BA in Value Studies
The arts, history, literature, social science, philosophy, and foreign language are all part of the curriculum of the 4-year BA in Value Studies. Qualifying students receive a German and an American degree upon graduation.
Degree Granting
The BA in Value Studies awarded by ECLA of Bard (German degree) has been approved by the Berlin Senate Department of Education, Youth, and Science. An American BA degree is also awarded to qualifying students by Bard College, NY (USA) accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
Students with a secondary school qualification equivalent to a US high school diploma are eligible to enroll in the programme leading to the American BA degree granted by Bard College.
Students with a secondary school qualification that meets the requirements for admission to a German university will be enrolled as students in the German BA degree programme and will graduate with a German BA degree from ECLA of Bard and an American degree from Bard College. Eligibility for the German BA depends on having a school leaving qualification equivalent to the German Abitur.
Credits
Students complete 24 courses and a BA Thesis Module over four years to earn 240 ECTS credits. Most courses (elective and concentration seminars) meet for two seminars of ninety minutes per week. Core courses meet for an additional two lecture sessions of ninety minutes. Normally, students will take one core course and two elective courses per semester. Up to three courses in the BA degree can consist of language courses.
Structure
The BA in Value Studies is substantially focused on foundational core courses in intellectual history, offering students an overview of the main texts, issues and dialogues that have originated and shaped the disciplines of the humanities and the sciences. Throughout its core courses, the degree programme maintains a focus on the problems and questions that the various approaches and movements in these fields aim to address, and takes as its guiding presupposition the awareness that all scholarly and individual scientific undertaking is dedicated to establishing objects, principles and realms of value.
The courses are committed to connecting the debates and innovations of intellectual history with contemporary controversies and concerns, making clear that past cultural developments have been animated by real-world dilemmas and pressures, and that they continue to have a claim on our understanding and our future. The core programme is an excellent preparatory groundwork for specialist training in any field of the humanities or the social and natural sciences, as it forms students with a comprehensive historical knowledge, who are capable of asking critical questions and pursuing their own creative, research and practical initiatives.
The teaching formats consist largely of small-group seminars, with a considerable emphasis on individual advising and consultation with Professorial faculty. Its learning and teaching are directed towards the cultivation of writing and communication skills of unmatched quality, to producing graduates equipped to engage in a wide range of areas of work, traditionally associated with a Bachelor of Arts formation or otherwise, and scholars able to pursue research with adherence to the highest standards of responsibility and with reference to the condition and needs of the world around them.
Alongside its core courses, the BA requires concentration in two specific further areas of study. It also offers a range of electives in a wide scope of fields, including the fine arts and performance. In addition, BA students have the opportunity to pursue study in modern European languages (German, French and Spanish) and must meet a German-language requirement of B1 level before the end of their second year. Engagement with the context of study is a crucial component of the BA learning environment: a number of classes take place in the museums of Berlin, while guest lecturers from research institutes and other Berlin universities are frequent visitors to the campus, where talks and events supplementary to the core and elective courses are a regular occurrence. ECLA of Bard encourages and supports contribution to civic and social engagement through internships, and through participation in local projects and initiatives in the city of Berlin.
Core Courses
The core courses offer an overview of intellectual history from Antiquity to Modernism. They follow a chronological sequence, and have an emphasis on two or more disciplines foundational to the humanities or to the social and natural sciences. The core components of the BA in Value Studies are:
Greek Civilization
Medieval Literature and Culture
Renaissance Art and Thought
History and Philosophy of Science
Origins of Political Economy
Modernism
Students take one core module per semester in the first and second year of study. The final two core modules may be taken in either the third or fourth year. Through the core modules, students gain a thorough knowledge of the most important texts and developments in intellectual history, with an emphasis on European culture and its dialogues and interactions with other regions of the world. The core courses also introduce the debates and sources of influences which shape the modern specialist inquiries of the humanities and social sciences, examining for instance (in the Origins of Political Economy) the emergence of economics from a combination of scientific, literary, and political preoccupations and new departures, or the relationship between mathematics, architecture, and ancient philosophy (Greek Civilization), or the affinities between aesthetic experiment and the questioning of the Newtonian paradigm in the early twentieth century (Modernism).
All core courses have a strong emphasis on writing, with regular essays and the preparation of draft assignments being a crucial element in coursework. In the first year core courses, students work with a writing counsellor as well as their individual instructors to refine and perfect their writing expression and conception of the structural presentation of arguments. Core courses consist of one-half of a student's full academic workload during the semester, with two lecture and two seminar sessions per week (each of ninety minutes), alongside individual meetings with tutors and advisors. The core courses provide a thorough and profound background preparation for specialist interdisciplinary study, making students aware of the connections between fields, and of the common questions and related methodologies that have driven their evolution.
Concentration Areas
In addition to their work for the core courses, BA students choose two areas of concentration in the following domains:
Art and Aesthetics
Ethics and Politics
Literature and Rhetoric
Each area of concentration consists of two concentration seminars introducing students to the main methodologies, historical overviews, and core texts central for that subject. A series of electives in each concentration builds on the foundation set by the concentration seminars, offering further exploration of the work of individual authors or artists, time periods and aesthetic, political or literary movements and innovations. In all these courses, the examination of works and artefacts is guided by attention to the question of how judgments, objects and realms of value are established, defended or transformed. As the concentration areas indicate, these specialisms are not conceived along the lines of narrow disciplinary subject, but seek to bring together traditional directions of academic inquiry with frameworks and questions not normally integrated within them.
For instance, Art and Aesthetics combines training in the methods and material of art history with the philosophy and theory of aesthetics, as well as contemporary developments in film, media and visual culture. Ethics and politics brings to bear on a practice and phenomenon concerned with pragmatic decision making and the logic and structure of statecraft and governance, moral questions and dilemmas often excluded from its remit. Literature and Rhetoric links literary forms and changes with the study of language and culture as systems of meaning, and examines the very significance, structure and future fate of the establishment of literature as an object, practice and realm of value. Concentration seminars and concentration electives in these domains prepare students for specialist research in the BA thesis project, which is devoted to material, themes and methodologies derived from the coursework pursued within one of the concentrations.
Both concentration seminars and concentration electives meet for two sessions of ninety minutes per week, and are focused on small-group discussion, as well as regular meetings with instructors. Like the core courses, this component of the degree places a strong emphasis on regular writing as part of seminar preparation, and includes a variety of other assignments, such as presentations and short analyses (oral and written) of visual and written material, to cultivate not only excellent writing and communication skills, but also the ability to contribute to public and academic debates regarding key questions of disciplinary inquiry, and to present individual research in concise, engaging, clear, and productive form.
Elective Component
In addition to the concentration modules and core courses, BA students take a range of courses in alternative and related fields, including sociology, philosophy, the fine arts (performance and installation), film studies, mathematics, and cultural studies. Elective courses can either supplement or expand the preparatory training provided in the concentrations, or introduce students to the rudiments or possibilities of new fields. Guest lecturers from institutions in Berlin and around the world contribute to the wide range of course offerings available in the BA degree.
BA Thesis
The culminating experience of the Value Studies degree is a BA thesis project written in the fourth year of study. The project is pursued under the supervision of an individual faculty member, and the Thesis Module involves individual weekly meetings with the Professor, as well as a research colloquium, introducing research methods, resources and guidelines, and providing a forum for the presentation of the discrete phases of the project for the responses of faculty and students. Thesis topics are chosen from the primary area of concentration, and an official interview with faculty members at the end of the second year establishes the basis for, progress towards and framework of the thesis topic and its place in the student's programme of study.
Language Study
The ECLA BA programme offers the possibility of study in three modern languages, German, French and Spanish, at beginner, intermediate and advanced level, and requires that BA students reach German level BA1 by the end of their second year. Students are strongly encouraged to begin German study from the first semester of their enrolment. Language courses meet for three sessions of ninety minutes each per week.
