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Curriculum / Spring 2009
Czech Culture and Civilization The course traces essential events and periods of Czech history and culture. It provides students with a deeper insight into the Czech mentality and character by dealing with issues, which have determined modern Czech identity, as well as with current political and cultural events and issues. Moreover, students get familiarized with the city of Prague. Through both these aspects, the course will help students to integrate into and experience the Czech society from within. The course consists of in-class lectures and discussions, multimedia presentations, and field trips.
Intensive course designed to develop, at a very basic level, the proficiencies of comprehension and speaking, and introduce the students to everyday culture of Czech life. The focus is on achieving elementary conversational skills covering various elementary topics. In addition to this, practical excursions out of the classroom are organized.
Political Dimension of the European Union The course explains the origins and current structure of the European Union. It examines the role of politics in the functioning of the EU. The course describes political effects of the European Integration and the role Member States, EU Institutions and European citizens play in the whole process of the European integration. The course examines to what extent the EU limits the power and sovereignty of EU Member States. Special attention is paid to the EU citizen’s rights, both political and „economic“.
CEE Economies and the EU Enlargement In 2004 Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia became part of the enlarged EU. This has had an economic impact on both the new entrants and the EU itself. The first part of this course deals with issues related to the economic transition from centrally planned economic system into the market economy. The second part tackles topics related to the EU enlargement.
Fragmentation and Reintegration of Europe This course compares the current stage of geographical patterning of ethnonational identities and political and economic transformation in democratic Western Europe and postcommunist Eastern Europe. Since the 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain, the continent is involved in modernization and reintegration largely orchestrated by the European Union. Nevertheless, the importance of ethnonational, political and economic diversity is enduring and it is increased by the fragmentation of former communist federations. The course proceeds from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and acquaints students with essential facts of the ethnonational heritage, post-1989 state fragmentation and recent political and economic reintegration across Europe.
Societies in the New EU Member Countries: Related Topics in Social Change in the East Central Europe The course focuses on the complexity of social change in the East Central Europe (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia) in the period between the fall of Communism and the accession to the European Union. The emphasis is on the mutual interrelations between political, social, economic, and regional development. Special attention is paid to the external influence of the EU accession on these processes. In the first block, students will be informed about the typical social structure of the Communist and post-Communist society in comparison with Western models. Then the changes of incomes, expenditures, poverty, social mobility, educa tion, housing, national economy, regional devel opment, and the systems of administration will be addressed. In the second block, voting be havior and party system development will be studied in relation to region’s history, cultural diversity, development of social structures, re gional development, ethnic relations, and elec toral laws. The gender issues and the value changes will be discussed vis-à-vis empirical data collected. Finally, the hypothesis of East - West convergence in political, social, economic and regional development will be tested. Instructor: Dr. Tomáš Kostelecký, Senior Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Czech Acad emy of Sciences
Gender and Culture: Selected Current Topics The course analyzes contemporary phenomena shaping our everyday existence in this world as men and women. Starting with the debate of the “communist gender experiment” students move into political and sociological arenas to debate registered partnership, transgender issues, reproduction rights (including sterilization of Roma women), sex trafficking, pornography, and representation of sexes in public life. Youth subcultures will be presented from a gender viewpoint. Other major cultural myths upholding traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity – film, media and advertising will be studied and compared to the new virtual possibilities of cyberspace, “reformed” spirituality and post-feminist readings of popular culture and cartoons. The course is heavily supported with visual documentation, field-trips, and stars exciting Czech guest-speakers from the field of arts, politics and religion. Instructor:
The course builds on the very successful Cultural memory course. It focuses on general understanding of European mentality viewed as a basic unity established on Christianity, urban culture and market economy. The extreme plurality and constant, often brutal discussion among individual kingdoms, states, political fractions, guilds, heretic sects, aristocracy and clergy - the neverending flow of ideas, influences and technologies - may have created the seemingly uniform but in detail very complex European phenomenon. Can it last in contact with globalization, Americanization, Islam and its own internal conflicts and transformations? What is its heart and what potential can it bring to common future? The course will lead students through main European periods of architecture such as Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles which will be interpreted in terms of mentality changes, intellectual history and cultural anthropology. Approximately one half of the lectures will be held in the classroom while the excursions to some well known and totally unknown historical monuments will take place during the other lectures.
Czech History of the 20th Century: An Oral History Project The main goal of this course is to familiarize students with development of the Czech society in the 20th century and to provide thus a necessary background for the oral history project students will participate in. The course focuses on the key crossroads of modern Czech history (emergence of an independent state, Nazi occupation, establishment of the Communist regime, Prague Spring, Velvet Revolution). The oral history project, which constitutes an integral part of the course, is organized by the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Science of Czech Republic. The thematic focus of the project is the late sixties in the U.S.A. and Czechoslovakia - parallels and differences and/or Czech exiles in America who returned back home after 1989. American students will participate on the project together with Czech students and young assistants of the Institute of Contemporary History. Instructors:
Jews in East Central Europe: Life of a Minority This course describes the life of the Jewish community in Europe since the formation of Jewish settlements around the 9th C until the present time. The historical aspect is enriched by detailed insights into both Jewish spirituality and social life. In-class lectures are combined with the field-trips to Prague Jewish monuments. The course has basically three focal points: (1) The situation of the Czech Jewry is the natural departure point. However, we attempt to offer meaningful comparisons with related regions, whose communities represent tendencies that might help elucidating the key problems of a particular period. Above all, the very specific development of Polish Jewry is necessary for the understanding of Jews of Central Europe from 16th C onwards. (2) We put the emphasis on recurring constantly to the interference between the Jewish minority and the surrounding society. The development of a minority is not viewed as isolated but rather interconnected in a very particular way with the majority society. (3) We try to reconstruct the character of the daily life of the Jewish people in the period under scope. Analyzing the rites of passage, festivals and customs as well as the social structures we attempt to describe the different social roles of classical Rabbinic Judaism (a child, a woman, a laic, a rabbi etc.) Instructor:
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in European Context: Confrontation, or coexistence? The ongoing process of so called globalization has led to more or less open confrontation between "universal" transatlantic (originally European) culture (First World) and "particular", local or national cultures of the underdeveloped countries (Third World). The outward conflict based primarily on economic inequality has been gradually trans-formed into ideological and religious antagonisms between "West" and "East", and "North" and "South". Basics of the three great monotheistic systems (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are studied, both in phenomenological (religious philosophy) and historical perspec-tives. Special attention will be given to different interactions between these religions cultures in given historical and geographical context, applied to individual historical periods of Euro-pean history. Contributions of various religious systems to foundation of European culture will be examined and their role in this multicultural process will be evaluated. The historical-philosophical survey will be com-pleted with an assessment of the nowadays situation, with the emphasis on examination of possible ways to a dialogue rather than to a confrontation.
This course gives a comprehensive picture of European art history from Antiquity to present times. A special attention is paid to crucial monuments of Central Europe and Prague. In descriptions of art historical epochs the emphasis is placed on iconography as the barometer of historical changes. Instructor:
Readings from Central European Literature: Meeting Points, Diverging Lines In this course we will walk a full circle: from the days of Austro-Hungarian empire to the very presence, the moment when nowadays independent countries belonging once to one larger unit are to be re-united in an even larger unit. While reading texts of authors representing the canon of modern Central European literature, we will be looking for uniting themes and diverse paths taken up in the turbulent common past of this territory. Instructor:
Emblematic Reductions: Icons of American and Czech Popular Culture This course focuses on semiotic interpretation of popular culture emblems, e.g. entities produced by intentional reduction of meaning. It will cover discursive practices that produce semantic reductions, be it mass media, pop-culture industry, as well as mediating chains of exchange between distinct nations. The materials covered and interpreted will include popular music, TV broadcasting, book presentations and re-presentations, advertising, internet presentations, as well as sociological sources. The course is based on cultural studies perspective, stressing semiotic methodological approaches. Instructor:
Readings from Central European Literature: Meeting Points, Diverging Lines In this course we will walk a full circle: from the days of Austro-Hungarian empire to the very presence, the moment when nowadays independent countries belonging once to one larger unit are to be re-united in an even larger unit. While reading texts of authors representing the canon of modern Central European literature, we will be looking for uniting themes and diverse paths taken up in the turbulent common past of this territory.
Modern Czech Film: History on Screen The course provides a deeper insight into the issues of mod-ern Czechoslovak history and socio-cultural developments as documented by both major feature films and documentaries. Viewed against the general backdrop of key historical events, the participants will gain more intimate knowledge and understanding of the unique modern Central European experience as interpreted by famous film makers many of which helped create the phenomenon of the Czech New Wave (Academy Award Laureates Milos Forman and Jiri Menzel among them). Film screenings will include films covering World War II., the Stalinist Fifties, the period of political and cultural thaw of the Six-ties, the most significant works of the post-1968 Soviet invasion years as well as post-1989 Velvet Revolution trends and controversies of the Czech film art.
Language course is designed to give students the ability to handle everyday situations in Czech by focusing on listening and reading comprehension, speaking and beginning writing skills, introduction to Czech grammar. Instructors:
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