Topical Focus / Course Description:
The seminar discusses the inner workings of contemporary debates regarding migration in both the EU and the US. It focuses on the discursive production of illegality via socio-legal mechanism and media representations of racialized and gendered tropes of “the migrant.” In a first section, the seminar analyzes, via different media and phenomena, how the European Union and “Europe”—as an imaginary space of unity and homogeneity—represent (forced and/or undocumented) migrants and as the ultimate “other” threatening Western civilization. The second section of the seminar introduces Judith Butler’s notion of “grievability” that elaborates how the US, and the “West” in more general terms, establishes hierarchies of grief regarding the public depiction and representation of dead bodies (such as migrant corpses in the desert borderlands between Mexico and the US). Butler’s concept becomes pivotal when debating the contemporary US migration discourse and its evolving politics of mourning.
Requirements:
Attendance and active participation in class are expected in order to successfully partake in the course.
Regarding exam requirements, a term paper according to the examination regulations of your MA program must be written. Additionally, a portfolio of 2,000 words must be prepared (more details will be provided in the prepatory meeting).
Dates:
Prepatory Meeting: January 10th, 2020, 14.00 hrs, room tba
Sessions will take place: 2020, January 31st (10-18 hrs) and February 1st (10-16 hrs) / February 14th (10-18 hrs) and February 15th (10-14 hrs), rooms tba
Selected Literature:
Délano Alonso, Alexandra/ Nienass, Benjamin (2016): “Deaths, Visibility, and Responsibility: The Politics of Mourning at the US-Mexico Border.” In Social Research 83 (2), 421-451.
Genova, Nicholas de (2017) (ed.): The Borders of ‚Europe:‘ Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering. London/Durham, NC: Duke UP.
Talavera, Victor/ Núnez-Mchiri, Guillermina Gina/ Heymann, Josiah (2010): “Deportation in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: Anticipation, Experience, and Memory.” In: Genova, Nicholas de/ Peutz, Nathalie (eds.), The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement: London/Durham, NC: Duke UP, S. 166-195.
- Lehrende/r: Mareike Gebhardt