Recent work in sensory history has highlighted how sound and listening shape human experience and historical change. Rather than treating music and sound as mere background, this seminar approaches them as active forces that structure power relations, social hierarchies, and cultural practices. We examine how “sonic spaces” emerge not only from architecture and acoustics but also from political, religious, gendered, and racialized contexts, as well as listening conventions and programming choices.
Through case studies, we will explore churches as sites reflecting cosmic order, courts and gardens as acoustic technologies of princely power, women’s convents and salons as spaces of musical agency, and the military, epistemological, and extractive uses of sound in colonial settings. By analyzing the interplay between space, sound, and practice, the course invites us to rethink early modern history through a sensory and spatial lens and to understand how power was embodied, performed, and contested through sound.

This seminar examines the largely under-researched social, legal, and cultural status of musicians of sub-Saharan African descent in early modern Europe. Through case studies, we explore Black musicians at the courts of Portugal and Spain, Black trumpeters and kettledrummers in the Holy Roman Empire, Black singers in seventeenth-century Florence, and Black composers and performers in the urban musical cultures of France and England. The course also analyzes musical constructions of Blackness in different musical genres, such as the villancicos de negros from early modern Iberia and its colonies, and the figure of Monostatos in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Situating these examples within broader histories of race-making, enslavement and freedom, mobility, and labor, we consider musical performance as both exploitation and potential agency within courtly and colonial power structures. Drawing on key English-language works on critical race, postcolonial, and court studies, students learn to interpret the biographies and sonic practices of Black musicians as part of Europe’s entangled histories of music/sound, power, race, and empire.

This is a research-based seminar dedicated to topical issues in (studies of) Central and Eastern Europe in light of contemporary polycrises: Russia’s war in Ukraine; authoritarian backlash in Russia, Belarus and elsewhere; democratic backsliding in a number of EU-member states; global climate breakdown; and others. It invites students to engage with contemporary debates on decolonization, gender and sexuality, nationalism and identity, memory, and environmental destruction – as seen through cultural practices including (but not restricted to) literature, film, visual arts, digital activism, and music.

No specific linguistic competences are required for participation: materials will be studied in translation (English and/or German, according to availability) or with subtitles.

In the course of the semester, students will formulate their own research topics to pursue in a limited and guided capacity, producing written and/or visual outputs in a flexible assessment format. The seminar will foreground a dialogic structure, encouraging students to contribute in multiple ways and collectively co-shape the direction and content. A number of special guest inputs are also planned.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the of the course, students should be able to:
• critically discuss selected cultural products and practices from central/eastern Europe, including in comparative perspective in relation to global processes and with reference to broader theoretical paradigms such as memory studies, de- and postcoloniality, theories of gender and sexuality, and others;
• develop their own research question in a self-selected area of cultural studies in an central/eastern European context, as well as adapt and apply appropriate theories to carry out the project within a given time frame;
• demonstrate advanced knowledge of contemporary cultural issues in central and eastern Europe in line with their own research interests and language skills, and identify areas in which they may wish to specialise in future research projects (e.g. the BA thesis).

This series of interconnected lectures serves as an introduction to social theory and cultural criticism. Themes include: definitions of culture, theories of identity; modernity and postmodernity; language, semiotics and (post)structuralism; cultural memory; psychoanalysis; race, ethnicity and imperial legacies; Marxist critiques; and study of culture in the age of globalization.

This is an interdisciplinary course bridging various fields of inquiry including anthropology, sociology, history, literary studies and linguistics. It is open to students from all departments and is intended to be useful for a wide range of potential academic paths.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• apply a range of theories and methods of analysis to works of literature, film, art, and other cultural phenomena;
• engage in informed discussions on the foundations of cultural theory, including ideas first voiced by Clifford Geertz, Antonio Gramsci, Roland Barthes, Sigmund Freud, Linda Hutcheon, Arjun Appadurai and others;
• critically discuss the concept(s) of culture as applied to terms such as “mass” culture, “high” culture”, “popular” culture and “national” cultures.

Teilnehmende/Participants:

Students taking Integrated European Studies (IES) Module M5c ("Einführung in die Theorien und Methoden der Kulturwissenschaft"; 12CPs) must complete this lecture course and the seminar "08-31-2-M5c-2: Gender Studies: Kultur und Gesellschaft".

Students from all faculties and exchange programmes are also welcome to participate. The lecture course is worth 6CPs/ECTS as a stand-alone course.

Prüfungsleistungen und CP/Assignments and Credits:

This course is normally assessed as part of the Module IES-M5c “Einführung in die Theorien und Methoden der Kulturwissenschaft”, in which second-semester Integrated European Studies (IES) students attend and complete assessments in different but related aspects of cultural theory.

The lecture course and the seminar will be weighted equally in the grading of the module as a whole (12 CPs in total).

Students are also invited to take the course as a stand-alone paper in General Studies and receive a GS-Schein (or e.g. Erasmus Credit Transfer for exchange students). In this case, the course is worth 6 CPs/ECTS. The assessment format for all students is the same, namely:

This course is assessed by written Examination (100%): a 90-minute question-and-answer based examination carried out in Week 14. Answers may be written in German or English (or a mixture).

Prüfungsleistungen und CP/Assignments and Credits:
6 CP

https://www.uni-bremen.de/fb8/international/internationales-modul
3 CP/ECTS for this course, +3 CP/ECTS extra credit