European and Mediterranean Studies (EURO-GA)

Since at least the proposal of the Turing test, building computational systems that can communicate with humans using natural language has been a central goal for Al research. Understanding real, naturally occurring human language is the key to reaching this goal. This course surveys recent successes in language understanding and prepares students to do original research in this area, culminating with a substantial final project. The course will focus on text, but within that will touch on the full range of applicable techniques for language understanding, including formal logics, statistical methods, distributional methods, and deep learning, and will bring in ideas from formal linguistics where they can be readily used in practice. We'll discuss tasks like sentiment analysis, word similarity, and question answering, as well as higher level issues like how to effectively represent language meaning.

Topics vary each semester

Early-modern Irish history is an epic tale of conflict, subjugation, and the struggle for national identity. In the roughly two and a half centuries covered by this course, Ireland was transformed from a mysterious and remote island on the periphery of Europe to a quasi-autonomous state fully caught up in the sweeping economic, political, and social transformations that defined the late eighteenth century. Among the topics covered in History I are the Tudor conquest and colonization; Gaelic pushback; Ireland under the Stuarts; the Williamite War and formation of the Protestant Ascendancy; the emergence of Irish nationalism; Ireland and the Enlightenment; 18th-century political, economic, and societal transformations; and Ireland in the Age of Revolutions. The struggles and frustrations of this period define the agenda for Ireland’s tumultuous passage through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Debates in Modern Irish History This course seeks to analyze a selection of the intense debates in Ireland itself and abroad, especially in Britain and the USA, that characterize modern Irish history, concentrating on topics that transcend the specific Irish experience to raise issues of wider human import. It is equally a study of events and of their interpretation from various contested perspectives, and thus requires intense engagement with the historiography, and with the study of history as a mode of thought. The topics to be explored include the issues of Conquest, Collaboration, Assimilation and Resistance, viewed through the prism of Ireland and the British Empire, as reflected in a number of major topics, including: The Act of Union; The Great Irish Famine; Irish Diaspora; Issues of Irish Identity (as seen through Irish and British eyes via historical movements and events); the ethno-religious conflict in Northern Ireland since 1968; Ireland and Globalization

Topics vary each semester

Examines the formation of the European nation-state starting with the French Revolution. Provides an overview of key issues, including citizenship, exclusion, immigration, identity, nationalism, security, and the creation of the European Union and its policy formation.

Analysis of postcommunist Eastern Europe, focusing on main theoretical explanations of democratic survival, developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in comparative perspective, and single-country studies.

Trains students in the history of the Mediterranean and provides them with insights into the theories and interpretations of the Mediterranean. Analyzes the ways in which the Mediterranean has been identified not only as a geographical region, but also as a cultural, political and social one. Examines the reshaping of cultural, political and social borders across the Mediterranean.

This course draws on contemporary events in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, to discuss key issues of the history of the twentieth-century Mediterranean. Films and film documentaries will introduce debates on colonialism, postcolonialism, and war; democracy and dictatorship; revolution, political dissent, and human rights; migration, gender, and racism.

Trains European studies graduate students in approaches to research and in the sources and uses of research materials on Europe. Students start work on what will eventually become the master?s thesis. Topics of discussion include how to select an appropriate topic, how to formulate a question about it, and how to design and develop the argument at the core of the thesis.

Topics vary each semester

The Eastern Europe workshop is an informal 2-credit lunchtime workshop for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, meeting together to hear speakers and discuss issues concerning Eastern Europe.

Examines the role of science, technology and infrastructures in the making of twentieth-century Europe from a historical perspective.

Investigates theoretical and empirical work that has been published, looking first at historical and macro levels of analysis, and then at the institutional and sector impact of agent and structure explanations. The EU has gained considerable competence, yet it remains the victim of political dispute among 15 rival governments. Some sovereignty has been ceded to federalist agencies in Brussels, to the European Court, and to the EU Central Bank (ECB,) but the power transfer is far from complete.

Analysis of the histories and philosophies of immigration in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, their minority integration regimes, the principal theories of multicultural accommodation, key issues in minority integration, and the tension between cultural sensitivity and women?s rights.

Independent study with an academic instructor

Topics vary each semester

Students can earn academic credit for a structured and supervised professional work-learn experience within an approved organization. Permission of the department required.

This course aims to provide an overview of the Southeastern Europe and the Modern Mediterranean. It presents cultural history through the lens of this region, and reviews both the history of the region and of its representation. It examines the impact of the broader European cultural contexts, and assesses the interplay between western European concerns and developments and the history of southeastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. It examines the Eastern Mediterranean dimensions of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman domain with attention to the implications of the dissolution of empire. The course further connects with contemporary issues of national politics and immigration politics on the Mediterranean.