Anyone who works with historical manuscripts quickly encounters a microcosm of formats, colors, and functions that lend the objects a special degree of veracity and resonance. That is what makes these features so interesting for systematic study by scholars working in the fields of codicology and paleography. These areas are even more important to scholars of the Middle East, where book printing did not become widespread and established until the 19th century. In a workshop entitled “Introduction to Arabic Codicology,” junior scholars and students study the centuries-old traditions of manuscript production in the Arabic-speaking world.

From the violence at the Rütli School, widely reported in the German media, to domestic violence and high rates of recipients of Hartz IV public assistance: In recent years, Neukölln has made more headlines throughout Germany for its negative attributes than any other district in Berlin. But social and cultural anthropologist Michaela Brosig of Freie Universität Berlin went beyond the clichés presented in the media for her master’s thesis, studying the lives and lifestyles of young women of Turkish immigrant backgrounds in Neukölln. “Neukölln Unlimited?” she asks in the title, a play on both the title of a recent film of the same name and the opportunities and limitations involved in living in this district.

A modern chicken coop is like the operating room at a major medical center. Visitors wishing to enter the coop itself must first pass through an area meant to keep out germs, and coveralls and shoe covers are required. As many as 40,000 animals are raised at major facilities and shipped off after five weeks – when they weigh enough to be slaughtered.