Moodle.UP

This course is only for students who have to do the "Übersetzungspraktikum" as part of their Master's degree in Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture. Please note that in Anke Bartels' class you can only do translations this semester. If you do not speak enough German to do so successfully, please enroll in this class (Robert Segrott), where you can write a review article instead.

As the current ecological crises and the various forms of oppression, discrimination and injustice around the globe demonstrate, the issues of global warming, species extinction and the loss of biodiversity cannot be regarded as isolated from issues of social and ecological justice, forced migration, and war. These crises have also become regarded as symptoms of the so-called Anthropocene, which also comes with a realisation that the old human-made models of knowledge and power need a thorough revision in order to better understand this contemporary moment, and to envision a socially and ecologically just future on this planet.
This seminar will engage with different modes and methods of cultural and postcolonial analysis, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities, to discuss the socially uneven encounters and entanglements of earthly living, and ask: In which ways are the current ecological challenges entangled with colonial histories and their multiple legacies?
Cultural theorist Marie-Luise Pratt’s notion of the contact zone will serve as an entry point into this discussion: In Pratt’s The Art of the Contact Zone (1991), the aim of the concept was to move the study of empire from the European imperial centre and recentre it at the sites of imperial intervention, in effect to decentre Europe. Her recent book, Planetary Longings (2022), deals with how mass extinction of nonhuman life-forms ows to the impact of humans on their habitats. Here the contact zone helps to critically examine and displace anthropocentrism, as it did Eurocentrism in its original context.

In the last few of years, popular debates about colonialist representations in the public space – through monuments and street names, for instance – have gained momentum, especially in connection with the toppling of monuments in various cities around the world (e.g. Bristol/UK) depicting leading colonial actors involved in the enslavement trade and in the oppression of people in the formerly colonized countries.
In this seminar, we will critically discuss popular debates (drawing from different media outlets) and academic discourses (based on theoretical texts) that address some of the histories, concepts, and practices of dealing with colonial legacies as represented in and performed with monuments, architectures and street names.
Students will read theoretical texts from cultural studies, postcolonial studies and memory studies, as well as sound and sensory studies to study the social, cultural and multi-sensory dimensions of memory and knowledge making.
The seminar will also engage with different artistic and activist interventions into colonialist representations in the urban space, for instance through campaigns, artistic interventions, decolonial walks and audio guides in Britain and beyond.
There will also be space for exploring practice-based methods of engaging with monuments through sound walks and field recordings.