This course introduces students through field study to the most beautiful artistic and architectural monuments of Prague and teaches them to interpret their characteristics in the context of art history and culture in Central Europe. Special attention is paid to the question of how the development of spiritual and societal values throughout history has influenced architectural and artistic trends. Through presentations followed by guided tours of the most representative sites, students learn not only to recognize the main artistic styles, but also to read and interpret the values they represent.

The course explores how and what ideologies have informed visual aspects of art and architecture produced before and after the Velvet Revolution (1989) in what is now the Czech Republic. We look at individual pieces of art, architecture and material culture, propaganda posters and excerpts from movies, and search for ways in which they are in/formed by different ideologies. To achieve this, you are first introduced to a set of epistemological building blocks, i.e., themes and modes of thinking that have influenced the form of arts and visual culture, such as modernity, modernism, and the concept of ideology as such. 

Graduates of the module describe behavioral principles of strategic and non-strategic decision making in an economic environment. This enables them to evaluate purely theoretical problems more adequately and to design an appropriate economic environment for applied decision problems as well. Moreover, graduates conduct simple economic experiments in order to test how suitable selected economic and institutional designs are to deal with economic problems.

Why are some countries poor and other countries rich? What are the factors of growth? What is the role of political and economic institutions in the development process? How can aid foster growth and development? These questions are of central interest not only for academics, but also for policy makers and international organizations shaping policies for sustained growth and development. Providing the answers is particularly relevant for any country undergoing a strong transition and development process, such as the former Soviet Union countries. It is however also important for the European Union, whose member countries vary significantly in their original economic environments. This course aims to address these questions in view of the theory and empirics of economic growth

Comprehending the Holocaust (Shoah) goes beyond understanding the historical fact that six million Jews and other innocent victims were brutally murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Holocaust is a lesson in what happened in our modern rational technological society and in what can happen again in spite of all trusted safety measures. What does it mean to comprehend the Holocaust – is it possible at all? We will concentrate more on the nature of modern genocides, their underlying ideological patterns and their modern features. The Holocaust as a significant and unique event in history continues to have universal implications. This mass murder has specific features that make it different from all other genocides. It is not only a historical event but rather a turning-point of our history.

This course aims to bridge the gap between art and society, offering a unique interdisciplinary perspective on Prague's contemporary art scene. We will traverse museums, galleries, and art exhibited in public sphere to unravel the stories embedded in each artwork, exploring the intersections between artistic expression, societal values, and cultural identity.

This course will consider the new phenomenon of digital currencies from a monetary and financial stability angle. We will first look at the technological foundations of cryptocurrencies, and then we will discuss challenges related to the issuance of central bank digital currencies and stablecoins. We will study central bank digital currencies that are in advanced stages and we will learn about their potential impact. We will discuss private efforts to issue stablecoins (e.g. LIBRA) and discuss why they raise concerns of regulators.

This course will introduce the participants to the crucial phenomena of Central European history and culture. While the turmoils of the twentieth century are covered by several AEP courses, this class concentrates on tracing the foundations of contemporary identities and the roots of modern complexity. It covers Central European history from its origins to WWI, dealing with a wide range of topics such as chivalry and courtly culture, the Reformation and confessional conflicts, or nationalism and revolutions. All these subjects witness the evolution of social order, the search for ideal political systems, transformation of intellectual paradigms, and changes in artistic sensibilities. Every topic is studied through both key texts and emblematic images which facilitate the explanation of typical features of the given period.

This course targets students that are staying in the Czech Republic for a limited period of time and need to cover the basics of the language in order to communicate in everyday situations. The ultimate aim is to provide the students with basic skills, grammar, and vocabulary for handling everyday life in the Czech Republic, and to give them an idea of the Czech language system as well as Czech culture. The instruction uses a communicative method of teaching: the material is based on situations the students face, not on a grammatical overview of the language, with an emphasis on both receptive and productive language skills.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to some basic economic principles and theories explaining environmental issues and problems today and to explore existing policies at the national, international, and global level. Students will learn about concepts such as externalities, the tragedy of the commons, enforcement as a public good, interventionist solutions to the externality problem such as taxes and marketable pollution permits, as well as non-interventionist solutions to the externality problem such as the Coasian solution and self-regulation.

This course explores the history and the current state of political, economic and cultural relations between the United States and Europe. Ever since the end of World War II, the cooperative relationship between these two parts of the world, often described as "the West“, has been a bedrock of international stability, security and prosperity. After the end of the Cold War, this relationship has undergone changes, along with the whole system of international relations. Recently, on both sides of the Atlantic, the talk has been about a crisis of the Euro-American relationship. We will examine the validity of these claims, the causes of the current problems and possible ways of overcoming them.

This lively and original course is open to students who have an interest in studying the social and political transition in Central Europe through an understanding of its cinema. This is not a traditional film course: We will focus on the films’ social, political and historical contexts. 

This course covers core topics in modern macroeconomics – long run economic growth, business cycle fluctuations, inflation, the role of finance, unemployment, and climate change – with a focus on analogies and differences between European and US institutions in their response to similar economic problems. The course emphasizes analytical frameworks, empirical evidence, and policy implications relevant to understanding complex economic phenomena. Students will gain skills in interpreting macroeconomic data, evaluating theoretical models, and applying them to contemporary issues.

The course aims to provide students with an introduction to the key concepts, methods and understanding of the application of economics to health and health care. Students will gain knowledge of the core theories underpinning health economics, and by looking at the epmirical evidence they will learn to evaluate whether they give correct predictions for real health care market. The difference between US and European approach toward health care financing and provision will be discussed to stimulate students' critical thinking about the major challenges health care systems face and how health economics can play a role in understanding and mitigating those challenges.

The course aims to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of the international human rights framework in Central and Eastern Europe where human rights system mirrors historical developments of the countries within the globalizing world. The course invites students from all disciplines to explore and make sense of current human rights issues, cases and problems in the region, contextualized in the broader challenges of human rights at the beginning of 21st century. We will discuss how current political crises (refugees and migration, housing issues, digital rights, LGBTQ* rights and alike) shape the debate about human rights in the CEE region and beyond.

The post-communist countries of Central Europe - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - are struggling hard to overcome the legacy of the totalitarian regime and to establish liberal democracy and free market economy. The objective of this course is to help students better understand the history of Central Europe and the ideal resources that might enable it to succeed in the transformation from communism. The students will learn recent Czech and Central European political history and get familiar with the various ways in which the predicament of these countries was reflected upon in the thought of the most prominent political theorists from the region concentrating, in particular, on the idea of civil society. 

The course provides an interdisciplinary insight into current findings across the diverse research areas covering language, culture, and mind to explain individuals’ behavior in a larger cultural and psychological context. The course content stretches across a range of psycholinguistics, anthropological, ethnographic, and social-cognitive topics dealing with social behavior, allowing students to naturally compare the manifestations of these across at least their primary socialization milieu and the study-abroad context.

Throughout Central Europe leading-edge filmmaking erupted in the 1920s. This course studies a select band of Central European directors (along with a special bonus, the Soviet bloc film-artist, director Andrei Tarkovsky) and their collective attempt to deal with and to follow their search for a medium to describe, the cultural and political region, the complexity of individual and collective political life and historical experience. In this way, the truth peeks through some of the aesthetic units of the cinematic image in our chosen films as so many lines of light. Particular attention will be paid to the Czech New Wave movement of the late 1960s.

This course examines the fundamental social institutions of marriage and family. It reviews the historical development and changing structures and functions for understanding relationships. The course delves into the current trends across various cultures and societies to understand and deal with new challenges that are shaping family and marriage issues in contemporary society. Emphasizing comparative analysis, students will engage in debates and open discussions on different topics such as parenting styles, gender roles, marital relations and the impact of globalization on family life. 

This course explores mass persuasion and propaganda in a developmental context with an emphasis on understanding approaches and techniques. It traces the emergence of strategic persuasive communication and propaganda from its origins to the present day. The basic principles, philosophy, and techniques of mass persuasion in different periods are considered, with an emphasis on contemporary contexts. Students will learn to identify different propaganda techniques and will gain the tools to evaluate and debunk propaganda campaigns. A developmental approach is used in order to allow the opportunity to see aspects of continuity and change in approaches. 

This course offers a broad introduction to the various manifestations of surveillance culture in our past and present society, along with how they impact our understanding of contemporary public and private spheres. The class dialogue will be focused on the analysis of historical rhetoric about surveillance and the wide range of tools used to gain social control and that of its individual members. We will focus on the comparative analysis of different methods of surveillance employed by select former communist states (mainly Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany) during communism and after its fall. As the communist state surveillance organs, namely the StB in Czechoslovakia, the Stasi in East Germany, and the SB in Poland, ceased to exist with the fall of the totalitarian system, new mechanisms of social control began to emerge, but this time with no visible borders from which one could easily escape. The case of post-communist surveillance will be discussed from a more inclusive perspective, touching upon the global resonance of 9/11, when surveillance has been legitimatized as a tool of social order and has also been openly questioned by individuals such as Edward Snowden. Moreover, surveillance today and the invasion of one’s privacy face threats from many "little brothers" rather than just the state itself. In this respect, this course will investigate several issues emerging from the relationship between various technologies (including AI) and societies to determine how they shape the post-modern culture of social control, fear, and empowerment.

This independent study course offers students an opportunity to engage in immersive teaching practice at an elementary or high school level in Prague. The teaching practice course adheres to the standardized procedures mandated for pre-service teacher education within the Czech Republic's educational framework, as stipulated by governmental guidelines for Czech universities.