This course introduces students into the racial structuring of contemporary societies, including their bio- and necropolitics, the forgotten places of slow death, and white innocence. Of particular interest are questions of how we can take account of histories and experiences that are not integrated into historical discourses or archives, and what forms of futurity might inhere in these histories and everyday practices and sensations. Here we will examine also creative methods of future making proposed by indigenous and Black feminist scholars.
Last update: Lorenz-Meyer Dagmar Regine, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)
This course introduces students to critical studies of race, racism and racial politics, their rich genealogies in feminist theory and activism, and their continued urgency, particularly in Europe. What exactly does it mean to say that race is ‘socially constructed’ or that it needs to be ‘re-ontologised’? Is race 'fluid'? How do race and gender inevitably intersect in historically specific ways? What are apparatuses (including research methodologies) through which race gets reiteratively produced and made absent? And how are ‘we’ implicated in such racial productions? Through engaging case studies and feminist debates, the course examines the ruptures and continuities of racial formations, antisemitism, post/colonialisms, and racialized embodiments. The aim is to develop critical thinking, reading and research strategies for addressing processes of racialisation in a geopolitical context where the importance of race is routinely denied. We will also look at feminist and anti- racist organising, concrete utopias, and debates about the limits of multiculturalism, and bio- and necropolitics.
Last update: Lorenz-Meyer Dagmar Regine, M.A., Ph.D. (25.02.2026)
Course completion requirements
Assessment
·Active participation in class (discussion question, class exercises): 25%
·Concept paper (700 words):discuss one important analytical concept from the readings. Explain what it is, and what allows one to do in relation to another concepts in relation to another text or event and show what it can do: 25%
·Abstract/outline for final paper: research question, outline, sources) (250 words): 10%
·Final paper (1600 words): analyses a (surprising) ‘vignette’, an extract from a fieldnote, interview, novel, photograph, film extract from a conceptual perspective discussed in the course (must cite at least 3 sources from the course); can build on reflection paper, and can be co-written (3500 words): 40%
Last update: Lorenz-Meyer Dagmar Regine, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)
Syllabus
a full sylabus will be distributed at the beginning of the semester.
Last update: Lorenz-Meyer Dagmar Regine, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)
