The 2021 Transatlantic Students Symposium examines the interrelationship be-tween the production of knowledge and processes of (de)colonization. The sympo-sium particularly seeks to decenter established master narratives (D. Chakrabarty) as well as terminologies and methodologies (L. Tuhiwai-Smith) in order to re-think power hierarchies and different positionalities, and to develop strategies towards a politics of care which transcends narrow national interests.
By focusing on decolonization of knowledge as the central methodological approach the course particularly investigates cultures and societies that have been historically oppressed and silenced through policies of erasure, dominance, colonialism, apart-heid, genocide, and the Holocaust (H. Bhabha, E. Said, G. Spivak, H. Arendt).
In doing so, we will employ multiple critical lenses (such as critical epistemology, transnational feminism, queer studies, Indigenous and Black sovereignty, global social theory) to promote an understanding of knowledge production that debunks knowledge constructed and practiced under colonialist projects and that helps us to work towards fulfilling the liberatory promise of a postcolonial, democratic and in-clusive world that can stand up to the challenges posed by authoritarianism and nationalism today.
The multiple crises that are challenging every single nation state on the planet cur-rently, and with it the global order, call for a new politics of care. Most recently, global and local responses to the Coronavirus pandemic have forcefully made visible long-existing and deeply rooted social, economic, and political injustices, and re-vealed the severe discrepancies of social (health) care as a result of hegemonic po-litics of exclusion that perpetuate colonialist patterns. They have also shown that the global and the local need to be considered together and that attempts to main-tain and deepen hegemonic divisions are doomed to fail.
Moreover, addressing decolonization in the transatlantic realm needs to problema-tize the prioritization of the Western perspective on transatlantic relations and thus requires to refocus on the entirety of the Atlantic realm, both in the Northern and the Southern hemisphere.
The course will generally follow an asynchronous digital format (with synchronous phases) that will include various virtual spaces of collaboration with students from the partner institutions (Oregon State University, Southern Oregon University, University of Warsaw and – possibly – University of Tübingen), such as colloquia, di-gital forums, student-run workshops.
The course will culminate in the 19th Transatlantic Students Symposium to be held as a Virtual Edition in March 2021.
Course requirements include active class participation, in-class presentations, inde-pendent project work and a symposium presentation.
Please register for the course via AGNES.
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