Racial Biopolitics, Black Futurity - YMGS639

• Title: Racial Biopolitics, Black Futurity
• Guaranteed by: Programme Gender Studies (24-KGS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: winter s.:combined
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:0/2, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (25)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: doc. Věra Sokolová, M.A., Ph.D.; Dagmar Lorenz - Meyer, M.A., Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): Dagmar Lorenz - Meyer, M.A., Ph.D.
• Co-requisite : {The course under this code is intended for MA level students. BA students interested in this course need to enrol the BA level code that begins with "YB".}
• Incompatibility : YBLS034
• Is incompatible with: YBLS034

Annotation

English

This course introduces students into the racial structuring of contemporary societies that purport to foster equality 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, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)

Czech

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, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)

Course completion requirements

·       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 : 15%

·       Session leader: Jointly (with c 2-3 other students) prepare one handout for that class that contains a 500-word synopsis of the three main readings, a; a sound or piece of music, and 6 questions for classroom discussion  (blocks iI-IV). 20%

·       Abstract for final paper : 5%

·       Final paper (1800 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): 35%; 

Last update: Lorenz - Meyer Dagmar, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)

Syllabus

The full course syllabus and the first readings will be available in the first week of the semester. Sessions will consist of short lectures, student led discussions and classroom excercises. Course requirements include leading the discussion, a short response papers and a term paper.

Block I  White Innocence and the In/visibilities of Racial Formations

Block II  Gender, Racial Schemas and Premature Death

Block III Silence and Absences in the Archive

Block IV : Racial and gendered Trans/Formations and Utopias

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Last update: Lorenz - Meyer Dagmar, M.A., Ph.D. (05.09.2025)