This course explores the modernization process in the Ottoman Empire and how those transformations were reflected in the making of modern Turkey. Although there is a chronological frame, the course is organized as modules focusing on certain themes. Throughout six modules, modernization of the state apparatus, integration to the global economy, transformation of the cities, modern forms of art and changes in social life will be discussed. Students will become familiar with the political reforms of the late Ottoman period, Ottoman political and intellectual figures of the modern era, changes in social structure with the process of modernization, demographic structure of the cities, urban planning, cultural life and lastly wars which triggered change in various areas. These topics will be covered through the primary and secondary sources.
This course aims to introduce the students with a broad outline on fundamental sciences by focusing on a discussion of groundbreaking discoveries, innovations and inventions in various scientific fields. The course also aims to develop the students’ curiosity for scientific fields and their connections, help them understand the consequences of scientific developments and the role science and technology play in shaping today’s world.
The main objective of this course is to introduce the students with major concepts in humanities and social sciences as they relate to world civilizations and history. It is expected that the students will become familiar with social scientific theories that utilize and build upon these concepts and understand that concepts and ideas change in time and space, and are institutionally framed. This will enable students to understand the historical context and intellectual conditions that give rise to certain developments by focusing on the content and social context of concepts such as civilization, science, history, time, space, myth, religion, individual, society, family, state, nation, race, gender, culture, globalization. The overarching theme will be how we understand civilization and the implications of different notions of civilization on how we interpret the world around us and how we organize our everyday practices. For this reason, the course will cover the period from the beginnings of the world, as depicted in scientific, religious, and mythical origin stories to the times of colonialisms and revolutions up until early twentieth century. Throughout the term the students will read primary or secondary texts and watch documentary and/or feature films dealing with history, family, religion, city, and/or nation, and respond to them utilizing the concepts covered in class.
This transdisciplinary course is designed to help students reflect critically on the ethical implications of their conceptions of life and of their relationship with other human beings, with the society at large, and with the rest of existence. It aims to encourage them to think freely – to be free of prejudice and misinformed preconceptions; to build self-confidence and become responsible individuals who appreciate the rights of other living beings; and to empower them to become active agents in society’s development through civic engagement. The course consists of five modules designed to focus on some of the most pressing issues of our times, i.e. diversity, cit-y-zenship, gender, information technologies, and bioethics, all of which involve ethical dilemmas that are hard to resolve and even hard to recognize most of the time. The course also aims to equip the students with basic research skills and reinforce their command of English by developing their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and to expand students’ academic vocabulary both at the receptive and productive level.
This course aims to introduce the students to the wide world of design and its culture through a variety of perspectives. The course presents design in an expanded scope including technical/technological, material, spatial, ecological, political, economic, and global perspectives. It presents a rich variety of works in various scales blurring the boundaries between design, arts, architecture, engineering, science and interior and exterior space. Styles, materials, and concepts, in their relation to creative production, technological culture, industry will be exemplified. The course will evolve around the following dichotomies analog/digital, crafted/fabricated, personal/social, particular/general, material/non-material, standard/non-standard while focusing on the concepts of sustainability, recoverable, upcycled, recycled, copyright, copyleft, technology, open-sourced and appropriated. The course will be structured as four three-week modules which will focus on understanding the power of design, expanding the toolkit for design, representing and mapping how design shapes everyday life and how everyday life shapes design, and experimenting with particulars of data-driven design.
This course aims to present an applied introduction to algorithmic thinking for complex problem solving tasks. It seeks to build up a wide variety of interdisciplinary problem and conflict-resolution skills and competencies derived from computation, mathematics, logic and design. It introduces a multitude of problem solving skills such as pattern recognition, abstraction, induction-deduction that students will work on in groups, as well as preparing students to use programming interfaces like Python to work with datasets to address popular and exciting riddles and problems. Overall, the course prepares students for the rest of their university life and the problems they may encounter throughout.
This course aims to develop skills to express themselves orally and in writing in daily life and to comprehend argumentative essays in various forms and analyze them critically. This course encourages students to express their thoughts / arguments individually or as a member of a group in accordance with the manners of discussion. In this course students gain the ability to use relevant materials and resources in conducting academic research and the reflex to apply the rules of academic integrity in written and oral productions.
This course has two central objectives: exposing students to materials in Turkish to make them use and improve their Turkish language skills; and introducing students to the Turkish culture through the use of these materials.
This course explores the history of modern Turkey from the early Republican period until today in its political, social, economic, and cultural aspects. Following a module-based structure based on specific themes, the course centers on the ruptures and continuities in general trends and processes of the history of Turkey. Throughout six modules, the shifts from empire to Republic, a single-party system to a multi-party system, the Cold War to the new global world will be discussed in relation to various social and economic aspects including rural to urban migration, social movements, neoliberalism, political Islam and identity politics. In this regard, the class is planned on three principles: First, it places Turkey in a global context hence emphasizes connections as well as disconnections. Second, it evaluates both the transformations at the state level and how ‘ordinary’ people are influenced by those transformations. Third, besides secondary guiding sources, primary sources are used to help students relate in a personal way to the past and promote a deeper understanding of history instead of a series of events.
This course is an introduction to the fundamentals of the appreciation of works of art and literature with a critical perspective. The course introduces works of art and literature together with the social and political contexts surrounding them and the controversies that they are engaged in. It aims to help students gain critical thinking skills as well as equipping them with the necessary tools to see, read, and analyze works of art and literature. Moreover, the course encourages students to be more perceptive to artistic expressions and creations they encounter in their everyday surroundings in Istanbul.
This course aims to introduce students to key concepts and themes related to globalization and give an overview of debates pertaining to socioeconomic inequalities, limitations and challenges that emerge with globalization. The course introduces the students to the most challenging issues that the human kind is facing today. Some of the issues (such as war, peace, migration) that this course will bring under scrutiny is as old as the human kind itself. Some of them, however, like the global climate crisis, is relatively new and has been exacerbated by the ongoing globalization process and the interdependencies formed as a result of this process. Additionally, the course outlines key questions that global issues provoke and provides a review of processes of globalization in economic, environmentalist, cultural, political and social domains.
This course introduces students to the concept of social responsibility with theoretical knowledge and universal values. It aims to transform this information into active citizenship skills through civic engagement activities.
This course provides a general survey of the history of jazz from its origins to the present, with an emphasis on the stylistic and evolutionary development of the music and the significant contributors to jazz styles. The main objective of the course is to help students understand, appreciate this great American art form called Jazz. In addition to this, the course aims to equip the students with basic skills that will enable them to identify basic musical elements in jazz, recognize main characteristics of styles in the jazz literature, identify similarities and differences between jazz and other music genres and analyze developments in jazz music in terms of social and historical context. Topics that will be covered in the course are “Early Jazz and New Orleans”, “1920’s New York / Louis Armstrong”, “The Swing Bands / Count Basie and Duke Ellington”, “Bebop / 1950’s: Cool Jazz and Hard Bop”, “Modality of Miles Davis and John Coltrane”, “The Avant-Garde, Fusion”, “Latin Jazz” ve Jazz ve Rock”
The aim of this course is to help students understand scientific method and how we gain our knowledge of the Universe through scientific reasoning and discovery. This will help students to have a deeper understanding of the roles of science and technology in our society, and gain insight into the many important discussions and debates related to science and technology in our modern life. Topics that are to be discussed in class are: “Cosmic landscape”, “Planetary and celestial motion”, “Gravity and light”, “Survey of the solar system”, “The moon and the inner and outer planets”, “Space debris”, “The sun and other solar systems, exoplanets”, “Stellar birth and stellar evolution”, “The Dead Stars: White Dwarfs”, Neutron Stars and Black Holes”, “The Milky Way Galaxy”, “Galaxies and Galactic Evolution”, “Cosmology”
This course involves the study and practice of academic writing, including an introduction to rhetorical principles, the writing process, critical reading, research, and inquiry. The major assignments focus on descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and critical writing. Assignments are completed through the steps of drafting, feedback, and revision. Students are required to review and discuss the work of their classmates and to attend individual and small group feedback sessions with the writing instructor.
This course introduces students to the concept of social responsibility with theoretical knowledge and universal values. It aims to transform this information into active citizenship skills through civic engagement activities.
The relation between the scientific and religious worldviews has frequently been one of tension, yet is the opposition between the two inevitable? Much debate surrounding the relation between science and religion has taken place within a poorly informed view of the history and philosophy of science and its relationship with religion. The objective in this course will therefore be to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of this relation by taking an interdisciplinary approach, embracing scientific, philosophical and historical perspectives. We will consider how the relation between religion and science has been philosophically conceptualized, while also widening the discussion by integrating contributions from outside philosophy and following the history of the shifting relation between religious and scientific thinking. In addressing the question of whether this relation should be understood in terms of conflict, incommensurability or symbiosis we will explore topics such as the impact which scientific discoveries have had on religious doctrines and the different methods of justification and verification employed by religion and science.
Study of feeling/emotion in modern and contemporary literary and cultural texts has always been a topic of theoretical and critical attention, with a growing number of conferences, fellowships, books, and journal articles devoted to it. This course examines human feelings/emotions as a theory for understanding the expression and formation of modern social identities and contemporary cultural and political formations. That the feelings/emotions do not only vary from culture to culture but also have histories within cultures is our guiding supposition. By watching films and reading novels, short stories, and essays by some prominent modern and contemporary fiction writers we will examine the relationship between the emotions and modern and current socio-cultural formations. We will ask whether it makes sense to understand our contemporary world as a number of characteristic ways of feeling. Throughout the course, we will consider a way to interpret human feelings as a theory for critiquing culture, politics, and society.
The course aims to develop students’ critical and analytical thinking skills and aesthetic sensibilities through an introduction to a range of interpretive frameworks and theories to be used to analyze and contextualize art and visual culture, and to contribute to their individual development.
The course introduces students to a variety of film styles and genres, such as classical, contemporary, independent, experimental, avant-garde, and international cinema. It teaches students how to “read” a film through formal elements such as cinematography, mise-en-scene, and editing. Classes will incorporate film viewings, readings, discussion, presentation, and lecture.
This course aims to introduce social, political, and cultural atlas and history of Istanbul through the images of the city in music, film, and literature. For this purpose, each week is designed as a musical, visual, and literary journey to the main districts of the city (Üsküdar, Beyoğlu, Haliç, Sultanahmet, Bosphorus, The Prince Islands, Kadıköy, and Northern Forests). For each week, a brief historical introduction will be followed by a student discussion session about the assigned music, film or reading material. At the end of the course, students will not only gain the significant historical knowledge about the city, but also they will be able to relate to the socio-cultural transformation of modern Turkey to Istanbul’s polyphonic and cosmopolitan life and history. Poetry, novel, short story, classical Ottoman music, popular songs, Yeşilçam movies, audio recordings, words, musical notes and images create infinite spatial entities of a city. Therefore, as the final outcome of the course, students will be asked to do a thematic city atlas which will include a literary, audio/visual mapping, marking, and explaining of a specific district or neighbourhood.
Istanbul is a bad romance for too many. Life in it is difficult yet leaving it behind is almost impossible. Located in the west of the east and east of the west Istanbul has always been full of conflicts and possibilities. This is a city, conquest of which resulted in the start of a new epoch in history. Having been the capital of two empires, namely the Byzantine and Ottoman, its inhabitants find themselves walking through history most of the time. Istanbul constantly offers magnificent views and exciting encounters together with devastating hardships to its residents. Since the vast majority of the world population have started to reside in cities, urban contradictions abound. In the case of Istanbul; the city’s integration to the global city network, the European migration crisis and a violent urban transformation justified with the high risk of an earthquake are added to the conflicts. Istanbul is a megacity which becomes more and more difficult to survive in each passing second, yet somehow managing to keep its charm as one of the most interesting and fascinating metropolises of the world.
Unsurprisingly, such a city has always been the inspiration and setting for a significant amount of literary output. In this course while we trace this output we will enjoy high quality literature and gain knowledge about the city. While reliving the urban experience, unfamiliar and familiar, throughout the selected fictional texts, we will try to look at our city with a completely fresh perspective.
All primary and secondary sources to be read here are in English. The course aims to offer a gate to the depths of Istanbul for the foreign students as well as the native speakers. Therefore, the literary texts have been chosen among those translated from Turkish to English by reliable translators.
Dünya nüfusunun büyük çoğunluğu şehirlerde ikamet etmeye başladığından beri kentsel çatışmalar giderek tırmanmakta. İstanbul örneğinde; kentin küresel şehir ağına entegrasyonu, Avrupa göç krizi ve bunların yanı sıra yüksek deprem riskiyle meşrulaştırılan acımasız kentsel dönüşüm bu çatışmaları şiddetlendiriyor. İstanbul’da yaşamak her geçen gün daha zorlaşsa da o, dünyanın en ilginç ve büyüleyici metropollerinden biri olarak çekiciliğini korumayı başaran bir mega-şehir.
Elbette ki, böyle bir şehir çok sayıda edebi eserin ilham kaynağı ve mekanı olageldi. Bu derste, bu eserlerin izini sürerken iyi edebiyatın tadına varacak ve kent hakkında bilgi sahibi olacağız. Bize hem tanıdık hem de yabancı kentsel deneyimleri seçilmiş kurmaca metinler üzerinden yaşarken kentimize tamamen yeni bir bakış açısıyla bakmaya çalışacağız.
Derste okunacak tüm birincil ve ikincil kaynaklar İngilizce olacak; edebi metinler güvenilir çevirmenler tarafından Türkçe’den İngilizce’ye kazandırıldı. Bu nedenle, şehrin derinliklerindeki bu yolculuğa hem yerli hem de yabancı öğrenciler katılabilir.
This elective course is designed to give students an introduction to psycholinguistics; the study of how we as humans acquire, process and produce language. Throughout the course, we will have a crash course into topics such as visual and auditory recognition of words, sentence comprehension and production, bilingualism (and beyond), language acquisition, and language disorders. It is ideal for students who have always wondered how we learn languages and have an interest in reading and critiquing original psycholinguistics research articles.
Understanding the difference between taste and flavor means enjoying the food you eat every day at a new and deeper level. While analyzing the very well-known recipes from all over the world like eggs Benedict, osso buco, ceviche or içli köfte we will actually be working on various culinary reactions such as caramelization, nixtamalization, pasteurization, Maillard reactions, re-dox reactions, etc. Traditional recipes will be used as a tool to discover and appreciate how we apply general chemistry and basic biochemistry all the time. We will be examining the structure and the characteristics of foams, emulsions, colloids, gels, suspensions, solutions as a general chemistry course, but our exemplary cases will be edible (meringues, ice cream, marshmallows, mayonnaise and gelatine). Milk and milk products, eggs, meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, our ingredients, will be considered as reactants and students will be encouraged to understand their chemical nature and evaluate their significance in the recipe in which it is involved. Students will soon see that the chemistry textbook was a part of their daily lives all along even on something as ubiquitous as their plate. The aim of this course is to teach how to benefit from basic science to improve our way of living.
Planetary life support systems are collapsing due to climate change and the biodiversity crisis. The root cause is the existing consumer economy, coupled with profit maximisation based on costs loaded to nature and the public. Existing economic policies are rigid and deterministic; economic growth is still regarded as the ultimate goal rather than means to achieving welfare. We have reached the limits of our planet, and are consuming more than it can produce, creating a deficit in the savings account of the planet. In this course, we will explore new ways of thinking about how we organize the production, distribution and consumption of the goods and services that nourish our everyday life. We will learn new paradigms that challenge the fundamental tenets the human economic enterprise is built upon. And ask the question how do we transform this economy to create a sustainable future for humanity?
This course is aiming to improve awareness of a university graduate on “Private and Social Cost of Energy Consumption”. The introduction part of the course would cover a summary of the non-renewable (fossil fuels and mineral fuels) and the renewable energy sources, and conversion technologies of primary energy sources to practical forms such as thermal energy, electricity, mechanical energy, refined fuels and synthetic fuels. Transporting energy would also be touched upon. The major part of the course would be on analyzing private and social costs of energy consumption from a source to an end user. Differences between market price and the current costs to the society as well as to the future generation will be discussed for different energy sources, conversion and transport technologies. Social cost would be analyzed in categories such as: environmental damages (flora and fauna, materials, global climate change), damages to human health, effects to economies, incomparable allocation of resources and unproductive subsidies. Policies and regulations to reduce social cost of energy consumption would be given at national and international scale.
Biomimicry is a practice that aims to learn from and be inspired by nature translating it to novel ways of problem-solving and innovative design. The goal of this modular course is to guide students to make informed observations in and about nature to understand how nature operates and solves problems. The course focuses on the evolution of biomimicry through case studies and encourages students to be inspired by nature’s design. Our intention is to provide a wide perspective into diverse fields where implementing biomimicry has led the way to new potentials. This course is designed not only to learn about biomimicry but also to promote cross-disciplinary relationships among students from different departments for potential future collaborations. Since biomimicry has been an emerging field that fosters collaborative relationships across disciplines, group learnings will be highly encouraged to achieve that. Collage making and origami will be used as a tool to experience the relationship of form and structure as well as to improve the motor skills, visual and spatial abilities of the students. Other digital tools including SketchUp, Photoshop, 3D printing might be introduced as complementary tools to study elaborate representations in the design of form, structures or processes varying from drug discovery to architectural systems.
This course aims to provide the essential economic literacy to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Unlike many introductory courses to the economics, it is prepared with an interdisciplinary framework combining economics, personal finance, political economy, and development studies. The course is organized under five interrelated modules. First module focuses on the individual and the market to introduce key micro-economic concepts such as opportunity cost, competition, monopoly, supply and demand. Second module focuses on the national economy and state to introduce macro-economic concepts such as national income, inflation, unemployment, economic crisis, and development. Third module provides the foundations of personal finance so as to understand the concepts like time value of money, risk, compound interest as well as to prepare students for everyday economic activities such as financial planning, budgeting, and saving. Fourth module introduces a brief history of the global economy in the last two centuries. Fifth module focuses on Turkey’s economy by analyzing the dynamics of trade, finance, employment, class, development, gender, economic crises in the last century. This will allow students to identify the various phases of capitalist economic development such as Keynesianism, neoliberalism, and globalization.
This course seeks to equip students with much-needed economic literacy in the age of globalization. It bridges the gaps between theory-practice as well as national-international to provide a holistic introduction to economics. Students who complete this course will be able to understand key economic concepts, manage their personal finances, recognize the broader dynamics of global economy, and be aware of Turkey’s economic history and current challenges.
Teaching philosophy underpinning the course seeks to foster critical and analytical thinking as well as problem solving skills of students. There are various types of assignments that are tailored to nurture different skillsets. Calculation papers will enable familiarity with economic and financial data so as to develop students’ computational skills. Movie reflection paper will improve students’ academic writing as well as their ability to link theory with practice. Presentation on Turkey’s economic problems will foster academic speaking as well as independent thinking and research skills. Active participation into the forums will develop English language skills of students.
This course is an introduction to money and financial markets. From a historical and social perspective, it reviews not only economic but also anthropological and other social research on money and finance.
The course consists of three parts. The first part is dedicated to the exploration of the social meanings of money within the realm of economic exchange and beyond. Within a modern economy, money functions as a medium of exchange means of payment, unit of account and store of value. In the first part of the course, we will discuss how money came to fulfill these different functions today by exploring the different modalities of exchange, with and without money, across time and space.
The second part is on the evolution of monetary systems in the world economy. We will cover the history of financial and monetary systems since the early modern period. Specifically, we will discuss the bimetallism and the use of silver until the 19th century, the gold standard and how it allowed the first globalization, the interwar financial crisis, and finally the reconstruction of monetary system under the Bretton Woods system up to the recent financial crises. The main purpose is to provide a bird’s eye view of how the monetary system evolved during the long history of capitalism and globalization.
Finally, the third part will summarize the contemporary understandings of money within economics and other social sciences. In light of the modern theories of money and finance, we will discuss the global financial crisis of 2008, assess current monetary policy and central banking practices as a response to and an outcome of the crisis, and explore the emergence of cryptocurrencies as a new global phenomenon.
This course aims to introduce students to the basic principles and concepts of modern economics. We want public policy to treat everybody equally and to be efficient. However, in many instances equality and efficiency principles point to different directions. This course deals with this issues by examining various cases such as access to healthcare, university placement, income inequality, work, wages, firms, unemployment, etc. We also discuss how to change/reform rules of the game (institutions) so that these desirable goals are less in conflict with each other. Lectures will utilize Economy, Society, and Public Policy (ESPP) (https://www.core-econ.org/espp/) and CORE The Economy textbooks. The books were developed by Core Economics Project and completely free. They are interactive online books including videos, interactive graphs and hands-on exercises. They are flexible enough to be utilized by one lecturer in small classes as well as in a big lecture aided by assistants for hands-on exercises.
The course aims to enhance the knowledge of the students on democratic participation especially related to digital democracy, human rights-based approach to environmental and public health issues and good governance, transparency, and accountability of administration.
The goal of this course is to provide students a broad outline of scientific discoveries and engineering, and help them to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. To this purpose, the course explores different disciplines of engineering and provides participants with a broad background of engineering technologies as it focuses on the topics “Energy”, “Computer Technology”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Telecommunication” and “Bioinformatics”
The goal of this course is to cover basic concepts of mathematics that will be of use to the students of any background using a modular teaching model. Students will be able to identify solution strategies for real-life problems and comprehend the need for mathematical tools. Mathematical concepts will be discovered/thought through experiments hence the student will be able to observe the need for mathematics.
The content of the course is based on the genres, novel and short stories. Focusing on the concept of “fiction” through novels and short stories in modern Turkish literature, students will be able to interpret and criticize novels and stories in an analytical way and produce their own critical points of view. In addition, the relationship between novels and short stories with other texts and genres is discussed through concepts such as intertextuality, adaptation and rewriting. Besides, in-class activities are designed in order to encourage the creative writing skills of students.
This course has two main objectives: To help students understand the dynamics of social and cultural life in Turkey, to introduce students to Turkey’s leading and internationally recognized cultural and artistic works and artists, and to help them improve their Turkish language skills.
This course explores the modernization process in the Ottoman Empire and how those transformations were reflected in the making of modern Turkey. Although there is a chronological frame, the course is organized as modules focusing on certain themes. Throughout six modules, modernization of the state apparatus, integration to the global economy, transformation of the cities, modern forms of art and changes in social life will be discussed. Students will become familiar with the political reforms of the late Ottoman period, Ottoman political and intellectual figures of the modern era, changes in social structure with the process of modernization, demographic structure of the cities, urban planning, cultural life and lastly wars which triggered change in various areas. These topics will be covered through the primary and secondary sources.
This course aims to introduce the students with a broad outline on fundamental sciences by focusing on a discussion of groundbreaking discoveries, innovations and inventions in various scientific fields. The course also aims to develop the students’ curiosity for scientific fields and their connections, help them understand the consequences of scientific developments and the role science and technology play in shaping today’s world.
The main objective of this course is to introduce the students with major concepts in humanities and social sciences as they relate to world civilizations and history. It is expected that the students will become familiar with social scientific theories that utilize and build upon these concepts and understand that concepts and ideas change in time and space, and are institutionally framed. This will enable students to understand the historical context and intellectual conditions that give rise to certain developments by focusing on the content and social context of concepts such as civilization, science, history, time, space, myth, religion, individual, society, family, state, nation, race, gender, culture, globalization. The overarching theme will be how we understand civilization and the implications of different notions of civilization on how we interpret the world around us and how we organize our everyday practices. For this reason, the course will cover the period from the beginnings of the world, as depicted in scientific, religious, and mythical origin stories to the times of colonialisms and revolutions up until early twentieth century. Throughout the term the students will read primary or secondary texts and watch documentary and/or feature films dealing with history, family, religion, city, and/or nation, and respond to them utilizing the concepts covered in class.
This transdisciplinary course is designed to help students reflect critically on the ethical implications of their conceptions of life and of their relationship with other human beings, with the society at large, and with the rest of existence. It aims to encourage them to think freely – to be free of prejudice and misinformed preconceptions; to build self-confidence and become responsible individuals who appreciate the rights of other living beings; and to empower them to become active agents in society’s development through civic engagement. The course consists of five modules designed to focus on some of the most pressing issues of our times, i.e. diversity, cit-y-zenship, gender, information technologies, and bioethics, all of which involve ethical dilemmas that are hard to resolve and even hard to recognize most of the time. The course also aims to equip the students with basic research skills and reinforce their command of English by developing their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and to expand students’ academic vocabulary both at the receptive and productive level.
This course aims to introduce the students to the wide world of design and its culture through a variety of perspectives. The course presents design in an expanded scope including technical/technological, material, spatial, ecological, political, economic, and global perspectives. It presents a rich variety of works in various scales blurring the boundaries between design, arts, architecture, engineering, science and interior and exterior space. Styles, materials, and concepts, in their relation to creative production, technological culture, industry will be exemplified. The course will evolve around the following dichotomies analog/digital, crafted/fabricated, personal/social, particular/general, material/non-material, standard/non-standard while focusing on the concepts of sustainability, recoverable, upcycled, recycled, copyright, copyleft, technology, open-sourced and appropriated. The course will be structured as four three-week modules which will focus on understanding the power of design, expanding the toolkit for design, representing and mapping how design shapes everyday life and how everyday life shapes design, and experimenting with particulars of data-driven design.
This course aims to present an applied introduction to algorithmic thinking for complex problem solving tasks. It seeks to build up a wide variety of interdisciplinary problem and conflict-resolution skills and competencies derived from computation, mathematics, logic and design. It introduces a multitude of problem solving skills such as pattern recognition, abstraction, induction-deduction that students will work on in groups, as well as preparing students to use programming interfaces like Python to work with datasets to address popular and exciting riddles and problems. Overall, the course prepares students for the rest of their university life and the problems they may encounter throughout.
This course aims to develop skills to express themselves orally and in writing in daily life and to comprehend argumentative essays in various forms and analyze them critically. This course encourages students to express their thoughts / arguments individually or as a member of a group in accordance with the manners of discussion. In this course students gain the ability to use relevant materials and resources in conducting academic research and the reflex to apply the rules of academic integrity in written and oral productions.
This course has two central objectives: exposing students to materials in Turkish to make them use and improve their Turkish language skills; and introducing students to the Turkish culture through the use of these materials.