Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences
Europa-Universität Viadrina
Study in the field of cultural studies
Research and teaching in the heart of Europe
With a cultural studies program at Viadrina, you are choosing interdisciplinary research and teaching in the heart of Europe. Our 6000 students from 80 nations live and study in Frankfurt and Słubice, at the Viadrina and at the Collegium Polonicum, in Germany and Poland. Internationality with a special focus on Eastern Europe is the central concern of our university.
New perspectives in the mix of disciplines
The goal of all Bachelor's and Master's degree programs at our faculty is to enable students to adopt new points of view and their respective perspectives. A diverse range of seminars, lectures and workshops from the fields of cultural history, social sciences, linguistics and literary studies is available to them. In the mix of disciplines, new answers to the old questions about the nature of identity, society and culture are to be found.
Intensive promotion of language competence
The scientific education is accompanied by an intensive promotion of the language competence of our students. Learning additional foreign languages and a stay abroad at one of our numerous partner universities in Europe or non-European countries are not only desired in some of our study programs, but mandatory.
Bachelor Programmes
An internationally oriented bachelor's degree programme with an interdisciplinary study structure consisting of history, linguistics, literature, and comparative social sciences that combines research and teaching.
Read more...An interdisciplinary course of study in law, political science, and cultural studies that examines the foundations of the legal and political order of modern states and societies and their international interconnections.
Read more...An interdisciplinary bachelor's degree programme in English and German that provides knowledge in the fundamentals of social and cultural sciences and in two of three individually chosen subject areas (EUROPE/S - MEDIA - DIFFERENCE).
If knowledge of the German language is not available at the beginning of the programme, it will be acquired in the course of the programme.
A course of study for those interested in Poland, which requires gradual acquisition of linguistic competence in the Polish language and combines the acquisition of knowledge about Poland, especially Polish literature, history and culture.
Read more...Master Programmes
The course problematizes Europe and the modernity emanating from Europe, which since the early modern period have emerged from commonalities as well as from diversity and from conflicts. It not only imparts genuine historical competencies, but also incorporates approaches from literature and art studies as well as philosophy. In a transcultural perspective, exchange processes between different European and non-European cultural constellations are taken into account.
Read more...With the (international) track options:
Linguistic Research (Multimodality, Multilingualism).
Intercultural Communication Studies [MICS] (with AMU Poznań)
Multimodality - Discourse - Media (cooperation with Paris 3)
The research-oriented program Language - Media - Society combines a cultural-scientific and cultural-comparative perspective on language and mediality in their social conditionality with a focus on Europe. The course addresses different communication contexts (everyday life, institutions, audio-visual media), communicative and aesthetic practices (oral and written, monomodal and multimodal, analog and digital), forms of discourse (everyday conversation, text, audio-visuality, political and public discourse) and social structures (power relations, affiliations and diversity). The focus is particularly on the use and medialities of different languages and language varieties in Europe.
Read more...With the track options:
Literary Cultures of Europe
Philosophy and Cultural Studies (cooperation with Paris 1)
The subject of the programme is Western and Eastern European literature. Basic characteristics are the combination of modern basic languages, literary language mastery, expansion of the literary canon, and a research-focused orientation.
Read more...With the international track option:
Sciences sociales et culturelles (Cooperation with Paris 8)
The program focuses on socio-cultural processes of change and differentiation in late modern European societies in an international context. This includes questions of power and exclusion as well as diversity and discrimination.
Read more...Interdisciplinary study of the challenges, perspectives, and problems of the culture and history of Eastern Europe in its pan-European context.
Read more...From four central areas - culture, politics, law and economics - courses are offered in English, French, Polish and German by the various faculties.
Read more...The Master of Digital Entrepreneurship (MoDE) is an interdisciplinary, project-based degree program offered by the European New School of Digital Studies (ENS). The English-language program deals with digitalization from the perspective of law, economics, social sciences and computer science and offers the possibility of a German-Polish double degree. In six module groups, students are taught theoretical and practical methods to develop and reflect on their own entrepreneurial solutions to the challenges of digital transformation in Europe.
Read more...Continuing education (4 semesters, qualified practical professional activity of at least one year, fee required).
The course of studies "European Cultural Heritage" presents an overall profile of the knowledge, skills and competences relevant in the protection of cultural property / preservation of historical monuments and in the management of cultural property.
Read more...Instructional Profile
We are confronted with the end of the dominance of the "West" in the world, which has been taken for granted for two centuries, we are now experiencing an increasing cultural importance of world religion and producing a profound transition in the cultures of knowledge that permeates all areas of society.
At the same time, the opening of Central and Eastern Europe to the West has set in motion a complicated process of upheaval and transformation throughout Europe, which has produced forms of modernization but also found recourse in regional and national traditions.
In the days of the "Cold War," it was enough to ask, "Which side are you on?" It has been replaced today by the more difficult-to-answer question, "Who are you?" The cultural philosopher Ernst Cassirer answered this question about the often invoked "identity" of a society in this way:
The various forms of culture are not held together by an identity in their inner essence, but by the fact that they share a common basic task.
These historically changeable basic tasks must be researched scientifically. The Faculty of Cultural Studies attempts to meet this demand by combining the humanities and social sciences in the disciplines represented here - cultural history, comparative social sciences, literary studies and linguistics. Since access to other societies is mediated through language, cultural studies education requires a high degree of foreign language competence and a willingness to study abroad.
Cultural studies in Frankfurt and Słubice, between Germany and Poland, offer the chance to get to know Europe as an idea, concept and reality in history and the present.
That's why! - Study Social and Cultural Sciences at the Viadrina.
Links & Contacts
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