| Etnographic Approaches to Law and Conflict | ANTH 513 | 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 try to understand the cultural processes that create this variation. We will 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. The ethnographies we will read will be about a diverse set of contexts such as Mexico, Iran, Türkiye, New Guinea and urban America. Some of the questions we will tackle in particular will be; what are the different notions of justice -including fairness, equity etc.- that can be found in different cultural contexts? What is the relation of these different notions to the particular methods and mechanisms of resolving conflicts? When and how do these meanings and practices of justice contribute to the re-making of existing hierarchies-such as gender, age, status- and when and how do they come to challenge them? |
| Anthropology of the State | ANTH 515 | 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 Migration and the City | ANTH 521 | 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 urban encounters, contact zones, everyday multiculture, everyday cosmopolitanisms and conviviality |
| Anthropology of Affect | ANTH 525 | 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 the Body | ANTH 526 | 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 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 Hope | ANTH 528 | 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 550 | 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. |
| Migration and Citizenship | ANTH 554 | 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. |
| Social Mobilization, Resistance and Protest | ANTH 565 | 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 Anthropology | ANTH 568 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ethnography refers both to the main qualitative research methods and the written product of anthropological research. This course aims to familiarize students with the tools of conducting ethnographic research, while also giving them an opportunity to put these tools into practice. Throughout the course, various aspects of and approaches to doing and writing ethnography will be critically examined. |
| Anthropology and History | ANTH 569 | 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 571 | 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. |
| Islam in Türkiye | ANTH 591 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Etnographic Approaches to Law and Conflict | ANTH 613 | 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 try to understand the cultural processes that create this variation. We will 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. The ethnographies we will read will be about a diverse set of contexts such as Mexico, Iran, Türkiye, New Guinea and urban America. Some of the questions we will tackle in particular will be; what are the different notions of justice -including fairness, equity etc.- that can be found in different cultural contexts? What is the relation of these different notions to the particular methods and mechanisms of resolving conflicts? When and how do these meanings and practices of justice contribute to the re-making of existing hierarchies-such as gender, age, status- and when and how do they come to challenge them? |
| Writing Culture | ANTH 669 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this course, current debates in the field of anthropology will be examined through in-depth reading of a selection of contemporary ethnographies, or books produced by anthropologists on the basis of field research. |
| Digital Paradigm | BP 541 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Digital Paradigm covers the changes created by sociological facts and judicial issues in a new environment and the opportunities and risks created by these changes in the business world, as well as products and services moving from physical environments to digital environments faster than expected. Due to Digital Paradigm many firm has been founded or disappeared in the last 10 years. Moreover, the new lines of business have been formed or some of them disappeared or become smaller. The course will follow these changes and will be lectured as seminars. Also, case study and role study methods will be applied. |
| Design | BP 542 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Design course aims at not educating designers, but improving the skills of a manager working with designers, developing the skill of communicating with designers, and developing the skill and criteria of evaluating a design. The process starts with comprehending the concept of " design thinking" that can be used in every field of the business world, and continues with the place and importance of design in building a brand. It will also address the importance of proper brief preparation, presentation and package design for the brand, and contemporary marketing issues such as service and experience design. At certain points of all these studies, the concepts will be analyzed through real examples and practices by means of studies to be conducted with different brands related to the topic. |
| International Conflict and Peace | CONF 500 | 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. |
| Introduction to Conflict Analysis and Resolution | CONF 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an overview of the field of international conflict analysis and resolution. It examines major social scientific theories of conflict and weaves together ideas ideas from various disciplines with new approaches especially to causes of deep-rooted conflict. The courses emphasizes sources and responses to conflict in the international system. |
| Correlates of War and Peace | CONF 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar surveys theories of international conflict. Assigned readings will cover major theoretical perspectives, debates, and empirical research on the causes of international conflict and war with an emphasis on recent developments in the field. The seminar will also touch upon factors that influence the duration, severity and termination of international conflict. |
| Foreign Policy and Conflict Resolution | CONF 504 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The use of conflict resolution approaches in the development and implementation of a nation's foreign policy. Addresses the challenge of how policy making and diplomatic practice can be influenced by theories of conflict resolutions. Students will compare security oriented foreign policy approaches with innovative foreign policy formulations. |
| Multilateral Negotiations in the EU | CONF 508 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Multilateral negotiations are complex interactions. This course investigates social structure of mutilateral negotiations in the context of the EU negotiations, and offers theoretical frameworks to explain different angles of multilateral negotiations. At empirical level the course addresses the negotiations in the EU in three different levels. First, the course analyzes negotiations between the member states and the EU institutions and the institutionalized Patterns of bargaining, second the course addresses the negotiations between the major EU institutions, namely, the Commission, the Council of the EU and the European Parliament. Third, the course addresses the negotiations patterns between the EU and non-members, specifically through the enlargement negotiations underway since 1997. |
| Third Party Roles in Peace Processes | CONF 510 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine the role of various third parties in different stages of a conflict and peace processes, such as conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. The objectives of the course are to introduce the students to the concept of "third party intervention" and the range of third party roles and perspectives, to understand the different strategies and tactics used by third parties, and to discuss the effectiveness of their interventions. |
| Culture and Conflict | CONF 511 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designated to introduce students to the cultural roots of conflict taking place around the world. We will explore the systematic attempts to understand the relationship of cultural difference and conflict both in theory and in practice. The aim of the course is to integrate international conflict resolution methods and culture as they pertain to different conflict zones. In this course we will study this emerging literature and field of study and practice. We will critically evaluate its usefulness in confronting contemporary global political and humanitarian challenges. Specific attention will be given to such cultural causes as ethnicity, language, race, and gender in the development and resolution of conflict in domestic and international arenas. |
| Research Methods | CONF 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces research design and analysis and aims to expose them to ethical consideration in research and publishing. Students will learn techniques for gathering analysing and interpreting data. The techniques include laboratory and field experiments, simulation, surveys and sampling approaches, archival analysis, and ethnographic filed work. Both qualitative and quantitaive techniques are covered including an introduction to probability theory and statistical analysis. Students will also have experience with SPSS and qualitative computer programs. |
| Issues, Concepts and Theories in Conflict Resolution | CONF 523 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Considers the key substantive themes in conflict resolution. Senior scholars will present their approaches to each of these themes in two-week modules, including identity conflicts and nationalism, language and culture and institutions, the global context of conflict, and the dynamics of the peace process. Students will be expected to complete a concept essay on each of these thematic modules. |
| Advanced Topics in Conflict Resolution | CONF 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a continuation of Pro-seminar I. Senior scholars will cover such topics as war, violence, and conflict resolution, conflict termination, peace-keeping, peace building, negotiation, mediation and other forms of third-party decision making |
| Conflict Resolution Practice | CONF 531 | 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. |
| Managing Conflict in Organizations | CONF 532 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the intersection between organizational behavior and human conflict. Organizations are basic units of society that require interdependence and effective conflict analysis and management skills. This class will enable students to develop conceptual understandings of the psychological and behavioral dynamics of interpersonal, intergroup, and systemic conflict in an organizational context. Students will also gain practical skills related to effective diagnosis and intervention in organizational systems and learn about the strategic prevention and management of conflict. A variety of didactic techniques will be used, including lecture, small group work, and fieldwork in an organizational setting. |
| Media in Conflict Resolution | CONF 534 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Events, characters, images and stories we see everyday in the media shape our perceptions and values. Moreover, the way the media presents such issues as cultural diversity/clash, conflicts and wars have a powerful and long-lasting effects in societies and the way the conflict and peace are structured. This course will critically examine the representations of conflict in the media to determine whether such representations are an accurate or distorted reflection of reality; study the effects (if any) of such representations on the public to provide the students with a critical understanding of the role of media in shaping society and social norms. The scope of this course includes how media creates stereotypes leading cultural intensity, how it reflects times of conflicts and wars (with an emphasis on embedded journalism), how media's presentation of reality affects peace process and post-conflict phase. |
| Organizations in Conflict Resolution | CONF 536 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Since the establishment of the League of Nations, a wide range of literature on the role of organizations in international relations has emerged. Recently, some scholars also focused on the role of local NGOs in conflict prevention and creating a peaceful, trustful political environment. This course studies the role of organizations as a) sources of conflict, b) conflict prevention c) mediators and d) peace builders. We will, first analyze how to study organizations in general and then, their roles in conflict settings. More specifically we will discuss the role of local and international non-governmental (NGOs) and governmental organizations (IGOs). |
| Integration of Theory, Research and Practice | CONF 541 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is the review and synthesis of the students prior course-work. It is intended to provide a holistic perspective of the field, emphasising the most recent scholarship. Students are expected to to prepare an integrative paper that shows connections among theory, research and practice in the context of particular conflicts. |
| Collective Violence, Healing, and Transformation | CONF 542 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Promoting healing, enabling reconciliation and cultivating transformation in countries affected by mass violence remains a pressing question facing the global community. This class will explore the effects of collective violence, such as genocide, ethnic, inter- and intra-state conflict, and the recovery process. Focus will be on understanding the concepts of trauma and resiliency and exploring mechanisms for healing, fostering reconciliation, and transforming the trauma of war at multiple levels of analysis. Students will become familiar with current conceptual frameworks in the fields of trauma studies, social and political psychology, and international development related to these topics. Both historical and current cases of collective violence will be used to consider the effects of violence and the healing process at social, communal, and individual levels. Students will gain familiarity with and consider the challenges to and effectiveness of healing, reconciliation, and transformation processes that have been undertaken in post-conflict countries. |
| Issues In Post-Conflict Environments | CONF 544 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analyzing post-conflict phase is as important as understanding the roots and escalation of conflicts What happens when the conflict starts to de- escalate and an agreement is reached? If and when can the conflicts be reconciled? Conflict transformation, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction entail a variety of components, including creating institutions that will foster lasting peace and stability, designing and implementing mechanisms for bringing accountability to perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses, and fostering reconciliation in post-conflict societies. This course will explore the complex legal, political, and moral considerations that shape efforts to promote peacebuilding. We will look at various methods developed over the last half-century to reconstruct societies divided by war, political repression or ethnic conflict. |
| Advanced Conflict Resolution Practice | CONF 552 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course discusses and uses a variety of role-plays and simulations to explore the issues involved in negotiation, coalition building, representation, facilitation, meeting management, mediation, communication, rules of decision, consensus building and other issues which are presented when multiple parties seek to resolve their conflicts and disputes outside of conventional models. The course will focus on issues of group dynamics and processes of decision making. Students will learn how to be an effective part of a group and will experience leading and managing group processes. Thus, they will learn from being inside group processes and complex conflict situations, as well as standing outside of them to analyze and lead them. |
| Human Rights, Democracy and Conflict Resolution | CONF 561 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This corse analyzes the issues of human rights and democracy as they pertain to conflicts and conflict resolution methods The course covers such issues of philosophical and political bases for the international human rights movement (including the ongoing debate over universality, culture and human rights), the United Nations and regional systems for human rights protection and promotion to provide a tool for analyzing conflict and various forms of interventions attempting to promote peace and justice, the controversial meanings of democracy and how it causes conflict between and within states, and finally the means in which these terms can be used to evercome various forms of conflicts. We will also analyze the development of international criminal courts, truth commissions,and other attempts at transitional justice to deal with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides;and the human rights dimensions of terrorism. |
| Conflicts in Contemporary Turkish Society | CONF 580 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an overview of the conflicts that define the political consciousness of the contemporary Turkish society from the perspective of the conflict resolution field. These cases include the Cyprus, Kurdish and Armenian questions, Islam and Turkish Secularism, Modernization/ Europeanization and military-civilian relations. Main conflict frameworks are introduced that cover a wide range from personal to international levels of analysis. Students are encouraged to work in groups and asked to develop their own intervention models to each specific case. |
| Approaches To Ethnic Conflict | CONF 582 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ethnic conflicts all around the world started escalate in the post-Cold War era. Many students of ethnicity and nationalism try to explain ethnic roots of conflicts and examine cases where these conflicts with various level of violence took place. In the conflict resolution field, there also emerged a body of literature on how to resolve conflicts. What are the causes of these conflicts? What are the strategies to prevent them? Why and how do they end? Can they be reconciled? What can the international community do to facilitate peaceful settlement? This course will provide the students with the analytical tools to tackle with these questions. |
| Seminar in Group and Organizational Dynamics | CONF 585 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This Seminar offers students the opportunity to develop an introductory overview of group and organizational dynamics, leadership, and authority, and to learn about their own behavior in groups. Students will study experientially the nature of authority and leadership and how they take up their own roles in groups and organizations. |
| Internship | CONF 590 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students are expected to work in an organization where they will combine theory and practice through observation and experience. |
| Pro-seminar in Conflict Resolution | CONF 592 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides students and the academic community a global perspective on seminal theory, research, and practice in the arena of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The course is comprised of presentations by visiting scholars and practitioners, followed by an opportunity to engage in dialogue about their work and current issues in the field. The course will include participants from different world regions and both academic and practice-related backgrounds. In this way, students will be exposed to varying cultural, epistemological, and disciplinary approaches to addressing the complex issues inherent in resolving conflicts. They will also gain models for the application of theory to and design of interventions in real-world settings. It will be conducted in the format of a seminar series, thus allowing for maximum participation of visitors and a rich intellectual discourse on these topics. |
| Directed Reading | CONF 593 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for extra preparation in research methods, including deepening mastery of the relevant research through special readings, whenever necessary. |
| Pro-seminar in Conflict Resolution II | CONF 594 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides students and the academic community a global perspective on seminal theory, research, and practice in the arena of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The course is comprised of presentations by visiting scholars and practitioners, followed by an opportunity to engage in dialogue about their work and current issues in the field. The course will include participants from different world regions and both academic and practice-related backgrounds. In this way, students will be exposed to varying cultural, epistemological, and disciplinary approaches to addressing the complex issues inherent in resolving conflicts. They will also gain models for the application of theory to and design of interventions in real-world settings. It will be conducted in the format of a seminar series, thus allowing for maximum participation of visitors and a rich intellectual discourse on these topics |
| Term Project | CONF 597 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Term project students taking this course are expected to write a research paper on atopic agreed upon by a faculty member. |
| Master Thesis | CONF 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| Introduction to Conflict Analysis and Resolution | CONF 601 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an overview of the field of international conflict analysis and resolution. It examines major social scientific theories of conflict and weaves together ideas ideas from various disciplines with new approaches especially to causes of deep-rooted conflict. The courses emphasizes sources and responses to conflict in the international system. |
| New Approaches to International Conflict | CONF 602 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In the latter half of the twentieth century, war among states has become increasingly rare. More significantly, states in some regions of the world, i.e. in Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America, have come to neither expect nor prepare for war against each other. Such zones of peace (or security communities), through their proliferation and expansion, hold the promise for a fundamental transformation of world politics. After briefly introducing students to the range of International Relations theories on interstate war and peace, this course will focus on constructivist approaches that explain the formation of such zones of peace through the development of shared norms, values, and a sense of collective identity among states. Then, these constructivist arguments will be applied to analyze the possible transformation of Turkish/Greek relations through the expansion of the European zone of peace. |
| Foreign Policy and Conflict Resolution | CONF 604 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The use of conflict resolution approaches in the development and implementation of a nation's foreign policy. Addresses the challenge of how policy making and diplomatic practice can be influenced by theories of conflict resolutions. Students will compare security oriented foreign policy approaches with innovative foreign policy formulations. |
| Multilateral Negotiations in the EU | CONF 608 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Multilateral negotiations are complex interactions. This course investigates social structure of mutilateral negotiations in the context of the EU negotiations, and offers theoretical frameworks to explain different angles of multilateral negotiations. At empirical level the course addresses the negotiations in the EU in three different levels. First, the course analyzes negotiations between the member states and the EU institutions and the institutionalized Patterns of bargaining, second the course addresses the negotiations between the major EU institutions, namely, the Commission, the Council of the EU and the European Parliament. Third, the course addresses the negotiations patterns between the EU and non-members, specifically through the enlargement negotiations underway since 1997. |
| Third Party Roles in Peace Processes | CONF 610 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine the role of various third parties in different stages of a conflict and peace processes, such as conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. The objectives of the course are to introduce the students to the concept of "third party intervention" and the range of third party roles and perspectives, to understand the different strategies and tactics used by third parties, and to discuss the effectiveness of their interventions. |
| Culture and Conflict | CONF 611 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designated to introduce students to the cultural roots of conflict taking place around the world. We will explore the systematic attempts to understand the relationship of cultural difference and conflict both in theory and in practice. The aim of the course is to integrate international conflict resolution methods and culture as they pertain to different conflict zones. In this course we will study this emerging literature and field of study and practice. We will critically evaluate its usefulness in confronting contemporary global political and humanitarian challenges. Specific attention will be given to such cultural causes as ethnicity, language, race, and gender in the development and resolution of conflict in domestic and international arenas. |
| Research Methods | CONF 612 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces research design and analysis. Students will learn techniques for gathering, analysing and interpreting data. The techniques include laboratory and field experiments, simulation, surveys and sampling approaches, archival analysis, and ethnographic filed work. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques are covered including an introduction to probability theory and statistical analysis. Students will also have experience with SPSS and qualitative computer programs. |
| Issues, Concepts and Theories in Conflict Resolution I | CONF 623 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Considers the key substantive themes in conflict resolution. Senior scholars will present their approaches to each of these themes in two-week modules, including identity conflicts and nationalism, language and culture and institutions, the global context of conflict, and the dynamics of the peace process. Students will be expected to complete a concept essay on each of these thematic modules. |
| Issues, Concepts and Theories in Conflict Resolution II | CONF 624 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a continuation of Pro-seminar I. Senior scholars will cover such topics as war, violence, and conflict resolution, conflict termination, peace-keeping, peace building, negotiation, mediation and other forms of third-party decision making |
| Conflict Resolution Practice | CONF 631 | 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. |
| Role of Media in Conflict Resolution | CONF 634 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Events, characters, images and stories we see everyday in the media shape our perceptions and values. Moreover, the way the media presents such issues as cultural diversity/clash, conflicts and wars have a powerful and long-lasting effects in societies and the way the conflict and peace are structured. This course will critically examine the representations of conflict in the media to determine whether such representations are an accurate or distorted reflection of reality; study the effects (if any) of such representations on the public to provide the students with a critical understanding of the role of media in shaping society and social norms. The scope of this course includes how media creates stereotypes leading cultural intensity, how it reflects times of conflicts and wars (with an emphasis on embedded journalism), how media's presentation of reality affects peace process and post-conflict phase. |
| Role of Organizations in Conflict Resolution | CONF 636 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Since the establishment of the League of Nations, a wide range of literature on the role of organizations in international relations has emerged. Recently, some scholars also focused on the role of local NGOs in conflict prevention and creating a peaceful, trustful political environment. This course studies the role of organizations as a) sources of conflict, b) conflict prevention c) mediators and d) peace builders. We will, first analyze how to study organizations in general and then, their roles in conflict settings. More specifically we will discuss the role of local and international non-governmental (NGOs) and governmental organizations (IGOs). |
| Integration of Theory, Research and Practice | CONF 641 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is the review and synthesis of the students prior course-work. It is intended to provide a holistic perspective of the field, emphasising the most recent scholarship. Students are expected to to prepare an integrative paper that shows connections among theory, research and practice in the context of particular conflicts. |
| Issues In Post-Conflict Environments | CONF 644 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analyzing post-conflict phase is as important as understanding the roots and escalation of conflicts What happens when the conflict starts to de- escalate and an agreement is reached? If and when can the conflicts be reconciled? Conflict transformation, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction entail a variety of components, including creating institutions that will foster lasting peace and stability, designing and implementing mechanisms for bringing accountability to perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses, and fostering reconciliation in post-conflict societies. This course will explore the complex legal, political, and moral considerations that shape efforts to promote peacebuilding. We will look at various methods developed over the last half-century to reconstruct societies divided by war, political repression or ethnic conflict. |
| Advanced Conflict Resolution Practice | CONF 652 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course discusses and uses a variety of role-plays and simulations to explore the issues involved in negotiation, coalition building, representation, facilitation, meeting management, mediation, communication, rules of decision, consensus building and other issues which are presented when multiple parties seek to resolve their conflicts and disputes outside of conventional models. The course will focus on issues of group dynamics and processes of decision making. Students will learn how to be an effective part of a group and will experience leading and managing group processes. Thus, they will learn from being inside group processes and complex conflict situations, as well as standing outside of them to analyze and lead them. |
| Human Rights, Democracy and Conflict Resolution | CONF 661 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This corse analyzes the issues of human rights and democracy as they pertain to conflicts and conflict resolution methods The course covers such issues of philosophical and political bases for the international human rights movement (including the ongoing debate over universality, culture and human rights), the United Nations and regional systems for human rights protection and promotion to provide a tool for analyzing conflict and various forms of interventions attempting to promote peace and justice, the controversial meanings of democracy and how it causes conflict between and within states, and finally the means in which these terms can be used to evercome various forms of conflicts. We will also analyze the development of international criminal courts, truth commissions,and other attempts at transitional justice to deal with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides;and the human rights dimensions of terrorism. |
| Approaches To Ethnic Conflict | CONF 682 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ethnic conflicts all around the world started escalate in the post-Cold War era. Many students of ethnicity and nationalism try to explain ethnic roots of conflicts and examine cases where these conflicts with various level of violence took place. In the conflict resolution field, there also emerged a body of literature on how to resolve conflicts. What are the causes of these conflicts? What are the strategies to prevent them? Why and how do they end? Can they be reconciled? What can the international community do to facilitate peaceful settlement? This course will provide the students with the analytical tools to tackle with these questions. |
| Internship | CONF 690 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students are expected to work in an organization where they will combine theory and practice through observation and experience. |
| Directed Reading | CONF 693 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for extra preparation in research methods, including deepening mastery of the relevant research through special readings, whenever necessary. |
| Term Project | CONF 697 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Term project students taking this course are expected to write a research paper on atopic agreed upon by a faculty member. |
| Master Thesis | CONF 699 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| Core Issues in Cultural Studies | CULT 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces the students to the theoretical frameworks of graduate study in Cultural Studies by focusing on the debates around the definitions and uses of the concept of culture as well as on such specific issues as orientalism/occidentalism, cultural constructions and contestations of gender and sexuality, media and popular culture, and the changing configurations of private and public spheres. It combines the overview of the major theoretical and methodological approaches in the field of cultural politics and criticism with a critical discussion of various applications of these approaches in specific social, political, and historical contexts. |
| Core Works in Cultural Studies | CULT 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to broaden and deepen the students' understanding of cultural theories and to develop their ability to think critically about cultural issues through a sustained engagement with a selection of works by some of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. The questions raised in the course will concern the ways in which these theories have shaped contemporary research and pedagogical agendas, the negotiations and interventions they have enabled, their social and political contexts, and to what extent they can "travel" across cultures. |
| Epistemological Foundations of Cultural Analysis | CULT 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | With its focus on the epistemological foundations of cultural analysis, this course will prepare students for an applied course in methodology. The course will analyze the construction of knowledge, reviewing the history of methodology in the social sciences and humanities and will introduce the students the research methods, analysis and design. The course will also focus on recent critiques and the emergence of new approaches and methodologies of cultural analysis. Issues such as reflexivity, the positionality of the researcher and research ethics will be discussed. The course will be taught in module format by several faculty members. |
| Cultural Analysis Workshop | CULT 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this course, students will complete a research project of their own in which they learn to use a a variety of methods of cultural analysis including observation, interviewing, oral history, textual and documentary analysis and visual analysis. The course will track all the stages of research from proposal-writing to data collection, analysis and writing. The course will be taught in module format by several faculty members. |
| M.A. Term Project | CULT 505 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students taking this course are expected to write a research paper on a topic agreed upon by a Faculty member. |
| Technology and Culture | CULT 520 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Aiming to destabilize some of the routine assumptions about the neutral or autonomous role of technologies, this course will explore how they are embedded in social and cultural life. Of special importance is how conceptions of time and space are shaped through the interaction of culture and technology. The course will start with some specific examples of the 'old' technologies (eg. telephones or radios) to understand their social uses when they were new. It will proceed to examine comparable processes in relation to 'new' technologies (eg. cell phones or home computers). Throughout, theoretical readings on the link between old/new technologies and the organization of time and space as critical dimensions of modernity and postmodernity will be discussed. |
| Digital Humanities | CULT 521 | 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. |
| Youth Culture | CULT 522 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on youth culture viewed within the wider frame of age and generation. It asks, 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 also investigates how youth culture (and generational identity) have been studied in Türkiye. It includes a unit in which students undertake a research project of their own on youth culture and/or generational identity in Istanbul. |
| Media Worlds | CULT 525 | 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. |
| Art and the Body | CULT 527 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will explore the many ways in which art represents, shows, displays, suggests or otherwise makes bodies part of its concerns. How and in what ways do representations of bodies determine senses of identity or of space? How successful have moves away from the representation of bodies been? How are senses of corporeality conveyed in cultures which do not characteristically represent human bodies? Students may expect to develop a critical vocabulary for assessing how senses of the body are communicated. |
| Modernism/Postmodernism | CULT 532 | 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. |
| Representations of Violence | CULT 535 | 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. At what point, however, 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. Subject to these conditions, CULT 535 may be taken for graduate credit. For the possibility of taking this course at the undergraduate level see CULT 435. |
| Postcolonial Theory and Its Discontents | CULT 537 | 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 in the Middle East | CULT 541 | 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 | CULT 542 | 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, Türkiye, 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. |
| Seminar on Gender, War and Peace | CULT 543 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The 20th century has been a century of wars, hot and cold. This course explores the gendered aspects of wars, militarism, and peace politics. The first part of the course War, Militarism and Gender, focuses on the ways in which wars, militaries and military service have shaped gendered self - understandings in the 20th century. The second part, Women and Peace, is based on a historical survey of women's peace activism in different parts of the world. The third section, Feminism and Peace Politics, highlights feminist theorizing on peace and peace politics. The course will be organized as a seminar. The active participation of students in class discussions and presentations will be essential. Students are expected to carry out original research towards the final paper. Subject to these conditions, CULT 643 may be counted towards the fulfillment of the seminar requirements for the History MA and PhD programs. For the possibility of taking this course at the undergraduate level see CULT 443. |
| Gender and Sexuality in Türkiye | CULT 544 | 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 Türkiye. 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. |
| Nation, History and Culture in Museums | CULT 551 | 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 552 | 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 553 | 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 differ 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 only 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 554 | 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. |
| Urban Spaces and Cultures | CULT 555 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | How do we begin to understand te diffrences ,commonalities, and interconnections between 'World Cities' - such as Cairo, New York, Istanbul or Singapore? This course provides a ciritical guide to diverse ideas, concepts and frameworks used to study such cities. It explores how city spaces and cultures are constituted, divided and contested, by focusing such topics as: colonial landspaces 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. |
| Cultures and Politics of Law Reform | CULT 560 | 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 Türkiye, 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 whatemerges out of their contestations. In this way we will try to develop a dynamic, culturally and politically informed understanding of law reform. |
| Oral History | CULT 561 | 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 dialogue 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 562 | 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 Türkiye. |
| Postsocialism | CULT 563 | 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. |
| Globalization and Health Inequalities | CULT 568 | 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 |
| Everyday Life | CULT 570 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What is everyday life? Is it a routine that we take for granted and have a difficult time to take an analytical distance from, or is it critical in informing our identity and subjectivity? How does what we do in our everyday life shape who we are and where we belong? How do different conceptions of time and space, and philosophical debates on public/private and nature/nurture play a role in these processes? This course is designed to broaden and deepen the students’ understanding of everyday life, based on relevant social sciences and humanities literature across different time periods and cultural contexts, starting from the capitalist societies in 19th century Europe. It will also cover how the major developments in the first two decades of the 2000s, such as digitalization, virtual reality, new social movements and the COVID-19 pandemic have changed our everyday life and our conceptualizations of it. |
| Political Ecology and Society | CULT 584 | 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. |
| Pro-thesis Seminar | CULT 590 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Pro-Thesis Seminar provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field. |
| Advanced Topics in Cultural Studies I | CULT 591 | 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 592 | 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 593 | 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 Türkiye. Each semester the course will be structured around a different theme, emphasizing the ways in which politics and culture are articulated in present-day Türkiye. |
| Independent Study | CULT 598 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course allows graduate students to explore an area of academic interest not covered in regular course offerings. As in any graduate seminar, the course must terminate in a research paper or its equivalent. Students may enroll in this course only after they have received the approval in writing of the faculty member with whom they would like to work. Before the supervising faculty member grants approval, the student must submit a preliminary reading list and an indication of the kind and scope of the final product (e.g. 20-page paper, ten-min. video). |
| Master's Thesis | CULT 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| Seminar on Gender, War and Peace | CULT 643 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The 20th century has been a century of wars, hot and cold. This course explores the gendered aspects of wars, militarism, and peace politics. The first part of the course War, Militarism and Gender, focuses on the ways in which wars, militaries and military service have shaped gendered self - understandings in the 20th century. The second part, Women and Peace, is based on a historical survey of women's peace activism in different parts of the world. The third section, Feminism and Peace Politics, highlights feminist theorizing on peace and peace politics. The course will be organized as a seminar. The active participation of students in class discussions and presentations will be essential. Students are expected to carry out original research towards the final paper. Subject to these conditions, CULT 643 may be counted towards the fulfillment of the seminar requirements for the History MA and PhD programs. For the possibility of taking this course at the undergraduate level see CULT 443. |
| Microeconomics I | ECON 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Consumer and demand theory, production and theory of the firm; competitive markets, partial and general equilibrium theory. |
| Microeconomics II | ECON 502 | 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. |
| Macroeconomics I | ECON 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Traditional and endogenous growth theories real business cycles, overlapping generation models. |
| Macroeconomics II | ECON 504 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Real and monetary issues in the open economy, unemployment, models of consumption, investment, money, monetary and fiscal policy. |
| Quantitative Methods | ECON 505 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course introduces students to research methods, analysis and design and aims to expose them to ethical considerations in research and publishing. Topics included are linear algebra; probability theory, random variables distributions, hypothesis testing, asymptotic distribution theory, estimation. |
| Econometrics | ECON 506 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Classical linear regression model, generalized least squares generalized method of moments, qualitative dependent variable models, time series analysis. |
| Public Economics | ECON 520 | 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 521 | 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 522 | 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. |
| Economics of the Welfare State | ECON 523 | 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 Türkiye. |
| Political Economy of Türkiye | ECON 526 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine the main economic policy regimes and the underlying social, political and institutional dynamics in recent Turkish history in the context of a political-economic theoretical framework. The topics covered will include: positive political theory; political groups, interest groups and political influence; the political economy of elections; populism and redistributive politics; the statist era; the import substitution era; Türkiye during globalization; structural reforms and political, social and institutional constraints. |
| Essentials of Project and Infrastructure Finance | ECON 547 | 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. |
| Mathematics for Economists | ECON 571 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will introduce students to real analysis, linear algebra and convex optimization. Students will be expected to explore and learn the core concepts associated with set theory, the real number system, metric spaces, continuous functions, differentiation, Riemann integration, interchange of limit operations, systems of linear equations, manipulation of matrices, linear transformations, orthogonality, eigenvalues/eigenvectors, convex sets, convex functions, (un)constrained optimization, and duality |
| Seminar I | ECON 591 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Seminar complementing first year graduate courses. |
| Seminar II | ECON 592 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Seminar complementing first year graduate courses. |
| Advanced Microeconomics | ECON 601 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Selected topics in decision and social choice theory cooperative microeconomics; mechanism design, auction theory; contract theory; general equilibrium and incomplete markets. |
| International Economics | ECON 602 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Classical and strategic trade theory; intertemporal trade and the current account; money and exchange rates; financial markets and foreign investment. |
| Advanced Macroeconomics | ECON 603 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Selected topics in open economy macroeconomics labor and unemployment, search models, matching models. |
| Applied Econometrics | ECON 604 | 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. It also aims to expose students to research methods and ethical consideration in research and publishing. |
| Industrial Organization | ECON 605 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Monopoly, product selection and quality, price discrimination, vertical control, theories of oligopoly, tacit collusion, entry, limit pricing and predation. |
| Corporate Finance Theory | ECON 606 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Capital structure decisions, dividend policy, security design and voting rights, corporate governance and the market for corporate control, optimal financial contracting, internal organization of the firm, and managerial reputation. |
| Game Theory | ECON 607 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Topics in cooperative and non-cooperative game theory as a continuation of topics in game theory covered in ECON 502 |
| Seminar in Mechanism and Market Design | ECON 608 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Theory and applications: auctions, double auctions matching mechanisms, price formation procedures. |
| Financial Economics | ECON 609 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Choice under uncertainty, stochastic dominance, Arrow-Debreu model of complete markets, portfolio choice, mutual fund separation theorems Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT). |
| Competition and Regulation | ECON 610 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Competition law and policy in Türkiye 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 |
| Advanced Emerging Markets Macroeconomics | ECON 611 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Topics in open monetary macroeconomics, including IS-LM-BP, inflation tax and seignorage, exchange rate based stabilzation programs, and balance of payments crises. |
| International Trade and Industry Dynamics | ECON 612 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course develops the core models that underlie modern trade theory and examines their empirical relevance. It then focuses on productivity measurement, entry-exit of firms and industry dynamics, followed by the effect of international trade on firm dynamics. |
| Welfare Economics | ECON 624 | 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. |
| Advanced Labor Economics | ECON 630 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course covers economic theory and econometric analysis of labor market outcomes. The topics in the course include labor demand, labor supply, labor market equilibrium, human capital, screening and signaling investments, migration, and intergenerational mobility. Through these topics the course aims to introduce students to several of the most important theoretical and empirical methods in the field. |
| Matchings and Markets | ECON 688 | 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. |
| Seminar III | ECON 691 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Seminars, paper presentations and guided study to develop a thesis or project . |
| Seminar IV | ECON 692 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students present their work on Master thesis or project and participate to economics seminars by invited scholars. |
| Term Project | ECON 697 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students taking this course are expected to write a research paper on a topic agreed upon by a Faculty member. |
| Master Thesis | ECON 699 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| PhD Pro-Seminar | ECON 700 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Initiates the student to PhD dissertation work, master research methods and develop research skills under the guidance of thesis advisor. Production of an original research paper and its presentation in a program seminar. |
| Mathematical Economics | ECON 701 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Mathematical foundations of advanced economic theory, topology, linear and concave programming and applications, fixed point theorems and applications. Equilibrium analysis, existence, uniqueness and stability. Dynamic analysis and the theory of optimal control. |
| Matching and Markets | ECON 703 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analysis of two-sided and many-sided matching problems, stability and other properties of matching. Matching-based market formation models, design of economic exchange systems and applications. |
| Theory of Incentives and its Applications | ECON 704 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Analysis of principal-agent models, control mechanisms in hierarchies, collusion and its prevention. Game-theoretic approaches to incentive problems with applications to industrial organization and regulation. |
| Research in Game Theory-I | ECON 705 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Advanced topics in noncooperative game theory, repeated games, asymptotic games, atomic games. Analysis and application of equilibrium concepts for noncooperative games. Evolutionary game theory. Analysis of latest developments in the field. |
| Research in Game Theory-II | ECON 706 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Topics in cooperative game theory. Solution concepts, their properties and applications. Analysis of latest developments in the field |
| Dynamic Macroeconomic Modeling and its Applications | ECON 711 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Dynamic sectoral equilibrium models, dynamic labor market search and matching models, heterogeneous agents models of financial markets, political equilibria and voting models. |
| Theory of Economic Growth and Development | ECON 712 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Endogenous growth models, innovation and imitation models, impact of labor and financial markets on economic growth, open-economy growth models and the impacts of international trade and finance on economic growth. |
| Advanced Econometrics | ECON 731 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Latest developments and approaches in econometric theory and its applications. |
| Advanced Law and Economics | ECON 756 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Extensions of economic theory to study criminal, tort, family, property and contract laws. Economic analysis and modeling of various legal issues with applications. |
| PhD Dissertation | ECON 799 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Process of research and writing of the PhD dissertation under the guidance of the thesis advisor and dissertation committee members. |
| Pro-Thesis Seminar | ES 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Pro-Thesis Seminar provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field. |
| The European Union as a New Legal Order | ES 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course looks at the EU system as an additional constitutional system, which has been added to existing national systems. Some of the debate will focus on whether this new system will replace national systems or somehow be adduced. The course will dwell upon the legal basis of progress from economic to political union and trace the continuously evolving relationship between the citizen, the EU and the national legal systems. Towards this end, select Treaties, cases from the European Court of Justice will be analysed for a clearer perception of the new legal structure and processes. |
| Türkiye-European Union Relations | ES 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course analyses Türkiye's relations with the EU from political, economical, cultural and social dimensions. It provides the historical background of these relations dating it back to the post World War II order. The course covers the Ankara treaty, Association Agreement, Customs Union and the phases of Türkiye's association with the EU. Türkiye's position in the EU's enlargement process, and Turkish candidacy are also elaborated in detail |
| Energy Politics | ES 504 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Energy affects all aspects of individual and collective life. Economic growth requires increasing supplies of energy, making security of supply important for both developing and mature markets. On the other hand, energy producing countries are more concerned about the security of future demand for their exports. After beginning with an introduction to the geopolitics of energy, the course focuses on political, economic, strategic implications of current trends in energy markets. It will also take into account the relationship between energy and environment and alternative sources of energy in the context of the EU energy policy and the Turkish market. |
| European Foreign Policy | ES 505 | 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 addreses 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. |
| Policy Making in the EU | ES 506 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course aims to create a basic understanding of the institutions, actors, levels, factors and constraints that impact upon EU policy-making process. This process is complicated by the levels involved; the supranational, national, regional and local; as well as the multiplicity of actors, both institutional and individual. There will be discussion on how the new constitution to be soon promulgated will influence the process. |
| The Political Economy of European Integration | ES 507 | 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. |
| European Administrative Law and Eurocracy | ES 508 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Union, in one sense, is a huge accumulation of laws, legal documents and directives, which determine how the system is meant to function. The course, will selectively, take up components of the evolving Acquis Communataire and link them to jurisdiction and enforcement. The specific type of bureaucrat, probably not born but bred in the administrative environment of the EU, the eurocrat, will be focused upon, with a view to determine the type of administrative culture evolving and its impact upon the EU. |
| Multi-level Governance in the EU | ES 510 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Various institutions of the Union at local, regional, national and supranational levels, with ever increasing frequency and emphasis, have devised policies and initiated mechanisms, which are best, represented by the concept of governance. The Union, while formulating common policy in limited areas, has accepted the principle of subsidiarity in many others, encouraging collaborative schemes and approaches among various actors at different sub-national levels. Major instruments for implementation like the Social fund and Regional and Cohesion Fund envisage and encourage a new societal division of labour, new types of collaboration among a multiplicity of stakeholders and new forms of participation and accountability, true to the spirit of governance.All these developments and trends justify a course in which this concept and its various applications within the European Union are taken up systematically, to facilitate a clearer understanding of how the Union functions. |
| European Economy | ES 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on contemporary economic development, problems and policy issues in Europe. Part One provides a broad understanding of post-war economic development in Western Europe and in the former Soviet Union. Part Two ensures detailed knowledge of four economies: Britain, Germany, France and Eastern Europe. Part Three develop analytical and evaluative skills for examining economic institutions and developments in historical and comparative contexts. The range of contemporary economic problems and policy issues includes the following: (i) uneven development in Europe: success stories and failures and lessons which can be learned from the past. (ii) Globalisation: trade, industrial and capital import strategies in the context of increasing global economic integration. Part Four of the course focuses upon the development, economic policies and institutional framework of European Union |
| Economic Policies in the EU | ES 514 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The basic approach is to provide detailed knowledge of European Economic integration after the Second World War. Starting from Treaty of Rome in 1957 until today. Specific topics covered include theories and practice of European economic Integration: Customs Union, Single European Market, European Monetary Union, EU institutions (European Investment Bank, European Central Bank) and economic policy-making processes, CAP, social and regional policies and so on. The EU as international actor; the EU's difficult economic relationship with the USA and the rest of the world; the impact of the EU on UK's, Germany's national macroeconomic policies. |
| International Economic Institutions | ES 516 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on international economic institutions: the role of the IMF and the World Bank in the world economy; do we need them? challenges and opportunities of the OECD in the beginning of the new century; The World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a new economic actor in the international arena; decision-making process in the international organisations. |
| European Business | ES 518 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on identification, analysis and resolution of managerial issues within the context of business firms operating in the EU. Two central themes underpin this section of the course: first, a comparative analysis of British, German and French firms; second, the Multinationals (MNCs), Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and transfer of technology from the EU to other countries or visa versa. The role of the EU firms in the globalisation process; intellectual property rights and FDI; causes and consequences of merger waves; has globalisation changed the rule of the game? |
| Public Opinion and EU Enlargement Process | ES 519 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Although EU is largely seen as an elite project, the process of enlargement has given mass preferences an increasingly determining institutional role in EU politics. This course aims to provide the students first of all a conceptual framework to analyze the interactions between mass public opinions and international relations. The conceptual framework of two-level games will then be used to analyze the dynamics of public opinions in the enlargement process and the resulting referendums. Basic public opinion analysis techniques will be conveyed to the students and the methodology and main characteristics of the Eurobarometer surveys in member and enlargement countries will be discussed. The interaction between public opinion support for EU membership and Turkish domestic politics will be analyzed in depth with eye towards diagnosing temporal as well lasting impacts of EU membership process on Turkish domestic politics. |
| From Plan to Market: Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe | ES 522 | 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. |
| Major Issues in the Euro-Mediterranean Area | ES 523 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the major issues in the Euro-Mediterrranean Area. It will investigate the main political, economic and social dynamics in the region. Given the importance of this region for the European integration and European security, the topics covered will enable the students to grasp the many complexities in the Euro-Mediterranean. |
| Major issues in the EU | ES 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to provide awareness of the political, social, economic and institutional processes in the EU and an opportunity to examine in detail the current major issues in the EU. Papers will be addressed by guest speakers from different EU member and candidate countries. This course consists of two sections: First section focuses on the European Union. Topics covered in the lectures include issues related with the history and theories of European integration, EU institutions, enlargement, European Monetary Union, foreign and defence policy, justice and home affairs, the policy process and output of the EU, and the future of the Union. The second section focuses on the impact of European integration on domestic policies of member and candidate countries and the resulting "Europeanisation" therein. |
| Migration and Integration | ES 554 | 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. |
| Seminar on the Turkish Economy | ES 592 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Different development strategies such as import substitution and import promotion; current economic issues in Türkiye(from 1923 until present) |
| Term Project | ES 597 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students taking this courses are expected to write a research paper on a topic agreed upon by a faculty member. |
| Master Thesis | ES 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| Anthropology and Film | FILM 524 | 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. |
| Documentary: Context and Practice I | FILM 535 | 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&Practice II | FILM 536 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a continuation of FILM 535, 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. |
| Gender in the Middle East | GEN 541 | 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 542 | 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, Türkiye, 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 Türkiye | GEN 544 | 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 Türkiye. 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. |
| Migrations and the Family | GEN 585 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course addresses how human mobility across borders and state policies of immigration control, shape, and change intimate relations and family formations. In other words, it asks how states make and unmake families through their migration policies. It accordingly focuses on the institution of marriage and processes of reproduction (including having and caring for children), and questions who 'deserves' to have a ‘right to family’ by examining different country-specific cases of family reunification and family separation. Issues to be discussed include: governance of migrant reproduction, dynamics of mixed- immigration-status families, challenges faced by transnational families and their shifting care regimes, the place of different kinds of children (left-behind, unaccompanied and adoptee) in migration policy-making. In tackling all these issues, the course aims to provide an understanding of how migration and related state responses disrupt, reinforce or rearrange gendered norms of family-making. |
| Gender: Fundamental Concepts and Approaches | GEN 600 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Philosophical, historical, psychological and scientific perspectives on the definition and meaning of gender: history of the emergence and development of the concept; Drawing out the connections between gender and different regimes of power; discussion of subjectivity, sexuality, cultural and artistic practices, and violence in light of feminist and queer theory. |
| Methodology for Gender Studies | GEN 601 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Supplementing basic qualitative research strategies with perspectives from women’s studies, and feminist and queer theory; Discussing how fundamental topics in gender studies can be studied and discussing their political significance; critically examining existing methods; thinking about the factors that determine a feminist or queer research question and method. |
| Theories of Gender and Sexuality | GEN 605 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Social and cultural perspectives on the reception, uses, and contestations of the body, gender and sexualities; Development of theory, social movements, and activism aspects; Discussions on men and masculinities, sexual minorities, undoing gender, and ethnographic comparisons on gender and sexual cultures. |
| Gender and Politics | GEN 610 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the relationship between gender, culture and politics. It offers a theoretical 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 and Knowledge | GEN 620 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the relationship between gender and knowledge in social, cultural, economic and scientific contexts (from a philosophical perspective). Topics to be covered include how gender relations influence the production and content of knowledge, the biases and injustices they give rise to, and the question of objectivity of knowledge. |
| Men and Masculinities | GEN 680 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the 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 masculinities of the future; males' diverse experiences as boys/men; and public discourses and representations about changing masculinities. |
| Gender and Migration | GEN 683 | 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 |
| PhD Pro-thesis Seminar | GEN 690 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is mainly an exercise in listening, reading and writing on a regular basis. The students will not only be exposed to various research areas in the field toward which they may direct their future thesis work, but will also get in the habit of writing short concise essays. |
| PhD Thesis | GEN 699 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of PhD students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty advisor plus other thesis committee members following the completion of their course-work. |
| Readings and Research on Gender | GEN 700 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A course for advanced graduate students to focus on specific topics in gender and women's studies. |
| Renaissance Art | HART 511 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to enable an understanding of the modes of visuality of Renaissance art through analyses of the works of prominent artists of the period, such as Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian and Tintoretto. The art of the Renaissance will be considered in relation to Renaissance culture at large, social and political. The significance of Renaissance modes of visuality since Renaissance culture will also be assessed. For the possibility of being taken as an undergraduate course, subject to adjusted work requirements, see HART 311 |
| Visual Arts in Türkiye | HART 513 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | "Visual Art in Türkiye" 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 Türkiye. |
| Post 60 Turkish Art | HART 514 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The post-60 period in Türkiye 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 Türkiye with particular emphasis on the determining social and cultural changes. |
| Women Artists | HART 520 | 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 in the age of Revolt: Early Modernity | HART 521 | 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. |
| Power and Architecture | HART 523 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An introduction and overview on architecture as a manifestation of political power. Rome's great fora and imperial heritage; the triumphal arch and the apotheosis of the emperor; the Colosseum and public displays of munificence. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance : the great cathedrals and then the palaces; the power of God and the power of man; the Renaissance city; imperial legacy : the Topkapı Palace and the imperial mosques of İstanbul. Absolutism and revolution : Louis XIV and Versailles; new ideals and new virtues; public monuments. The Modern era : urban development; the city as a reflection of absolute order; colonialism and assertions of power; international corporate architecture and visions of the future. |
| Art Histories | HART 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will offer the opportunity to pursue the study of different histories of art as implied by different practices and theories of art. It will review the relations between evaluation and description of artistic phenomena and the understanding of history, with a view to generating both critical accounts of art history and new accounts of history and of art. Materials will be selected as relevant to these ends. |
| Art & History at the Museum | HART 525 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is above all to 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 |
| The Dome of Gold : The Art of the Byzantine Empire | HART 531 | 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 532 | 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. |
| Heavenly Spires: Introduction to Medieval European Art and Architecture | HART 533 | 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 an undergraduate course, see HART 433. |
| Caravaggio | HART 550 | 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 580 | 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. |
| Art and Power | HART 623 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the role of the visual arts and architecture in the representation of political power and ideology. Images can bear very potent meanings. These meanings are sometimes buried in complex symbolism and conveyed through attributes and emblems, while seemingly insignificant gestures, postures, and motifs can denote sophisticated state, dynastic, and ideological associations. Apart from addressing a variety of themes pertaining to legitimacy of rulership, notions of sacred kingship, and references to mythical archetypes that shaped the image of the ruler over centuries, imagery was used also to convey and promote fundamental values of the prevailing ideology, the social order, and the myths that shaped the cultural outlook of an age. Thus 18th century ideals of progress, industrialization, and democracy were accompanied by admiration of the classical world, and a desire to achieve those moral values that were believed to have existed in Antiquity. Consequently, ornate Baroque façades gave way to Greco-Roman temple fronts while grand history themes replaced fanciful Baroque allegories. After the Napoleonic wars the search for identity shifted to national history and the glorification of the Middle Ages, initiating a surge of Gothic-style buildings while images of the knights replaced the heroic nudes of the Classicist revival. This romantic medievalism was followed by yet another myth. Rekindling the age-old quest for Paradise, early 20th century political ideology competed with religion in promising a society that would offer prosperity and social justice, generating images of a utopian classless society of contended workers and peasants. As much as imagery can reflect the cultural outlook of an age and reveal its significant postulates, architecture remains the most explicit manifestation of political power. Through symbolic language, direct or indirect associations, and references to celebrated buildings of the past or to sacred or highly revered sites, architecture is imbued with complex meanings that convey messages of continuity, power, and sanctity, or commemorate deceased rulers and ensure legitimacy to their successors. Guiding students into in-depth studies of these and related themes, HART 623 counts towards the fulfilment of the graduate seminar requirement in History subject to the completion of a major research paper (of around 30 pages) making significant use of primary resource materials. Also see HART 323 for the possibility of being taken simultaneously as an undergraduate course without the special seminar requirements. |
| Ideology and Architecture | HART 624 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A research seminar starting with an introduction and overview : architecture and political ideology, a survey from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The rise of the national idea : historicism and revivalism; revival and survival; Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the underlying ideologies. The meaning of styles : the academies; the rundbogen and the spitzbogen; French Classicism and ideas of the republic; antiquity and the United States of America; the English and German neo- gothic and the revival of the national past; the neo- byzantine style and the quest for national identity in southeastern Europe. Nationalism and architecture. Architecture and continuity : concepts of ethnicity and nationhood in Russia, the Balkans, and Türkiye; architecture and modernity : the parliament, the theater and the museum as embodiments of statehood; visions of paradise : national socialism and Soviet socialism. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History. |
| Ottoman Architectural Practices | HART 626 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A research seminar built around four main, interrelated axes of inquiry : (a) Compiling all relevant information about Ottoman architects of, first, the 14th-17th centuries, and then the 18th-19th centuries (including their origins, training and education, biographies and works) in order to advance towards a comprehensive prosopography of the subject both before and after the breakup of the Lodge of Royal Architects; (b) probing relations or networks of patronage (including commissions from the royal house, the sub-royal elite of the ümera and ulema, and commercial-professional strata), as well as the influence exercised by all such patrons on design and execution; (c) reviewing various technical aspects including materials and building site organisation; and (d) exploring the connections between technical data or constraints and symbolic elements in monumental religious architecture in particular. Counts towards the fulfillment of the research seminar requirement in History. |
| Images Translated from Narrative to Visual in Ottoman and Safavid Miniature Painting | HART 633 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to Ottoman and Safavid miniature painting. It aims to investigate the artist who translated the historical and literary narrative sources into manuscript illustrations; to study their modes of rendering; and to develop an understanding towards the interpretation of themes and subjects by building a familiarity with the examples of book painting and a close reading of the existing scholarly literature. It introduces some princely manuscripts produced at the Ottoman painting workshops by Ottoman painters depicting subject matter drawn from Islamic-Persian literature. |
| Ottoman and Safavid Art History | HART 635 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introduction to the art and architecture of the Ottoman Empire and its neighbor and rival to the east, Safavid Iran, during the 16th?17th century heyday of both. We will consider how each empire used artistic means ? architecture, painting, decoration, and other arts ? to put its own distinctive perceptual stamp on the world within its reach. To this end, it considers a number of major works (as well as some minor ones) of each dynasty in a constellation of contexts: political, cultural, stylistic. A running theme will be the notion that art serves ''power'' and how this paradigm has affected the study of Ottoman and Safavid art history. |
| Designing the Nation. Art and Nationalism | HART 644 | 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 Türkiye. |
| M.A. Pro-Seminar | HIST 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for a better preparation in research methods and analysis including deepening mastery of the relevant research languages through special readings, whenever necessary. The course also aims to expose students to ethical standarts and rules in research and publishing. |
| Explorations in World History I | HIST 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is the first of a sequence of two term-courses that are required of all MA students in History. It is a general survey course that explores specific themes and periods from the first human communities to c. 1500, and problematizes them in comparative, theory-intensive ways. It runs parallel to the SPS 101 (Humanity and Society I) freshman course, which serves as the teaching practicum of HIST 501 for SU graduate students in History who also serve as SPS 101 section instructors. Both SPS 101 and HIST 501 embody a discrete, step-function view of historical development, examining sets of institutional-cultural "solutions" situated along each major material-technical threshold, without however proceeding in a continuous narrative from one such locus to another. Topics dealt with in the first semester include : Modernity's subsumptions and transformations of pre-modernities; comparing contemporary with prehistoric hunters and gatherers; nomadic pastoralism, mounted archers, steppe empires; the economics of peasant production; the role of movement and conquest in history; "dark ages" and state formation; precocious maritime civilizations in Antiquity; tributary states and societies; the function and varieties of fief distribution; types of urban space and culture; the world on the eve of the "European miracle"; the Italian Renaissance as the dawn of early modernity. |
| Explorations in World History II | HIST 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A general survey course exploring specific themes and periods from c. 1500 to the present, and problematizing them in comparative, theory-intensive ways. Runs parallel to the SPS 102 (Humanity and Society II) freshman course, which serves as the teaching practicum of HIST 502 for SU graduate students in History who also serve as SPS 102 section instructors. Topics dealt with over the second semester include : the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent relativization of religion; the European Reconnaissance and the birth of the modern world-system; the rise and political economy of the merchant empires; the "military revolution" and the genesis of the modern state; science, scientism, and the Enlightenment; modes of sovereignty and legitimacy : the birth of modern politics and political science; proto- industrialisation; the wealth of nations; revolutions and modernity; the French Revolution and its legacy of "revolutionism"; the Industrial Revolution and its legacy of the "social question" in the 19th century; varieties of nationalism : European; east-southeast European, extra-European; debating the new imperialism, 1875-1914; imperialism, war, and revolution; the new toughness of mind : socialism and communism; the new toughness of mind : fascism and national socialism; the post-1945 world order; the collapse of communism, and problems of post- communism; new issues and conflicts of capitalist modernity at the end of the 20th century. |
| The Formations and Constructions of Europe | HIST 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A double exploration of Europe's both "real" and "ideal" emergence. An introductory section to be devoted to (a) the physical shaping of a continent, (b) its stages of human settlement, from prehistoric times through the Germanic and Slavic migrations down to modern and recent patterns of movement, (c) the basic language groups created on this basis, and (d) Europe's religions in flux across space and time. Through these and related dimensions, simultaneously, the three main thresholds of "European history" as such : the Dark Ages, the birth of Early Modernity, and the Age of Revolution. The parallel development of the notion of Europe in political and social thought, together with its various theoretical ramifications or extensions (such as "the West", "the historical nations", "bourgeois civil society", "civilisation" or "capitalism"), juxtaposed to its non-European others or counterparts, in the course of the creation of a Eurocentric symbolic geography by the 19th and 20th century social sciences. Selective studies of specific aspects of European history (such as cities, wars, or revolutions), as well as of how all this has impacted on modern European politics and culture. |
| The Twentieth Century Through Art and Literature | HIST 506 | 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. |
| Trends, Debates, Historians I | HIST 511 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The Historiography sequence of HIST 511-512 is required of all PhD students in History, and while it may also be taken by MA students, in all cases it should be taken after HIST 501-502 or some other, comparable survey of world or at least European history. This is necessary because ''Trends, Debates, Historians'' adopts an approach to the study of Historiography that is historical in more than one sense. It proposes to study methodology not in the abstract but in the concrete, as embodied in the output of a number of great historians living and working in the 20th century; naturally it strives to relate each such historian to his/her context and preferred paradigm; but it also situates each such contribution within the framework of the period problematic and literature to which it pertains. This means that works studied are taken up in the chronological order of their subject matter, i.e. of the historical period to which they refer (rather than by reference to their authors in chronological sequence). Furthermore, as a side objective of the course is to study problems of overall organization and sustained consistency in writing synthetic books (as opposed to research articles), in both semesters the emphasis is on reading complete books by leading- edge historians. Thus after opening with a few introductory texts of a general nature plus an initial set of readings on historians' own views of their profession, HIST 511 quickly moves into sampling works by historians of Antiquity, followed by close readings of some leading Medievalists. These and others are also scrutinized for the methodological insights they might shed into Ottoman historical studies. Controversies among Turkish as well as European scholars on the nature of serfdom, feudalism, or the feudal mode of production, as well as the more recent ''feudal revolution'' debate, are treated through special files interpolated where necessary. Throughout, two basic questions are repeatedly posed : From Herodotos and Thucydides, through the 19th century, down to the present, what has changed and what has not changed in the practice of historians ? |
| Trends, Debates, Historians II | HIST 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The second semester of the required HIST 511-512 sequence in Historiography pursues the same "complete readings" approach into major works concentrating on first the Early Modern and then the Modern era. Once more, historians are studied individually, and trends or schools are for the most part introduced through the historians that embody their distinctive approaches. Authors dealt with over the second semester may be as diverse as Febvre, Braudel, Le Roy Ladurie, Christopher Hill, Keith Thomas, E. P. Thompson, Charles Tilly, Simon Schama and Carlo Ginzburg, as well as Hobsbawm, Blackbourn, Landes, Eugen Weber, Peter Gay or François Furet. Crucial debates, for example on "the transition from feudalism to capitalism" and its Brenner follow-up, or on "the military revolution and the genesis of the modern state", are introduced as separate files or appendices. The last quarter of the course is devoted to a closing survey of the current proliferation of outlooks and approaches, including discussions of microhistory, cultural history, history of mentalities, the return of the narrative, the return of the state, as well as modernist vs post-modernist positions on the question of "historical truth", "myth-making", or the relationship between literature and history. |
| Readings in Historical Thought | HIST 513 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | More concentrated, in-depth readings in periods or fields that are not comprehensively covered in HIST 511-512, such as (a) the ancient (Greek and Roman) historians; (b) Medieval European and Ottoman chroniclers and historians; (c) Renaissance and Enlightenment historians; (d) the 18th-19th century development from antiquarianism through linguistics into history proper; (e) the systematization of the new "scientific history" early in the 19th century; and (f) a more detailed examination of the development of history throughout the rest of the 19th century. Recommended particularly for History students intending to concentrate on Historiography, as well as for Social Sciences students interested in the history of political ideas or intellectual history. |
| Readings in the Philosophy of History | HIST 514 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An initial examination of the separations between History, Philosophy, and the Philosophy of History that occurred in the 19th century, followed by more concentrated, in-depth readings in the major philosophers and philosophies of history, including Vico, Herder, Hegel, Marx, with particular attention to the subsequent proliferations and derivatives of Marxist history. Also covers late 20th century developments and controversies, including Fukuyama, Huntington or the Paul Kennedy type of future-oriented macro-history as well as further attention to modernist vs post-modernist epistemologies. Recommended particularly for History students intending to concentrate on Historiography, as well as for Social Sciences students interested in the history of political ideas or intellectual history. |
| Episodes in the History of Science I | HIST 515 | 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. |
| Historical Marxism II : Communism and Post-Communism | HIST 516 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Coming out of the Bolshevik Revolutionin Russia, and then expanding to both Eastern Europe and China after World War II, Communism came to exert such a pervasive influence on the 20th century that up to the early 1980s, there was no aspect of politics, international relations, social life, art or culture that was not permeated by it. And yet, barely two decades after its fall, the set of theories and practices that was once regarded as " the future of humanity" lies almost forgotten. HIST 516 is an attempt to think back from the early 21st century to the concrete visage and historical legacy of Marxism in power, exploring especially the party that was its chief instrument, the theories through which it eternalized its dictatorship, fostered a permanent culture of "the enemy" and legitimized its purges, as well as the daily structures of living perpetually in an atmosphere of abnormal politics, with a new social contract of basic services but without any fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed rights and political empowerment. |
| Introduction to Orientalism and Oriental Studies | HIST 517 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The ascendancy and self-globalization of the West went hand in hand with its exploration of “the Rest” not only in geographical, political and military terms but also in the form of opening up a new Oriental Studies world of knowledge. Over centuries, European scholars proceeded to penetrate non-European societies and cultures from languages, literature and belief systems to history proper. They produced a wealth of publications, including major dictionaries, encyclopedias, translations, anthologies and commentaries, that are to this day the indispensable reference materials and tools of trade of all scholars of the Middle East, of Islam, or of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time they constructed a vision, a gaze, an ideology of Eurocentrism and Orientalism. The object of this course is to introduce historians in the making to both aspects in their interconnected development, and especially to familiarize them with an immensely rich background of learning that will stay with them through their entire careers. |
| Political and Social Thought in France in the 19th and 20th centuries | HIST 519 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to introduce students to the political and social movements originating in France in the 19th and 20th centuries about which they should become knowledgeable in order to understand why Turkish modernization, whether in the 19th or the 20th century, has been primarily affected by currents of thought originating in France. |
| Rites of Power | HIST 521 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will examine the relations between a ruler and his/her subjects as expressions of what we broadly term "culture". Through ceremonies, rituals and festivities, a leitmotif of political power relations is investigated. Moving from the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Era to Modern Times, discussion focuses on (1) courtly ceremonies such as coronations, royal marriages and births, each accompanied by stately banquets; (2) the pageantry of politics and the politics of pageantry in the making of the architecture of cities such as London, Paris, Venice, Prague or Moscow; (3) the rites of rulership and personality cults in the Hannoverian monarchy, the French revolution, British India from the time of the Great Mutiny onward, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union; and lastly (4) civic spectacles and popular culture. In each section a special effort will be made to bring in comparative examples from the realm of Ottoman studies. |
| Women in Pre-Modern Societies | HIST 522 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Issues in the Gender History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Türkiye | HIST 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a graduate-level survey course on various aspects of the history of women in Ottoman and Republican Turkish society. It aims to provide an introduction to the following historical "moments" and issues : the status of women according to Islamic law; women in rural society; provincial urban society and women; women of the royal household and court from the 14th to the 18th centuries; women in 19th century Ottoman modernization and related gender issues; the beginnings of active state involvement in maternity and abortion; the development of female education; the emergence of women into public life; marriage, family life, and divorce during the Ottoman reform period; New Ottoman and Young Turk views on the emancipation of women; male and female sexuality in Ottoman Turkish literature; stages in the development, subsumption, and revitalization of women's and feminist movements; gender issues in the Republican era. |
| Law, State and Property in the 19th Century | HIST 525 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course studies the transformation in the understandings of state power, of property and of law, and the historical background to these changes that can be traced back to the formation of centralized monarchies and the commercial expansion of the 16th century. While this early history formed the background of the histories of modernity, the rupture in terms of the ways individual societies were governed, economic activity was organised, and property rights or resource allocation was affected, actually took place only in the 18th and the 19th centuries. These forms have subsequently been associated with the process of modernity, and were universalized given thecontext of competition, imperial penetration, and international economic expansion. The course will focus on the debates of 18th and 19th century political economists and political theorists including the Physiocrats, Montesqieu, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham and Alexis de Tocquevılle. It will then address the historical context these conceptualizations grew out of and responded to. |
| Globalization and Law | HIST 526 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| History of Citizenship in Europe | HIST 527 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Citizenship is a powerful technology of inclusion and exclusion and of identity-building in modernity. History is one important perspective from which to understandind its functioning. The purpose of this course is to provide resources for a critical analysis of the philosophical, institutional and sociological foundations of citizenship and its changes over time, from their intellectual reformulation in the Italian Early Renaissance onwards. Another aim of the course is to provide a perspective on European history through the subject matter of citizenship building. Choosing citizenship as a vantage point challenges conventional interpretations, particularly of social movements from liberalism to the rise and transformation of the welfare state. The course combines readings from relevant figures of the so-called Republican tradition, as well as analyses of processes of citizen incorporation and definition of rights in different European countries from the 19th century to the present. |
| Early Islamic History: A Survey | HIST 531 | 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 an undergraduate course, subject to adjusted work requirements, see HIST 331. |
| Islamic History: the Middle Period (c.945 - 1500) | HIST 532 | 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. |
| Economic History | HIST 533 | 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. |
| Russian History I : Tsarist Russia (from the 17th Century to 1917) | HIST 534 | 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. |
| The Gunpowder Empires of the Islamic World, ca. 1450-1800 | HIST 535 | 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 536 | 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 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. |
| The Economic History of the Middle East Since World War II | HIST 538 | 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 Türkiye. |
| Christians In The Ottoman Empire | HIST 539 | 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 541 | 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. |
| History of Political Ideas in the Balkans in the Modern Era (19th and 20th Centuries) | HIST 547 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Capable of being taken both as a companion to HIST 549 and also on its own, HIST 547 represents a departure in some measure from that of a classical ''history of ideas'' course. It is concentrated less on the study of political ideas as theoretical/intellectual constructions per se, than on their contextualization, therefore on the explanation of their specific local articulations and varying social weight. This shift in focus follows from two general contextual premises : (a) The disproportionate significance of the political in the changing Balkan societies in the modern era; and (b) the ideological systems within and by way of which local national elites have pursued their developmental policies. Hence a primary concern will be not to gauge how faithfully a certain ''Balkan'' political development has corresponded to its ''European'' prototype, but rather to see what functions and hopes were pinned on it; how efficient it was in terms of imposing (new) norms of political action and of social and economic relations; and finally, what the sources of intra-Balkan diversity have been in all these regards. All major politico-ideological (self-) definitions of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as their mutual relations/influences, will be considered. The implicit objective will be to shed light on the historically crystallized semantics of the modern political vocabulary in the Balkans -- of terms like ''tradition'', ''modernity'', ''freedom'', ''the people'', ''democracy'', ''nation'', ''parliamentarianism'', and ''political participation''. Requirements : short presentations and papers, plus one or two written exams. For the possibility of being taken not as a taught course but as a seminar, subject to the approval of the instructor and the fulfillment of the research paper requirements for a seminar in History, see under HIST 647. |
| Sources and Methods for 19th and 20th Century Balkan History | HIST 549 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is one of a series of term-courses reviewing sources relevant for the study of Balkan and Ottoman/Turkish history in different periods, as well as methods that have been developed and employed by historians on the basis of different types of sources. Specifically for Southeast Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, HIST 549 addresses the major issue of politics and underdevelopment, i.e. the nature, operation and functions (particularly those related to social and economic transformations) of the political sphere in "late-developing" societies. It aims to demonstrate the correlations between the processes of modernization, state-building, and nation- building in the Balkans through integrating (instead of contraposing) social and economic with political history. Balkan modernization will be posited within a broader European context and comparison, thus challenging two widely shared and interlocking concepts/frameworks of interpretation for the Balkans : (a) the East/West dichotomy in patterns of social and political development, and (b) the negative perspective on the operation of Balkan politics in general and on Balkan nationalism in particular. The course is structured around four major fields of historical research and interpretation: (1) Economic and social transformations of Balkan societies in the modern period; (2) the social backgrounds, legitimization, and developmental projects of the Balkan political elites; (3) long-term effects of parliamentary institutions in the late-industrializing Balkan societies; and (4) state- building and nation-building experiences in the Balkans as compared to those in other, contemporary European peripheries as well as Western Europe. The unity of these study fields is to be sought in the framework of the historically evolved relationships between social structures, elites, and (modes of) modernization. Chronologically, the course will be divided into two parts : the formative phase of the Balkan national states before World War I; and the inter-war period. |
| History of Ottoman Institutions | HIST 550 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Close studies of Ottoman social and political institutions (including, for example, the dynasty and modes of succession, the palace and court society, religion and related ideological structures, law and the judiciary, land tenure and revenue-collection/sharing arrangements, pious foundations, the royal guards army and other components of the military establishment) through archival documents and narrative sources. |
| Aspects of Ottoman Rule in the Bulgarian Lands in the Pre-Tanzimat Period | HIST 553 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Focuses on selected issues and specific features of Ottoman rule in the Bulgarian lands, and therefore requires some previous, preliminary knowledge of Ottoman history and documentation. The main themes addressed will include : early Ottoman administration (from the 15th to the early 16th centuries); the Ottoman judicial system and the functioning of the kadı court; agrarian relations : timars, vakıfs, çiftliks; monuments of Ottoman culture; towns and urban society; Osman Pazvandoğlu of Vidin against the backdrop of Kırcalı/dağlı unrest; the National Awakenings of the Balkan peoples; the international situation at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. At the same time, the core of the course will revolve around the official status and the real situation of various ethno-religious groups (such as the Orthodox Christians and the Jews) : their institutions; their attitudes vis-à-vis the Ottoman authorities; questions of Islamisation, and of neo-martyrs; church building and restoration; other and related problems. Assessment will be based on participation throughout the course, including short presentations, as well as a final paper based on either the relevant secondary literature, or an appropriate amount of work on the primary sources over and above the secondary literature, in which case it may count as a research seminar (also see HIST 653). |
| Frontier Societies and the Early Ottoman Community | HIST 555 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The principal aim of the course is to study the emergence of the Ottoman polity and society in the context of frontiers as a universal phenomenon. After examining the frontier as an historical concept, the course considers specific frontier situations of particular relevance to Turkish and Islamic history, such as Inner Asia and China, Eurasia and Byzantium, Iran and Turan, the Arab lands and Byzantium, Andalusia and Christian Spain. The specific context of West Anatolia and the Balkans in the 14th century is then studied in terms of topics inherent in the study of frontiers, such as trade and warfare across the frontier, relations between central political authority and frontier lords, and cross-frontier political accomodation. |
| The Ottoman Empire and the Balkans | HIST 556 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A general introduction on: the early Ottoman emirate; methods of conquest and patterns of expansion in the Balkans rival claims to war-leadership; competition, cooperation, absorption; the rewriting of history by subsequent Ottoman chroniclers. To be followed by increasing concentration on : political, social, cultural interactions; decapitations and amalgamations in town and country; the emergence and growth of the "Ottoman system" as a series of successive incorporations of the pre-Ottoman or non-Ottoman social formations and systems of land tenure; giving and receiving; what is "Ottoman", what is "Balkan"; problems of talking about : the Ottoman empire in Balkan space, the Balkans under Ottoman rule, the Balkan lands in Ottoman times. |
| Sources and Methods for Ottoman History, 1450-1600 | HIST 561 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is one of a series of term-courses reviewing sources relevant for the study of Ottoman and Turkish history in different periods, as well as methods that have been developed and employed by historians on the basis of different types of sources. Specifically for the 15th and 16th centuries, HIST 561 is arranged topically to review the political organization of a dynastic state, the social structures of townsmen, peasants and nomads, as well as the relationships between political authority and various social groups. The wider context of Ottoman lands in Europe and in West Asia is then considered in relation to ideology and political thought. Each topic is studied in terms of how it is being treated in current historical scholarship, emphasizing the interplay between sources and methods appropriate for analytical or narrative history. |
| Ottoman Reform Movements II: Political and Social (1839-1918) | HIST 562 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Intellectual and social issues prevalent in present- day Türkiye have their antecedents in 19th century Ottoman Empire. Ottoman 19th century was a period where old and new, reform and reaction met each other. In fact, this was an era where the empire was shaken by series of wars and crisis of disintegration. Reformist bureaucrats applied policies to forestall this process, while the intelligentsia vehemently opposed authoritarian reforms. Discussions on 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. Public discussions came to an abrupt end when the Committee of Union and Progress established military dictatorship (1913-1918). As a whole, this "long nineteenth century" was an era where institutional foundations of Turkish modernization were laid down. This course aims to introduce, discuss, and understand Ottoman reform movements and thoughts of the last hundred year of Ottoman existence, based on the evaluation of reformist statesmen of the Tanzimat-period, oppositional intellectuals of the 1860s and 1870s, conservative attitude of Hamidian absolutism (1878-1908), and Young Turk reformist ideas of the last decades of Ottoman existence (1889-1918) |
| Social and Economic History of the Ottoman Empire | HIST 563 | 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. |
| Rebellion and Dissent in the Ottoman Empire | HIST 564 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course examines selected episodes of rebellion, social unrest and dissent. Major the oretical debates regarding early modern revolts in Eurasia are introduced and their relevance for the Ottoman Empire are explored. Themes to be covered include dynamics of state-making and socio-economic change, language of dissent, and questions of organization, agenda and agency in rural and urban revolts |
| Love, Entertainment and Daily Culture in Ottoman Poetry, 1400-1800 | HIST 565 | 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. |
| History of a City I : From Byzantion to Constantinople | HIST 570 | 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 570 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 lecture hours per week will be complemented by additional seminar hours focusing on the primary sources available in translation, as well as comprehensive readings in the available secondary literature. For the possibility of taking ''History of a City I'' as an undergraduate course, subject to appropriately adjusted requirements, see HIST 370. |
| History of a City II : Ottoman Istanbul, 1450-1900 | HIST 571 | 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 571, whether taken independently or as a sequel to HIST 570, 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.... |
| Sources and Methods for 17th and 18th century Ottoman History | HIST 572 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is one of a series of term-courses reviewing sources relevant for the study of Ottoman and Turkish history in different periods, as well as methods that have been developed and employed by historians on the basis of different types of sources. Specifically for the 17th and 18th centuries, HIST 572 starts out with a review of the decline paradigm, which among other things portrays the Ottoman Empire as a stagnant, peripheral and passive spectator in Early Modernity, and which has been persuasively challenged since the 1970s. Building upon research based on the central Ottoman archives over the last three decades, and using the state as the key unit of analysis, the first part of this course takes an in-depth look at people and ideas in the Ottoman territories over 1600-1800, via (1) the changing political economy, (2) the transformation of agrarian relations, (3) the problems of provisioning Istanbul, (4) struggles between the reforming and conservative wings of the ruling elite, and (5) the "women's sultanate", so-called, and the changing legitimation patterns of the House of Osman. A second part deals with (6) economic, social and cultural life in the provinces, and (7) the growth of international trading cities such as Thessaloniki, Izmir or Aleppo. In concluding, historiographical attention is devoted to the clichés or tropes of (8) the "Tulip Age", (9) "Oriental despotism", and (10) "incorporation into the world- system". |
| Postorientalism and Postcolonialism | HIST 575 | 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 Türkiye studies. |
| Late Ottoman and Modern Turkish Politics and Literature | HIST 576 | 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. |
| Sources and Methods for 19th Century Ottoman History | HIST 581 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is one of a series of term-courses reviewing sources relevant for the study of Ottoman and Turkish history in different periods, as well as methods that have been developed and employed by historians on the basis of different types of sources. Specifically for the ''long'' 19th century, HIST 581 is designed to familiarize the student with the basic chronology, themes, problematics and source materials of Late Ottoman history; namely the period starting from the reforms of Selim III and the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt to the beginning of the Second Constitutional Period and the establishment of the Young Turk regime. The course aims to situate the myriad transformations in Late Ottoman social, political and cultural life not only within their European and Balkan context, but also in relation to the modernizing agendas of the non-western/colonial world. Thus, the Ottoman efforts to salvage the state and to redefine an exclusive imperial identity will be discussed through comparative perspectives and methodological insights provided by current studies on 19th century Austria-Hungary, Russia and Iran, as well as colonial North Africa and India. |
| Ethnicity and Nationalism | HIST 583 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to explore relations (or the absence of relations) between nationalism and ethnicity in different contexts such as the Ottoman empire, Germany and the Russian empire. The course is designed not only for developing a comparative and context-sensitive approach to nationalism and ethnicity, but also for attempting a collective enquiry into the emergence and transformation of the concepts of "nation", "nationalism", "patriotism" and "ethnicity" through time. While surveying the classical and current theories of nationalism and ethnicity, the course also aims to address the concept of social organization, the symbolic universe and collective memory as relevant concepts of the social sciences. |
| Minority Questions in Contemporary Türkiye | HIST 585 | 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, Türkiye'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 HIST 585 is addressed. For the possibility of taking this course at an undergraduate level, subject to appropriate adjustments, see SPS 485. |
| Topics in Armenian History and Literature | HIST 586 | 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 587 | 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 its Turkist and Unionist extensions. Course materials will comprise not only the usual 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 588 | 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 588 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 ''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 other 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. For the possibility of taking this course at an undergraduate level, subject to appropriate adjustments, see HIST 488. |
| From Empire to Republic : Turkish Nationalism and the Nation-State | HIST 589 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A dense survey course on the making of Modern Türkiye 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 489 for the possibility of being taken at the undergraduate level. |
| Sources and Methods for Early Republican History, 1920-1938 | HIST 591 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is one of a series of term-courses reviewing sources relevant for the study of Ottoman and Turkish history in different periods, as well as methods that have been developed and employed by historians on the basis of different types of sources. Specifically for the first two or three decades of the Turkish Republic, HIST 591 comprises a comparative study of the ''one party'' period and political system using primary sources and relating them to their specific historical and political contexts. Starting with the political situation emerging out of World War I, as well as the various alignments and polarizations evolving during the years of the War of Independence, the impact of this crucial, traumatic, formative ''moment'' will be pursued from the founding of the Republic to the end of the early Republican era. Included will be a comprehensive review of all political, cultural, economic and foreign policy developments and orientations, with specific focus on the political organizations of the period. |
| Sources and Methods for Late Republican History, 1938-1950 | HIST 592 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is one of a series of term-courses reviewing sources relevant for the study of Ottoman and Turkish history in different periods, as well as methods that have been developed and employed by historians on the basis of different types of sources. Specifically for the mid-20th century, HIST 592 offers a close scrutiny of the İnönü years -- comprising the tail end of the one-party period, and opening up to the transformation of the political régime in the post-war era -- that simultaneously introduces the student to the ample primary sources of this crucial but often neglected era. Themes to be covered include : special focus on the Republican People's Party as a political organisation, and on the changing features of the one-party system, together with explorations of political, economic and cultural life. Aspects of Turkish foreign policy under İnönü. Frameworks of synchronic comparison with other one-party régimes, as well as of diachronic comparisons between the early and late phases of one-party rule in Türkiye. |
| Caucasus and its Hinterland: Clans, Ethnicities and Nations in Imperial Borderlands | HIST 593 | 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-Soviet 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 |
| Turkish Social and Political Thought, 1839-1914 | HIST 594 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A study of the foundations of political thought in the Ottoman empire and modern Türkiye. The first part of the course focuses both on continuities with the earlier "Islamicate" discourse, and on the crucial break with tradition initiated during the Tanzimat. Over the second part of the course, some key representatives of post- 1908 currents of thought such as liberalism, nationalism or feminism will also be investigated. |
| MA Term Project | HIST 595 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | For students in the "MA by Examination" program, the institutional framework for guided research under the supervision of a Faculty member towards the completion of their required research project, on a topic to be submitted to and approved by the History Program Committee. |
| The Tanzimat Process as a Transfer of Knowledge | HIST 596 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey of reform movements in the Ottoman Empire especially through the prism of their contacts with West European scientific speculations in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as through their sequel in the form of Tanzimat reforms up to 1850. An attempt will be made to cover the history of institutional developments parallel to the history of ideas. May be taken both as a taught course and as a seminar, subject to the approval of the instructor and the fulfillment of the research paper requirements for a seminar in History. See HIST 696. |
| Nations and Boundaries in the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus | HIST 597 | 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 an undergraduate course, subject to adjusted work requirements, see HIST 497. |
| A History of the Cyprus Conflict | HIST 598 | 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. |
| Master's Thesis | HIST 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| PhD Pro-Seminar | HIST 600 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for a better preparation in research methods and analysis including deepening mastery of the relevant research languages through special readings, whenever necessary. The course also aims to expose students to ethical standards and rules in research and publishing. |
| Advanced Readings in Ottoman Historical Texts | HIST 601 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Readings in various types and styles of Ottoman handwritten sources from different periods. The purpose is to study a wide range of bureaucratic and intellectual texts, noting their historical contexts as well as stylistic and linguistic features. Provides extra training in intermediate-to-advanced Ottoman paleography, as well as enhanced source knowledge. Does not count as a 600-coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. Prerequisite : TLL 501-502 or the equivalent. |
| Advanced Readings in Research Languages | HIST 602 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Readings in various types and styles of historical sources in languages of the Ottoman lands other than Ottoman Turkish (such as Arabic and Persian, as well as Greek, Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian). Provides extra language training as well as enhanced source knowledge. Does not count as a 600-coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Ottoman Historians and Chroniclers | HIST 609 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Review of the development of history writing in Ottoman society; the scope, meaning and uses of history; official and non-official şehnames, chronicles, histories. Uses of Ottoman historical writing for modern scholarship. Readings in major historians of the 16th and 17th centuries (Kemal Paşazade, Celalzade, Mustafa Ali, Naima) in printed and manuscript texts. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History while also serving as a course in advanced paleography. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Ottoman Historians and Chroniclers, 17th-18th Centuri | HIST 610 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Review of the development of history writing in Ottoman society; the scope, meaning and uses of history; official and non-official histories and chronicles. Readings in major historians of the 17th and 18th centuries (Evliya Çelebi, Silahdar, Naima, Raşid, İzzi, Şemdanizade and likes) in printed and manuscript texts. |
| Readings in Ottoman Material Culture | HIST 611 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is twofold. The first is to study the history of material culture in the Ottoman realm as a kind of alternative perspective in social history. To some extent, such perspectives are linked to the ongoing anthropologization of history. Second, since individuals (men and women, young and old, rich and poor) as well as the material world that surrounded them, have been largely neglected in Ottoman historical studies and this seems to be related to the fact that the primary sources that researchers have most readily made use of have been mainly official papers of the state, HIST 611 will deliberately be exploring and studying other types of documents and evidence that may shed light on this neglected domain. The idea here is to develop a more qualitative understanding of elite or ordinary life, both by investigating the material circumstances of daily existence, and by entering the inner world of the family and household, the work-place, the neighbourhood -- contexts normally assigned to the domain of culture. Also included, ideally, will be housing and homelessness, clothing and nakedness, eating and hunger. A special effort will be made to establish links with equally recent developments in (1) the history of everyday life; (2) family history and the history of kinship; (3) gender history; (4) standards of living; and (5) consumption studies. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages based on primary source materials. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History while also serving as a course in advanced paleography. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Readings in Ottoman Legal Culture | HIST 613 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Combines introductory instruction in Ottoman law and legal practice with advanced paleographical training. Different aspects of law, such as court practice, legal interpretation, and royal legislation, are examined, and the relevant primary sources introduced, in alternating years. (Thus if the theme for a particular semester has been the practice of ifta, after an introduction to relevant debates in the field of Islamic and Ottoman law, the class embarks on a collective historical survey of selected themes as they appear in fetva collections of the 16th to the 18th centuries. A comparable approach will be adopted for other themes to be offered in rotation over the years.) Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages based on primary source materials. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Royal Courts and Households | HIST 621 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A comparative approach to the place of royal households in various polities, especially in relation to the development of other political institutions and to international relations. With contributions from international experts, the Ottoman royal household will be studied in the context of its predecessors and neighbours, such as the Carolingian empire, Byzantium, Seljukid sultans, the Inner Asian royal organization, and Romanov Russia. Requirements : short papers for every comparative, non-Ottoman module, plus a major research paper of around 20-30 pages based on Ottoman materials. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History while also serving as a course in advanced paleography. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Ceremonies in Courts and Capital Cities | HIST 622 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey of the cultural politics and political culture of a number of great courts selected from different periods and geographies, ranging from Renaissance Italy through France under absolutism to Mughal India. Questions to be addressed by a distinguished group of international scholars will include : the role of pomp and circumstance in building authority and legitimacy; the composite nature of early modern polities; the role played by courts in shaping rulers' relations with the wider community of the realm; the imprint of ceremonies and ceremonial organization on urban space - framing a closer look at the impact of the Ottoman court on the texture and topography of Istanbul. Requirements : short papers for every comparative, non-Ottoman module, plus a major research paper of around 20-30 pages based on Ottoman materials. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History while also serving as a course in advanced paleography. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Revolutions in History | HIST 623 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What is a revolution ? Are revolutions necessary and inevitable, hence universal ? Is their balance sheet all positive or negative ? Why, after an enduring revolutionist legacy, are revolutions being so strictly questioned today ? Does "the end of history" mean "the end of revolutions" ? HIST 623 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. May be taken by undergraduates as a taught course (= HIST 323), and simultaneously by graduate students as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page research paper based on primary materials. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the seminar requirement in History. |
| Topics in Ottoman Cultural History | HIST 625 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Topics in Ottoman Cultural History been treated mostly in terms of segmented and isolated fields, giving rise to separate "histories" of architecture, miniature painting, the other decorative arts, music and literature. Furthermore, its relationship with the Imperial court has been narrowly and superficially conceived, so that it has frequently been reduced to a mere "reflection" of the political and military fortunes of the state or the ruling house, and simultaneously divorced from the material and cultural conditions of production, the entire habitus, of a court society. Against this historiographical background, and through an ongoing critique of the prevailing modes of interpretation (including documentary, formalist retrospective-ideological, or connoisseurial approaches, as well as more up-to-date methodologies focusing on reception theory, the social foundations of art, or identity issues within art), HIST 625 will be exploring the possible avenues of "total history" in this regard, seeking to address questions of "Ottomanization", "social, political and cultural fluidity", "legitimate change", "barriers between various classes of official Ottoman society", "erosion of corporate distinction", or "cultural experimentations", and encouraging students to investigate the ways in which configurations of power and legitimation (in all their change and continuity) were both expressed by and constructed through artand culture at various times. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History subject to the completion of a major research paper (of around 30 pages) largely based on primary source materials. For the possibility of being taken as an upper undergraduate lecture course, with adjusted readings and requirements, see HIST 425. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Research in Popular and Applied History I : | HIST 631 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Research in Popular and Applied History II : Topics in the History of Medieval Europe and Anatolia | HIST 632 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The second of a series of comparative and applied workshops in the analysis of elements of popular historical consciousness, including fiction, popular journal and comic strips as well as history education materials. Focuses not only on Türkiye but Southeast Europe as a whole, and creates space for exploring the possibilities of defining and producing alternative educational materials, including textbooks and/or theme kits for teacher and students. More specifically, and as the continuation of HIST 631 over the second semester, HIST 632 is devoted to critical investigations of existing accounts of Medieval Europe and Anatolia in history education, as well as the possibilities of improving on such treatments. Does not count as a 600 -coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Research in Popular and Applied History III : | HIST 633 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Research in Popular and Applied History IV: Topics in Ottoman and Late Ottoman History, 1600-1918 | HIST 634 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The fourth of a series of comparative and applied workshops in the analysis of elements of popular historical consciousness, including fiction, popular journals and comic strips as well as history education materials. Focuses not only on Türkiye but on Southeast Europe as a whole, and creates space for exploring the possibilities of defining and producing alternative educational materials, including textbooks and/or theme kits for teachers and students. More specifically, HIST 634 is devoted to critical investigations of existing accounts of Ottoman ''decline'', belated modernization and tortuous collapse in history education, as well as the possibilities of improving on such treatments. Does not count as a 600-coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Research in Popular and Applied History V : Topics in 19th Century World and Ottoman-Turkish History | HIST 635 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The fifth of a series of comparative and applied workshops in the analysis of elements of popular historical consciousness, including fiction, popular journals and comic strips as well as history education materials. Focuses not only on Türkiye but on Southeast Europe as a whole, and creates space for exploring the possibilities of defining and producing alternative educational materials, including textbooks and/or theme kits for teachers and students. More specifically, HIST 635 is devoted to critical investigations of existing textbook accounts of the 19th century "reform period" in Late Ottoman history, as well as the possibilities of improving on such treatments. Does not count as a 600 -coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Research in Popular and Applied History VI : Topics in 20th Century World and Ottoman-Turkish History | HIST 636 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The sixth of a series of comparative and applied workshops in the analysis of elements of popular historical consciousness, including fiction, popular journals and comic strips as well as history education materials. Focuses not only on Türkiye but on Southeast Europe as a whole, and creates space for exploring the possibilities of defining and producing alternative educational materials, including textbooks and/or theme kits for teachers and students. More specifically, HIST 636 is devoted to critical investigations of existing textbook accounts of 20th century Late Ottoman and Turkish Republican history, as well as the possibilities of improving on such treatments. Does not count as a 600-coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Research in Popular and Applied History VII : Topics in Nationalist Conflict and the Breakup of Empire I | HIST 637 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The seventh of a series of comparative and applied workshops in the analysis of elements of popular historical consciousness, including fiction, popular journals and comic strips as well as history education materials. Focuses not only on Türkiye but on Southeast Europe as a whole, and creates space for exploring the possibilities of defining and producing alternative educational materials, including textbooks and/or theme kits for teachers and students. More specifically, HIST 637 is devoted to critical investigations of existing as well as earlier textbook accounts of the nationalist conflicts emerging in the context of the protracted death throes of the Ottoman Empire. Unlike the previous courses in this series, HIST 637 (and its HIST 638 sequel) will count as a 600-coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Research in Popular and Applied History VIII : Topics in Nationalist Conflict and the Breakup of Empire II | HIST 638 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The eighth of a series of comparative and applied workshops in the analysis of elements of popular historical consciousness, including fiction, popular journals and comic strips as well as history education materials. Focuses not only on Türkiye but on Southeast Europe as a whole, and creates space for exploring the possibilities of defining and producing alternative educational materials, including textbooks and/or theme kits for teachers and students. More specifically, HIST 638 is devoted to critical investigations of existing as well as earlier textbook accounts of the nationalist conflicts emerging in the context of the protracted death throes of the Ottoman Empire. Unlike the previous courses in this series, HIST 638 (as well as its HIST 637 prerequisite) will count as a 600-coded research seminar for graduate students registered in regular Sabancı University degree programs. |
| Designing the Nation. Art and Nationalism | HIST 644 | 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 Türkiye. |
| History of Political Ideas in the Balkans in the Modern Era (19th and 20th Centuries) | HIST 647 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Capable of being taken both as a companion to HIST 549 and also on its own, HIST 547 represents a departure in some measure from that of a classical ''history of ideas'' course. It is concentrated less on the study of political ideas as theoretical/intellectual constructions per se, than on their contextualization, therefore on the explanation of their specific local articulations and varying social weight. This shift in focus follows from two general contextual premises : (a) The disproportionate significance of the political in the changing Balkan societies in the modern era; and (b) the ideological systems within and by way of which local national elites have pursued their developmental policies. Hence a primary concern will be not to gauge how faithfully a certain ''Balkan'' political development has corresponded to its ''European'' prototype, but rather to see what functions and hopes were pinned on it; how efficient it was in terms of imposing (new) norms of political action and of social and economic relations; and finally, what the sources of intra-Balkan diversity have been in all these regards. All major politico-ideological (self-) definitions of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as their mutual relations/influences, will be considered. The implicit objective will be to shed light on the historically crystallized semantics of the modern political vocabulary in the Balkans -- of terms like ''tradition'', ''modernity'', ''freedom'', ''the people'', ''democracy'', ''nation'', ''parliamentarianism'', and ''political participation''. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History. For the possibility of being taken not as a seminar but as a taught course, see HIST 547. |
| The Eastern Question, 1768-1923 | HIST 650 | 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. May be taken by undergraduates as a taught course (= HIST 450), and simultaneously by graduate students as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page paper based on primary materials. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the seminar requirement in History. |
| The Patriarchate and the Monasteries in the Ottoman Empire | HIST 652 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A general introduction on : the making of Western and Eastern Christianity; political ideology and religious life in Byzantium; icons, saints, asceticism and monastic life. To be followed by increasing concentration on : Ottoman religious policy in the Balkans; Mehmed II's policies around and after the conquest of Constantinople; the making of the patriarchate and the millet system; Christians and Jews in Ottoman society; Mount Athos, other monasteries and monastic networks, and their interactions with Istanbul as well as local society in the Balkans. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History. |
| Aspects of Ottoman Rule in the Bulgarian Lands in the Pre-Tanzimat Period | HIST 653 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Focuses on selected issues and specific features of Ottoman rule in the Bulgarian lands, and therefore requires some previous, preliminary knowledge of Ottoman history and documentation. The main themes addressed will include : early Ottoman administration (from the 15th to the early 16th centuries); the Ottoman judicial system and the functioning of the kadı court; agrarian relations : timars, vakıfs, çiftliks; monuments of Ottoman culture; towns and urban society; Osman Pazvandoğlu of Vidin against the backdrop of Kırcalı/dağlı unrest; the National Awakenings of the Balkan peoples; the international situation at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. At the same time, the core of the course will revolve around the official status and the real situation of various ethno-religious groups (such as the Orthodox Christians and the Jews) : their institutions; their attitudes vis-à-vis the Ottoman authorities; questions of Islamisation, and of neo-martyrs; church building and restoration; other and related problems. Assessment will be based on participation throughout the course, including short presentations, as well as a final paper of around 30 pages based on an appropriate amount of work on the primary sources as well as the secondary literature. Subject to these conditions, counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History while also serving as a course in advanced paleography. Students submitting only a shorter paper based just on the seconary literature (instead of a major research paper as described above) may obtain credit only for a taught course, and not a seminar. (Also see HIST 553.) Prerequisites for HIST 653 : HIST 561 or the equivalent, plus an adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Rebellion and Dissent in the Ottoman Empire | HIST 664 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar examines selected episodes of rebellion, social unrest and dissent through selected primary sources and secondary literature. It introduces major theoretical debates regarding early modern revolts in Eurasia and explores their relevance for the Ottoman Empire. Themes to be covered include dynamics of state-making and socio-economic change, ideology and language of dissent, and questions of organization, agenda and agency in rural and urban revolts. |
| Topics in the History of Ottoman Slavery | HIST 669 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this seminar is to explore slavery as an institution in the Ottoman context. Historical "moments" or issues regarding which students will be guided into in-depth research include: Ottoman slavery in the context of broader world perspectives; "open" and "closed" systems of slavery; means of acquiring or recruiting slaves; ethnicity and slavery; changes in the Ottoman demand for slaves; slaves as soldiers and administrators; slaves in agriculture; slaves in manufacturing activities; domestic slavery; popular slave culture in Ottoman society; slavery and its legal framework; the Abolitionist debate in Europe and North America, and its relevance for Ottoman slavery; Western involvement in Ottoman slavery; governmental measures against slavery and the slave trade; the eventual demise of Ottoman slavery in the absence of a legal act of abolition. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| The Making of Istanbul | HIST 671 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A research seminar combining visual materials with textual sources. Periods and topics dealt with, and which students may choose to concentrate upon, include : (1) The Byzantine past; rituals and monuments in the making of a city. (2) Early Ottoman land tenure in and around Istanbul : tahrirs and Imperial vakıfs, kanun and canon. (3) Istanbul as a distinctive "local culture" within the Ottoman Empire. (4) Istanbul as a locus of social unrest. (5) Late Ottoman Istanbul : its changing topography; its diverging tastes and identities (or : the emergence of sub-localities within a local culture). (6) Republican Istanbul and the end of a city. Requirements : a major research paper combining multiple types of evidence. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Seminar for Early Modern Ottoman History | HIST 672 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A key research seminar in Ottoman history designed to introduce graduate students to first-hand familiarity with, and provide them with an initial capacity for working on, a variety of primary period sources, in their original form, revolving around a particular theme relevant to the 17th and 18th centuries. The thematic concentration may be changed by the instructor from year to year. Prerequisite: HIST 572 or the equivalent, plus an adequate Ottoman script reading ability (both to be verified by the History Program). Basic deliverable: a major, 30-page research paper based on primary materials as described above. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the MA or PhD seminar requirements in History. |
| Seminar for Late Ottoman history | HIST 681 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Politics and Society in Ottoman Cities, 16th -18th centuries | HIST 682 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | An introduction to major research paradigms used in the study of Ottoman towns. Different urban typologies based on geography, culture or material life, and commonly used units of analysis such as community, class or estate, are examined. Themes to be studied include formal and informal politics and aspects of life in public spaces; regulation, conformity and resistance, sociability and ceremony. Requirements : a major research paper of around 30 pages based on primary source materials. Counts towards fulfilling the seminar requirement in History while also providing advanced paleographical training. Prerequisite : An adequate command of Ottoman Turkish, through TLL 501-502 or the equivalent, and subject to the instructor's approval. |
| Special Readings on National Memory I : Varieties of Early Turkish Nationalism | HIST 689 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The complex transition from 19th century varieties of Ottoman identity or Muslim patriotism to Turkish nationalism in the throes of the protracted crisis of 1908-22. The search for a viable past : contemporary traumas vs mytho-historical ways of compensation. Alternative "golden ages'', projected affinities, and corresponding value systems. Early textbooks; popular history; the invention of Central Asian origins; questions of race; Yusuf Akçura's and Fuat Köprülü's weaving of an evolutionary grand narrative; grafting a national discourse onto an Ottoman-centred imperial discourse; early Kemalism's redefinition of Turkish nationalism; the objectives and constraints of the Turkish Thesis of History. May be taken by graduate students as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page research paper based on primary materials. |
| Texts and Constructions of National Memory II : Reading the Republican Historians | HIST 690 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A critical, comparative 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 Türkiye. 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. May be taken by undergraduates as a taught course (= HIST 490), and simultaneously by graduate students as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page research paper based on primary materials. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the seminar requirement in History. |
| Modern Dictatorships, and the One-Party Period | HIST 692 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course offers an in-depth study of the one-party period and political system in Türkiye, 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. May be taken by undergraduates as a taught course (= POLS 392), and simultaneously by graduate students as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page research paper based on primary materials. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the seminar requirement in History. |
| Turkish Political Thought | HIST 694 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a survey of the main currents and their selective representatives in Turkish political thought since 1908 such as liberalism, nationalism, socialism, feminism, and political Islam. May be taken by graduate students as a taught course (POLS 594), or alternatively as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page paper based on primary materials. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the seminar requirement in History. |
| Reform and the History of Ideas in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century | HIST 695 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The existing literature about reform in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century concentrates primarily on the institutional components of reform. However, a great deal of research on the intellectual and knowledge components of reform has appeared since the 1960s. The time has now come to review this literature and bring it into a course constructed for that purpose. Graduate students may take this as a research seminar, subject to additional reading and research requirements, including writing a major research paper based on primary materials. Subject to these conditions, satisfies the 600-coded graduate research seminar requirement for History. |
| The Tanzimat Process as a Transfer of Knowledge | HIST 696 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey of reform movements in the Ottoman Empire especially through the prism of their contacts with West European scientific speculations in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as through their sequel in the form of Tanzimat reforms up to 1850. An attempt will be made to cover the history of institutional developments parallel to the history of ideas. May be taken both as a taught course (= HIST 596) and as a seminar, subject to the approval of the instructor and the fulfillment of the research paper requirements for a 600-coded research seminar in History. |
| Late Ottoman and Modern Turkish Foreign Policy, 1870-1970 | HIST 697 | 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 Türkiye'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. May be taken by undergraduates as a taught course (= HIST 397), and simultaneously by graduate students as a research seminar subject to the special requirement of producing a major, 30-page research paper based on primary materials. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions, counts towards completion of the seminar requirement in History. |
| Master Thesis | HIST 698 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| PhD Thesis | HIST 699 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of PhD students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty advisor plus two other examiners from the relevant field following the completion of their course-work. |
| Literature Survey: Historiography | HIST 702 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey : the Middle Ages in Europe | HIST 712 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey: The Early Modern Era | HIST 714 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey: From the Age of Revolution | HIST 715 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Literature Survey: Modern Balkan History, 1800 to the Present | HIST 742 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey : Central Asian and Turkic History | HIST 751 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey : Ottoman History, 1300-1600 | HIST 762 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey : Ottoman History, 17th and 18th centuries | HIST 771 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey : Ottoman-Turkish History, 1800-1918 | HIST 781 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey: Recent Turkish History, 1918 to the Present | HIST 791 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Literature Survey: Cultural History | HIST 799 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | One of a series of eleven courses comprising advanced surveys of the secondary literature relevant to a particular field or period, and intended to prepare PhD students in particular for their comprehensive examinations in one major and two minor fields. May also be taken by other students as a field-specific directed readings course. Requirements : producing a comprehensive reading list (of what has actually been covered), plus a complete syllabus for a comparable undergraduate course in History. |
| Globalization and International Relations | IR 501 | 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. |
| International Security | IR 510 | 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 Türkiye 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. |
| American Politics and Government | IR 530 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces 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. |
| Special Reading on Int.ConfRes | IR 532 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | |
| Russian Politics and Foreign Policy | IR 535 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Providing indepth understanding of Russian politics and foreign policy. Understanding the actors, institutions and structure of Russian politics. Discovering the domestic sources of Russian Foreign Policy. Focusing on the priorities, principles and mechanisms of foreign policy. Analyzing Russian politics in regional and international contexts. |
| Central Asia and Caucasus in International Perspective | IR 537 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Providing indepth understanding of politics in Caucasus /Central Asia. Exploring the issues of international relations, governance, energy, security and conflict resolution in the region. Analyzing the political processes, challenges, achievements specific to the regional countries. Focusing on the sources and dynamics of regional and international interest to the region. |
| Foreign Policy Analysis | IR 592 | 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. |
| Term Project | IR 597 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students taking this course are expected to write a research paper on a topic agreed upon by a faculty member. |
| Law, Business and Society | LAW 501 | 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. |
| Human Rights in the EU | LAW 504 | 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. |
| International Law | LAW 511 | 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 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the similarities and differences between written constitutions than 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. |
| Postcolonial Theory and Literatures | LIT 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | the other course readings. This course may be taken What happens whwn anthropolologists 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 ). |
| Auto/biography | LIT 530 | 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 534 | 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. 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 540 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course focuses on the critical evaluation of 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 545 | 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 552 | 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 |
| Literature and Immigration | LIT 554 | 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, Resistance | LIT 559 | 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 incorporates 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 570 | 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. |
| Modern Turkish Literature | LIT 594 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What are the repercussions of social and political movements in Turkish literature? How is the cultural dynamism of Türkiye represented on the literary plane? This course will explore modern Türkiye 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 Türkiye (Selma Ekrem, Halide Edib.) |
| Postcolonial Theory and Literatures | LIT 624 | 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. This course may be taken simultaneously by undergraduates (see LIT 324). Graduate students may take it as a research seminar, subject to additional reading and research requirements, including writing a major research paper based on primary materials. |
| Advanced Topics in Turkish Literature | LIT 692 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar 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 Türkiye. Seminar materials combine such literary works with theoretical and historical writings on Türkiye, 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 692 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. Subject to the completion of a long (approx. 30 pages) research paper largely based on primary sources, this seminar counts towards the fulfillment of the research seminar requirements for the MA and PhD degrees in History. |
| Philosophy of Social Sciences | PHIL 501 | 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. |
| Personhood and Personal Identity | PHIL 521 | 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. |
| Philosophy of Art | PHIL 522 | 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. |
| European Humanism and After | PHIL 525 | 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 550 | 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. |
| Ancient, Medieval and Early Political Theory | POLS 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a chronological survey of the history of ancient Greek, medieval and early modern political thought. It begins with the Greek classiscs 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. |
| Concepts, Structures and Transformations | POLS 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at equipping the students with a conceptual framework that will enable them to conduct qualitative studies in the field of Political Science. While the conventional literature on ideology, discourse, Orientalism, liberalism, democracy, and fascism will be covered on the one hand, approaches that go beyond nation-state paradigms in social sciences will be introduced, on the other. The latter will include a survey of the reconceptualization of citizenship as a result of the processes prompted by globalization. The critical issues concerning the dynamics and motor of political change will also be studied. (A required course for Political Science PhD students) |
| Political Theory | POLS 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey of the impact of dominant political theories in the 19th and early 20th centuries viewed as thematic constructions that have to be set in their historical context to be fully understood. The course shall focus both on political thought and on the concomitant social/intellectual movements, the latter, in turn breaking new ground for the emergence of new political cultures. |
| Comparative Method | POLS 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Graduate level course to be offered to students who had already been through Comparative Politics instruction. This course focuses on comparison as a method of control, the logic of comparison in most similar and most different systems, case study, area study approaches in comparative politics. |
| Turkish Social and Political Thought | POLS 504 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is asurvey of the main currents and their selected representatives in Turkish social and political thought since 1908. |
| Political Tought:Issues,Concepts,Debates | POLS 505 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to introduce political science graduate students to some of the main concepts, theories and debates in political thought. The focus of the course will be to orovide 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 necessary for graduate work. |
| Political Ideologies | POLS 507 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will review the fundamental contemporary ideoligies such as liberalism, conservatism, facism, and Marxism and recent manifestations of ideoligical politics such as political Islam, new Right politics feminism, and environmentalism. |
| Revitalization Movements in the Islamic World | POLS 508 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A survey of the organizational and idealional changes that have marked the Islamic world in the last three centuries and that have been characterized as " Neo-sufism " . The course will start with a study of the mujaddidi movement of Ahmad Faruqi Sirhindi (1563 - 1624) and cover developments in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as ramifications of revivalism in Anatolia- Contributions to these movements by leaders such as Ahmad Ibn Idrıs (1760 - 1832),Muhammad Ali as-Sanusi 1787-1859),Shakh Khalid Shahrizuri al Bagdadi (1776 - 1827),Muhammad al Mahdi (1844-1881),and Ziyaeddin Gümüşhanevi (1812-1893) will be highlighted within two main frames:that of Islamic culture and that of recent theoretical contribution to the study of " Fundamentalism ". One aspect of these developments feeds directly into contemporary Turkish Politics through the influence of Mehmed Z. Kotku and N. Erbakan. |
| Greek-Turkish Relations | POLS 509 | 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 Türkiye; 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. |
| Comparative Politics | POLS 510 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to introduce the graduate students to the comparative study of politics. The objectives of the course are: 1. To enable students to develop skills in analysing political institutions, processes, and structures through comparisons of political systems embedded in different cultural contexts; 3. To introduce the students to the main issues and topics of the field of comparative politics; and 4. To introduce the students to the analysis of how major human concerns with freedom, social justice, equality, democracy etc. take shape and influence the emerge and structure of political institutions, processes, and practices in different polities. |
| Great Powers and Origins of International Order | POLS 511 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the foreign policies of great powers and their consequences for international order. It analyzes how great powers have used military and diplomatic tools in the international arena and how these tools have affected international rules, institutions, and norms. The course focuses on the strategies of the USA, Britain, and Germany since the 19th century and traces the development of international orders -from the failed attempts of Concert of Europe and the League of Nations to the Cold War order. It considers the foreign policies of current and rising powers, such as the EU, China, and the USA, and if in the post-9/11 era the policies of these states will produce a different order. |
| Changing Parameters of the New Right | POLS 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The primary purpose of this course is to give the student an understanding of the extreme right-wing phenomenon both in theory and practice. In an era in which some of these parties has made a remarkable progress in Türkiye and Western Europe (i.e., Jörg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria), the study of right-wing extremism seems to be relevant for all students of political science and related disciplines. A theoretical framework of the extreme right-wing politics is constructed by the study of other ideologies, that has or is supposed to have influenced the phenomenon. These include conservatism, liberalism, fascism and racism. |
| Comparative Party Systems and Electoral Behaviour | POLS 513 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to provide a review of historical and conceptual bases of modern party systems, mass electoral behaviour and election systems. Competing theoretical paradigms that adress the enduring issues in the literature are introduced, application of the basic tools of analysis in the literature are presented and comparable research questions for the Turkish context are discussed. |
| Politics of Southern Europe | POLS 514 | 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.. |
| Political and Social Thought in France in the 19th and 20th | POLS 519 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The aim of this course is to introduce the students the political and social movements originating in France in the 19th and 20th centuries about which they become knowledgable in order to understand why Turkish "modernization" whether in the 19th or the 20th century, has been primarily affected by currents of thought originating in France. Cross-listed as HIST 519 |
| Politics of Representation and Identity | POLS 521 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will explore issues of representation and identity in the context of cultural pratices. It is concerned with clarifying processes of identity formation and transformation, especially as they take place in the political and cultural realms. The notion of 'representation' does not refer to electoral or to institutional representation narrowly understood but aims to capture the cultural and symbolic aspects of representation that have political and institutional repercussions. For these purposes, the course will analyze the myriad relationships among multiple forms of representation and the macro-social processes shaping the contemporary world as well as engaging in the current political debate and polemics that revolve around these ssues. Therefore, issues of multiculturalism, politics of difference and postmodernity will be taken up alongside issues of performativity, feminism, masculinity, surrealism and pornography. Our overriding concern will be to gain self-understanding regarding the identities we assume, reject or negotiate with. In other words, the ultimate speculative thrust of this course is to further our self-reflexivity with respect to our academic practices as well as our personal identities. |
| Politics and Culture | POLS 522 | 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 |
| Philosophical Approaches to Modernity | POLS 523 | 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. |
| Civil Society | POLS 525 | 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 Türkiye'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 526 | 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. |
| Methods and Scope of Political Analysis | POLS 529 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to philosophy of social sciences, various methodological approaches in political science and research methods and analysis. Components of research design, measurement, validity, data collection strategies and logic of inference are discussed. Various research design examples are provided from the recent political science literature and students are exposed to research process, article evaluation and thesis proposal writing. It also aims to expose students to ethical considerations in research and publishing. |
| Quantitative Research Methods | POLS 530 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to quantitative research methods used in political science. Basic exposure is provided to descriptive tabular analysis and statistics, probability, distribution theory, central limit theorem, hypothesis testing, ordinary least squares and multivariate regression methods. It also aims to expose students to ethical consideration in research and publishing. |
| Qualitative and Textual Research Methods | POLS 531 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to help students develop their research design skills in qualitative methods. The objective is to enable graduate students to create and critique sophisticated qualitative research designs in political science. In order to do so, the seminar explores the techniques, strengths, and limitations of qualitative methods by scrutinizing the logic and application of comparative-historical research, case- study, process-tracing, and textual analysis. The course further takes on epistemological issues in the social sciences such as causality, theory testing, case selection, inference, and the philosophy of social science. Even though qualitative research can stand on its own, this course stresses the advantages of not viewing the qualitative methods in isolation from other methods. Accordingly, the course encourages the use and application of mixed-method research in political science. It also aims to expose students to ethical considerations in research and publishing. |
| Survey Research Methods | POLS 532 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course builds on "Methods and Scope of Political Analysis" course and provides a working knowledge of the total survey approach, sampling, questionnaire design and collection and analysis of survey data. |
| Qualitative Research Methods | POLS 533 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide an introductory exposure to techniques in political science using few observations or "small N" research. The substantive question is build around discussions of theoretical and empirical issues associated with in-depth analysis of a small number of cases. Topics covered include case selection, field methods and in-depth interviewing, measurement, analytical narrative, structured comparison, statistical methods and inference in small N research. |
| Formal Modelling and Political Analysis I | POLS 534 | 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. |
| Formal Modelling and Political Analysis II | POLS 535 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course builds on POLS 534 and aims to expose the students to recent applications of formal analysis in various fields of political science. Assuming a sound understanding of basic formal tools of analysis examplary articles focusing on selected topics in comparative politics, international relations and social choice are discussed and various extensions are opened for discussion. |
| Introduction to Computational Social Science | POLS 536 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course interweaves three main themes: (1) Graduate level introduction to computational concepts, principles and modeling approaches in the social sciences, with an emphasis on simulations and elements of cpmlexity theory as these apply to social phenomena. Topics include systems dynamics, cellular automata, and agent-oriented models. (2) Hands-on examination of agent simulations in the social sciences by examining and experimenting with a variety of social simulation projects conducted in Repast Agent Simulation Environment (3) Ability to design experiments and evaluating results for the purpose of testing research hypotheses |
| Advance Research Methods and Data Analysis in Political Science | POLS 537 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course trains students to use statistical models for forecasting societal, mainly political, outcomes The students learn how to use Machine Learning and Data Mining algorithms to explore topics such as measuring the extent of partisan polarization, predicting electoral outcomes, predicting local violence, analyzing the trend of interstate war, and forecasting civil war. Subjects to be covered include understanding the differences and similarities between Correlation Analysis, Causal Inference, and Forecasting Principles; Naive Bayes; k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN); Regularized Linear Regression (Lasso, Ridge, eNet); forecasting using Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE); Trees methods; Clustering; and Dimension Reduction. |
| Türkiye and the Middle East | POLS 539 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will explore the story of Türkiye's relations with the main middle eastern states since the 1920s, within the context of its wider foreign policy concerns. Opening classes will cover the historical background of Turkish policies in the region between 1945 and 1960, Türkiye's interests and capacities in the region, the linkage between regional policies and Türkiye's relations with the superpowers, and the role of economic factors. Subsequent sessions will deal with Türkiye's policies towards the main regional states, closing with Türkiye's position in the first and second Gulf wars (1991, 2003) and an overall assessment of the evolution of Turkish policy and interests. |
| International Relations Theory | POLS 540 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at providing the political science graduate students with a thorough analysis of international relations theory. The course will do so first, by analyzing the emergence of the modern state system and the evolution of the international relations as a discipline. Second, the course will focus on major approaches and paradigms in international relations theory, namely realism, neorealism,liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism. and contructivisim. By differentiating between rationalist and sociological approaches to international relations, the course will expose the students to the major current debates in IR theory. The course aims to furnish the students with advanced theoretical skills on international relations that would enable them to further their studies on international relations. |
| International Organizations | POLS 541 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What role do International Organizations (IOs) play in world politics? Why do states establish supranational and international institutions, and what determines both their design and evolution? How do international and domestic forces impact their effectiveness and function? This course provides an in-depth look at the theory behind and practice of IOs and focuses on both theoretical and methodological issues related to IOs. It looks at the interaction between international law and politics as exemplified by the United Nations, international financial institutions (the IMF and World Bank), selected regional organizations (NATO and EU), and the WTO. Finally, and considers their substantive work in areas such as the promotion of democracy, peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development. Primary goal is to understand the interplay between interests, institutions and information in defining how IOs influence world politics. |
| NGO Governance | POLS 542 | 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 Türkiye and elsewhere. |
| International Negotiation | POLS 543 | 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 |
| Latin American Politics | POLS 546 | 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 548 | 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. |
| Middle Eastern Politics and Government | POLS 549 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A 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. |
| Turkish Politics | POLS 550 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide a systematic historical review of classic and contemporary literature on the Turkish political institutions and processes from the Ottoman period to the present. Special attention will be paid to public policy making processes, forms of political participation, organisation and structure of diffrent levels of government institutions and mass movements. |
| Current Issues in Turkish Politics | POLS 553 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at contributing to the ability of students to analyze analytically and critically the diversities and vicissitudes of political institutions, actors, and discourses in Türkiye, as well as, 'continuities and changes' in Turkish politics. In doing so, the course begins by discussing the question of how to approach methodologically to Turkish politics, and then proceeds by focusing on crucial problem areas, namely those of institutional problems, societal changes and demands, and identity questions. The course attempts to discuss these issues and problems by locating them at the international/the domestic nexus. To achieve its aim, the course involves lectures, class discussions, and class presentations, and requires both active student participation and reading course material before attending the lectures. |
| Turkish Electoral Behaviour and Party System Research | POLS 554 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is intended to provide students with a structured opportunity to formulate cutting edge research questions on electoral behaviour and party system research. The primary objective is to guide students in formulating research questions and then actually carrying out the research and contribute to the existing literature. |
| Turkish Foreign Policy | POLS 555 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to provide students with a ststematic study of Turkish foreign policy. The course will elaborate on the basic principles of Turkish foreign policy making in the 20th century. Major turning points such as the developments in the Post World War II period and Cold War era, as well as the post-Cold War era will be yhoroughly investigated. The course analyzes the basic parameters of Turkish foreign policy during the Cold War era and then proceeds onto an analysis of the changes in these parameters after the end of the Cold War. The course empirically focuses on Türkiye's foreign policy towards Europe, Türkiye's policy towards the NATO-EU relations, the Middle East, Arab-Israeli conflict, and Transcaucasia. In addition, Türkiye's positon in the Gulf crisis of 1990-1991 and the Cyprus problem are investigated through the theoretical lenses provided in the course. |
| Tanzimat Studies | POLS 556 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a survey of the main currents and their selected representatives in Turkish social and political thought since the Tanzimat period. This course will attempt to analyze a number of basic documents relevant to the history of Ideas in the period of the Tanzimat. At each stage eminent personalities having contributed to the reform movement will be drawn into the study as a "constellation" of the thinkers of the time. |
| The Politics of Authoritarian Regimes: | POLS 557 | 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. |
| Modern State in Europe | POLS 560 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims at providing the students with a basic understanding of European politics. The course will do so first, by analyzing the historical background of European politics from the Peace of Westphalia and onwards, with specific emphasis on the state building process in Western Europe.Second the course will focus on the political dynamics in Europe with the aim of isolating commonalities and similar patterns in European politics. Third, the course will analyze the challenges in European politics today, specifically those posed by integrative and fragmentary forces. The course aims to provide a comparative analysis of European politics in a multi-disciplinary manner. |
| Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe | POLS 561 | 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. |
| Analytical Approaches To The European Union | POLS 562 | 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. |
| Political Violence in the Post-Cold War Era | POLS 563 | 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. |
| Energy Politics | POLS 564 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Energy affects all aspects of individual and collective life. Economic growth requires increasing supplies of energy, making security of supply important for both developing and mature markets. On the other hand, energy producing countries are more concerned about the security of future demand for their exports. After beginning with an introduction to the geopolitics of energy, the course focuses on political, economic, strategic implications of current trends in energy markets. It will also take into account the relationship between energy and environment and alternative sources of energy in the context of the EU energy policy and the Turkish market. |
| Rise and Fall of Democracy | POLS 565 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to give the student an understanding of the democratic regime as well as the way in which it has come under attack in the contemporary period. It offers an introduction to the conflicting definitions of the term and addresses such issues as democracy as government and representation. The course reviews the phenomenal rise of electoral democracies after the Third Wave and the proliferation of 'democracy with adjectives' in the global south. Particular emphasis is be placed on those factors and mechanisms that have eroded democratic institutions and facilitated democratic backsliding and breakdown in different parts of the globe. |
| Special Topics in Political Science and International Relations | POLS 566 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The specific focus of the course will be announced each semester that it is offered. Special topics may vary but will draw from the fields of political science and international relations. Students are expected to study the relevant literature and acquire knowledge in the relevant field. |
| Middle East Politics | POLS 570 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to examine the state formation, institutions and domestic political processes in the modern Middle East, political economy of oil, inter-state relations and regional conflicts, politics of gender and religious identity in the region. |
| Local Government in Türkiye and the European Union | POLS 571 | 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 Türkiye has been compounded by a strained relationship between central and local govenment in sharing of competences and resources. The strategic decision of Türkiye 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 Türkiye. 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 to top the reform agenda in Türkiye. 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 Türkiye (Also see POLS 493) |
| Nietzsche | POLS 572 | 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 573 | 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. |
| Political Economy | POLS 580 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to equip the student with basic concepts and tools necessary to understand the literature and to conduct research in this field. The substantive question is why governments do what they do and with what consequences. Discussions focus on the recent contributions to the political economy of development; principal characteristics of the contemporary world economy, especially patterns of inequality and the varying explanations for their emergence. |
| European Politics | POLS 581 | 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 conflic 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 (Also see POLS 491) |
| Ethnicity and Nationalism | POLS 583 | 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. |
| Theorizing Nationalism and Civil Society | POLS 584 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Comparative study of the Turkish single-party period and political system using first-hand original sources and within their historical and political contexts. Starting with the political situation and separations involved within the period of the War Independence, that period's impact on the period prior to the building of the Republic, until the end of the early Republican period, will be studied. This will include a comprehensive view of that whole period's political, cultural, economical, foreign policy-related situation, in particular focusing on political organizations. Cross-listed as HIST 591 |
| Human Rights in World Affairs | POLS 589 | 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. |
| Sources and Methods for Early Republican History 1920-1938 | POLS 591 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Comparative study of the Turkish single-party period and political system using first-hand original sources and within their historical and political contexts. Starting with the political situation and separations involved within the period of the War of Independence, that period�s impact on the period prior to the building of the Republic, until the end of the early Republican period, will be studied. This will include a comprehensive view of that whole period�s political, cultural, economical, foreign policy-related situation, in particular focusing on political organizations. |
| European Union: Politics, Policies and Governance | POLS 592 | 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. |
| Turkish Politics in the Multi-Party Era | POLS 593 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course aims to analyze the developments and transformations in Turkish politics in the post-1960 period. The approach is intended to be more analytical rather than historical and relying on the recent concepts emerging in the field of social theory. In this regard the course will discuss the issues of the post-1960 such as modernity, Kemalism, secularism, nationalism, left, extreme right, popular culture more with a political theory and philosophy view point and taking politics of identity and difference as a starting point. |
| Turkish Political Thought | POLS 594 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A study of the foundations of political thought in the Ottoman empire and modern Türkiye. The first part of the course focuses both on continuities with the earlier "Islamicate" discourse, and on the crucial break with tradition initiated during the Tanzimat. Over the second part of the course, some key representatives of post- 1908 currents of thought such as liberalism, nationalism or feminism will also be investigated. |
| Reform and the History of Ideas in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century | POLS 595 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The existing literature about reform in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century concentrates primarily on 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. |
| European Security | POLS 596 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an in depth analysis of the European security order from 1914 onwards. It covers basic theories of security and proceeds onto an investigation of World Wars and their impact on European security, as well as the institutional attempts of building a European security system. Particular emphasis will be on the institutional restructuring in the Cold War era and the transformation of the Cold war European security arrangements since 1989. The European security institutions, their evolution process and the European security architecture will be thoroughly analysed. |
| Dynamics of Governance in the European Union | POLS 597 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Various institutions of the Union, with ever increasing frequency and emphasis, have devised policies and initiated mechanisms which are best represented by the concept of governance. The Union, while formulatinf common policy in limited areas, has accepted the principle of subsidiaity in many others, encouraging collaborative schemes and approaches among various actors, at the lowest possible administrative level. Major instruments for implementation like the Social Fund and Regional and Cohesion Fund envisage and encourage a new societal division of labour, new types of collaboration among a multiplicity of stakeholders and new forms of participation and accountability, true to the sprit of governance. All these developments and trends justify a course in which this concept and its various applications within the European Union are taken up systematically, with a view to derive policies for candidate countries during their process of harmonization. |
| Comparative Local Government | POLS 598 | 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 Türkiye has been compounded by a strained relationship between central and local govenment in sharing of competences and resources. The strategic decision of Türkiye 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 Türkiye. 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 Türkiye. 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 Türkiye. |
| Pro-Thesis Seminar | POLS 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Pro-Thesis Seminar provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| Seminar in Political Theory | POLS 600 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar is aimed to provide an in-depth discussion and extensive reading and research and research on a selected topic in political theory. Besides guiding lectures on cutting edge topics students are expected to take the initiative and actively contribute to seminar debates as well as writing papers aiming to form a substantial part of their thesis work. |
| Seminar in Comparative Politics | POLS 601 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar is aimed to provide an in-dept discussionand extensive reading and research on a selected topic in various aspects of nationalism. Besides guiding lectures on cutting edge topics students are expected to take the initiative and actively contribute to seminar debates as well as writing papers aiming to form a substantial part of their thesis work. |
| Thesis Preparation Seminar | POLS 610 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is mainly an exercise in listening, reading and writing on a regular basis. The lectures that will be offered by faculty members will introduce the students to new venues in Political Science. The students will not only be exposed to various research areas in the field towards which they may direct their future thesis work, but will also get in the habit of writing short concise essays. This course will be offered jointly by the Political Science faculty members in cooperation with Sabanci University's Academic Writing Center.(A required course for Political Science PhD. Students.) |
| Seminar in Nationalisms | POLS 620 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar is aimed to provide an in-depth discussion and extensive reading and research and research on a selected topic in various aspects of nationalism. Besides guiding lectures on cutting edge topics students are expected to take the initiative and actively contribute to seminar debates as well as writing papers aiming to form a substantial part of their thesis work. |
| Seminar in Research Methods | POLS 630 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar is aimed to provide an in-depth discussion and extensive reading and research and research on a selected topic in various aspects of quantitative research methodology. Besides guiding lectures on cutting edge topics students are expected to take the initiative and actively contribute to seminar debates as well as writing papers aiming to form a substantial part of their thesis work. |
| Seminar in International Relations | POLS 640 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar is aimed to provide an in-depth discussion and extensive reading and research and research on a selected topic in international relations.Besides guiding lectures on cutting edge topics students are expected to take the initiative and actively contribute to seminar debates as well as writing papers aiming to form a substantial part of their thesis work. |
| Seminar in Turkish Politics | POLS 650 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This seminar is aimed to provide an in-depth discussion and extensive reading and research and research on a selected topic in Turkish politics.Besides guiding lectures on cutting edge topics students are expected to take the initiative and actively contribute to seminar debates as well as writing papers aiming to form a substantial part of their thesis work. |
| Term Project | POLS 697 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students taking this courses are expected to write a research paper on a topic agreed upon by a faculty member. |
| Master Thesis | POLS 699 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a faculty member from the relevant field of their course-work. |
| Guided Study I | POLS 790 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students will be guided through major academics texts in comparative politics, Turkish politics and political theory. |
| Guided Study II | POLS 791 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students will be guided through major academics texts in comparative politics, Turkish politics and political theory. |
| Guided Study III | POLS 792 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students will be guided through major academics texts in comparative politics, Turkish politics and political theory. |
| Ph.D. Thesis | POLS 799 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ph.D. Thesis provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of PhD students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty advisor plus two other examiners from the relevant field over three or four years following the completion of their course-work. |
| Guided Project | PROJ 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a non-credit, elective course that aims to provide FASS students in particular (including graduates as well as undergraduates) 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. Completion of an initially planned internship work may in some cases be mandatory for fulfilling the course requirements. |
| Trends in Psychological Science | PSY 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to survey cutting-edge research in psychological sciences. Faculty members take turns in discussing with students research articles in their area of expertise that reflect current trends, novel research directions, and hot debates in psychological sciences —including social,developmental, and cognitive psychology as well as neuroscience |
| Data Analysis for Psychological Science I | PSY 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this course, students master the analysis of OLS general and generalised linear models using SPSS. Starting with a comparison of ANOVA and regression approaches, and how their respective SPSS dialogues can be used flexibly to produce similar results. Students are familiarised with analyses of between groups, repeated measures, and mixed datasets; higher-order interactions and moderation; crossing fixed factors with covariates; traditional and bootstrapping approaches to mediation; handling non-normal outcomes; and the basics of Bayesian inference. Along the way, students discuss and consider the details of experimental design, measurement, power,and ethics. |
| Data Analysis for Psychological Science II | PSY 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this course, students master multivariate analyses involving latent and random factors. They begin by learning principle components analysis and exploratory factor analysis, before proceeding to study structural equation modelling for both hypothesis testing and confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, they start to use mixed models, and their applications to repeated measures and hierarchical data. Throughout, students focus on acquiring practical skills, by analysing real-world datasets with a variety of software. |
| Culture and Cognition | PSY 505 | 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 |
| EEG Methods and Analyses | PSY 507 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a project-based course in which the student designs the experiment, collects data and performs EEG analyses. The first part of the course focuses on EEG experimental design and data collection. This section teaches students how to shape the choices EEG researchers make when designing their experiments according to their research questions. The second part focuses on data analysis and interpretation of results. Students learn preprocessing, event-related and steady- state potentials, time-frequency power analyses in both univariate and multivariate domains. They acquire not only theoretical knowledge but also practical skills. |
| EEG Methods and Analyses | PSY 510 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a project-based course in which the student designs the experiment, collects data and performs EEG analyses. The first part of the course focuses on EEG experimental design and data collection. This section teaches students how to shape the choices EEG researchers make when designing their experiments according to their research questions. The second part focuses on data analysis and interpretation of results. Students learn preprocessing, event-related and steady- state potentials, time-frequency power analyses in both univariate and multivariate domains. They acquire not only theoretical knowledge but also practical skills. |
| Cognition, Emotion and Psychopathology | PSY 511 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this seminar course, students read about and discuss topics in the booming fields of affective cognition and experimental psychopathology. Students present and analyse key readings on visual search for threat, attentional and memory narrowing, cognitive biases in anxiety and depression, cognitive bias modification, and cognitive approaches to understanding and remediating PTSD. Students gain confidence in presenting complex work, independently critiquing and debating concepts and evidence. |
| Visual Cognition | PSY 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to survey research and theoretical discussions on Visual Cognition. Vision is central to our daily interactions with the world. It is the most salient sense modality, dominating our perception. Visual thinking plays a crucial role in a number of tasks such as object recognition, reading emotions from facial expressions, spatial orientation and wayfinding, creative problem solving, planning for the future, understanding scientific visualizations or visual art. Topics to be discussed include theoretical research on cognitive and neural processes underlying visual cognition as well as applied research on visual thinking and individual differences in visual processing styles. |
| Selected Topics in Language and Communication | PSY 514 | 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. |
| Seminar in Memory and Attention | PSY 515 | 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. |
| Culture and Cognition | PSY 516 | 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 |
| Topics in Episodic Memory and Future Thinking | PSY 518 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This advanced graduate seminar provides a thorough examination of episodic memory and episodic future thinking, encompassing both current research in the field and practical applications. The course integrates theoretical frameworks with empirical evidence, employing a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the complexities of memory and imagination processes. Key focal points include the development of episodic memory, the impact of aging on remembering, memory and imagination in social contexts, the connection between emotion and memory, the accuracy of memory, neurological perspectives on memory, the various functions of memory, and the practical implications derived from memory research. |
| Cognitive Development | PSY 521 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course explores the cognitive processes that shape human development from infancy through older adulthood. Emphasizing a lifespan perspective, it xamines how cognitive abilities emerge, change, and sometimes decline with age. Topics include foundational theories, research methods, and practical applications of cognitive development principles across the lifespan. |
| Social Development | PSY 522 | 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, bias, and the influence of peers & parents, and culture on development |
| Language Development in Infancy and Childhood | PSY 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an overview of language development in infancy and childhood, from birth through the preschool years. We will go over milestones and content of what children acquire including phonological, semantic, and syntactic skills. The main focus will be on typical monolingual development, we will also explore language development in children growing up with bilingual and multilingual backgrounds as well as with speech and other communicative issues. We will cover methodological as well as theoretical issues around language development in early years. The implications of research findings in education will also be discussed. |
| Personal Relationships | PSY 540 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this class is to provide a broad overview of emotional, cognitive and motivational processes in close relationships (simply relationships science) from a social psychological perspective with a specific emphasis on the attachment, interdependence, attributions and evolutionary approaches. From family relations, friendships to romantic relationships, dynamics of diverse relationships are covered. Processes of initiating, maintaining, and terminating relationships are elaborated within the contemporary theoretical framework and empirical findings. |
| Social Cognition | PSY 542 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course surveys leading research on how we process social information and make day-to-day judgments. The course aims to provide students with a deep understanding of how we make sense of complex social information, including topics such as person perception, judgment and decision making, and stereotyping |
| Psychology of the Self | PSY 543 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The course aims to provide a detailed review of the recent literature on the self and attachment from the social psychological, personality, and developmental perspectives. With a specific emphasis on the cultural aspects, the issues such as self-knowledge, self-esteem, self-regulation, and formation and development of attachment bonds will extensively be covered. |
| Intergroup Relationships | PSY 544 | 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 545 | 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. |
| Cognitive Neuroscience | PSY 552 | 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. |
| Clinical Insights from Basic Psychological Science | PSY 567 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to teach the topics that require the integration of theories, findings, and methodology in clinical psychology with those in social, developmental, health, personality, and cognitive psychology. Sample topics of the course are short- and long-term effects of traumatic events (e.g., natural disasters, death of loved ones) on psychological well-being, personality, and interpersonal and intergroup relationships, the interdependence between family members' well-being and coping styles during challenging times, the benefits and costs of positive experiences (e.g., positive emotions, positive interpersonal processes, gratitude) during stressful times, the association between traumatic events' centrality and psychological reactions (e.g., depression, post-traumatic growth), grief after non-death losses (e.g., divorce, homesickness), and ecological grief and anxiety due to the climate change. |
| Foundations of Infant Mental Heath | PSY 569 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course provides an introduction to interdisciplinary research and practice in infant mental health. Its purpose is to promote an understanding about early life stress with implications on biopsychosocial development and discuss approaches for promoting resilience in young children within the context of family, community, and culture. Topics to be covered include adverse childhood experiences, parental mental health, and various prevention as well as intervention programs as applied examples in the field. |
| Psychology in the Public Interest | PSY 580 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will discuss how psychological sciences can advance public interest in diverse areas—such as health, technology, sports, law, education, and organizations. To gain an appreciation of how psychological findings can be used to resolve day-to-day problems students will read, critically reflect on, and discuss psychological research with applied implications |
| Pro- Thesis Seminar | PSY 590 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Pro-Thesis Seminar is a non-credit course aiming to guide MS students in choosing a research topic towards their thesis, conducting a focused literature review, and presenting their thesis proposal in a collegial discussion under the supervision of a supervisor. |
| Term Project | PSY 595 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The institutional framework for guided research under the supervision of a faculty member towards the completion of non-thesis program students’ required research projects |
| Master Thesis | PSY 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a faculty member. |
| Directed Research in Psychological Science | PSY 620 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Directed research course aims to provide hands-on empirical research experience to graduate students in psychological sciences. This course involves conducting a research project under the supervision of a faculty member. Students may carry out the research in the course as part of laboratory rotation, a funded research project of a faculty member, an independent research project, a systematic literature review, or other appropriate research activities. |
| Directed Research in Psychological Science II | PSY 621 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The second course in the Directed Research series. This course aims to provide hands-on empirical research experience to graduate students in psychological sciences. It involves conducting a research project under the supervision of a faculty member. Students may carry out the research in the course as part of laboratory rotation, a funded research project of a faculty member, an independent research project, a systematic literature review, or other appropriate research activities. |
| Critical Perspectives in Psychological Literature | PSY 680 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Literate review is the fundamental step in academic work and requires a thorough effort from the beginning. Researchers working on a particular topic primarily specialize in the field of literature review. In this course, students will learn to systematically search the literature to better comprehend the area they study and learn how to carry out a project. |
| Ph.D. Pro-thesis Seminar | PSY 690 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose and non-credit course that can be used flexibly for a better preparation in research methods and analysis including deepening mastery of the relevant research languages through special readings, whenever necessary. The course also aims to expose students to ethical standards and rules in research and publishing. |
| Ph.D. Thesis | PSY 699 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ph.D. Thesis provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of PhD students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a thesis advisor plus two other examiners from the relevant field over three or four years following the completion of their course-work. |
| Ph.D. Thesis | PSY 799 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Ph.D. Thesis provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of PhD students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a thesis advisor plus two other examiners from the relevant field over three or four years following the completion of their course-work. |
| Pro-thesis Seminar | PUBL 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Kredisiz olarak açılan bu derste öğrenciler rapor yazma ve sunum yapma becerilerini geliştirecek, ayrıca proje hazırlama konusunda eğitileceklerdir. |
| Governance, Politics and Public Policy | PUBL 501 | 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 |
| Research Methods and Quantitative Techniques | PUBL 503 | 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 |
| Public Expenditure Policy for Social Sectors | PUBL 504 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Public expenditure management: Process, roles and responsibilities; public expenditure review (PER) as a tool of policy analysis; the scope of PER; sources of data and information; indicators of expenditure efficiency and international comparisons; public expenditure analysis in the education and health sectors; public expenditure analysis of social protection policies. |
| Research in Public Policyr | PUBL 550 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students carry out research under the guidance of a professor towards their Master?s thesis. |
| Master's Thesis | PUBL 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The purpose of this non-credit course is to monitor and provide guidanceto students in their process of thesis research and writing under the supervision of professors. |
| PhD Qualifying Exam Preparation | QL 700 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a multi-purpose and non-credit course, that can be used in a flexible manner to enable the PhD students to prepare for their PhD qualifying exam in their respective fields of doctoral study. |
| Media and Politics | SOC 502 | 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 'spin control', 'the spiral of silence' or 'political advertising'. |
| Social Studies of Constitutions and Constitutionalism | SOC 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In recent years, constitutionalism as a mode of political action undertaken by courts and other political entities has become key to efforts of political reconstruction. In both South Africa and Eastern Europe, for example, constitutionalism has become the modus operandi of setting the framework of new political orders, for coming to terms with a troublesome past, and for gaining political legitimacy vis-à-vis global or regional trans-national institutions. At the same time, constitutions today, as in the past, remain a crucial site for contesting and negotiating the boundaries of the legitimate order and work as a juridico-political context for affirming and enacting deeply rooted imaginations of a nation's past, present and future. Constitutional courts, as well as other constitutional bodies emerge as major players in these contestations. We will examine these processes through the specific examples of the European Union, Hungary and South Africa. In particular the historical, political, social and economic dynamics at work in these contexts concentrating on the making of constitutions, the operation of constitutional bodies and the entangled notions of constitutionalism is discussed. |
| Media Research Workshop | SOC 504 | 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. |
| Religion and Politics | SOC 508 | 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. |
| Turkish Social Thought | SOC 513 | 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 Türkiye. 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. |
| Qualitative Research Methods | SOC 518 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed towards those who are new to qualitative inquiry. It will provide an overview of the theoretical foundations, primary methods of data collection and analysis. With the required student fieldwork projects, carried out concurrently with classroom lectures and discussions, the class aims to balance information acquisition and application of specific skills needed to conduct quality research. |
| Infrastructure and Mobilities | SOC 520 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The study of current mobilities of everything (people, ideas, goods, capital, and images), the social, cultural and political aspects of infrastructure and mobilities, the sustainable workings of mobility places and systems, and the historical formation of mobility as an inseparable feature of civilization, modernity, development, and globalization. Topics to be covered include Mobilities Theory; cities as interfaces and infrastructures; inequalities across (im)mobilities; historical development of transportation systems; global structures of mobilities; airports, railways, and container ports; mutual constitution of infrastructure, transportation, and tourism; social, cultural and economic impacts of sustainable transportation systems and hubs over place-making and social relations. |
| Urban Sociology | SOC 521 | 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) |
| Power, Economy, and Society | SOC 525 | 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 526 | 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 532 | 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 |
| Teaching Colloquium: Humanity and Society | SPS 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a non-credit graduate course designed exclusively for SPS FASS discussion session facilitators in SPS- Humanity and Society courses. The course consists of weekly teaching colloquiums that aim to discuss the course material, logistics, learning strategies and feedback with the SPS FASS facilitators for the improvement of the discussion sessions’ quality in SPS 101 and 102 courses This creates a learning environment for the SPS FASS facilitators that would allow them to practice their learning strategies, get feedback on their classroom performance and improve their knowledge about the course material |
| Teaching Colloquium: Humanity and Society I | SPS 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a non-credit graduate course designed exclusively for Teaching Assistants in SPS 101- Humanity and Society I. Through the discussion of the week's lectures and reading materials, graduate students will be offered analytical and practical tools and insights to preapare for the undergraduate discussion sections. |
| Teaching Colloquium: Humanity & Society II | SPS 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This is a non-credit graduate course designed exclusively for Teaching Assistants who teach in SPS 102 - Humanity and Society II. Through the discussion of the week's lectures and reading materials, graduate students will be offered analytical and practical tools and insights to prepare for the undergraduate discussion sections. |
| MA Pro-seminar | TS 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for a better preparation in research methods and analysis including deepening mastery of the relevant research languages through special readings, whenever necessary. The course also aims to expose students to ethical standards and rules in research and publishing. |
| Ottoman Intellectuals in the Long-nineteenth Century | TS 509 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Beginning with the Tanzimat and extending to the Young Turk Revolution, this course enables the students to learn and engage with the fundamental concepts and ideas of Ottoman intellectuals in the long nineteenth century. The transformations in the principle of political legitimacy, the relation between liberty and security, constitutionalism, parliamentarism, positivism, radicalism, conservatism, the concept of modern empire, and the demand for gender and legal equality: all these and more will form the content of this course. By focusing on prominent as well as female and “neglected” voices and primary texts in Ottoman intellectual history, this course aims to democratise and broaden the field of Ottoman political thought in particular and global intellectual history in general. |
| Ottoman and Turkish Legal History | TS 515 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to introduce the main issues and sources of Ottoman and Turkish legal history from the medieval to the modern period. It starts with a discussion of the nature law and norm making in pre-modern and modern societies and then examines the concepts, sources, and themes of Ottoman and Turkish legal history. The characteristics of distinctive periods will be explored through a review of the secondary literature as well as close readings of primary texts related to the topics at hand. |
| Digital Humanities | TS 520 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course covers digital humanities with theoretical and practical approaches. It examines the different application areas of digital technologies in the humanities and social sciences. It focuses on current methodological and theoretical discussions on the emerging field of digital humanities. Following the discussion of “data” in social sciences and humanities, the course turns to practices of data management and data cleaning. Of the many methods of digital humanities, four are covered in this course: textual analysis, data visualization, network analysis, mapping. After these methods are introduced, they will be practiced in the classroom with related software. |
| Economic History of Türkiye | TS 521 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course examines the economic transformations of Türkiye from the early modern Ottoman Empire to the late 20th century. It explores local and global interactions that shaped these changes. The course provides a broad overview of key economic changes and policies over this long period. Topics are divided into three periods. First, the economic transformations of the early modern Ottoman Empire from the late 16th to the 19th century are studied. Second, changes in the economic infrastructure from the early 19th century to the end of World War I are analyzed. Finally the course covers the economic policies of the Modern Türkiye, from the early Republican period to the integration into the global neo-liberal economic order after 1980. |
| Social Change in Türkiye | TS 550 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the multidisciplinary study of social and cultural change in Türkiye in the post- 1980 period. Topics to be covered include urbanization modernization and post-modernity debates, globalization and neoliberalism, social movements, cultural trends, social class, subjectivity, nationalism, forms of discrimination, gender and sexuality, and everyday life through a prism of change in Türkiye. |
| Turkish Studies and History: Debates and Topics | TS 551 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course introduces students to the debates and topics of contemporary research on Türkiye and its peoples that employ historical methodology and sources. The course follows a broad chronology from the major events of the late-Ottoman Empire to contemporary issues in the Republic of Türkiye. It introduces major themes such as transition from empire to nation-state, emergence and competition among political networks, history of political movements, migration, environment and economic transformation and how historical methodology and sources are utilized in the study of those themes. |
| The Founding Generations: The Young Turks, The Unionists and The Kemalists | TS 552 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The founding generations of the modern day Republic of Türkiye, who predominantly shaped the national culture, institutions, politics and economy of the republic almost until 1950, grew up in the ‘twilight’ of the Ottoman Empire. Their formative experiences were shaped within the confines of a shrinking empire where rising nationalisms, incorporation into world markets and modern reforms caused ‘everything solid’ to ‘melt into air.’ This course takes the formation of a broadly defined group of intellectuals, the Young Turks, as a starting point and discusses how the ideas and actions of a selected group of influential figures, as ‘Unionists’ and later ‘Kemalistst’ shaped contemporary Türkiye. The course relies heavily on the secondary literature in English and also on primary sources and ego documents about the individuals in question. Major topics in Turkish Studies, such as identity politics, the formation of Turkish nationalism, the new republic’s economic policies and the institutions are traced through the eyes of these individuals and their policies. |
| Cultural Heritage in Türkiye | TS 555 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Cultural heritage can be defined as the legacy of tangible artifacts or material culture and intangible attributes such as customs, practices, rites or values of a group, society or community inherited from the past, maintained in the present and passed on to future generations. This course investigates the ways how Türkiye, in the past and the present, has defined, transformed, re-contextualized and instrumentalized forms of cultural heritage for its needs and values. In the scope of this course, it is going to be examined how cultural heritage was transformed into national heritage with the rise of (cultural) nationalism. The uses of cultural heritage in contemporary Türkiye is another topic of the course. Other topics that will be discussed in the course include (the creation of) museums, libraries and archives, archaeological practices, the creation and preservation of monuments, national-history writing, the destruction or alteration of forms of cultural heritage, propagandistic interpretation of cultural heritage, and revived or invented traditions. |
| Internship | TS 590 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students are expected to work as interns or researchers in one of the centers, labs or forums affiliated with Sabancı University. |
| MA Term Project | TS 595 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | For students in the ''MA Non-thesis''program, the institutional framework for guided research under the supervision of a Faculty member towards the completion of their required research project, on a topic to be submitted to and approved by the Turkish Studies Program Committee. |
| Master Thesis | TS 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing, which they are expected to accomplish under the supervision of a Faculty member from the relevant field over the second year of their course-work. |
| Preparatory Survey | VA 500 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is an introductory course to be conducted jointly by all studio professors in the VAVCD program willing to participate. In the first ten weeks, every potential studio teacher will be exposed to students. Each instructor will occupy 2 to 4 weeks of expository teaching sessions during the course In the final four weeks individual assignments will be made on advisor basis. Students will be expected to start preparing a pre-thesis proposal (at least one proposal, there can be two), which will also help them to figure out their own advisors. |
| Introductory Module | VA 501 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this studio the students are expected to explore their individual language in the areas of art and design. Throughout the semester various studio faculty will meet and introduce the student towards his or her specific artistic approach or design understanding . In this semester utilization of diverse methods, materials and techniques by the student is anticipated. |
| Intermediate Module | VA 502 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students are expected to work on their own body of artistic works. Group and individual studio critiques throughout the semester will guide the student in his or her specific artistic approach. If the student is design oriented, a similar personalised understanding of combining and diversifying design components will be generated in projects focused on web design, digital video or more traditional design areas, such as editorial design. |
| Advanced Module | VA 503 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a continuation of graduate studios. Faculty as well as external participants from various disciplines will critique Works in progress. By this stage the student is expected to enhance his/her own vocabulary through forms, images, and words. Issues of professional practice including presentation practice will be covered and participation in exhibitions encouraged. |
| Graduation Module | VA 504 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | In this semester the student is expected to realize his/her graduate level final exhibition and /or final project. At this time the student will also work on and produce a portfolio at professional level. Personalised critiques by faculty will lead the student to his/her studio degree requirement. |
| Addressing Studio Creative Practice | VA 505 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course aims to enable artists and designers to theorize and to write effectively on their own creative output and projects, as well as to give them the ability to conduct research, introduce research analysis and design and develop theory in wider related fields such as art theory, art criticism, art education, new media, curatorial studies and the like. Although the methodology of research of the theory of artistic practice can be seen to be a merger of qualitative inquiry, aesthetics and narratology; nevertheless given the oftentimes subjective nature of writing about one’s own projects creative output calls for additional approaches and tools, which also include the ability to put together a solid documentation of personal creative as well as integrating such an output into a documentation both as an academic text and the presentation / summation thereof. The course also aims to expose students to ethical considerations in research and publishing. |
| Topics in Contemporary Art I | VA 510 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The beginning of the twentieth century reflects a plethora of various different art movements. The developments of and the transition from the 19th century allow the new century to challenge the long history of visual culture developed since the Renaissance. Cubism, sparking this period, immediately evolves into those other movements that reach their climax by break of the First World War. Although different social and political movements accompany the artistic movements the avant-garde marks the first period. In the period between 1914 and 1950 the authoritarian regimes, the adjacent cultural movements not only bring out the western metaphysics to a crossroads and art from architecture to painting takes new shifts. The course will focus on the analysis of these different movements with particular emphasis on the social and cultural conditions. |
| Topics in Contemporary Art II | VA 511 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The period following the post-2nd World War is apt to the developments occurred in use. The birth of post painterly abstractionism, minimalism, pop art relied on a shift from the modernist, avant-garde to a new understanding. Beginning by the 1970s the art world revolves around the birth of a new concern concentrated on the body. The rise of the 1980s on the one hand conduces to the further developments called in general the post-modern art and on the other the mounting of the contemporary. |
| Art Histories | VA 512 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will offer the opportunity to pursue the study of different histories of art as implied by different practices and theories of art. It will review the relations between evaluation and description of artistic phenomena and the understanding of history, with a view to generating both critical accounts of art history and new accounts of history and of art. Materials will be selected as relevant to these ends. |
| Post 60 Turkish Art | VA 513 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The post-60 period in Türkiye 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 Türkiye with particular emphasis on the determining social and cultural changes. |
| Modernities and Modern Art | VA 514 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Since the initiation of debates concerning the post-modern and postmodernism, there has been a tendency to neglect questions of the meanings of the modern in art and culture. This course will explore the possibilities of understanding the modern not as a single event but as a series of breaks in tradition or orientation in art, openning up possibilties of understanding the particularities of modern visual art in Türkiye as well as elsewhere. Comparative perspectives will therefore be encouraged so that students may develop critical vocabularies for assessing different art from different cultural situations and moments. |
| Visual Culture | VA 515 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Accounts of the meanings of visual art have been conflicting Different notions have been deployed in order to suggest that visual art produces spatial meanings of its own or that its meanings are comparable to those of other cultural processes and practices. This course will be a review of theorisations of visual meaning and of vision and the ways in which each is used to explain or to comprehend the other. The introduction of other terms of explanation into constructions of vision and the meanings of visual objects will be critically assessed. |
| History of Digital and Electronic Arts | VA 516 | 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 520 | 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. |
| Art and Design Reconsidered | VA 521 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The distinctions between art and design have been defining of the Western canon of art since the separation of art from guilds in the early Italian Renaissance. The mechanisation of production associated with industrialisation has occasioned major shifts in the practices and discourses of visual art. Technological innovations have perhaps radically altered relations to the visible. Debates about the values of craft in art have been crucial in defining modern art and design education. This course, in continuation of VA 520, will review the contemporary significance of these issues in the practice and theory of art and design. |
| Philosophy of Art | VA 522 | 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. |
| Ideology and Aesthetic | VA 523 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course brings together two major modern disciplines. The study of the conditions of perception, or aesthetics, and the study of beliefs,values and modes of knowledge, or ideology, have sometimes been imagined as complementary and sometimes as in contention with one another. The review of these moments in a history of thought will enable understanding and assessment of the importance given to art in modern thought. The course will also enable assessment of revisions of the modern and the claims of critical thought with regard to art. |
| Visual Culture and Ideology | VA 524 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The recent analysis pertaining to the concepts of identity, gender, self, recognition, difference binds together the political and the visual. However, beyond this, the 'ways of seeing' is a matter of cultural in a broader sense. The culture component, in the late twentieth century, does not only stand for the anthropological research but goes more for the analysis of the techniques of media productions. Television images, the world of advertisement, the consumption culture are the relevant realms of the visual culture productions. In the course two major fields of analysis semiotics and structuralism and deconstructionism will be covered as tools for the dismantling of the existing norms. Together with that the student will be exposed to the analysis of the different visual productions such as photography, television, graphic design, painting and sculpture as well as documentaries. The role of the real and virtual within this body will be considered as one of the major problematic of the course and these will be analysed with regard to gender, sexuality, political matters. |
| Critical Practice | VA 525 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Since the inception of the avant-garde, questions of the critical effectivity of art have been posed. Art has been variously thought to have revealed the truth about social life, enabled enlightenment concerning social relations, promoted new models of production, fallen into complicity with dominant reorganisations of the world or just failed. Is it conceivable, however, that there is something about art which resists being thought in these ways? This course will review these questions and others concerning the aims and ends of art so that the ways and means of the practice of art may be better comprehended and developed |
| Art and Anti-art | VA 526 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Since Dada, and arguably since Futurism, artists have been drawn explicitly to oppose art and cultures and institutions of art. This course will consider why this has seemed desirable or imperative, how it seemed possible and what the significant consequences of anti-art positions and acts have been. Has anti-art been a failure, given that art continues to be made and talked or written about? Is failure without value or sense? The course will explore the recurrence of aspects of anti-art in later work and practice, and may consider precedents in earlier work. |
| Art and the Body | VA 527 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will explore the many ways in which art represents, shows, displays, suggests or otherwise makes bodies part of its concerns. How and in what ways do representations of bodies determine senses of identity or of space? How successful have moves away from the representation of bodies been? How are senses of corporeality conveyed in cultures which do not characteristically represent human bodies? Students may expect to develop a critical vocabulary for assessing how senses of the body are communicated. |
| Critical Discourse | VA 528 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Changes in the discourses of art may be traced to discover how art has been understood, rejected and accepted, noted and noticed . This course will introduce students to some of the major shifts in the modes of understanding and evaluation of art, considering these in both their philosophical and cultural significances. Students will be encouraged to develop their critical vocabularies, moving across a range of different works and critical procedures, as well as to reflect on the aims and purposes of art and the criticism of art. |
| 3D Modelling | VA 529 | 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. Graduate students can take this course to realize their term and thesis project. project. |
| Art Analysis : Theory and Criticsm | VA 530 | 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. |
| Cinema, Ideology, Psychoanalysis | VA 531 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Arguably cinema has been the most powerful technique of cultural promotion. Since the 1930s, critics have argued over how and why this seems to be the case: what cinema has done to sense of identity and of belonging; to senses of purpose and action; to senses of belief and of future. This course will review the major criticisms of the ideological force and effectivity of cinema, including those which have used psychoanalytic concepts to explain the appeal of cinema and its fictions. |
| Camera, Image, Screen | VA 532 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course will be a review of the changing configurations of image-production devices, their invention, use and alteration. From the camera obscura, via the invention of photographic practices, to the institutions of film, broadcast television, video and the computer, images have apparently multiplied and spread. How do different uses of the screen affect us? How does the screen determine senses of space? What is a critical image practice which takes account of the dominant uses, by producers and viewers, of particular screens? Various critical image practices will therefore be assessed. |
| Art, Culture, Technology | VA 533 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The advent of new technologies has sometimes been accompanied by announcements of the end of art. Conversely, it has been argued that technologies have been invented in order to provide a means of apparently satisfying a demand which has been generated by art. This course will review these various conceptualisations of the relations and perhaps non-relations between art and technology. As the goals of art have shifted or redefined, the relations between art and culture have also altered. The course will therefore consider these shifts too in order to arrive at a better understanding of the stakes of the practice and the criticism of art today. |
| 3D Animation | VA 534 | 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. Graduate students can take this course to specialize themselves in the area of computer graphics and animation. |
| Documentary: Context and Practice I | VA 535 | 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&Practice II | VA 536 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is a continuation of FILM 535 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. |
| Experimental Film and Video | VA 537 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | What is experimental film and video? How is it different from mainstream practices and other types of works? What are its close ties to other art practices? This course will be a comprehensive study of experimental film and video through screenings, readings, discussions, and creative practice. It will offer 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 will create a series of short experimental videos to explore new ways to express themselves. |
| Videography and Narrative Making | VA 538 | 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. Graduate students can take this course to create narrative and video based on their term and thesis project. |
| Envisioning Information | VA 539 | 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 and viewings are also incorporated into the class material. |
| Art and Popular Culture | VA 540 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The challenge to art of mass produced objects and techniques of reproduction of imagery have intensified questions of the relations between art and popular culture. Arguably, art has only become unpopular as a reaction to these dynamics and developments, once popular culture assumed a particular significance as apparently defining of cultures of democracies. Debates in art about the distance from the popular, or closeness to it, will be reviewed in these contexts, in a critical exploration of the meanings of imagery and the purposes of art. |
| Visual Communication Theory | VA 541 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The history of design is significantly marked by the uses of various theories of visual communication. This course will outline those significant moments, exploring the meanings and values of designed objects together with those theories of design. The understanding and evaluation of particular works of design will be considered in order to assess those theories of visual communication, enabling a review of the aims of design with particular reference to contemporary practice. |
| Visiting Artist / Designer | VA 542 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Integration of interdisciplinary studio concerns with contemporary art issues. Students work with several guest artists, designers, filmmakers, critics, or scholars in lecture/discussion/workshop activities. |
| Design and History | VA 543 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Crossing the traditional boundaries between Art and Science, as well as borrowing from the vocabularies of other disciplines, the goals of design have shifted between form and function and the integration of technological innovation into the process of creating usable objects.Taking its initial trajectory from the formative discourse evolving around typographically based design traditions this comprehensive review of the history of design will be exploring the manifold possibilities of integrative as well as dispersive design practices. |
| Art and Institutions | VA 544 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | The argument that art is what particular institutions promote and/or claim as art has been reiterated in a number of contexts. This course will be review of those arguments and of the situations from which they arise and on which they comment. What has art become if it cannot apparently escape from institutional determination? How have artists and writers responded to these situations? The course will enable a critical review of the problematic of art and institutions initially by defining the problems and difficulties that institutions raise for art, as a prelude to assessing possibilities of the reverse. |
| Interaction Design | VA 545 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course is designed to focus on 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. |
| Interactive Sound | VA 546 | 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. |
| Photography & Expression | VA 547 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Visual expression is the essence of visual communication / multimedia design these days. And, , photography is the one of the most important components of this interactive design process. In this class, we are going to to discover / experiment ways to express yourself and your design ideas through photography. We will try to create photographs that tell stories or create moods. |
| Motion Graphics and Art | VA 548 | 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. Graduate students can take this course to realize their term and thesis project. |
| Art and Design in Virtual Worlds | VA 549 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This exploratory course will focus on the usage of cutting edge technologies as is manifested in the emergent phenomena of immersive, three dimensional, online virtual worlds, such as Second Life®, in the provision of multi-dimensional, temporal interactive content for the usage in user participative artistic productions, games, integrative design practices, broadcast, visual effects and architectural visualization. |
| Construction/Deconstruction in 3 Dimensional Space | VA 550 | 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. |
| From Line to Stain on Surface | VA 551 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course asks questions on what painting practice is, what is thinking on painting today and how it's living in the contemporary art practice. Its transformation will be considered in the history with the discovery divers mediums such as photography, cinema, video, digital techniques and what is their influences of tracing a line and creating a stain on a given surface. |
| Design Thinking | VA 553 | 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. |
| Advanced Topics in Typography | VA 554 | 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 |
| Physical Computing | VA 555 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Students will learn how to communicate through computers by applying various physical perception methods for the purpose of creating interactive art and design projects. The course will also be supplemented with reading and analyzing a series of written theoretical materials about the topic. Basics of building circuits and developing software to communicate with microcontrollers and computers will be introduced |
| De-coding Design Culture | VA 556 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | This course focuses on the historically accumulative aspects of design elements, which constitute the significant aspects of Culture in general, and Design Culture in specific sampling units. The prevalence of design as a ritualistic element of cultural activities and its critical analysis is grounded on the most prevalent comparative evaluations of art and design theories and their inferences. Central questions include: what kind of relationships exist between design-based activities and art practices?,Which reciprocal activities generate the outcomes between design and technology?, How do these relationships affect the cultural-map of specific habitations and social locations?, How can one read cultural identities through decoding the design elements of the product-lines?, Which design elements of the product embodied historical evolution of the cultural exchanges? |
| Advanced Illustration | VA 561 | 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. |
| Fine Art Practice | VA 571 | 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 a 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, providing access to sources and references inherent in the creative process. Students are required to keep a paper or digital journal as a resource and a reference for the development of an innovative and personal approach to ideas and techniques. |
| Professional Practice as a Designer | VA 580 | 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. |
| Summer Project I | VA 581 | 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 582 | 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. |
| Project / Exhibition / Thesis Preparation Seminar | VA 590 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for extra preparation in studio projects/exhibitions. |
| Thesis Preparation Seminar | VA 591 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | A multi-purpose course that can be used flexibly for extra preparation in research methods, including deepening mastery of the relevant research through special readings, whenever necessary |
| Term Project | VA 597 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' work under the supervision of a Faculty member for the preparation of an exhibition / design project. |
| Master Thesis / Studio Project | VA 599 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Provides a non-credit framework for the continuous monitoring and collegial discussion of MA students' thesis research and writing under the supervision of a Faculty member or for the preparation of an exhibition / design project. |
| The Business of Art | VIS 508 | 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 510 | 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 512 | 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. |
| Exchange Graduate Project at FASS | XM 595 | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Graduate level project course for exchange graduate students |
