migration

By Emily Mitchell-Eaton

This class examines geographies of death, dying, and mourning as experienced by migrants living in diaspora or exile.

By Joseph M. Alpar and Kerry Ryer-Parke

There are now more than 270 million migrants across the globe. This course used music to study critical issues of migration beyond statistical analysis and surveys.

By Eda Derhemi 

For thousands of years the Mediterranean Sea has been a place where important civilizations have met and where cultures and languages have intermingled and competed.

By Louie Dean Valencia-García

Spanning from antiquity, this course deconstructs the concept and history of “Western Civilization.” Through the study of primary and secondary sources, students will consider how history can be written to include oppressed and marginalized voices while still attempting to understand the broad scope of European history and its legacy.

By John Pickles

In this course we will focus much of our attention on diverse geographies of Europe and how post-socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, political unification through the European Union, economic globalization, and post-colonial immigration mean for our understanding of Europe Today.

By John Pickles

“Europe Today” is an upper division undergraduate course focused on the processes and patterns of transnational and global Europe, and the ways in which these processes and patterns have reshaped and are reshaping everyday lives, economies, and places across the continent.

By Clara Frysztacka

Europe is not only a central reference point for cultural studies at the Europe-University Viadrina and elsewhere, but it is also an omnipresent concept in the press and political debates.

By Clara Frysztacka

“Europe” and “nation” are deeply connected concepts. In historiography, conceptions seeing the seventeenth century as birth moment both for the nation-state and the idea of modern Europe are utterly widespread.

By Nancy Love

This course examines the various types of feminist political theories that inform contemporary feminist politics.

By Denise Martz

The purpose of this course is to take the contemporary social psychological phenomena of fat talk and body snarking to examine them through scientific and a feminist/political lens.

By Boyd van Dijk

The course demonstrates how Europe’s images of justice and rights were far from constant, but actually shifted overtime to reflect changing moral and political transformations.

By P.W. Zuidhof

From its inception, European integration has heavily relied on economic cooperation and legal collaboration. This course revisits important milestones in the history of European integration to study how at every stage new forms of economic cooperation have been established and how the legal basis of the EU has been extended.

By Claske Vos and Robin de Bruin

Global power relations, the global economy, corporate interests, national interests, historical traditions, public opinion, stereotypes, institutional settings, and personal relations of politicians, policy officers and experts, all impact upon each other in the process of European integration and European policy making.

By Stefanie Woodard     

Although people have been relocating for millennia, migration and related phenomena seem to have dominated our headlines in the last few years. Is migration happening on a larger scale today, or is this just a matter of perception?

By Miles Rodríguez

The Border. The Ban. The Wall. Raids. Deportations. Separation of Families. Immigrant Rights. Sanctuary. Refugee Resettlement. These words – usually confined to policy, enforcement, and activism related to migrants and refugees – have recently exploded into the public view and entered into constant use.

By Eva Woods-Peiró and Jeff Golden

In this course we will explore best practices for nurturing positive change in a community, notably in the context of the local Latinx community.

By Raúl Necochea López

When I was in graduate school, the most emphasized skills were learning how to carry out historical research and present it to multiple publics. In colloquial terms, these skills were “the money,” often literally, as they were highly prized in the academic job market that I knew in the 2000s.

By Michele Rivkin-Fish and Mark Sorensen

This course examines comparisons and contrasts between the disciplinary approaches of public health and anthropology. We begin by examining the theories and methods of the social determinants of health paradigm, an approach that investigates the relationships between inequality, poverty, and health. 

By Lindsey Smith Taillie

We will examine the social, political, and ethical context of how individuals make decisions about what to eat; how this context shapes the implementation of food policy; and how these policies in turn shape individual behavior and health, by employing a comparative framework over three countries/regions (China, Latin America, and the US).

By Mike Fisher

Inadequate access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (‘WaSH’) is a major cause of preventable morbidity and mortality, and accounts for a substantive portion of the global burden of disease. 

By Michele Rivkin-Fish and Jehanne Gheith

This course explores the ways historical, cultural, and political forces shape major moments of the life course and the stories told to make sense of them. Specifically, we examine the changing experiences and representations of living, suffering, healing, and dying in Russia through key moments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

By Michele Rivkin-Fish

This course examines the experiences of post-socialist countries as a means of understanding the relationship between political-economic, social, and cultural change, on the one hand, and public health and gender relations, on the other.

By Marion Detjen and Dorothea von Hantelmann

Germany’s migration history of the twentieth and twenty-first century is shaped by its own denial. Until this day, and in spite of the fundamental shift of the new citizenship and residency laws in the years between 2000 and 2005, Germany cannot conceive of itself as an immigration country.

By Laura Scuriatti

How is it possible to narrate the experiences of estrangement, disorientation and surprise born out of the encounter with a foreign place which is also supposed to feel like “home?”

By Kerry Bystrom

What does citizenship mean today when the power of nation-states to define and secure the future seems to be shrinking even as nationalism is on the rise?

By Agata Lisiak

Unpacking the workings of colonial histories and racial capitalism, the course puts emphasis on the uneven geopolitical developments that produce specific forms and taxonomies of migration.

By Ariane Simard

What happens when conscientious acts move from being merely a political practice to becoming something that resembles works that are more subtle and personal? What happens when an artist’s work veers into the political realm?

By Parthiban Muniandy

What does it mean to be a “temporary” person? The multiple discourses surrounding “migrants,” “refugees,” “illegals,” and other non-native-born people often paint problematic, exaggerated, and frustratingly misunderstood portraits about entire communities and populations.

By Jeffrey Jurgens

As challenging as the current situation may be, however, its characterization as a crisis is also somewhat curious. After all, this is hardly the first time that European nation-states have responded to significant numbers of unauthorized migrants. In addition, far more people remain displaced in Turkey and Syria, for example, than in the entire EU, and many EU member states have far greater material and institutional resources at their disposal than other major “receiving countries.” Why, then, do the recent flows of refugees constitute a crisis for Europe? And why the language of crisis now?

By Emily Bloom and Nicole Callahan

Much like the Core Curriculum, this course aims to equip students with critical tools for approaching, reading, and striving with literary and philosophical texts—ancient as well as modern.

By Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Analyze how state authorities, rebel movements, extremist associations, and ethnic and religious organizations mobilize youth populations to shape public narratives.

By Ioana Uricaru

Food is essential for life and has always been used in art and literature to fulfill emotional, visual, intellectual, and narrative functions.

By Sandra Carletti

Food and life experiences are inextricably linked. In this course, we will examine the ways in which literature uses food to represent and understand the human experience  We will focus on the various symbolic functions of food associated with the images of cooking, eating, drinking, and feasting presented in these literary works.

By Matt Reidenbach

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the principles governing the flow of water on and beneath the earth’s surface. This includes concepts of fluid dynamics applied to open channel flow, ground water flow, and dynamics.

By Erica Morrell

In this course, we will learn about and apply core sociological perspectives to analyze dynamics of local, regional, national, and global agri-food systems development over the past several decades.

By Mike Pace

This is part of our Campus Spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.

By Erica Morrell

What is knowledge? In this course, we will explore the rise of the authority of science across much of the globe. We will regard potential problems with and challenges to science’s dominant position, and we will analyze whether and how other forms of knowledge may shape contemporary social, cultural, and political life. Practical cases to illustrate these dynamics will draw from the food system, and we will conduct significant engagement with our local community’s emergency food system to translate theoretical concepts around knowledge into practice.

By Juan Carmona Zabala

Greece and the Balkans have often been considered the place where Europe and the Orient—both contested categories themselves—meet and overlap. In the twentieth century, this part of the world has been the stage of geopolitical competition among world powers.

By Odd Arne Westad

At the beginning of the 21st century, China is moving ever closer to the center of international affairs. This course traces the country’s complex foreign relations over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine its path in the decades to come.

By Eamonn Butler

This course is designed to appeal to students interested in the geopolitics and international relations of the Central European region. It will provide students with the opportunity to examine the key foreign policies, geopolitical developments and international political relations of Central Europe, with specific attention given to the Visegrád countries of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.

By Thomas Lundberg

The purpose of this course is to examine and compare the political processes, governing institutions and political economies of contemporary European societies. Through the in-depth study of country case studies, we will analyse how history has shaped the political and economic structures of these societies and the extent to which these structures determine contemporary political outcomes in both the advanced industrial democracies of the west and the transition countries of the east.

By Luca Anceschi

This course aims to present students with an advanced introduction to the politics and international relations of post-Soviet Central Asia – a region that is here defined as the ensemble of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

By Molly Lipscomb

In this class we will discuss why sustainability is a problem, and how to measure and evaluate the trade-offs related to different environmental policy choices. We will discuss benefits and drawbacks of various traditional policy solutions such as command and control, permitting, and taxation, and we will discuss new policy tools that are gaining in use: integrated platforms, auctions, tradeable quotas.

By Paolo D’Odorico

Since the 1960’ the human population has been increasing by one billion every 12-14 years and is projected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050. More people will require more food and water while the increasing affluence in emergent economies will further enhance human appropriation of natural resources.

By Peter Debaere

Soaring food prices and the recent droughts in Australia, India and the United States underscore that freshwater scarcity is a major challenge in the 21st century. Almost one-fifth of the world’s population currently suffers the consequences of water scarcity, and this number is about to increase.

By Paolo D’Odorico

This course introduces the fundamental physical principles that are necessary to understand the interactions of hydrological processes with forest ecosystems. The course focuses on hydrologic processes characteristic of forested watersheds, including the impact of forests on evapotranspiration rates, soil infiltration, soil water redistribution, shallow water table variability, runoff generation, streamflow dynamics, and soil stability and erosion.

By Jim Smith

Potable water is essential for human life. Throughout most of the industrialized world, advanced water treatment systems incorporate fundamental physical, chemical, and biological principles into engineering designs to produce high-quality water at relatively low cost to consumers.

By Brian Richter

In this course we will explore the dimensions of what “sustainability” and “sustainable development” mean in the context of water use and management. We will examine the different ways in which water is used, valued, and governed, examining sustainability through different lenses and perspectives.

By Teresa Culver 

Emphasizes the management of stormwater quantity and quality, especially in urban areas. Course includes impacts of stormwater on infrastructure and ecosystems, hydrologic and contaminant transport principles, stormwater regulation, structural and non-structural stormwater management approaches, and modeling tools for stormwater analysis and management.

By Teresa Culver 

The emphasis in the course is on the behavior of water, including closed conduit flows and open channel flows. It is hoped each student will gain proficiency with equations of energy, momentum and force as applied to fluids.

By Matt Reidenbach

Studies the physical properties, processes, and structure of the oceans; mass and energy budgets; methods of measurements; and the nature and theory of ocean currents, waves, and tides in the open sea, near shore and in estuaries.

By Christian McMillen

This is part of our Campus Spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.

By Christian McMillen

This is part of our Campus Spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.