis will be placed on learning basic theories about human behavior in social contexts, and applying such frameworks and research to real-life settings in politics, education, law, health care, etc. |
| Applied Social Psychology | PSY 341 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course offers a social psychological perspective on how to help individuals become happy, healthy, wise, and nice. It will use cutting-edge research and theories in social psychology to develop strategies, policies, and business ideas that improve individual happiness and health, encourage wise decisions in organizational and educational settings, and promote prosocial behavior. |
| Relationship Science | PSY 343 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The goal of this course is to provide an overview of theories and research in the field of interpersonal relatipnships and family science. Topics of this course include, but are not limited to, interpersonal attraction, attachment, relationship maintenance, family violence, relationhip dissolution, and divorce. |
| Group Processes | PSY 344 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Building upon contemporary social psychology research literature, this course introduces students to basic intragroup processes and within group dynamics such as group formation and group thinking, group decision-making, ingroup diversity and ingroup identification, as well as intergroup processes such as the formation of stereotypes and prejudice, outgroup attitudes and behaviors The course does not only rely on classical theories in the field of group processes, but it also focuses on state of the art research in social psychological and personality science, and aims to provide students with a generic understanding of how groups-groups and groups-individual dynamics operate in various settings |
| Introduction to Neuroscience | PSY 350 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will focus on the biological basis of human brain, covering topics such as neural functioning (membrane potentials, ion channels, neurotransmitters, synapses, etc.), the basis of brain organization (cortices, nuclei, axonal paths, etc.), and main neural circuitries (sensory pathways, motor system, limbic system, autonomous nervous system etc.). There will be a particular emphasis to link these electrical, chemical, and anatomical notions to the behavioral output. Topics include (but are not limited to) brain basic anatomy and function, a relationship between neural and chemical systems working together in the brain, and how we perceive the world around us. |
| Cognitive Neuroscience | PSY 352 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience which studies processes of nervous system underpinning cognitive functions (acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge). The course explores the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes such as perception, attention, memory, and decision- making. In light of behavioral and neuroimaging research, the course aims to deliver the skills to interpret cognitive neuroscience research and understand human cognition. |
| Abnormal Behavior | PSY 360 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Theories and approaches to understanding psychopathology and treatment to, and prevention of abnormal behavior. Emphasis is on current theory, research, issues in, and the role of clinical psychology in contemporary society. |
| Clinical Applications of Psychology | PSY 362 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an overview of clinical applications of psychology. Topics to be covered are basic features of clinical assessment, basic features of clinical interventions, psychological testing, overview of psychotherapy models (psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, cognitive, group, family etc.) and research on clinical interventions. Clinical case examples as well as relevant movies and literary works will be used in order to demonstrate the workings of clinical psychology in practice. |
| Emotion | PSY 370 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will introduce students to the rapidly developing field of emotion science. Students will learn about the biological function, neurology, and physiology of emotions in humans and other animals, and about strategies for measuring and classifying emotions. The course will also examine interactions between emotion and cognitive functions, and how these can be used to understand and treat mental illnesses. |
| Stress and Well-Being in Adulthood | PSY 371 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines associations of stress with psychological and physical well-being in adulthood. Topics include conceptualization and measurement of stress and well-being; daily life factors influencing stress reactions ; psychological, social, and biological mechanisms underlying stress regulation; pathways through which daily life events and stress are linked to psychological and physical well-being; age-related changes in stress and well-being across adulthood. |
| Testing and Measurement | PSY 380 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides the students with necessary skills to measure psychological constructs as well as knowledge on test construction, validity and reliability issues. It also covers topics such as factor analysis and administration and scoring procedures of various types of tests, including standardized tests of intelligence. |
| Personality | PSY 382 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to introduce students to different approaches in personality, such as, psychodynamic, cognitive, social learning, and trait approaches, and provide the background to evaluate and critique them. |
| Sensation / Perception | PSY 390 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will cover basic principles of sensation and perception in vision, audition and other modalities by mainly focusing on the structure and the function of the sensory systems, which will be discussed in terms of how information is processed. Additionally, some of the following questions will be discussed in this course. What are the anatomical structures of the senses? What are the factors which has an effect on these complex processes? How does the perception arise from information gathered by the sensory system? |
| Independent Study I | PSY 398 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list, developing research skills, and gain hands-on experience in carrying out a research study. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Independent Study II | PSY 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list, developing research skills, and gain hands-on experience in carrying out a research study. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Advanced Research in Psychology | PSY 403 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The goal of this course is to develop the knowledge and skills in literature review, data analysis, and writing. Topics of this course include, but are not limited to, hypothesis generation, structure of scientific articles, description of methods, and writing up scientific research papers. |
| Culture and Cognition | PSY 405 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides students interested in cognition with the opportunity to study the social and cultural aspects of thinking. It uses a psychological, and at times cognitive scientific, lens to explore issues such as the relation of language and thought, narrative development, memory (individual and collective), emotion, morality, transmission of knowledge, concepts, implicit cognition. It will survey research and theory within social psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and cross-cultural psychology and provide implications from and for philosophy, anthropology, literature, artificial intelligence, and politics. This course is also concerned with methodological and theoretical challenges in the integration of cultural perspectives in psychology |
| Advanced Topics in Social and Cognitive Psychology | PSY 410 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Specific content topics in social psychology and cognitive psychology for a better understanding of both fields. The particular focus may change each semester it is offered. Topics include not limited to moral psychology, emotion, memory processes, spatial cognition etc. |
| Selected topics in Language and Communication | PSY 414 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course presents specialized topics in research on language and communication. The selected topics will vary from year to year, but topics are drawn from one or more areas of psychology and related fields including cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, speech pathology, and education. The main focus of this course is to closely examine recent literature in the field. By the end of the course, students are expected to have developed basic abilities to critically evaluate research articles concerning the psychology of language. |
| Selected topics in Memory and Attention | PSY 415 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the most recent advances in interactions between attention and memory. Topics include the role of memories for guiding attention, and the role of attention for encoding, manipulation, storage, retrieval of memories. The goal of the course is to provide an advanced, state-of-art understanding of the interactions between memory and attention, and to deliver the skills for critically evaluating the relevant research. |
| Cognitive Development | PSY 421 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course reviews current research and theoretical issues about cognitive development. Major research areas that are covered are theory of mind, joint attention, language, memory, numerical cognition, social cognition, and implications of atypical cognitive development. Paralells with socioemotional development are also stressed. |
| Social Development | PSY 422 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides a broad overview of how children behave in and think about the social world. The topics include: innate and early-emerging social knowledge, moral development, social cognition, theory of mind, aggression, victimization, identity development, social categorization and bias, and the influence of peers & parents, and culture on development. |
| Human Bonding | PSY 433 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The central goal of the course is to understand the basic structure, functions, dynamics, and development of human affectional ties. The course will survey a broad range of topics at the heart attachment theory and research, including formation and maintenance of attachment bonds from infancy to adulthood, individual differences in attachment representations, attachment change across the lifespan, dissolution of attachment bonds, and strategies to promote satisfying attachment relationships. |
| Topics in Psychology in the Public Interest | PSY 440 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Applied aspects and the immediate implications of information derived from psychological science. The focus may change each semester that it is offered. Topics include but are not limited to educational psychology, health psychology, sports psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, policy implications in educational and legal issues. |
| Psychology of the Self | PSY 443 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to present an overview of the recent theories and research in the self literature. The course also covers how self and attachment processes interact and their cultural implications. Particular emphasis is placed on the formation and nature of self- development, self-esteem, self-regulation and attachment. |
| Intergroup Relationships | PSY 444 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides students with an advanced understanding of intergroup processes and relationships focusing on special topics such as social identities, majority-minority group relationships, prejudice reduction techniques, collective action, and acculturation. Departing from both theoretical and empirical research in social psychology, political psychology, and intergroup processes literatures, the course equips students with extensive knowledge in intergroup relationships and aims to provide students skills and competencies that enable them to critically discuss and generate research ideas in the field of intergroup relationships.. |
| Selected Topics in Social Psychology | PSY 445 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides students interested in social psychology with the opportunity to explore a variety of popular research areas in depth. It will also include discussions about the methodological and technological challenges the field is faced with. |
| Selected Topics in Neuroscience | PSY 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine recent literature in neuroscience. The aim of this course is to enable the students to have a good grasp of the most recent advances, and a critical assessment of the literature in the field of neuroscience. Through reading the recent and important classical studies in literature, students will gain essential perspective as well as critical thinking on the relevant studies. |
| Selected Topics in Applied Psychology | PSY 464 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The goal of this course is to present specialized research topics in the broad area of applied psychology. Topics may be drawn from one or more area of psychology and include (but not limited to) applied topics in social psychology (i.e., traffic psychology, road user behavior), health psychology, forensic psychology. The selected topics will vary from year to year and will include examination of recent literature and interpretation of recent trends in the field of applied psychology. |
| Social Theory | SOC 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What is society? What makes and holds societies together? Why and how do societies change and develop - or else fail to do so? This introductory sociology course presents an overview of the major theories of society proposed through the 19th and 20th centuries, ranging from classical theory through Marx and Weber to critical theory, hermeneutics and the interpretive tradition, psychoanalysis, structuralism, post-structuralism , post-colonial theory, feminist and post-modernist theories. Key issues for the study of (post)modern society include: the relationship between knowledge, power and representation; consumption, commoditization and electronic forms of exchange; the impact of new information technologies; transnationalism, global cities and hybrid identities; and local knowledge and everyday life viewed as text and performance. While the last few decades' decline of master narratives or "grand theories" has fed into the current emphasis on interdisciplinarity, the main premise of this course is that the need for interdisciplinarity brings with it a further need: that of a firm grounding in social theory. |
| Perspectives on Law and Society | SOC 203 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course offers a survey of the interdisciplinary field of Law and Society. Works from a variety of disciplinary traditions such as Anthropology, Sociology, History, Political Science, Economics, Philosophy and Literature shall be read. Some of the main themes that Law and Society scholarship has tackled over the last three decades: origins and different sorts of law and lawmaking, the relationship of law to the political domain, the relationship of law to socio-economic structures of hierarchy and the relation between law on the books and law in action will be explored. |
| Sociology of Science | SOC 300 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to the study of science as a social field and practice. It explores major approaches in the sociology of science, including institutional analysis, social constructivism, laboratory studies, actor-network theory, social worlds approach, boundary-work, and field theory. Topics to be discussed include the rise of modern science, the evolution of scientific knowledge and practice, technology and social change, gender in science, media representations of science, science policy, and the commercialization of scientific research. |
| Political Sociology | SOC 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the study of power, politics, and the state from a sociological point of view. Topics to be covered include sociological theories of domination and the modern state, the social origins of political regimes, collective action in revolutions and social movements, class coalitions and welfare states, social cleavages. |
| Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility | SOC 305 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Recent years saw a surge of interest in the social responsibilities of corporations in general and of multi-national corporations in particular. Largely premised on the view that corporate power exceeds or nearly exceeds that of national governments in this global era, various social forces are currently at play with the attempt to redraw the redistributive obligations and capacities of market, state and civil society. This class offers an in depth introduction to the topic, drawing on theoretical and empirical materials from sociology, political science, management theory and law. The purpose is to familiarize students with the contested meaning of the concept of 'social responsibility,' and to introduce them to the vibrant field of activity that emerges around it. In particular, the aim is to familiarize students with concepts and models such as corporate citizenship, triple bottom line reporting, social performance management systems, social accountability standards (e.g. SA8000), and compliance and monitoring instruments and to situate those in the context of evolving contemporary theories of governance and regulation. |
| Sociology of Religion | SOC 308 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course surveys major topics and perspectives in the study of religion as a social institution. It starts with the classical writings of Troeltsch, Durkheim, Weber, and Geertz, and seeks to answer the following questions using empirical cases drawn from Europe, the United States, Turkey, and India: Why do different societies experience different degrees of secularization? How do church-state relations and secular ideologies vary from one setting to another? Can secularism itself be considered a religion-like formation? What is civil religion? What role does religion play in social movements, and civil societies? |
| Turkish Social Thought | SOC 313 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course will deal with the basic social and political ideas developed in the early and late republican period in Turkey. in the first part a special emphasis will be given to the formation of the social thought via the constitution of the notion of law and society within the framework of the 'essential' conflictual concepts, such as east-west, modernity-conservatism. In the second part basic schools of thought (like blue Anatolia) and the ideas and arguments of the prominent thinkers and intellectuals will be analyzsed. in this regard new understanding of the social and the political will be dissected with special reference to such debates as, modernity, postmodernity, secularism, political Islam, Europe, globalisation. An extensive review of Turkish literature in this context is imperative. |
| IQualitative Research Methods | SOC 318 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the principles of qualitative sociological research. It provides a strong theoretical basis for the interpretive research questions and sociological methods, such as interviewing, participant observation, thematic focus groups, comparative approaches, and the qualitative analysis of large surveys. |
| Urban Sociology | SOC 321 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Social implications of urban life with respect to such topics as patterns of city growth; urban social organization (family, neighbourhood, community); urban social issues (housing, crime); urban policy and urban planning (sociology of planning, citizen participation). |
| Science, Religion and Society | SOC 350 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course investigates the relationship between religion and science from a historical and comparative perspective. It explores historical cases of conflict between religious authorities and scientists, reviews different religions’ approaches to scientific activity, examines the impact of positivism, naturalism, and materialism on secularist movements, and discusses contemporary controversies about intelligent design, stem cell research, and genetic reproductive technologies. The course concludes with a discussion of the place of religion in academic institutions and in the lives of scientists. |
| Media and Politics | SOC 402 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a seminar course designed to explore three aspects of media/politics in particular: (1) transnational/national news agencies and media organizations in the era of digital, cable and satellite communication (2) critical debates on issues such as bias and objectivity in political reporting, tabloid news, political scandal, investigative journalism (3) intersections between media power and national politics, including such themes as 'agenda setting', 'spin control', 'the spiral of silence' or 'political advertising'. |
| Media Research Workshop | SOC 404 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The main aim of this workshop will be to provide hands-on experience in media research techniques. Students will be expected to work on individual projects and/or joint projects learning to apply various techniques such as ''frame analysis'',; ''narrative analysis''; ''focus group analysis''. The reading materials for the course will include examples from existing media research with different kinds of materials (visual, written, digital) as well as conventional ''methodology'' articles. |
| Exploring the Legal Profession | SOC 406 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The power that legal professionals enjoy, and the dependence of social order on that power, makes them the bearers of a number of tensions. Lawyers, judges, prosecutors, court clerks and police officers all operate within hierarchical structures, maintaining the social order while trying to deliver equality. Other actors such as Constitutional Court judges reflect upon and decide the rules through which the 'game'- e.g. democracy - is to be played. They are expected to keep up the legal form in all their actions. But real life conditions such as inadequate resources make this a burdensome task. At times, their moral inclinations as individuals conflict with their roles as legal actors. This course explores these and other tensions that define the role of legal professionals in social life, using the legal profession as a lens through which to understand the making of social, economic and political realities. |
| Religion and Politics | SOC 408 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the interaction of religious and political authorities, discourses, and institutions through historical, comparative, and normative perspectives. We will start our discussion with a survey of the role of religion in the formation of modern political institutions and identities, including the modern state, long-distance and national social movements, welfare regimes, and national identities. We will then investigate various aspects of religious politics, focusing in particular on religious movements and violence, the rise and transformation of religious parties, secularism as political ideology and movement and the relationship between religious politics and democracy. The course will conclude with a review of recent debates in political theory on the legitimate place of religion in public life and in the political sphere. In the course of the semester, we will discuss empirical cases drawn from Europe, the U.S., the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. |
| Sociology of Mobilities | SOC 420 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the study of current mobilities of everything (people, ideas, goods, capital, and images), the social, cultural and political aspects of the infrastructure and workings of mobility places and systems, and the historical formation of the mobility as an insaparable feature of civilization, modernity and globalization. Topics to be covered include Mobilities Theory; cities as interfaces and spaces of travel and tourism; inequalities across (im)mobilities; historical development of transportation systems; global structures of mobilities; airports, railways, and container ports; mutual constitution of transportation, travel and tourism; social, cultural and economic impacts of transportation systems and hubs over place-making and social relations. |
| Power, Economy, and Society | SOC 425 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the study of the meaning, functions, and place of economic activities in society from a comparative perspective. Topics to be covered include globalization, capitalism and neoliberalism; work and labor regimes; governmentality; cultures of consumption; space and value; deindustrialization and class; and cultural economy |
| Gender and Work | SOC 426 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines how the organization and practices of labor, work, and workplace is gendered through a historical and comparative socio-cultural lens. Subjects to be examined include the constitutive relation between gender identity, class position and labor force participation; work and gender dynamics within different sectors in contemporary planetary economy; the state’s involvement with gender, family and work; and women’s and men’s experiences of work hierarchies. |
| Sexualities, Sociabilities | SOC 432 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Who are we? Every social group tries to answer this question, albeit with significant variation across cultures and throughout history. All social groups also try to define and enact rules about the sexual activities of their members. Sociological and anthropological literature shows that the ways in which social groups define their rules about sexuality relate to the ways in which they define boundaries and maintain spaces for themselves. In this course we are going to survey existing theoretical discussions and research about this problematic. Specific themes for discussion will vary, but are likely to include such issues as homosexuality, honor crimes and the headscarf |
| New Social Movements | SOC 444 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course's aim is to introduce students to the various theoretical approaches to the study of the formation and impact of new social movements. The interrelationship of new social movements with identity politics and processes of globalization will receive special attention. In analyzing various theoretical approaches, we will concentrate on such topics as collective action, resource mobilization, post- Fordism, universality, multiculturalism, authenticity, hybridity and globalization. |
| Humanity and Society I | SPS 101 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to the study of the human experience in the pre-modern world (from early humans to mid 18th century). It brings together various disciplinary approaches and major topics of the pre-modern world in a roughly chronological order. There are three central aims of this course. The first aim is to present our students the challenges and potential in the scientific study of human experience through the introduction of various analytical tools from disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology and economics. The idea is to show to our students that the human experience is as much the realm of scientific inquiry and critical thinking as it is the case with the natural world. The second aim is to introduce the basic dynamics of the pre-modern world before the 18th century so that students would be adequately equipped to follow our consecutive course SPS 102 about the modern era and the concept of modernity. Finally, this course also aims to emphasize the structured use of language, in this case English, for the purposes of knowledge production and critical analysis. It accepts the role of language in humanities and social sciences as important as calculus is for physics. To that end, it pays special attention to critical reading and writing as evident from the course structure. |
| Humanity and Society II | SPS 102 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to the study of the human experience in the modern world. It brings together the history of major milestones in the modern era, from the mid-18th century to the 21st century, and prominent theoretical frameworks that are employed to analyze this transformative period in the history of our species. SPS 102 is designed to be a follow-up of SPS 101 and thus compliments the content and the academic skills that were previously introduced. There are three central aims of this course. The first aim is to present our students the challenges and potential in the scientific study of human experience through the introduction of various analytical tools from disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology and economics. The second aim is to provide the intellectual foundations that would help our students to understand the dynamics of the contemporary world around them by historicizing its relatively recent formation in the history of humanity. Finally, this course also aims to emphasize the structured use of language, in this case English, for the purposes of knowledge production and critical analysis. It accepts the role of language in humanities and social sciences as important as calculus is for physics. To that end, it pays special attention to critical reading and writing as evident from the course structure. |
| Fundamentals of Scientific Inquiry and Statistical Reasoning for Social Sciences | SPS 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides the undergraduate students with an elementary but rigorous grip on the fundamentals of scientific inquiry and statistical reasoning. The course aims to introduce students to understanding the basis of inductive reasoning and assessments involving uncertainty as well as statistical concepts and techniques. The students will be exposed to probability, chance, causation, correlation, statistical hypothesis and testing. The course also includes practical application of these techniques. |
| Law and Ethics | SPS 303 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to encourage students to reflect on the meaning of being an individual and a citizen. Certain fundamental questions, posed by the ancients but persisting in their relevance, informs the structure of the course: What is good life? How should we live? What does the life of a virtuous individual and citizen consist of? How can the likely conflicts between the two be resolved? Related to these, the course also explores the diverse relationships between law and ethics and adresses issues such as political authority, representation and consent, freedom, justice, and equality. |
| Research Methods | SPS 311 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Statistical reasoning and techniques used by social researchers to summarize data and test hypotheses. Topics include describing data collection, sampling measurement, distributions, cross-tabulations, scaling, probability,correlation/regression and non-parametric tests. |
| Quantitative Methods | SPS 312 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The goal of this course is to provide students with a working knowledge as well as a critical understanding of quantitative research methods used by researchers in social sciences. The basic principles that inform social science approaches to quantitative research will be discussed and applied throughout the course as the strengths and limitations of various research methods are studied. Topics include: descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, analysis of variance, factorial design, content analysis and interaction and relational analysis. |
| Analysis of Social Networks | SPS 315 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a theoretical, methodological, and practical introduction to the analysis of social networks. Applications in different social science disciplines are systematically presented and discussed. Besides theoretical evaluation of the foundations of social network analysis students are guided to undertake collaborative empirical analyses of social networks |
| Approaches to Ethnic Conflict | SPS 320 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Many students of ethnicity and nationalism try to explain ethnic roots of conflicts and examine cases where ethnic conflicts with varied level of violence/non-violence. However, a study of ethnic conflict should encompass various dimensions of the issue including the causes, process, and outcomes. This course will use literature from sociology and anthropology to study the roots of ethnic conflicts, geography to discuss the spatial meanings attached to ethnic differences, literature from political science to examine how different political systems accommodate ethnic differences and ethnic violence and international relations to come up with possible strategies to prevent and reconcile them. We will also refer to historical case study examples. |
| Football, Nationality and the State | SPS 322 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity or religion football occupies a central place in the daily lives of many people in the world. Viewed from this perspective football is not only a sport but it is also a social phenomenon. Football is deeply embedded in and relates to concepts like patriotism, nations, nationality, nationalism and the state. This course primarily aims to study football as a social phenomenon and to explore its political, social and cultural implications on a global scale. Football, as a political instrument whether employed for repression of the masses or as a way of expressing different identities is an exceptional game that carries the potential to help us to understand the complexities of modern society and politics. |
| Alcibiades and Philoctetes: Individual?s Talents and Rights in an Oligarchical Society | SPS 325 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Throughout history and fiction, individuals with outstanding talents within their social settings have been subjected to life-determining societal responses. A more general issue is the protection/transgression of an individual's rights when they are perceived to be at odds with the dominant forces of society. The problem becomes acute in oligarchical societies, which are controlled by a close-knit coalition insensitive to the larger benefit of the majority. The conflict between individual talent and reactionary oligarchy is vividly seen in the historical character of Alcibiades of Athens, during the Peloponnesian War. The conflict of oligarchic transgression over individual rights has been given attention in the story of Philoctetes in the Iliad, as masterfully brought into focus in the play by Sophocles, in the medieval novel The Abyss (L'Oeuvre au Noir) by Marguerite Yourcenar, and in the history of Piri Reis. A critical analysis of individual talents and rights under oligarchic encroachment will be conducted, with historical, biographical, and literary settings. |
| Global Environmental Challenges | SPS 374 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide an introduction to the global environmental challenges with their scientific, economic and political aspects from an interdisciplinary natural and social science perspective. This course equips students with skills to comprehend and analyses the historical background, as well as the future outlook of current environmental problems caused by the immense impact of human civilizations, particularly by economic growth and changing production-consumption patterns. Topics to be discussed include environmental pollution and ecological footprint, global issues such as ozone depletion, deforestation, climate change, and biodiversity loss, air pollution and other environmental health issues, urban environmental problems, food and water politics, plastic pollution and the oceans. Course include discussions of case studies for the solutions and movements for a sustainable future, such as eco-innovation, green economy, and environmentalist campaigns. |
| Climate Change and Environmental Politics | SPS 384 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces the essence of ecological crisis and environmental problems, and science and policy aspects of the environmental issues, especially of global climate change. Climate change is not only the most alarming planetary challenge, but also is at the nexus of the debate around international politics, environmental law, social movements and the search for sustainable economic alternatives. This course equips students with the skills and methodologies to use the basic notions of environmental politics such as ecological citizenship and environmental justice, which are also among the novel concepts in political theory . International environmental politics, green and environmental movements, climate governance and food politics are among the topics to be discussed. |
| State Formation | SPS 442 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine forms of stateness; their varieties and determinants. We will look at practice, language and ideas in Europe and Asia using historical sociological and anthropological perspectives. The course will also focus on the current transformations in state sovereignty that are entangled in processes of globalization. |
| Military in Society and Politics | SPS 452 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course analyzes the interaction between the military, society, and politics, with specific examples from Latin America, Africa, Middle East, and Asia. It introduces the main characteristics of the military organization and its professionalism, taking the Western model as the ideal. It examines how the role of the military in politics and society changes at various political, economic, and social development levels. It asks if the military is an institution that resolves conflicts within society by mediating between different sides, or an actor that pursues its own corporate interests. The course also focuses on the consequences of military interventions on politics, society, and the future of democracy. Keeping in mind the outcomes of military interventions, the course considers civilian control of the military in democracies |
| Visual Language I | VA 201 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course intends to convey the basic knowledge of seeing. Various methods for the organization of visual elements are utilised in the projects produced by students throughout the semester. These projects will be jointly discussed during the studio critiques to develop necessary skills in reading and analysing visual statements. |
| Visual Language II | VA 202 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course is a continuation of VA201. At this stage the students will be introduced to the principles of three-dimensional design. The aim of the course course is to analyse the fundamental methods of producing 3 -D objects and issues of spatial organization. A part of the semester will be devoted to introduction to basic typography and exercises in relating 2-D design to the third dimension. |
| Language of Drawing I | VA 203 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The goal of the course is to introduce basic ways of visual perception such as lines, shapes, darkness-light. In the second phase of the course the participants are expected to develop their skills of observation towards nature, man-made objects and human figures. |
| Language of Drawing II | VA 204 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a continuation of VA 203. Advanced tasks and individual experiments on large-scale drawings and renderings are to be performed in the studio. The focus is on broadening ways of perception, interplay of light and dark, use of color and paint, and general improvement of the individual's drawing skills with the guidance of the instructor. |
| Introduction to Photography | VA 228 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to introduce the student to the varied aspects of photography and to develop the student’s ability to read, describe, and interpret photographic images. It covers topics like, the history of photography, major photographic works of the 20th century, and contemporary photographers. Genres like portraiture, photo journalism, landscape, narrative, and conceptual and other facets such as, shutter speed and aperture, framing and compositional techniques, natural lighting and white balance effects are central points of interest. |
| Design with Typography | VA 234 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is based on the study of letterforms, typography image and concept relationships for effective communication. The language of typography, building a visual vocabulary, the personality of type, review of fonts and font families, exploring size, arrangement of text, creative use of space, communication through letterforms, working with words and color are the issues and subjects to be investigated. |
| Project Studio I | VA 301 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | VA section: Introduction to painting, sculpture and to basic notions of art making. Studio research into the numerous possibilities of various styles and approaches to visual art VCD section: Coverage of the basic concepts of Graphic Design, such as Typography, Page Layout and Image creation and processing and their basic interactions. |
| Project Studio II | VA 302 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | VA section: Introduction to actual space of the artwork. The studio work will aim to provide access to a vast array of media and conceptual approaches to making and thinking about art. The faculty and students will jointly work on mixed media, installation, kinetics, electronic media and other contemporary practices. VCD section: An investigation into the implementation of design elements within design concepts; i.e. the creation of designs within conceptual frameworks through a broad focus towards multimedia and web design projects. |
| Introduction to Multimedia | VA 310 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course aims to study multimedia as defined by MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte: "Taking the audiovisual richness out of broadcast and entertainment, the depth of knowledge and information out of publishing, and the interactivity of computers - all put together in the sensory deep rich interactive systems we call multimedia." This particular sequence of introductory classes focuses on the design of communication tools which link people to their surroundings. The course will take advantage of the inherent multi-disciplinary nature of multimedia by covering the basics including; computer hardware and peripherals, file formats, resolution and color, screen composition, photography, graphic design, concept development, flowcharting, storyboarding, visualization techniques, presentation formats, production methods, desktop publishing and the principles of user interface design in general. No prior computer experience beyond the word processor is expected. |
| History of Visual Communication | VA 312 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces the student to an historical the origins of printing and typography to the postmodern/present day visual communication design. It aims to provide a conceptual and pictorial overview of significant stages in visual communication design activities. The designs of key periods will be discussed and investigated with respect to their social and economic impacts on the society. |
| Visual Culture | VA 315 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | As an introduction to Visual Studies, this course will examine a range of differently produced visual objects. Moving across a field which includes traditionally produced fine art objects to photography, film TV and digital media, from video to performance to fashion the course will consider different accounts of visual culture: how visual objects are understood, interpreted and evaluated. The course may therefore touch upon theories of aesthetics as well as on other accounts of the significance and value of modes of visual communication. |
| Fine Art Practice | VA 321 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a hands-on studio course aimed to provide the students with the opportunity to enhance their creative skills through the completion of set projects in wide range of artistic fields. The course addresses aspects of practice common to all forms of visual art activity, such as coming into existence of artistic ideas, conducting various methods of self-directed visual research for recording and producing artistic ideas and images. Students are required to keep paper or digital journal as a resource and a reference for the development of an innovative and personal approach to ideas and techniques |
| Digital Art Practice | VA 322 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course involves the exploration into the common aspects of visual arts with an emphasis on the digital artistic practice. Students are expected to do visual research and develop ideas in journals in paper or other appropriate forms and digital media for experimentation and visualization. Exploring potential interrelationships between media, established and new, the projects produced in this course will demonstrate a capacity for independent creative thinking and a consolidation of technical, imaginative, and expressive skills. The course will also place emphasis on the development of a critical and theoretical framework for the evolving practice of digital art. |
| Figure Drawing | VA 323 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is an advanced drawing course to improve skills of drawing by studying proportions of human body and anatomy based on observation of live models standing and in motion. There will be studies of the model alongside still life objects as well as utilising other drawing methods ranging from photographic-slide and video projections over the models. Different drawing materials and techniques such as computer enlargements and transformations will be used to enrich the students' individual perception and expression abilities. |
| Advanced Drawing | VA 324 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will guide the participant to experiment with various drawing techniques, develop and try out self-created materials, paints and tools. This approach aims to help students to find out their individual processes and use of tools for artistic drawings |
| Interface Design | VA 325 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course is an introduction to the study and design of interfaces in general. Interfaces represent how people interact and are crucial to the success of any project as they link the projected audience to the material to be conveyed. The aim in this course is to enable students to apply the principles of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to the study / design of useful, usable, and effective user interfaces. |
| Studio Photography and Lighting Techniques | VA 327 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to develop the student's digital photographic skills in camera use, studio lighting, and image processing. It focuses on: basic camera techniques such as exposure, white balance, ISO, shutter speed and depth-of-field; the appropriate use of lighting like key lights, side lights, hair lights, natural/outdoor lighting and the use of diffusers and reflectors; and lastly, an emphasis will be placed on the combined use of both in-camera and lighting techniques for achieving specific photographic effects. Additionally, the course introduces digital imaging processes like color correction, sharpness, burning and dodging, and the preparation of images for the web and print. |
| Digital and Photographic Imaging | VA 328 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will introduce the student to digital and photographic imaging technologies and techniques in a studio setting. Each student will be guided so as to both grasp those technologies and techniques, including 'post-production' software applications as well as more traditional developing and printing, and to develop their own artistic and design work using those techniques. |
| Photography and Expression | VA 329 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Visual expression is the essence of visual communication / multimedia design. Photography is the one of the most important components of this interactive design process. This class helps the students to discover and experiment ways to express their design ideas through photography. The objective is to create photographs that tell stories or create moods |
| Illustration as Communication | VA 331 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course concentrates on the fundamentals of illustration as a communication design tool. Diverse illustration techniques and their applications from layout level to final output will be the main focus of the course. Processes in digital media as well as conventional illustration methods will be interchangeably utilized. |
| Content Creation and Design for Websites | VA 333 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will take a two step approach towards creating websites which hold meaningful, i.e., well researched and discussed content that is presented in a well-designed, easily understandable and navigable manner. During the first phase of the course students will first research a topic of their own choosing, for which they will subsequently put together written and visual content that is the outcome of the research that has been conducted. In the second phase of the course a website in which this content is displayed will be undertaken. |
| Sound and Image | VA 335 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores sound fundamentals as an ingredient of art and design, focusing on varied sound segments for installation, performance, video/film, websites, and audio CD. The course is intended for art and design students as well as persons involved in sound related work and interested in basic knowledge of sound and acoustic. Prior design experience would be useful but not necessary. Appropriate recording methods, recording specific events and broadcasting it simultaneously are some other subjects that the course covers. |
| Interactive Sound | VA 336 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on the use of interactive sound for creative applications. Topics include applied programming for live sound analysis, synthesis and processing and the use of external devices to control live computer-based sound performances. |
| Creative Coding | VA 345 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course explores code at a conceptual level with the aim of using computation as an expressive and creative tool. It addresses topics such as generative audio-visuals, computational art, scripting for common media tools. |
| Independent Study | VA 399 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows students to explore an area of academic interest not currently covered in regular course offerings. Under the supervision of a faculty member, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning, including developing together a reading list and forms of evaluation. Students must receive the approval of a supervisor faculty member prior to enrollment. |
| Project Studio III | VA 401 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | VA section: After the intentionally eclectic program of the third studio year, the students at this stage are expected to move towards a personal approach to producing and reflecting about art. While the work becomes self-reliant, collective studio critiques will encourage and guide the student to ask the substantive questions about individual goals. VCD section: Introducing multimedia design elements; i.e. sound, interactivity, animation and the combination thereof within a graphic presentation. |
| Project Studio IV | VA 402 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | VA section: In this semester the students are expected to develop their own body of artistic works. Both collective and individualised studio critiques will continue throughout the semester. Issues of professional practice and presentation methods will be researched and reviewed. VCD section: Combining and diversifying design components within a final project such as web design, digital video or more traditional design venues, such as editorial design. |
| History of Digital and Electronic Arts | VA 416 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will study the fields of digital and electronic arts, their historical development and contemporary theoretical and aesthetic contexts together with their technical and scientific foundations and convergences. Students will gain an understanding of how artists responded to- and participated in- the development of science and technology in the 20th century and how a range of new interdisciplinary approaches emerged that re-shaped art and science interactions and helped re-define scientific and technological thinking in the arts of the 21st century. The course will explore a diverse range of media and include computational and generative art, code art, net-art, interactive art and digital installations and synthetic worlds. It will also show how art and artists have helped contribute to the development of computational theories like cybernetics, artificial intelligence and artificial life. |
| Concepts & Debates in Contemporary Art | VA 420 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of art thought of as modern than that it has given rise to debates - about its value, meaning, purpose or even existence as art as such. This course will review those debates, and explore the relations between these debates and their consequences, if any, in a changing field of art. It will also review the definitions of the modern and its others implied by these debates. |
| Advanced Topics in Typography | VA 424 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course builds an advanced understanding of typographic technique through in depth analyses of: forms of letters; text and tonal value; and the elements of typographic style. Students will deal with topics ranging from corporate communications; public information design, literature and storytelling and intellectual meditations |
| Art Analysis: Theory and Criticism | VA 430 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of the course is to introduce theories of aesthetics from its early formulations to the present day. The students will be informed about post-1945 art theories and critical movements such as structuralism, post-structuralism and feminist art. The connection and interdependency between art and theory in the same period will be discussed. Students will be encouraged to produce written pieces which critically evaluate artworks. |
| Videography and Narrative Making | VA 431 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students are introduced to the methods of video production and post production. They will learn to write video script, visualizing storyboard, directing, cinematography and editing. They are expected to explore different ways of seeing, framing and composing narrative based upon his or her creative content of narrative making. |
| 3D Modelling | VA 433 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The student is introduced to the benefits of learning digital media through studio practices. The main focus is to understand digital modelling tools, ways of modelling, modelling techniques, texture mapping on various modelling geometry and modelling for animations. This is a fundamental course for those who are interested in computer animation and computer graphics in the field of games, movie, multimedia and interactive production. |
| 3D Animation | VA 434 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Sequel to 3D Modelling course, student is introduced to the process of animation and multidisciplinary design as a team experience. Students polish their skills and advance their knowledge in digital media production, by assigning and completing targeted task in the area of 3D animation. |
| Experimental Film and Video | VA 437 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A comprehensive study of experimental film and video through screenings, readings, discussions, and creative practice, this course offers a critical exploration of the history and theory of experimental and avant-garde film and video, including the impact of new technologies and current practices. Students create a series of short experimental videos to explore new ways to express themselves. |
| Envisioning Information | VA 439 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This introductory course aims to help students grasp the unique place of information visualization within the wider spectrum of Visual Communication Design. The course covers some of the basics of data visualization and investigates creative ways of shaping information through the use of design principles. The students work on projects that involve data collection, use of charts and timelines, infographics and wayfinding systems. Topic related examples, research, readings and viewings are also incorporated into the class material. |
| Motion Graphics and Art | VA 440 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The student is introduced to the principles and elements of motion design through studio practices. This course emphasizes on the relationship between typography principles and animation fundamentals. Students relate their experimental videos with kinetic typography to synthesize the language of motion between text and image for time-based media |
| Visiting Artist Studio | VA 441 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will be taught by a visiting artist. Sabancı University intends to invite regularly local and international artists to teach studio courses within the VA/VCD program. The content and issues covered in the course will be determined by each visiting artist. |
| Visiting Designer Studio | VA 442 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will be taught by a visiting designer. Sabancı University intends to invite regularly local and international designers to teach studio courses within the VA/VCD program. The content and issues covered in the course will be determined by each visiting designer. |
| Interaction Design | VA 444 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to focus on screen based interaction issues. During the course, students will become familiar with the topic with using various tools and applications that are commonly used in professional interaction design work and they will be introduced to the works of practitioners in the field. Advanced programming techniques in various scripting languages will be covered. |
| Issues in Contemporary Performance Art | VA 445 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What issues are significant in the analysis and the practices of performance art, and how have they developed? Conflicting narratives of the history of the genre have developed in the US and Europe. These genealogies don't merely give an account of the art form-they also both enabled and delimited the work of artists and the ways that spectators view them. By examining and critiquing the dominant narratives of the history of performance art, I hope to offer alternative ways of understanding the significance(s) of the genre. I will take into account works that have been crucial to the field, attending to the multiple layers, voices and practices that lay within it. |
| History and Aesthetics of Electroacoustic Music | VA 446 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | After its practical emergence in the late 1940's, electroacoustic music became an integral part of 20th and 21st century music history. This course explores the aesthetical, ideological and technical evolution of electroacoustic music in historical context. It aims to investigate the sound processing techniques, and in order to establish a critical listening perspective, which can be considered as a fundamental element for the perception of electroacoustic compositions. |
| Construction/Deconstruction in 3 Dimensional Space | VA 450 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to ask questions about inner and surrounding space of a 3 dimensional art work. Ideas on construction and deconstruction of sculptures installation will be covered by studying cases in the 20th Art History and critics on students practice in various studio techniques |
| Design Thinking | VA 453 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Today design lies at the crossroads of culture, technology, society, environment and business. This course aims to look at this unique intersection and the role of the 21st century designer not just as a "creator" but as a thinker, initiator, collaborator, entrepreneur. Design thinking methodologies are employed to generate creative ideation and students are expected to express their views, join discussions and contribute material to further develop their understanding and awareness of the thinking that goes into design. |
| Physical Computing | VA 455 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores various methods and design systems for the purpose of collaboratively applying physical computing while building an interactive physical environment. The course also supplements a series of written theoretical ideas about the topic. Basics of building circuits and developing software to communicate with microcontrollers and computers will be introduced. |
| Advanced Illustration | VA 461 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Illustration can be broadly explained as the visual rendering of a specific subject through drawing, painting or photography. In this course illustration will be taken to refer to the visual representation of certain moods or attitudes through these media. Students will have the opportunity to learn various illustration techniques and experiment on creating their own style. Projects may vary, but will include (at least) illustrating texts for posters and character development for a book of fairy tales. By the end of the semester students will have added to their portfolios, as well as to their expertise and self-confidence in experimenting with and using illustration for further visual projects. |
| Summer Project I | VA 481 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This highly intensive, short-duration project class will delve into a specialized topic related to the practice or the theory of the creative fields; the subject of which will vary based upon the area expertise of the instructor. The outcome will be an artwork/design product or a theoretical essay; the contents of which will be determined by the contents of the class. |
| Summer Project II | VA 482 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This highly intensive, short-duration project class will delve into a specialized topic related to the practice or the theory of the creative fields; the subject of which will vary based upon the area expertise of the instructor. The outcome will be an artwork/design product or a theoretical essay; the contents of which will be determined by the contents of the class. |
| Professional Practice as a Designer | VA 490 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to prepare the students for their careers, by developing the skills and strategies that will enhance competence, self confidence as well as the requisite adaptability to succeed in the diverse professional environments within which they are expected to operate. The course includes portfolio making and presentation of ideas, projects and concepts as well as enhancing writing skills, which will help the preparation of professional as well as creative briefs, and reports, which are all part of the requirements of large-scale design projects. The approach is practice-based. It sets up a system that encourages students to put into practice various subjects through hands-on assignments. Furthermore guest lecturers and field trips will provide students with the opportunity of learning from advanced professionals in the design fields. |
| The Business of Art | VIS 308 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course brings together a variety of readings from the humanities and the social sciences that examine the inner workings of the art world. Beginning with the conceptions of modern art and the artist, it critically explores the distinction between art works and artifacts, creativity and labor as well as between contemporary and 'ethnic' art. Drawing on ethnographic examples the course investigates how artists, critics, curators, collectors, patrons and sponsors conceptualize their work, and how they approach prospective audiences. A central concern will be analyzing how the philosophical underpinnings of the civic impact accorded to art are reflected in the daily 'business' of the art world. This will include looking at the practices and discourses of producing, curating and exhibiting; buying, selling, and collecting; reviewing, appraising, insuring and restituting artworks as well as probing the interpersonal and institutional relationships that constitute the arts sector. |
| The New Media | VIS 310 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course will focus on new media and contemporary art and the changes that technologies (web 2.0, virtual reality environments and digital media) are generating in the fields of fine art and curatorship. The course will survey the history of contemporary art from the late 20th Century to the 21st Century, comparing artists and aesthetics with major art movements from the beginning of the 20th Century. Students will acquire an in depth understanding of the artistic practices and aesthetic changes both in classic media and new media that have been determined by the introduction of digital technologies and that have generated the phenomenon of contemporary technocultures. |
| Museums and Contemporary Arts | VIS 412 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Museums and Contemporary Arts will focus on the curatorial challenges in the relationship between museums and contemporary art that have been caused by phenomena of transculturalism, new forms of contemporary artistic interventions and the increasing immateriality of the object. The course will provide an analytical history of contemporary artworks from the late 20th Century to the 21st Century, comparing curatorial approaches, artists' challenges and aesthetics. The influence of major art movements from the beginning and middle of the 20thCentury will be compared with late 20th Century art, contemporary visual practices and contemporary digital culture. Students will develop an understanding of curatorial and artistic practices as well as an aesthetic vocabulary and familiarity with the practice based and theoretical issues related to contemporary art and curatorial practices. |
