Welcome ... and: "Achtung, Achtung!"

Dear Screen Politics people,

I very much hope you had an ok summer and wish you a very warm welcome to our course!

We will meet for the first time next week Tuesday (11/08), 14:15.

This first session will only be a presentation of the course content and a distribution of tasks. Please, find the course reading list in the FILES in CANVAS. The texts marked in yellow are those that I think make sense for short presentations by you. Please, do have a look and also consult the short instructions at the top of the document! It would be good if everybody could make a shortlist so that you know which ones you would like and be able to present.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION RE: SOCIAL DISTANCING
As you will have gathered from the news, Corona infection numbers are on the up again. Since I am belonging to a risk group (asthma), I will have to be really careful (and I am sure many of you too). Therefore, I am modifying the original plan of dividing you up into three cohorts. Instead we will split the group of 16 students in half, which results in 2 cohorts of 8 people each:

I have built these below cohorts by simply opening the ¡°people¡± list in Canvas, taking the first 8 people and putting them into cohort 1 and the lower eight into cohort 2.

Cohort 1: Hoda, Isabel, Matei, Fam, Jeevs, Sofie, Kayla, Arieta
Cohort 2: Basak, Arta, Karolina, Milan, Sobia, Hanna, Elise, Yang

In order to make this as simple as possible for all of us, we will start with COHORT 1 being invited to come to class ¡®in the flesh¡¯ next week (11/08), the other cohort joining on Zoom, and then we will change each session.

Further about the cohorts: I know that they cut through established friendships and work relationships, but I would rather stay out of those intricacies¡­ Therefore, you CAN change cohorts by getting in touch with a student in the respective other one and exchange with them. Please, do send me an update cohort member lists in this case!
Also, if you cannot come to class physically you can offer your spot to someone else. How you do that and what channel of communication you use for it, I will also leave up to you!

The main thing is that we keep to this every-other-session scheme so as to not be too many in a small class room.

Also - although I know you will have heard this many a time before - it is important that we keep to the social distancing and anti-infection rules that are in place. Should any of you feel that they might have put themselves in danger in the two weeks before a class, please stay at home. Please, be also careful in your leisure time and please do reach out to me in case you start feeling symptoms. This is by no means shameful, because we can all catch this thing anywhere and it is a lottery (thankfully still with encouraging odds). It is only shameful to have symptoms and not inform the people you are close to on a regular basis.

Despite this unease, I am looking forward to our course together immensely!
Steffen