Open Courses

The Plan:
- Lecture 1: The Seven Deadly Sins in History
- Lecture 2: Medieval Europe (c.500–1500): An Introduction
- Lecture 3: Pride: From Medieval Theology to Modern Psychology
- Lecture 4: Fighting Pride? Monks and Mystics in Medieval Europe
- Lecture 5: Wrath: Anger & Power in Western History
- Lecture 6: Righteous and Vengeful Anger in the Crusades
- Lecture 7: Envy: Loathe Thy Neighbour?
- Lecture 8: Hatred & Marginalization in Medieval Europe
- Lecture 9: Sloth: Apathy and Depression in Western History
- Lecture 10: Depression, Despair, and the Medieval University
- Lecture 11: Avarice: The Politics of Greed
- Lecture 12: The Economic Miracles of the Medieval World
- Lecture 13: Lust: A History of Seduction
- Lecture 14: Medieval Sex and Sexuality
- Lecture 15: Gluttony: A History of Temptation & Intoxication
- Lecture 16: Feasting & Fasting in the Medieval West
Course Literature
1. Kenneth Baker, On the Seven Deadly Sins (London: Unicorn, 2018).
2. William C. Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 2002).
3. Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
4. The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, edited by Richard Newhauser (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
5. Ian. P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
6. Chris Wickham, Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
The Plan:
- Lecture 1, April 21: What is Civilization?
- Lecture 2, April 23: The Evolution of Complexity
- Lecture 3, April 28: Social Power
- Lecture 4, April 30: Imperial Organizations
- Lecture 5, May 4: Survey of Lost Civilizations
- Lecture 6, May 7: Theories of Collapse
- Lecture 7, May 12: Systemic Stress Dissolution Theory
- Lecture 8, May 14: Regional and Global Collapse
- Lecture 9, May 19: Case Studies of Collapse
- Lecture 10, May 21: Case Studies of Collapse
- Lecture 11, May 26: Case Studies of Collapse
- Lecture 12, May 28: Case Studies of Collapse
- Lecture 13, June 2: Case Studies of Collapse
- Lecture 14, June 4: Presentations
- Lecture 15, June 9: Presentations
- Lecture 16, June 11: Conclusions
Course Literature
1. Carneiro, R. L. (1970). A Theory of the Origin of the State: Traditional theories of state origins are considered and rejected in favor of a new ecological hypothesis. Science, 169(3947), 733–738. 2. Childe, V. G. (1950). The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review, 21(1), 3. 3. Denton, C. (2016). Collapse: Episodes of Imperial Decay. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 4. Denton, C. (2020). Fall of Empires: A brief history of imperial collapse. WESTHOLME PUBLISHING. 5. Diamond, J. M. (2011). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Penguin Books. 6. Fried, M. H. (1976). The evolution of political society: An essay in political anthropology. McGraw-Hill. 7. Luttwak, E. (1984). The grand strategy of the Roman Empire: From the first century A.D. to the third (3. ed). Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 8. Mann, M. (1986). The sources of social power. Cambridge University Press. 9. Motyl, A. J. (2001). Imperial ends: The decay, collapse, and revival of empires. Columbia University Press. 10. Service, E. R. (1971). Primitive social organization: An evolutionary perspective (2d ed). Random House. 11. Tainter, J. A. (2011). The collapse of complex societies (23. print). Cambridge Univ. Press. 12. Whittaker, C. R. (2008). Rome and its frontiers. Routledge.
- Teun Dekker, Maastricht University (the Netherlands)
- Jakob Dirksen, University of Oxford (UK) & Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany)
- Dara Melnyk, SKOLKOVO Education Development Centre (Russia)
- Davydd Greenwood, Cornell University (USA)
- David Kretz, University of Chicago (USA)
- David Palfreyman, University of Oxford (UK)
- Sheldon Rothblatt, UC Berkeley (USA)
- Andrey Shcherbenok, School of Advanced Studies, (SAS) (Russia)
- Pavel Sorokin, Institute of Education, Higher School of Economics (Russia)
- Kathryn Telling, Sussex University (UK)
The Plan:
- February 4, Lecture 1 The Liberal Arts – It’s How They Do it in the US? Daniel Kontowski & the SAS faculty Erika Wolf, Mike Schapira, David Melbye
- February 6, Lecture 2 The Value of Curricular Freedom through Students’ Eyes Guest lecture by prof. Teun Dekker, Maastricht University (The Netherlands)
- February 11, Lecture 3 The Uses of a Liberal Education Guest lecture by prof. Sheldon Rothblatt, UC Berkeley (USA)
- February 14, Lecture 4 The 21st Century Labor Market Dynamics and Implications for Liberal Arts Education – the Importance of General Skills through the Human Capital Theory Lenses Guest lecture by dr Pavel Sorokin, Institute of Education, Higher School of Economics (Russia)
- February 18, Lecture 5 The Initial Design of School of Advanced Studies (SAS) Guest lecture by prof. Andrey Shcherbenok, SAS
- February 20, Lecture 6 Experimental University Guest lecture by Dara Melnyk, SKOLKOVO Education Development Centre (Russia)
- February 25, Lecture 7 Organisational Challenges for the Liberal Arts in a Neoliberal Academia Guest lecture by prof. Davydd Greenwood, Cornell University (USA)
- March 3, Lecture 8 Student-Centredness, Ownership, and the Importance of Community in Liberal Arts Education Guest lecture by Jakob Dirksen, University of Oxford (UK) & Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany)
- March 5, Lecture 9 A Liberal Arts Experience: from Berlin to Chicago Guest lecture by David Kretz, University of Chicago (USA)
- March 10, Lecture 10 The Founding Fathers of European Liberal Education Daniel Kontowski, SAS
- March 12, Lecture 11 Liberal Arts and the Disciplines: a Panel Discussion with Project Design Session participants
- March 17, Lecture 12 ‘The Oxford Tutorial’ – A pedagogical Concept Worth Copying? Guest lecture by prof. David Palfreyman, University of Oxford (UK)
- March 19, Lecture 13 Students Like Us? Voices from New Liberal Arts Degrees in England Guest lecture by dr. Kathryn Telling, Sussex University (UK)
- March 24, Lecture 14 The Liberal Arts in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1990s Daniel Kontowski, SAS
- March 25, Lecture 15 Landscapes and Dilemmas: Russian, American, and Global Daniel Kontowski, SAS
- March 26, Lecture 16 Lessons Learned: Liberal Arts at the SAS Daniel Kontowski & the SAS Community

The Plan:
- Lecture 1, November 7 International Business: World is Flat or in Cage?
- Lecture 2, November 12 Global Economy in Review: 1987–2019
- Lecture 3, November 14 International Trade and Foreign Direct Investments
- Lecture 4, November 19 Culture and Why does it Matter
- Lecture 5, November 21 Regional Economic Integrations
- Lecture 6, November 26 Europe in Crisis or in Transition
- Lecture 7, November 28 Intentional Monetary System
- Lecture 8, December 3 Students’ Presentations: How to do Business in Different Countries
- Lecture 9, December 5 Nation Branding: What is it and why does it Matter?
- Lecture 10, December 10 How can Exchange Rates Destroy your Business
- Lecture 11, December 12 Human Resource Management in the Global Context
- Lecture 12, December 17 Globalization in Transition: the Future of Trade and Value Chains
- Lecture 13, December 19 Where does Innovation happen and why does it Matter?

The Plan:
- Lecture 1, September 3 Introduction – Medical Humanities: What Are They and Why Do They Matter
- Lecture 2, September 5 Health and Illness: What Are They? – Defining the normal and the pathological
- Lecture 3, September 10 What is a Doctor? – Healers, therapists, and physicians through history
- Lecture 4, September 12 Writing the History of Medicine – From the 'greatest benefits to mankind' narrative to the 'patient's view.'
- Lecture 5, September 17 Hysteria and Madness – Discourses and representations of mental health
- Lecture 6, September 19 In Atrocious Suffering – How representations and the experience of pain have changed over time?
- Lecture 7, September 24 Sensing the Past – The Five Senses through the philosophical, historical and medical perspective
- Lecture 8, September 26 Medical Rights and Wrongs –Theorizations, historicization, and enforcement of Medical Ethics
- Lecture 9, October 1 Medical Narratives – How do we tell our stories about health and illness?
- Lecture 10, October 3 Mediatizing the Medicine – What happens when a medical issue becomes mainstream
- Lecture 11, October 8 Exhibiting the body – Anatomical and Medical Illustrations and the Display of Human Body Parts
- Lecture 12, October 10 Art and Medicine – Overlapping of medicine and visual arts
- Lecture 13, October 15 Medicine and Movies – Representation of Physicians and Patients in the 7th Art
- Lecture 14, October 17 Conclusion – What Future for Humanities in Medicine?

The Plan:
- April 18/Lecture 1: Past, future, and temporal imagination (Grishin/drum/Jones)
- April 23/Lecture 2: Film “Viking”/“Викинг” (Andrey Kravchuk, 2016, Russia) - where to begin the story? (Grishin)
- April 25/Lecture 3: The problems of origins, continuity and destiny in the historical narratives/imagined pasts (Grishin)
- April 30/Lecture 4: Film “Tsar”/“Царь” (Pavel Lungin, 2009, Russia) (Grishin)
- May 2/Lecture 5: State and people in past and present (Grishin)
- May 7/Lecture 6: Film: “Annihilation” (Alex Garland, 2018, USA) (drum)
- May 9/Lecture 7: Dread and dark euphoria; feeling a historical moment of now. Why so much body horror and dystopia? (drum)
- May 14/ Lecture 8: Film: “Prospect” (Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, 2018, USA) ~ Hard science fiction and precarious laborers. (drum)
- May 16 / Lecture 9: Design fiction and speculative design ~ when science fiction “works.” (drum)
- May 21/Lecture 10: Film “Interstellar” (Christopher Nolan, 2014, USA) (Grishin)
- May 23/Lecture 11: Whose is the future? (Grishin)
- May 28/Lecture 12: Film: “Favourite” (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018, UK/Ireland/USA) (Jones)
- May 30/Lecture 13: Humouring the past (Jones)
- June 4/Lecture 14: A time travel film blending history and sci-fi will be chosen by the group (drum/Grishin/Jones)
- June 6/Lecture 15: Retro, mash-up, and the future past, what our past and future tell us about ourselves (drum/Grishin/Jones)

The Plan:
- Feb. 4: Camera Obscura: The Origins of Photography
- Feb. 7: Daguerreotype vs. Calotype
- Feb. 11: The Photograph as a Document
- Feb. 14: Focus on the Body: Portraiture and the Human Countenance
- Feb. 18: Focus on the Body: The Human Sciences (Medicine, Anthropology)
- Feb. 21: “The Other Half”: Photography and Social Control
- Feb. 25: Recording the Invisible, Motion, and Color
- Feb 28: 19th Century Virtual Reality: Stereographs and Magic Lanterns
- Mar. 4: “You Press the Button and We Do the Rest”: Kodak and the Snapshot
- Mar. 7: The Modern Illustrated Press & the Rise of Photojournalism
- Mar. 11: Photography and/as Art
- Mar. 14: The New Vision: From Pictorialism to Modernism
- Mar. 18: Photomontage, Photogram, Manipulation
- Mar. 21: Sovetskoe Foto: Photography and Revolution
- Mar. 25: Photography and Recent Art
- Mar. 28: The Digital Revolution

Sillabus:
- Nov. 6: Philosophy of Time. A primer on some philosophical issues on the nature of time
- Nov. 8: Change and Time. A paradox about how material objects change through time
- Nov. 13: Past, Present, and Future. Three different theories of the ontology of time
- Nov. 15: How do we know that we live in the Present?…and other problems in the ontology of time
- Nov. 20: Time Travel. Is time travel possible? Oddities and paradoxes of time travel
- Nov. 22: Causal Loops. What happens when a time traveler from the future influences the past?
- Nov. 27: The Grandfather Paradox. Erasing the causes of your existence by means of time travel
- Nov. 29: Time Travel and Freedom. What time travelers can and cannot do
- Dec. 4: Time travel and the Growing Block. Time traveling in a universe that grows
- Dec. 6: Time Travel and the Moving Spotlight. Time traveling when time is two-dimensional
- Dec. 11: Beings outside time. An unusual perspective on time
- Dec. 13: The logic of future contingents. The problem of future contingents: how to make sense of our claims about the future
- Dec. 18: Time and Change. A thought experiment that challenges the view that change is necessary for time
- Dec. 20: How (not) to get funds for your time machine project. A puzzle about your promising time machine project
- Dec. 25: Some further paradoxes of time travel
- Dec. 27: Concluding discussion: the nature of time and time travel
Sillabus:
- 09.03: Introductions and beginning thinking What is the Anthropocene? Who are "we"?
- 09.06: Fantasies of Nature the national park idea, nationalism, recreation, photography, freedom, solitude, escape, beauty
- 09.10: Grizzly Man screening (dir. Werner Herzog, 2005)
- 09.13: Thinking with Grizzly Man Are humans animals? Are animals persons? What is wilderness and who/what belongs there?
- 09.17: Nature, gender, and sexuality introducing ecofeminism and queer ecology
- 09.20: Whales and other aliensanimal intelligence, language, communication, charisma
- 09.24: Noise and other wasteocean pollution, ambient waste, noise, media, social media and environmentalism
- 09.27: Thinking about climate change climate change as a challenge to thinking and imagination, temporal scale and time-lapse photography, dark ecology
- 10.01: Disability, disease, and ecological loss Environmentalism meets wellness culture, crip critique, what is a “natural” disaster?
- 10.04: Environmental justice The movement’s history, its advantages and limitations, for what phenomena is it useful?
- 10.08: Indigenous People’s Day (US) Thinking with mountains: colonialism and mountaineering, recreation in late capitalism, optimized bodies and affect extraction
- 10.11: Guest speaker Dr. Juliette Colinas, specialist in environmental sociology and economics, on place, attachment, and social capital
- 10.15: Concluding discussion: pessimism, optimism, and action
Course topics:
- film history as the history of succession of styles (German Expressionism, French Impressionism of the 1920s);
- film history as the history of engineering and technology (the first and the second sound revolutions, introduction of new aspect ratios);
- film history as the history of production and institutional structures development (Hollywood studios in 1930-1948, German and Soviet cinematography of the 1930s; censorship; development of the canon: archives and festivals);
- development of new film forms with their regard for social history, technologies and production structures (classical Hollywood style; French New Wave);
- creating new categories to describe various cinematographic phenomena (film genres and film stars; film noir between genre and style);
- Italian neorealism as historical, political and intermediate phenomenon; auteur cinema and auteur style categories (foundation and legacy of New Waves in France, Eastern Europe, Germany and Brazil);
- film history as the history of globalization (the Chinese cinema phenomenon).
What is the relationship between law and love? At first glance, law and love seem to be opposed. Whereas law governs through distant rules, love emerges in intimate and often surprising circumstances. Whereas law strives to present itself in the language of reason and utility, love communicates through affect and sentiment. Law prohibits, yet “love endures all things” St Paul tell us at the beginning of the Christian tradition.
This course draws on both legal cases and literary and theoretical works on love to question the premise of this opposition. We explore both love’s place in law through an examination of the way courts and legislatures in the United States and Russia have defined and redefined love, as well as law’s place in love. Ultimately, we ask, what would it mean– and is it even possible– to say that law is somehow like love?Louis Vervoort studied physics in Ghent (MSc in engineering physics), Marseille (PhD) and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (post-doc). Already in this period his main interests shifted from classic physics to the foundations of the field – a research area in which the fundamental axioms are questioned and investigated. This brought him naturally to philosophy, which he studied at the University of Montreal (PhD). Some of the advantages of working in philosophy are that it allows to address a broad range of interests, and that it somehow incites to look for the unifying ideas, the fashionable ‘big picture’ (He will leave this little idea here very vague). Philosophy also encourages to ask ethical questions on research, technology, science and society. If he would have to summarize his most eye-opening experience of these last years, then it would be the observation that, at the very fundamental level, science and philosophy are solidly intertwined, and can greatly inspire each other. An idea popular among interdisciplinary practitioners, but not yet popular enough in other communities!
Maxim Alyukov is a researcher with the Public Sociology Laboratory and a PhD Candidate in Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki. He started his career as an engineer and then turned to psychoanalysis: Maxim was a curator at Freud’s Dream Museum, and an editor, author or translator working for several Russian journals focused on Lacanian psychoanalysis. Currently he takes part in a number of PS Lab projects on civil society, protest movements, and war in the post-communist world, as well as working on a dissertation about Russian TV viewers during the political crisis in Ukraine. Maxim holds Specialist degrees in engineering from the State Marine Technical University, and in psychology from the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, as well as an MA degree in sociology from the European University at St.Petersburg.
Peter Jones is a cultural historian, specializing in the religious, political, and intellectual life of medieval Europe (c.500–1500). Originally from the United Kingdom, where he gained both a BA and an MA from the University of Bristol, Peter received his PhD in History from New York University in 2014. From 2014–16 he was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, and from 2016–17 he worked as a visiting scholar at the Pembroke Center, Brown University. He has published a range of articles on medieval cultural history in academic journals and edited volumes, and has recently completed a book manuscript exploring the role of humor in the political and religious revolutions of the twelfth century.