15602a

WiSe 22/23: Colonial (Un)making of Gender and Sexuality

Hannah Vögele

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Course Description: This course traces the production of dominant categories of gender and sexuality in, through and with colonialism and continuous forms of dispossession. Today, the binary ordering of gender and heterosexual monogamous marriage and family structures are prominently being challenged by queer communities. We unpack how modern gender and sexual orders have never been natural in the first place and historicize how and why they come into being. Avoiding a single grand universalizing narrative, we follow different ways of conceptualizing gender, sexuality and their formation through colonialization and land theft, trans-Atlantic slavery, global capitalism, legal interventions, and war. Examples from concrete socio-historical contexts also show how stories of colonial imposition and enforcement of gender binaries, heterosexuality and the patriarchal family are also always stories of excess and resistance to it. By way of engagement with key political, social, and cultural texts from mainly Black feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, queer and trans theorists, the course also discusses different methodologies. We learn from how these scholars approach study and research and engage with issues of positionality, objectivity/subjectivity and universality/particularity as well as how to do research with care and how to avoid reproducing violence. Course Organisation: The course consists of short presentations by the instructor and students, collective discussions and break up sessions for smaller group discussions and the engagement with different media formats. While the texts provide the basis for the sessions, it is important to also make possible a different engagement with the issues through videos, podcasts, films and other forms of storytelling and theorizations. The working language of the course will be English, and all the material will be in English, though students can also contribute with German and other language materials, as long as translations are always possible. Requirements Participation (“Teilnahmeschein”) - Participate in class, in the discussions and group work - Prepare short reading notes/reflections on the literature for every class (discussing the arguments and/or methods of the literature); alternatively bring and introduce additional material (i.e. from podcasts, videos, protests, political actions, novels and non-academic literature – this should correspond to, expand or critique the arguments and/or methods of the main literature) Exam (“Modulprüfung für Leistungsschein”) - Paper of ca. 4.500 words (“Hausarbeit”) - Paper topics should be discussed with the lecturer in advance, we will also discuss them in class in one of the last sessions - Deadline 31.03.2023 Info on requirements (in German, we will provide an English version of this in class): https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/grundlagen/gender-div/studium_lehre/studium/SchriftlicheArbeit_Leitfaden_Gender_Diversity.pdf close

16 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Tue, 14:00 - 16:00 16 Class schedule

Tue, 2022-10-18 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Hannah Vögele