|
|
|
Code:
YBLP014 |
Lecturer:
Bartoš,H. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
This course examines ancient Greek political thought, with a particular focus on the emergence and development of the concept of a mixed constitution, which significantly influenced later political thought and formed the basis of the modern concept of constitutional democracy. Through careful reading and discussion of key texts, students will examine how Greek thinkers—particularly Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius—understood the ideal political order as one that harmoniously combines elements of democracy with other political systems. The aim of the course is to trace how this idea of political balance arose from broader Greek concepts of mixture, balance, and due measure. Special attention will be paid to the possible medical roots of this theory, specifically the analogy between a well-ordered state and a healthy body in balance between opposing forces. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS001 |
Lecturer:
Abu Ghosh,Y. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The tumultuous fate of European Roma and Sinti during the 20th century has seen their culture and very existence as a people challenged. Despite being subjected to intense assimilation policies and persecution, they regularly re-emerge with remarkable revitalizing power. Who are then the Roma and Sint and what does it mean to be Roma/Sinti from their point of view? In this course, we will learn about the historical and social adaptations of various Roma groups mainly in Europe but also in other regions around the world. Then we will focus on Central Europe as a region that has become the laboratory of policies addressing the allegedly troubling fit of the Roma/Sinti to modernity. The course will draw on the latest research on topics such as racialized modernity, memory building, political arenas and subjectivities, labor and class, center and periphery, gender, structural and political violence etc. This course will challenge mono-causal explanations and will stimulate students to think about and through Roma and Sinai experience in a critical way that brings into consideration the societies they live in. Building on a diverse selection of empirical material, ranging from ethnographic, historical, and sociological case studies to film and art, the course will present the Roma/Sinti “as good to think with” about contemporary societies. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS003 |
Lecturer:
Jakoubková Budilová,L. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The course will introduce the ways kinship has been conceptualized in social anthropology. Students will learn about anthropological discussions on important concepts like nature and nurture, consanguinity and affinity, or unilineal and cognatic descent. The ways of conceptualizing relatedness in cross-cultural perspective will be discussed, from the Western notion based on the reference to biological reproduction to milk kinship, blood brotherhood, godparenthood, or “chosen kinship”. Variety of possibilities of the forms of marriage and family households will be presented. Students will read important texts on anthropological analyses of kinship terminology, strengths and weaknesses of the genealogical method and the new reproductive technologies. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS005 |
Lecturer:
Halbich,M. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The aim of the course is to introduce tourism as a multifaceted global phenomenon, which is mainly related to travel in travel-for-leisure and as such offers a range of interesting research topics across different disciplines. Tourism-oriented ethnographic research has come a long way from the almost total disinterest of anthropologists, who have ignored tourism and tourists in their research, to its gradual inclusion in corpus of courses in many social anthropology, sociology, etc. departments around the world. Tourism is nowadays usually seen as an example of global currents that blur traditional territorial, social and cultural boundaries and creating their various hybrid forms. Their objectives are clearly adapting very quickly to global trends and the global market, but at the same time they seek to maintain or even increase their local differences. This conflict of the “global” with the “local” then raises the question of how this “local” is created or reshaped through the practices of “touristified representations”. On the one hand, they play a key role in these processes global marketing companies and national and local authorities, which are jointly involved in creating and selling image of certain destinations. On the other hand, however, it is tourism that, to a greater or lesser extent, generates the for transforming the local. In this way, tourism can be seen as a dynamic process that helps to renew competing socio-culturally defined local identities. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLH005 |
Lecturer:
Korbel,T. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The course deals with the development of the profession of architect and builder against the background of the cultural-historical development of the Czech lands in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. First, general aspects of the development of architectural and building education, administration and law in the Habsburg Monarchy will be presented. Second, the professional and social rise of this social group will be monitored against the background of the formation of the national identity of the Czech and German ethnic groups in the second half of the 19th century. Third, the course will focus on the role of architects and builders in the first phase of building the Czechoslovak state in the first half of the 20th century. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS006 |
Lecturer:
Pfaus,J. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
Follow-up course to Introduction to the Brain. This course explores the neural mechanisms that mediate motivated behaviors. We will begin by reading a seminal book on the topic, Motivational Systems, by Frederick Toates, to introduce concepts such as goal-directed behavior and incentive motivation, and heuristics regarding how behaviors can be broken down into motivationally distinct components. We will examine how the "pull" of incentives in the external world compares and relates to the "push" of drive states within the organism, and how these concepts guide our approach to understanding the biological bases of motivation. We will then consider the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of behaviors directed toward keeping the physical homeostasis of the organism in balance: drinking, feeding, temperature regulation, biological rhythms, and the repercussions of stimuli or states in which these systems are altered. This will be followed by discussions of "non-homeostatic" behaviors like sex, parental behavior, and aggression, and the manner in which these behaviors obey very similar neurochemical rules. We will then consider how these "natural" examples of motivated behaviors relate to pleasure, reward, and drug addiction. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS039 |
Lecturer:
Heřmanský,M. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The course will introduce students to selected issues in sociocultural anthropology through the means of reading and interpretation of anthropological papers. It aims to develop critical anthropological thinking and interpretiveskills. Each class will deal with one controversial issue in anthropology which remains unresolved. Each issue will be presented in two papers holding antagonist positions. Students will be expected to read both papers designated for each week in advance, before each class, and comprehend them to that extent to be able to discuss them in class. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLH001 |
Lecturer:
Vondráček,J. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
In this seminar we will analyze three key aspects of the history of Nazi Germany and the Second World War: Nazi domination, occupation and the war economy. We will focus on Nazi military expansion until 1945. In this context we will take closer look at the German war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) and the Holocaust in the east. Although terror and mass murder played a key role in Nazi policy, we will also study how the Nazi policy differed in the east and west towards local populations and how this policy was connected to the war economy. The seminar will be strongly text-based. You will be asked to read one to two texts and answer in-depth questions at each session. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS041 |
Lecturer:
Sindelar,M. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The lecture provides an introduction to the history, theory, and methodology within the anthropology of art. It starts out by discussing terminological issues and the difference between art-historical and art-anthropological approaches. After introducing earlier anthropological studies on art, the lecture focuses on key debates within this sub-discipline, including: differences between material culture and art, questions of agency, primitivism, aesthetics, and iconography, as well as art and technology. Following, newer art-anthropological research will be discussed in the context of art as a commodity, the collection and display of modern and contemporary art, art’s circulation in global art worlds, as well as the provenance and restitution politics of art. |
|
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS007 |
Lecturer:
Kolářová,M. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
Do you want to try out qualitative research methods in the real world? Understand the differences between quantitative and qualitative research methods in Social Sciences? Learn how to conduct an interview, observation or a focus group? Understand and analyse the perception of other people? This introductory course is designed for students from 2nd to 4th semester, and it has three primary aims: 1. It aims to give students a grounding in the theoretical and practical application of qualitative research methods in the social sciences. 2. The course will prepare students for the methodological part of the Comprehensive Exam in Social Sciences (CESS). 3. Completing this course offers a first step towards the skills students need to design and conduct their own research. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS016 |
Lecturer:
Hanson,E. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
This course examines how psychology informs politics, including how we build political identities, why people engage in political behaviors, and the mutually constitutive relationship between people and institutions. The course will primarily focus on research from social psychology, but we will also look to broader literatures including cognitive and personality psychology, sociology, political science, and international relations. Although much of the research in this field is conducted with a focus on the “global north”, and the United States in particular, in this course we will take a global perspective. We will cover topics such as ideology, political personality, partisanship, attitude change, motivated reasoning, intergroup relationships, conflict, conspiracies, and prejudice/stigma. |
|
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS008 |
Lecturer:
Černý,K. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The lecture deals with sociology of conflict (K. Marx, L. Coser, R. Dahrendorf, Ch. W. Mills) and with the main approaches to the sociology of revolution (P. Sorokin, J. Davies, T. Gurr, Ch. Tilly, C. Brinton, J. Alexander) including selected case studies (for example the Czechoslovac Velvet revolution of 1989, Arab Spring of 2011). It also partly deals with proto-sociology of war, (K. Marx, C. Clausewitz, T. Malthus, V. Lenin, J. Hobson, I. Kant), selected examples of sociology of war (P. Sorokin, Ch. Tilly, M. Kaldor, H. Joas, M. Klare, H. Dixon, S. Huntington), and sociology of terrorism (sociology of religious terrorism of M. Juergensmeyer, suicide terrorism covered by R. Pape). |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLH013 |
Lecturer:
Marková,A. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
The course focuses on symbolic figures in Czech history (e.g., St. Wenceslaus, Jan Žižka, Jan Hus, and many others) and on the changing interpretations of their roles over time. Attention will be paid to the interaction between ideology and history, historical narratives and myths, and collective memory and historical consciousness.The aim of the course is to familiarize students with significant milestones and symbolic figures in Czech history, while also demonstrating the ambiguity and variability of their interpretations in different political and historical contexts. |
|
|
|
|
Code:
YBLS009 |
Lecturer:
Klepal,J. |
|
Semester:
Summer
|
Language:
English
|
|
ECTS credits:
4
|
|
Schedule:
schedule will be published on 01/02/2026
|
|
Sociocultural anthropology in general, and medical anthropology in particular, has been questioning predominant understandings of human body, health, and sickness. This course focuses on anthropological encounters with beliefs and practices through which embodiment, wellbeing, and afflictions are experienced, communicated, and enacted in the contemporary cross-cultural context and globalized world. Topics covered include medical pluralism, disability, (bio)medicalization, reproduction, mental health, complementary and alternative medicine, and (bio)medical technologies. By the end of the course, students will have a better grasp of concepts and methods of sociocultural anthropology; they will be able to critically reflect on their own and others’ embodied experiences of health and disease; and they will be able to apply findings of medical anthropology beyond the field. |
|
|
