• About CAS
• Calendar
• Programs
• Publications
• Awards & Grants
• Outreach
• K-12 Education
• Global Opportunities
  • Call for Papers
  • Conferences & Symposia
  • Global Events
  • Journals
  • Study Programs
• Global Links
• Opportunities for Giving

Study Programs

This list contains notices of seminars, courses, and other programs of study both in North America and abroad. Some are for summer study, some for the regular academic year, or a portion of it. Some provide full or partial funding. View complete information about student fellowships and scholarships.

Summer

Austria. Summer Study. VISU (Vienna International Summer University) and SWC (Scientific World Conceptions) Summer Program, “The Culture of Science and Its Philosophy,” University of Vienna and the Institute Vienna Circle, Vienna, July 13 – 24.

Since 2001, the University of Vienna and the Institute Vienna Circle have been holding an annual two-week summer program dedicated to major current issues in the natural and social sciences, their history and philosophy. As an international and interdisciplinary program, VISU-SWC brings together graduate students, junior researchers, and a few gifted undergraduates who wish to broaden their horizons through crossdisciplinary studies of methodological and foundational issues in science. It also gives them the opportunity to work closely with world-renowned experts.

Topic: With the rise of specialized sciences, understood to be autonomous from philosophy, and the rise of philosophical positivism, philosophers and scientists debated among themselves claims for objectivity, realism, and truth in the sciences. They discussed, too, the roles that scientists and scientific knowledge justifiably play in political systems, social policy, and technological development. As secularism strengthened and religious metaphysics waned, philosophers also began to concern themselves with the scientific standing of philosophy itself. Arguably, the debates about the scientific status of philosophy became the most crucial debates in the historical framing of twentieth-century philosophy. At this same time, however, the specialist sciences increasingly faced challenges to their traditional claims to universal knowledge. The course addresses three main themes: aspects of the philosophical debates from about 1870 to 1950; the idea that scientific knowledge is perspectival; and issues related to the social responsibilities of science, the social dimensions of science, and the truth of scientific claims. Main lecturers: Ronald Giere (University of Minnesota, USA), Mary Jo Nye (Oregon State University, USA), and Alan Richardson (University of British Columbia, Canada).

Cost: € 880. Lodging in student dormitories is available at approximately € 325. Applicants should submit a short educational curriculum vitae, a passport photo, a list of most recent courses and grades, or a copy of your diploma, a one-page statement (in English), briefly outlining your previous work and your reason for attending the VISU-SWC, and a (sealed) letter of recommendation from your professor, including some comment on your previous work. This letter may also be sent directly by your professor. Please make sure that all documents arrive in time; we can process only complete applications. Application form available on our web site may be sent in advance. The administration of VISU-SWC at the University of Vienna cannot offer financial assistance. However, for a few select applicants who can demonstrate that, despite serious documented efforts, they have not been able to obtain any financial support, in particular due to economic difficulties in their own country, a tuition waiver grant, awarded by the Institute Vienna Circle and the University of Vienna, will be provided. Applications should be sent to Professor Friedrich Stadler, Institute Vienna Circle, University Campus, Spitalgasse 2–4, Court 1, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. Fax: +43-1-4277 41297. For further details, e-mail friedrich.stadler@univie.ac.at or consult the website.

Deadline: January 30.

Spring 2009

University of Minnesota Department of Art History
74922 Modernism’s Lab: Vienna 1900
Anselm Wagner, Visiting Fulbright Professor from the University of Technology, Graz, Austria
230 Blegen Hall, 11:15am-12:30 pm, Tu,Th
ARTH 5940, 3 credits

Topic: Vienna, ca. 1900, gave birth to some of the most important ideas and movements of modernism: Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, Arnold Schönberg’s and Alban Berg’s twelve-tone music, Otto Wagner’s and Adolf Loos’ early-functionalist architecture, the Secession with its promotion of a new unity of art and life and the invention of the White Cube, the geometrical design of the Wiener Werkstätte, Egon Schiele’s, Richard Gerstl’s and Oskar Kokoschka’s expressionism, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s and Karl Kraus’ criticism of language, the Vienna School of Art History and of Economics, and the radical positivist, anti-metaphysical philosophy by Franz Brentano, Ernst Mach and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this course, Vienna will be regarded as a laboratory of modernism where a cultural elite, characterized by broad interactions and relations, was inspired by disciplinary cross-fertilization. As such, it is very well suited as a historical case study with which one can initiate discussion about the political, cultural and art historical roots of our present-day world.

Further Information: Department of Art History, 338 Heller Hall, 612-624-4500

View the flyer (PDF)