Lecture Series Diversity, Gender & Intersectionality
Violence. Power. School. - Recognise, Prevent And Act Against Abuse
The history of pedagogy is also a history of violence. The reappraisal of violent relationships requires a systemic view of education in educational institutions. With the planned lecture series we would like to give different lecturers from science, practice and prevention projects space to inform and reflect together with the students.
The lectures will include the following main topics:
- Sexual education for the teaching profession with an intersectional focus
- Protection concepts in schools
- Black pedagogy
- Cyber safety
- Sexualised violence against children and adolescents from the perspective of the federal government
- Prevention measures
- Projects and contact points
The lecture series "Violence. Power. School." is organised by the Teacher Education Centre (ZLF) of the University of Passau together with the University's Executive Support Unit for Diversity and Gender Euquality. In addition to students, teachers from the near area are also cordially invited to actively participate in the discussion and reflection with their own experiences and critical questions.
Registration
The event is held on Wednesday evenings, at 6:15 pm in HS2 (PHIL). Virtual participation via Zoom is possible.
Registration for students via Stud.IP no. 68500.
Faculty teachers can use FIBS for their registration. The event number is 344303.
External participants can register via the registration form.
The events will be held in German.
Programme
Realistically, it must be assumed that every fourth to sixth girl and every ninth to eleventh boy in Germany experiences sexual violence; around 80% of the perpetrators usually come from the family environment (acquaintances, neighbors, uncles, stepfathers, fathers, etc.). Children and adolescents are also in a structural and personal relationship of dependency within the institution of school and [especially] with teachers and educators, which in principle increases the risk of assault. Therefore sexual assault and sexualised violence can in principle also occur in any educational institution. This lecture introduces the lecture series with three important questions: What is sexualised violence? Why is it important to address it, especially for (future) teachers? What can be done in case of an incident?
For students of LA GSP: The contents of the lecture are relevant for exams.
Univ. Prof. Dr. Christina Hansen studied educational science and psychology in Vienna. From 2003-2007 she was a research associate at the Institute for Special Education at the University of Vienna, and from 2007-2010 she held a professorship for giftedness research at the University of Karlsruhe.
Since 2010, Hansen has held the Chair of Educational Science with a focus on diversity research and educational spaces of middle childhood at the University of Passau. In addition, she is the academic director of the Department of Internationalisation of Teacher Education at the ZLF Passau. Since 2020, she has been a member of the Scientific Quality Assurance Council of the Austrian Federal Government.
Hansen was Vice President for Higher Education until August 2020, since September 2020 she is Vice President for Internationalisation, Europe and Diversity.
Her research focuses on diversity research, education and (social) space, professionalisation, and internationalisation of teacher education.
The presentation "From G as in Grooming to S as in Sexting - Cyber Security in Everyday School Life: Teachers as Shields against Online Threats?!" highlights the increasing importance of cyber security in education. In a digitalised world, students are increasingly exposed to online threats such as sex crimes, fraud and extortion. But can teachers actually become shields against these risks? This interactive presentation explores the role of teachers in educating students about cyber risks, promoting safe online behaviors, and implementing security measures in schools. Using selected case studies and best practices, possible strategies are presented on how educational institutions can help create a safe online environment for students and provide them with the necessary skills to deal with digital risks.
Corinna Hörmann has been working at Johannes Kepler University Linz since 2018 and conducts research with her team in the field of didactics of computer science and the implementation of digital basic education. Hörmann works on teaching and learning content for students and teachers, creates teaching materials and trains educators. She would describe herself as a modern STEMinist who dreams of a better world and a happy life.
Statistically, there are up to 2 children in every classroom who are experiencing or have experienced sexual violence in the past. The numbers tend to go up instead of down. In order to deal preventively with the topic of "sexual violence" as a school, to counteract the uncertainty of action and to achieve a removal of taboos, protection concepts are developed at schools. What are the components of a protection concept? Who is involved? How can it be sustainably anchored in schools and where can support be found? After a short introduction to the topic of "sexual violence", the lecture will deal with answering all these questions.
Christina Reuter studied elementary school teaching and school psychology in Eichstätt from 1995 to 1999. She completed her traineeship from 2001 to 2003 in Landsberg am Lech and Starnberg. From 2003 to 2022, She was a school psychologist and elementary school teacher in Augsburg. Since 2022, she has been an institute rector at the Academy for Teacher Research and Personnel Management in Dillingen an der Donau. Her main fields of activity are pedagogy, psychology and health promotion, special talents, gender and prevention of sexual violence.
Traditions prove to be extremely stubborn and resistant to change. This is especially true of those associated with childhood memories, even when the emotions and actions associated with them were experienced as terrifying. The staging of the visit of St. Nicholas and his companions around 6. December in family, school, community, clubs, and boarding school education can be considered a prime example of the appropriation of an actually positively grounded figure of salvation by the traditional history of a "black pedagogy." The corresponding depictions and autobiographical reports make clear in a frightening way with what self-evidence the moralising and humiliating concomitants of this pre-Christmas festive ritual were not only accepted, but formed the emotional core of the event. What is striking and appalling is that even today, in many places, the staging of the visit to St. Nicholas takes place according to the modalities of a black pedagogy.
Prof. Dr. Hans Mendl received his doctorate in 1995 with the dissertation "Literature as a mirror of Christian life. Religious narratives by Catholic authors from 1750 - 1850". Since 1999 he has held the Chair of Religious Education and Didactics of Religious Education at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Passau, now the Department of Catholic Theology at the University of Passau. His research focuses on theories of constructivism, the conceptual development of performative religious education and learning from other people's biographies with a focus on "everyday heroes". He is co-editor of the religion book for grammar school religious education "Religion vernetzt PLUS" and is involved in teacher training and further education.
In October, the federal and state governments addressed the topic of Current Research on Sexual Violence and Schools as a central issue for the further development of schools. The research project "SeBiLe - Sexual Education for the Teaching Profession" has recommendations ready for further development: Based on a large quantitative study among teachers and student teachers and supplementary interviews with teachers, a curriculum for the discussion of sexual education and the prevention of sexualised violence was developed for teacher training. Based on SeBiLe, the topics of sexuality and the prevention of sexualised violence are to be included in the training and further education of prospective and practising teachers at as many locations as possible.
Online attendance
Look & Protect, these two keywords make it clear that on the one hand it is necessary to strengthen children and young people individually to protect them from sexualised violence. On the other hand, adults must also be held responsible for this protection. Especially by structurally integrating the topic of sexualised violence in the respective organisation and institution, as it has been practiced in the diocese of Passau for years (e.g. church youth work).
By attending the event, the audience will gain a theory-based and practice-oriented insight into how the Diocese of Passau implements the claim of "Look & Protect" and why it is fundamentally worthwhile to implement prevention measures. However, you will also have the opportunity to personally deal with the topic of closeness and distance with a view to professionalisation in your own (work) environment.
Bettina Sturm has been the Prevention Officer for the prevention of sexualised violence in the Diocese of Passau since 2019.
She studied Social Pedagogy and Caritas sciences and worked for 18 years as a counsellor in a counselling centre of the Diocesan Caritas Association before joining the Diocese.
On January 24, 2024, we invite you to a panel discussion. The event will be moderated by Katrina Jordan. In addition to the President of the University of Passau, Dr. Christian Baumgartner from Weißer Ring, Kerstin Harant from IGEL e.V. Passau, Herbert Hugger from TV Passau, and Anneliese Fraser, ZLF Managing Director and Deputy Head of the ZLF Working Group Heterogeneity and Diversity will be on the panel. Under the title "No power to violence", projects and contact persons in and around Passau will have their say.
Univ. Prof. Dr. Christina Hansen studied educational science and psychology in Vienna. From 2003-2007 she was a research associate at the Institute for Special Education at the University of Vienna, and from 2007-2010 she held a professorship for giftedness research at the University of Karlsruhe.
Since 2010, Hansen has held the Chair of Educational Science with a focus on diversity research and educational spaces of middle childhood at the University of Passau. In addition, she is the academic director of the Department of Internationalisation of Teacher Education at the ZLF Passau. Since 2020, she has been a member of the Scientific Quality Assurance Council of the Austrian Federal Government.
Hansen was Vice President for Higher Education until August 2020, since September 2020 she is Vice President for Internationalisation, Europe and Diversity.
Her research focuses on diversity research, education and (social) space, professionalisation, and internationalisation of teacher education.
Contact
Regine Fahn
Executive Support Unit Diversity and Gender Equality, room JUR 003
E-Mail: regine.fahn@uni-passau.de, phone: +49(0)851/509-1122
The lecture series is sponsored by Prof. Dr. Christina Hansen, Vice President of the University of Passau.
Normality - Images, Discourses, Practices
‘Norms’ in the sense of efforts to find the right measure, to establish rules for appropriate behaviour and to define social, cultural, geographical and aesthetic boundaries between one's own and the other or the foreign are an integral part of cultural history. These rules find expression in the most diverse media and arts, for example as visualisations, but also in literature, in various discourses or in popular and everyday practices. It is true for all areas that the actors involved let themselves be guided by standards, confirm them, but also creatively or subversively thwart them. Thinking of social order as the implementation of norms and normality initially makes the category of the normal appear as a paradigm of modernity. However, the associated contexts of domination and oppression (e.g. pogroms, repression, stigmatisation) turn out to be long-established cultural patterns for the defence and disciplining of the non-normal.
The multidisciplinary lecture series "Normality - Images, Discourses, Practices" would like to take up the discussion on the meaning of normality and on the functioning of normalisation processes and ask about concrete processes of the genesis and shaping of regulations, patterns and schemes producing normality. A decidedly cultural-scientific, media-theoretical and cultural-aesthetic perspective will be pursued. The entire spectrum of human ideas of order and standardisation techniques will be addressed, from the specifics of historical disciplinary and stabilisation measures to current examples of a postmodern power of normalisation.
26.04.2023 - Normalität – Bilder, Diskurse, Praktiken. Einführung in das Thema der Ringvorlesung. - Prof. Dr. Natascha Adamowsky, Prof. Dr. Andrea Sieber
‘Norms’ in the sense of efforts to find the right measure, to establish rules for appropriate behaviour and to define social, cultural, geographical and aesthetic boundaries between one's own and the other or the foreign are an integral part of cultural history. These rules find expression in the most diverse media and arts, for example as visualisations, but also in literature, in various discourses or in popular and everyday practices. It is true for all areas that the actors involved let themselves be guided by standards, confirm them, but also creatively or subversively thwart them. Thinking of social order as the implementation of norms and normality initially makes the category of the normal appear as a paradigm of modernity. However, the associated contexts of domination and oppression (e.g. pogroms, repression, stigmatisation) turn out to be long-established cultural patterns for the defence and disciplining of the non-normal.
The multidisciplinary lecture series "Normality - Images, Discourses, Practices" would like to take up the discussion on the meaning of normality and on the functioning of normalisation processes and ask about concrete processes of the genesis and shaping of regulations, patterns and schemes producing normality. A decidedly cultural-scientific, media-theoretical and cultural-aesthetic perspective will be pursued. The entire spectrum of human ideas of order and standardisation techniques will be addressed, from the specifics of historical disciplinary and stabilisation measures to current examples of a postmodern power of normalisation.
The opening lecture provides an overview of the historical genesis of normalisation processes and outlines the common theoretical framework in which the other lectures in the lecture series will examine 'normality' in more detail using exemplary artefacts, images, discourses, media and practices in both diachronic and synchronic perspectives.
Natascha Adamowsky is a media and cultural scientist and has held the Chair of Media Cultural Studies with a focus on digital cultures at the University of Passau since 2020. Previously, she was a professor of media studies in the field of digital media technologies at the University of Siegen, professor and head of the Institute for Media Cultural Studies at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and professor of cultural studies aesthetics at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Prof. Dr Andrea Sieber has held the professorship for Older German Literature at the University of Passau since 2016. Her research focuses on cultural studies approaches in medieval studies, media history and media theory as well as the reception of the Nibelungen myth. She combines philological analyses with transmedial perspectives. Her central objective is to make the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages present and to communicate it in schools, universities and to a broader public. Since 2018, Andrea Sieber has been working as the University Women's Representative to promote true equality of women and men in academia and to eliminate existing disadvantages. Together with the Vice President for International Affairs and Diversity, she organises the lecture series "Diversity, Gender & Intersectionality" every semester.
03.05.2023 - Wie 'normal' war Diskriminierung im europäischen Mittelalter? / Normalität und Normativität: Philosophische Perspektiven auf Außergewöhnlichkeiten- Prof. Dr. Kristin Skottki / Prof. Dr. Karoline Reinhardt
Wie ‚normal‘ war Diskriminierung im europäischen Mittelalter? Intersektionale Aspekte der Konstruktion des Jüdischen
For intersectionality studies oriented towards the present, it is self-evident to assume that inequality and discrimination are social phenomena to be overcome and combated. But was this also true for societies in the European Middle Ages? Was the social inequality that prevailed at that time perceived as unjust, or as normal because it was supposedly 'natural'? How did the people concerned react to discourses and practices that we would call discriminatory today? Selected examples of negatively constructed Jewish alterity will be used to explore this question.
Kristin Skottki has been an assistant professor of medieval history at the University of Bayreuth since 2016. She is a co-editor of the book series "Transcultural Medieval Studies" (Brepols) and "Global Histories before Globalisation" (Routledge). Her current main research project "Sternberg 1492: An Exemplary Study of Late Medieval Christian-Jewish Relations, Christian Piety and the Relationship between History and Memory" (working title) is dedicated to the history and significance of the Host SacrilegeTrial of 1492 and the subsequent Holy Blood Pilgrimage in this small town in Mecklenburg. She deals with intersectionality and global history as approaches to past and present historiographies.
Normalität und Normativität: Philosophische Perspektiven auf Außergewöhnlichkeit
What are we obliged to do - and what goes beyond that? What role does "the normal" play in the justification of norms? Or in other words: how normative is normality? These questions are philosophically particularly interesting in places where we transgress, perhaps must transgress, the boundaries of the normal, where norms are violated in order to set new ones, where we move from the ordinary to the extraordinary. At the latest, James O. Urmson's essay "Saints and Heros" (1958) philosophically revived the debate on the question of the systematic place of outstanding actions. The author argues that all moral philosophies that assume a trichotomous division of actions into "commanded", "forbidden" and "permitted" cannot adequately describe the actions of saints and heroes; for this, another category is needed, namely that of supererogation. Based on the questions raised in Urmson's text about the systematic place of moral exceptionality in ethics, I will look at normality from the perspective of exceptionality in my lecture and, using recent research contributions on the sense and nonsense of (moral) heroism, examine how normality and normativity relate to each other here.
Prof. Dr. Karoline Reinhardt has been Junior Professor of Applied Ethics at the University of Passau since 2022. Previously, she was a PostDoctoral Fellow at the Ethics & Philosophy Lab of the DFG Cluster of Excellence "Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science" at the University of Tübingen, a research associate at the IZEW and, in 2018, a Visiting Scholar at Tulane University in New Orleans. After studying philosophy and political science in Tübingen, New York and London, she received her doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a thesis on "Migration and World Citizenship". For her dissertation, she was awarded the Walter Witzenmann Prize and the Kant Promotion Prize. She is a member of the Young Academy of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
10.05.2023 - A-Normalität (post-)migrantischer Frauen in Frankreich / Gendern - neue Normalität oder nicht mehr normal - Prof. Dr. Marina Hertrampf / Prof. Dr. Alexander Werth
A-Normalität (post-)migrantischer Frauen in Frankreich
France is considered the country of human rights; with the motto "liberty, equality, fraternity", the republic underlines its self-claim to equal rights. However, the realities often look different, not least for the French integration model, which relies on assimilation. Migrants and even post-migrants repeatedly come up against the limits of the uniforming-norming system that relies heavily on social reproduction. A fact that ultimately makes postmigration appear as a-normative and a-normal. The fact that this is especially true for (post-)migrant women is illustrated by exemplary literary texts by (post-)migrant women authors from France.
Marina Ortrud M. Hertrampf
Since 2020 Professor of Romance Philology (literature and cultural studies, focus on France) at the University of Passau.
Author of a monograph on the interrelations of photography and the novel in French postmodernism (2011), a study on spatial dimensions in the Spanish Corpus Christi play (2018) and a small book on French graphic novels on the Arab Spring (2016). Numerous publications on a wide range of research interests such as theories of space, rurality, cultural contact, imagology, migration & diaspora, exophony, intermediality, graphic narrative, Francophone literatures, Romani Studies and didactics of literature. President of the Society of Friends of Romain Rolland e.V.. Board member of the German Romance Studies Association.
Co-editor of the journal Hispanorama and the series "Europäische Kommunikationskulturen" (Rombach Verlag), "Ästhetiken der Roma - Selbst- und Fremddarstellungen" (AVM), "Forum Junge Romanistik" (AVM) and "LiteraturKulturRäume" (Stauffenburg Verlag).
Gendern – neue Normalität oder nicht mehr normal?
There is probably no other topic that is currently (and has been for some years) so heated in public discourse as linguistic gendering. Sometimes there is even talk of a social camp formation and division into gender supporters and gender deniers. Starting from the question of how linguistic norms can be defined linguistically, the lecture will discuss the current norms on linguistic gendering: What does the official orthography say, what recommendations does the Duden give and how are the language guidelines, e.g. at universities, designed? Based on this, linguistic gendering is placed in the context of general developments in language change. The questions of how the massive socio-symbolic charge of gendering came about and how the German language will possibly develop further with regard to gendering will be the focus of this lecture.
Professor Dr. Alexander Werth
since 2021 Chair (W3) of German Linguistics at the University of Passau
2018 Venia legendi in German Linguistics at the University of Marburg
2017-2021 Professorships at the Universities of Augsburg, Bonn and Erlangen-Nuremberg
2009 Doctorate (Dr. phil.) at the University of Marburg
2007-2021 Research assistant at the University of Marburg, Research Centre German Linguistic Atlas
2000-2005 Studies for Magister (Mag. Artium): German language (focus: linguistics), political science and media studies at the universities of Marburg and Hamburg
17.05.2023 - Ein kritischer Blick auf die Transformation von Zielsetzungen des Deutschunterrichts / „Als plötzlich nichts mehr normal war“ – Corona, Werbung und Normalismus - Prof. Dr. Markus Pissarek / Prof. Dr. Hans Krah
„Gott sei Dank hat sich die OECD als deus ex machina erwiesen“ – Ein kritischer Blick auf die Transformation von Zielsetzungen des Deutschunterrichts
In German didactics, there has been a lively discussion about the standardisation of subject-specific educational goals and the associated secondary consequences with regard to the setting of learning goals for German lessons since the far-reaching "PISA shock". On the one hand, standardisation is seen as a danger of trivialising and reducing teaching to the merely standardisable; on the other hand, it is emphasised that the turn to empiricism and monitoring has only made glaring deficiencies and inequalities visible and made new intervention concepts possible.
Using examples and results from empirical classroom research, this lecture will take a look at the tension between normality (as a quantitative-statistical concept) and normativity (as a phenomenon of setting) and show that we have to struggle with irresolvable paradoxes in this regard when it comes to teaching language competences.
Prof. Dr. Markus Pissarek; since 202o holder of the Chair of Didactics of German Language and Literature at the University of Passau; previously Head of School of Education and the Subject Didactics of German at the University of Klagenfurt; studies and doctorate at the Universities of Passau, Columbus/Ohio, Stirling/Scotland; first and second state examinations in teaching German and English at grammar schools, teacher at the grammar school in Vilshofen and later (from 2008) research assistant at the University of Regensburg. Research interests are adaptive reading promotion, competence modelling for reading and literary learning, subject-specific professional research.
„Als plötzlich nichts mehr normal war“ – Corona, Werbung und Normalismus
With the 'Corona crisis', the advertising industry in 2020 also found itself in a crisis situation: 'Is it allowed to advertise in these times as if nothing had happened?', 'How can we continue to advertise in these times at all?' More or less implicitly, a problem with normality is articulated here, certainly in the sense in which it was theoretically founded by Jürgen Link in normalistic thinking.
The lecture deals with TV commercials that ran from the end of March to the end of August 2020 and address the Corona situation. By means of exemplary observations, it offers some observations on how, on the one hand, the Corona situation has affected the challenges that advertising has to face as a text type, and how, on the other hand, this itself changes again in the course of 2020, describable precisely as (re)normalisation.
Prof. Dr. Hans Krah; since 2002 Chair of Modern German Literature at the University of Passau; studies and doctorate at the LMU Munich, habilitation 2000 at the CAU Kiel; in addition to the focus on literary history, research on media and cultural semiotic issues, such as popular mediation of 'knowledge', on media constructions of space and reality, on anthropologies/ideologies and their argumentative mediation in texts, especially with regard to gender ideas.
24.05.2023 - Queer? Genderfluidität in der christlichen Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit / Von Evas Verführung zum Glitch Feminism. Zur Geschichte von Gendernormen und Fehlerzuschreibungen. - Prof. Dr. Jörg Trempler / Prof. Dr. Martina Heßler
Queer? Genderfluidität in der christlichen Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit
Gender fluidity is not a phenomenon of modernity. For example, the famous hermaphrodites were already known in antiquity. Against this background, the lecture will address the reception of these older traditions in Christian art of the early modern period. Finally, it will be discussed whether these older phenomena can also be described with the contemporary concept of queerness, or where the differences are to be found.
Jörg Trempler has been head of the Department of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Passau since 2015. In addition to numerous writings on German Romantic art, his main interests include representations of catastrophes. In addition to publishing in academic anthologies and journals, Trempler has also published monographs with renowned publishers such as CH Beck, Mathes & Seitz and Wagenbach. Since 2012, Trempler has also worked regularly as a curator and has prepared international exhibitions, such as the current one together with the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg on the theme: "Im Nebel. The Invention of the Atmospheric".
Von Evas Verführung zum Glitch Feminism. Zur Geschichte von Gendernormen und Fehlerzuschreibungen
A mistake is considered a deviation from what is right. To speak of a mistake, it is therefore necessary to define "right" and "wrong". Not only in the technical sphere are norms set that must be adhered to, but also in the social sphere. From a historical perspective, the lecture asks about gender-specific attributions of mistakes and the associated setting of norms: How are images of "right" and "wrong" femininity/masculinity formed through the attribution of mistakes?
The lecture will cover a broad cultural-historical arc, ranging from primal narratives about Adam and Eve to a focus on technical errors and gender attributions to glitch feminism. The lecture is thus based on a broad concept of mistakes. Themes include sins and moral misconduct, mistakes in technical processes and concepts of mistakes as resistance to the mainstream.
Martina Heßler has been Professor of the History of Technology at the TU Darmstadt since 2019. She is currently researching the history of human-machine relations since the early modern period as well as the technological history of mistakes. Currently, a book on the history of the figure of defective humans is in preparation (publication 2024).
07.06.2023 - Normalisierung durch Parodierung? Konzepte von Homosexualität / "The Repair of the Political“ — Zur Unabschließbarkeit reparativer Logiken - Prof. Dr. Jan-Oliver Decker / Prof. Dr. Maria Muhle
Normalisierung durch Parodierung? Konzepte von Homosexualität in „Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt“ (BRD 1971, Rosa von Praunheim) und „Der bewegte Mann“ (BRD 1994, Sönke Wortmann)
Both Rosa von Praunheim's "Not the Homosexual is Perverted, but the Situation in which He Lives" (FRG 1971) and, over 20 years later, Sönke Wortmann's "Der bewegte Mann" (FRG 1994) present a homosexual subculture and thus provide a mainstream audience with insights into the life plans of gay men that were marginalised or at least little known at the time of the films' production. The lecture aims to show how in both films a gay life is constructed as an "other" that is categorised and evaluated from the perspective of an "own" through audiovisual mediation throughout the plot. In this context, special attention will be paid to the hyperbolic staging of gay lifeworlds and their characters in the lecture: Both films travesty and parody (time-specific) gay specifics and construct a gay self-image in the case of von Praunheim and a gay image of others in the case of Wortmann. In the chronological sequence of these two images, the lecture considers whether and, if so, how gay lifestyles are evaluated by the films as normal or still evaluated as "different" in the majority culture.
Jan-Oliver Decker, Prof. Dr. phil., born 1970.
- Studied Modern and Early German Literature, Linguistics, Art History and Media Studies at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel.
- After receiving his doctorate in 2002 on music videos with Madonna, he held a junior professorship in Modern German Literature and Media Studies at Kiel University from 2003-2009, which was positively evaluated in 2006.
- Since 2011, he has been a university professor for Modern German Literature and Media Semiotics at the University of Passau.
- Since 2005, he has been an advisory board member of the Literature Section in the German Society for Semiotics, of which he was also president from 2014 to 2017.
- His main research interests are: Literary and media semiotics, transmedial narratology, German-language literature from the 18th to the 21st century, film, television and new media in a cultural and mentality-historical perspectives teaching and learning with and via digital media in schools and universities (BMBF project SKILL.de).
14.06.2023 - Fremdheitserfahrung und Körpernormierung: Zwergenfrauen im 'Friedrich von Schwaben' / Normalität der industrialisierten Landwirtschaft - Dr. Judith Klinger / Prof. Dr. Anna Henkel
Fremdheitserfahrung und Körpernormierung: Zwergenfrauen im 'Friedrich von Schwaben'
In the late medieval Frederick of Swabia, the title character meets the dwarf queen Jerome, who wants Frederick for a husband and keeps him temporarily in captivity: The result is the daughter Ziproner, who follows the fugitive Frederick in later years and gains admission into his human family. The unusual figure of the female dwarf poses a riddle in an eccentric family constellation, for on the one hand Ziproner fits surprisingly smoothly into the courtly dynastic order, although on the other she is set apart from the noble community by markers of distance and strangeness. The novel arranges the overlapping of gender and species differentiations with the intrinsic spatiality of the dwarf world in a field of tension of ambivalent power and minor relationships. At its centre is the dwarf queen Jerome, who transgresses courtly norms and enforces love against the dominant gender order. Her extraordinary power turns into powerlessness in her relationship with the human man and breaks with an assumed bodily norm that makes the smallness of the noble-beautiful dwarf woman a problem. On the basis of the narrative and visual representation in the illustrated Heidelberg manuscript (cpg 345, circa 1470), the lecture examines which cultural and narrative processes of adaptation, equalisation and norming enable the integration of dwarf women into the aristocratic human world and where these processes reach their limits.
PD Dr. Judith Klinger studied German and English at the University of Hamburg as well as documentary film and television journalism at the University of Television and Film, Munich. Doctorate in Berlin with a thesis on conceptions of identity in prose Lancelot, habilitation in Potsdam with the thesis "Fremdes Begehren: Games of Identities and Differences in the Late 12th Century". Since 1995 employed at the Chair of German Medieval Studies in Potsdam. Co-editor of the series Popular Middle Ages (Transcript), research interests in the field of gender and queer studies, conceptions of space, animal studies, medieval reception.
Normalität der industrialisierten Landwirtschaft
Modern agriculture is very successful in that food security is guaranteed in a calculable way and agriculture harmonises with industrialisation. However, the field of agriculture is at the same time marked by numerous polarising challenges ranging from price pressure and animal welfare to soil, water and climate protection. Both the successes and the problems are closely linked to the regime of industrialised agriculture. This is accompanied by a dilemma: the normality of industrialised agriculture, which is almost invisible to the public and provides food security at historically low food prices, is incompatible with increasing demands for soil protection, water conservation, climate adaptation and the remuneration of qualified personnel - but these demands can be ignored less and less. What is needed is a transformation of the normality of agriculture, which necessarily implies a change in its social location.
The lecture traces the development towards the normality of industrialised agriculture from a socio-theoretical perspective, discusses the increasingly visible costs of this normality and points out challenges and development requirements.
Anna Henkel is a professor and has held the Chair of Sociology with a focus on the sociology of technology and sustainable development at the University of Passau since 2019. Previously, she was junior professor of social theory at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg and professor of cultural and media sociology at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focuses on sociological theory as well as on knowledge, materiality and sustainability research and on digitalisation. She combines socio-theoretical perspectives with empirical research, for example in the question of the change in responsibility relationships. Using social theoretical thinking to understand and explain social facts is her central objective.
21.06.2023 - Kunst als Blutsbrüderschaft mit dem irren Leben / Bilder. Welche sind es? Welche könnten es sein? - Prof. Dr. Karen van den Berg / Prof. Dr. Barbara Lutz-Sterzenbach
Karen van den Berg is professor of art theory and staging practice at Zeppelin University and academic director of the university's art programme. Research stays and teaching assignments have taken her to the University of Witten/Herdecke, the Chinati Foundation in Marfa (Texas), the IKKM of the Bauhaus University Weimar, the Europäische Kolleg Jena and the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, among others.
Her research focuses on art, politics and activism; artistic work and studio practice; museum and educational architectures.
In addition to numerous publications in these fields, she has written monographs and essays on artists and collectives such as: Richard Serra; Joseph Beuys; Forensic Architecture; Korpys/Löffler; Christian Jankowski and the Centre for Political Beauty. She is currently responsible for the Innovative Training Network training programme "The Future of Independent Art Spaces in a Period of socially Engaged Art (FEINART)", funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of Horizon 2020 (www.feinart.org).
Bilder. Welche sind es? Welche könnten es sein?
Art is the subject of images. Images are viewed, designed, reflected upon, communicated. The discourse on which images are the subject of discussion in reception, production and reflection in education, changes with varying dynamics. Essential conceptions of images or perspectives on the world of images persist. A critical reflection on the canon of images in curricula, media and textbooks for art education seems necessary in view of new social, art-theoretical and art-pedagogical discourses.
The lecture poses questions about normative ideas of images on the basis of the historical and current canon of images in art education and develops ideas for overcoming prevailing conceptions.
Dr Barbara Lutz-Sterzenbach is Professor of Art Education and Visual Literacy at the University of Passau. She conducts research on images in education in the context of globalisation/glocalisation, diversity and transculturality as well as on the cognitive potential of drawing with interdisciplinary references. Lutz-Sterzenbach studied art and German language and literature at the Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität and art at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, where she submitted her dissertation on the episteme of drawing (2015). She is the editor of numerous art education publications, the series "Kammerlohr. Fundamente der Kunst" series for grammar school art teaching and co-editor of the journal KUNST 5-10.
28.06.2023 - ‘Indianer’ in Science Fiction? Indigenous Futurism und die visuelle Infragestellung der kulturellen Norm/ Ritualisierte Transgressionen. Zirkus und Unterhaltung als Reflexion von Normalität - Prof. Dr. Karsten Fitz/Prof. Dr. Matthias Christen
‚Indianer’ in Science Fiction? – Indigenous Futurism und die visuelle Infragestellung der kulturellen Norm
Whether as a "dying race" (vanishing Indian), "noble" or "bloodthirsty savage", the literary, cinematic and artistic representations of mainstream American (and international!) society(ies) have frozen Native Americans in a static past for four hundred years. Against this backdrop of cultural imagination and appropriation from outside, it seems an oxymoron, an abnormality, to imagine indigenous peoples as part of future worlds. Indigenous futurisms, which go against this long-established Western norm, have emerged in the last decade as a broader artistic movement expressing Indigenous perspectives of the past, present and future in the context of science fiction and related subgenres in visual art, literature, film, comics, online games and other media forms. These perspectives often reflect indigenous forms of knowledge, traditional narratives, historical or contemporary political narratives and cultural realities. Indigenous futurisms are part of what Gerald Vizenor has called Native Survivance, a combination of ethnic survival and (often subversive) resistance. They challenge the centuries-long appropriation of indigenous cultures by the dominant society(ies) and at the same time diversify the frame of reference of the science fiction genre. As such, they contribute to processes of decolonisation. This paper examines the visual art of indigenous painter Ryan Singer (Navajo) at the intersection of pop art, activism and indigenous futurism. By focusing on Singer's artistic engagement with the fictional characters and settings of the Star Wars franchise, Singer's works are read as questioning the prevailing norm, as pop art acts of cultural and political decolonisation. This is evident, for example, when Singer (re)appropriates Princess Leia as Hopi Princess Leia (2009) because her hairstyle in Star Wars was originally adopted from the Hopi women's tradition, when Star Wars characters engage with Navajo gaming traditions, or when the artist uses an iconic Star Wars character in (De)Colonized Ewok (2019) to critique the forced assimilation of Native American children in boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Karsten Fitz is Professor of American Studies / Culture and Media Studies at the University of Passau. He studied American Studies and Political Science at the University of Hanover (M.A., Ph.D.) and at the University of Washington, Seattle. Fitz received the Fulbright American Studies Fellowship 2002-2003, which he spent at Harvard University and the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. His monographic works include Negotiating History and Culture: Transculturation in Contemporary Native American Fiction (Peter Lang, 2001) and The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s: Competing Images and Conflicting Narratives (Winter University Press, 2011). He is the editor of the anthology Visual Representations of Native Americans: Transnational Contexts and Perspectives (2012). Together with Birgit Däwes and Sabine Meyer, he is the editor of the book series Routledge Research in Transnational Indigenous Perspectives and co-editor of the first volume of this series, Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Motion (2015). His research on privacy issues led to the conference volume Cultures of Privacy: Paradigms, Transformations, Contestations (2015), co-edited with Bärbel Harju. Fitz has also published articles in various journals and conference proceedings on U.S. popular visual culture, American memory culture, American political culture, and in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Most recently, he co-edited (with Jürgen Kamm) the conference volume Transatlantic Cinema: Productions - Genres - Encounters - Negotiations (2020).
Ritualisierte Transgressionen. Zirkus und Unterhaltung als Reflexion von Normalität
As a highly modern form of early technological mass entertainment, the circus is a paradigmatic study of what constitutes entertainment. Contrary to the persistent caveat that entertainment is only a temporary escape from everyday life, the circus offers a highly complex model that helps to reflect the social and cultural context by deliberately transgressing the assumptions that establish normality in that context. Contrary to the conventional reading, however, entertainment does not simply consist in breaking norms and conventions, but in the fact that the act of transgression, as a ritualised one, is in turn subjected to fixed norms.
Matthias Christen, born in Lucerne, studied in Tübingen and Constance, doctorate with a thesis on the pictorial and textual forms of the journey through life, research assistant at the universities of Constance and Zurich, scholarship holder of the Swiss National Science Foundation, habilitation at the Ruhr University Bochum with a book on circus film. Photographic training at the Schule fas - Fotografie am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin. Since 2011 professor of media studies at the University of Bayreuth (film and photography). Co-director of the DFG project "Das Filmmanifest. History, Aesthetics and Mediality of an Activist Form" (together with Bernhard Groß, University of Jena).
05.07.2023 - Natur als Norm? Zum mittelalterlichen Naturrecht / Emojis: Zwischen Normalisierung und Normalität - Prof. Dr. Isabelle Mandrella / Prof. Dr. Gala Rebane
Natur als Norm? Zum mittelalterlichen Naturrecht
In medieval ethics, the medieval doctrine of natural law plays a central role. Its core idea is the justification of moral norms by means of the concept of a natural right that is to be understood in a non-positivist way, i.e. that is naturally obvious to every human being. But what does nature mean here at all and to what extent can it become normative in practical terms? The medieval thinkers adopt a concept that has its roots in Stoic philosophy and Roman law, but work out more strongly than these traditions that natural law is to be understood as the law of reason, because knowledge of natural rights is communicated to man through his reason. In the background a double concept of nature can be found, insofar as man is not only an animal creature, i.e. endowed with natural drives and instincts, but primarily a nature of reason - with normative implications.
Isabelle Mandrella holds a doctorate and habilitation in philosophy; her research focuses on the philosophy of the Middle Ages. She has been a professor of "Philosophy and Basic Philosophical Questions of Theology" at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at LMU Munich since 2012.
Emojis: Zwischen Normalisierung und Normalität
Emojis have become an indispensable and at the same time constantly contested attribute of everyday digital communication. The annually adopted additions to the pictorial vocabulary, in which both international media corporations and private users participate, reflect different ideas about social and cultural 'norms' and 'normality'. The lecture will focus specifically on gender identities and their normalisation in emoji discourses, including the ongoing debates on gender icons and their global reception.
Gala Rebane studied modern philology with a focus on Romance studies (specialisation in Italian studies) and was awarded a doctorate in intercultural communication. Between 2016 and 2022, she held the junior professorship for Intercultural Competence at Chemnitz University of Technology. Since September 2022, she holds the Chair of Comparative European Cultural Studies at the University of Passau. Her research interests include cultural identities and the reception of history in European countries, biculturalism and digital practices of everyday life. In 2021, her introductory volume on emojis was published in the series Digitale Bildkulturen by Wagenbach Verlag.
12.07.2023 - Abschluss zur Ringvorlesung (insbesondere für Studierende) - Prof. Dr. Natascha Adamowsky, Prof. Dr. Andrea Sieber
‘Norms’ in the sense of efforts to find the right measure, to establish rules for appropriate behaviour and to define social, cultural, geographical and aesthetic boundaries between one's own and the other or the foreign are an integral part of cultural history. These rules find expression in the most diverse media and arts, for example as visualisations, but also in literature, in various discourses or in popular and everyday practices. It is true for all areas that the actors involved let themselves be guided by standards, confirm them, but also creatively or subversively thwart them. Thinking of social order as the implementation of norms and normality initially makes the category of the normal appear as a paradigm of modernity. However, the associated contexts of domination and oppression (e.g. pogroms, repression, stigmatisation) turn out to be long-established cultural patterns for the defence and disciplining of the non-normal.
The multidisciplinary lecture series "Normality - Images, Discourses, Practices" would like to take up the discussion on the meaning of normality and on the functioning of normalisation processes and ask about concrete processes of the genesis and shaping of regulations, patterns and schemes producing normality. A decidedly cultural-scientific, media-theoretical and cultural-aesthetic perspective will be pursued. The entire spectrum of human ideas of order and standardisation techniques will be addressed, from the specifics of historical disciplinary and stabilisation measures to current examples of a postmodern power of normalisation.
The final lecture deepens the overview of the historical genesis of normalisation processes as well as the theoretical approaches taught and summarises the exemplary artefacts, images, discourses, media and practices presented from the perspective of different disciplines on the framework topic 'normality' in a synopsis.
Natascha Adamowsky is a media and cultural scientist and has held the Chair of Media Cultural Studies with a focus on digital cultures at the University of Passau since 2020. Previously, she was a professor of media studies in the field of digital media technologies at the University of Siegen, professor and head of the Institute for Media Cultural Studies at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and professor of cultural studies aesthetics at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Prof. Dr Andrea Sieber has held the professorship for Older German Literature at the University of Passau since 2016. Her research focuses on cultural studies approaches in medieval studies, media history and media theory as well as the reception of the Nibelungen myth. She combines philological analyses with transmedial perspectives. Her central objective is to make the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages present and to communicate it in schools, universities and to a broader public. Since 2018, Andrea Sieber has been working as the University Women's Representative to promote true equality of women and men in academia and to eliminate existing disadvantages. Together with the Vice President for International Affairs and Diversity, she organises the lecture series "Diversity, Gender & Intersectionality" every semester.
Let's talk about racism - Anti-Racism and Intersectionality in Conversation
Prof. Dr. Martina Pamanabhan, Chair of Critical Development Studies - Southeast Asia
Anti-racism is theory and practice to counter discrimination in the city and at the university. In the traditional lecture series Diversity, Gender & Intersectionality under the auspices of Vice-President Prof. Dr. Christina Hansen and the University’s Women's Representative Prof. Dr. Andrea Sieber and in cooperation with the Department for Diversity and Gender Equality, this winter is all about anti-racism and how we can understand it theoretically and live it practically in everyday university life, but also in e.g. the climate protection movement. Speakers from all over Germany and the UK will offer insights into the latest research on racism in international development cooperation, in educational institutions in Germany, and on how we can unlearn racism. The academic view will be joined by the perspective of civil society actors, such as the magazine makers OF COLOR. As a "Christmas present", Passau citizens and students will discuss their concrete approaches to anti-racist solidarity.
All these insights are based on intersectionality as a theoretical approach to analyse the entanglements of inequality through gender, class, ethnicity/nationality and age, among others. The university as a site of social change provides the space for debates on structural and institutional discrimination while seeking change. The diversification and decolonisation of teaching and research are challenges not only in everyday academic life. We will discuss with academics, civil society organisations and students how this can be achieved in Passau, throughout Germany and internationally. The theory and practice of anti-racism is the focus of this lecture series, which consciously relates academic analysis and social engagement.
26.10.2022 - We need to talk about racism: Becoming the Chair of “Critical Development Studies - Southeast Asia” A Minifesto - Prof. Dr. Martina Padmanabhan, Dimas Laksmana, Siti Maimunah, University of Passau
We renamed the chair of “Comparative development and Cultural studies with a focus on Southeast Asia” to “Critical Development Studies—Southeast Asia”. This is the outcome of an intense intellectual, political and yet intimate process over the last three years. In 2019 a group of international students from the MA Development Studies program reported the shock of experiencing racism in study groups and when looking for shared housing. While confined to online teaching, during class one student found the courage to share their experience of a racist incident on public transport in Passau, the perpetrator humiliating him before vanishing into anonymity. These distressing and painful aggressions urged us to start reflecting on our responsibilities and capabilities, as a chair at the university, to act upon discrimination and racism which still permeate higher education. Building upon feminist political ecology (FPE), post-development, decolonial theory and new area studies, we engaged in a process of learning, unlearning and relearning building up to “Principles of Critical Development Studies: A Minifesto”. We present here a collection of small but significant ideas and hope the commitment to pluralism will help shape the teaching practice and learning environment of the university as a whole.
Prof. Dr. Martina Padmanabhan holds the Chair Critical Development Studies - Southeast Asia at Passau University. She is an agricultural engineer and graduated in rural sociology at the University of Göttingen. She researches widely on gender relations, institutions and rural development and contributes to the debate on human-nature relationship, especially agrobiodiversity. She led international trans- and interdisciplinary sustainability projects i.e. on the use of biodiversity in South India and the societal transformation of agriculture via organic practices in Indonesia. She is part of the Feminist Political Ecology network WeGO. She is enthusiastic about feminist empirical fieldwork in Indonesia, India, Ghana and Ethiopia.
Dimas D. Laksmana is a doctoral candidate at the Chair of Critical Development Studies - Southeast Asia at Passau University. He graduated in environmental science and policy. His research lies at the intersection of science and technology studies and anthropology. His doctoral work as part of IndORGANIC, which is a transdisciplinary research project, investigates the politics of knowledge in organic agriculture in Indonesia.
Siti Maimunah is a Ph.D. student at the University of Passau, Germany, and she is a researcher for WEGO-ITN/ Mare Sklodowska Project 2018-2022. She is an activist and researcher working alongside NGOs to support communities affected by extractivism projects in Indonesia with JATAM, TKPT, and Sajogyo Institute. Her research combines activism and academic works to understand how the configuration of the Capitalist frontier through mega projects such as mining and logging shaped ethnicity, gender, and intersectionality on Kalimantan island, Indonesia.
Literature
Principles of Critical Development Studies SOA – Minifesto ASIEN
Laksmana, Dimas Dwi, Enid Still, and Martina Padmanabhan. 2021. We need to talk about racism. An invitation to join a conversation about racism at the University of Passau. A statement of the Chair of Comparative Development and Cultural Studies – Southeast Asia on: Decoloniality and empathy: Towards education that matters in our time.
02.11.2022 - Who is afraid of intersectionality in higher education? - Prof. Dr. Padmanabhan, Daniela Melissa Escarria Parra, Joeta Bakita Pendo Ndwiga, Ferdyani Yulia Atikaputri, Nicole Borges Steeb, Anna Kolb, University of Passau
We explore the theory and practice of intersectionality and decoloniality with regard to the case of the University of Passau to understand its importance for higher education and research. Drawing on feminist theory and research praxis we explore intersectional approaches to understanding social relations at our university from different standpoints and how this is interwoven into decoloniality. Based on student projects and our joint learning in winter term 21/22 we introduce to intersectionality as a concept and practice and how social movements have mobilised an intersectional perspective both before and since the term was coined. We investigate our own experiences as international and German students at the intersections of gender, age, caste, ethnicity, race and class through autoethnography and a net-mapping exercise. By doing so, we encounter how intersectionality as a lens operates to destabilise colonial ways of seeing. By presenting the results of the research and teaching project, we demonstrate why intersectionality is important to the political process of decolonising our very own University of Passau.
Daniela Melissa Escarria Parra is a Colombian lawyer passionate about human rights and international law. After graduating in 2019, she was awarded the Helmut Schimdt scholarship offered by DAAD. Thanks to this, she is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Governance and Public Policy at the University of Passau. Additionally, she is currently highly interested in Critical Discourse Analysis and Intersectionality to pursue social justice.
Joeta Ndwiga is currently pursuing her M.A. in Development Studies at the University of Passau. She is passionate about exploring solutions that have social and environmental impacts on her community and society, and her professional experience has revolved around food security, capacity building of farmers groups, and implementation of irrigation development projects in the national and county governments in Kenya. Her study concentration focuses on rural development, gender and development, sustainability development, and intersectionality, specifically in this research she employed the autoethnography research method to reflect on her personal experiences of microaggression as an international student of color and how they have impacted and shaped her student life. She is currently conducting her Masters’ thesis research on Solidarische Landwirtschaft - Passau, as an alternative shift in the food system.
Ferdyani Atikaputri is DAAD Helmut-Schmidt Programme scholarship holder and active student at M.A. Development Studies University of Passau. Prior coming to Passau, she was a professional development worker managing sustainable development projects with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and government of Indonesia. She continues expressing her interest in development sector through community engagement and research. She is currently active in an Indonesian community, Rumah Aman Kita (RUANITA) that focus on mental health, gender equality, and women empowerment for Indonesian living abroad. In this research, she elaborates intersectionality and net-map approach to analyze the involvement of actors in higher education system and students’ well-being during COVID-19 pandemic.
Nicole Borges Steeb (M.A. Governance and Public Policy) holds a vast interdisciplinary and international background situated at the intersection of social change and political processes. Despite a Bachelor in European Studies (Catholic University Of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) with a focus on European languages, history, and culture, she is constantly connected to her second home country Brazil (both physically and) through her research topics. In her autoethnography, she investigates her time as an exchange student in Colombia (Universidad de Antioquia). The experience as a whole demonstrates the need for an intersectional and decolonial approach inside universities in both the physical and epistemological space.
Anna Kolb absolved the first state examination in 2019 in primary school didactics with a focus on politics and society at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Then, she decided to expand her knowledge and skills in extracurricular education. Since the winter semester 2020/21, she has therefore been studying the research oriented Master's degree in Education and Educational Processes at the University of Passau with a focus on educational management. Her Interests and main areas of study are educational inequality, equal opportunities, innovations in the education sector. Moreover, she conducted a research project in a seminar on intersectionality, where she used autoethnography to address the following question: To what extent are her experiences at university shaped by her own positioning and upbringing as a working class child.
Literature
Bhambra, G. K. (2014) ‘Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues’, Postcolonial Studies. Taylor & Francis, 17(2), pp. 115–121. doi: 10.1080/13688790.2014.966414.
Icaza, R. and Vázquez, R. (2018) ‘Diversity or Decolonisation? Researching Diversity at the University of Amsterdam’, in Bhambra, G. K., Gebrial, D. and Nişancıoğlu, K. (eds.) Decolonising the University, London: Pluto Press, pp 108-128
09.11.2022 - Intersektionalität in der Praxis - die rassismus-kritische Plattform "of Color"
Session in German
In this lecture the concept of intersectionality and the critique of racism in the practice will be shown. As a platform for the critique of racism, the magazine "of Color" stands for the empowerment and representation of Bi_Poc and is addressed to Bi_Poc and to everyone who wants to learn about the critique of racism. In July 2022 the second print edition about the concept of intersectionality was published. How does the concept of intersectionality in the practice look like? Where are the limits of the intersectional work of "of Color"? What is the vision behind this platform? These questions will be discussed and answered in this lecture.
Pia Ihedioha studies elementary school education at the University of Passau. Outside of her studies she works as a teacher of civic education and did workshops focusing on antiracism and empowerment. She is a co-founder of the magazine "of Color". "of Color" is a platform for the critique on racism and represents Bi_Poc in the media. Since 2020 Pia volunteers together with a team of 10 members to create the vision behind "of Color".
16.11.2022 - Intersektional sehen? - Prof. Dr. Magdalena Nowicka, DeZIM-Institut und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Session in German
We experience the world intersectionally and at the same time we see others as members of a category - man, woman, black, young, old. Many of these categories are binary and the debates around people who are trans* (trans* gender, trans* race) highlight that very many people in Western culture are unsettled by ambiguity. Research shows that racialised thinking is so deeply socially embedded that even people who are blind from birth perceive others as racialised subjects. The visual "evidence" of human differences that Western culture, including science, relies on, must therefore be rethought.
So can we see in a way that resembles our own intersectional experience as bodies in the world? To answer this question, we need to understand how social categories emerge from visual clues and the extent to which categories shape our visual perception. In the search for ways to see differently - intersectionally - I draw on both academic, interdisciplinary sources and artistic practice in my talk. This can help us to make 'seeing through culture' explicit and thus open the space for more intersectionality.
Prof. Dr. Magdalena Nowicka is Head of the Department of Integration at the DeZIM Institute and Honorary Professor at the Institute for Social Sciences at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Nowicka is a sociologist with an interdisciplinary background in political and cultural studies from Poland and Germany. Her research interests are Transnationalism of migrants in diversity, conviviality and racism.
She has published on racism in the context of immigration and Brexit ("I don't mean to sound racist but ... " Transforming racism in transnational Europe, published in Ethnic and Racial Studies 41, 2018) and on the intersection of racism and masculinity (with Katarzyna Wojnicka, Understanding Migrant Masculinities through a Spatially Intersectional Lens, published in Men&Masculinities 2021). Her most recent publications include the book Revisualising Intersectionality (Palgrave, 2022, with Elahe Hashemi Yekani and Tiara Roxanne).
23.11.2022 - Rassismuskritik in der Praxis - Migrationspädagogik heute - Zehranur Manzak, Jugendbildungsstätte Unterfranken
CANCELLED
Session in German
We all live in a society that has (re)produced racist practices and discourses for centuries. Therefore, it is almost impossible not to have racist knowledge. However, recognising this (learned) knowledge, bringing it into one's own consciousness and reflecting on it repeatedly is possible and the goal of racism-critical practice. But can this knowledge ever be completely discarded?
This lecture offers an introduction and overview of racism-critical migration education and its development. The focus will be on current positions, previous discourses and the interplay between theoretical points of contact and practical educational work in the immigration society.
Zehranur Manzak, graduate in education (Univ.), is an education consultant at the youth education centre in Lower Franconia and is in charge of the couragiert unit. As part of her work, she designs seminars and works as a trainer with different groups who want to further their education in the context of a migration society and who want to be sensitised to rasism-critical moments. She is also a systemic ounsellor and works with family dynamics and biography work.
07.12.2022 - Racism and International Development - Thinking beyond 'Diversity' - Dr. Kalpana Wilson, Birkbeck, University of London
ONLINE
While almost a century has passed since WEB Du Bois wrote about the global colour line and it is 50 years since Guyanese Marxist scholar and activist Walter Rodney wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, it is only very recently, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, that many organisations involved in international development have begun talking for the first time about racism in development. Much of this discussion has not gone beyond considering the need for greater diversity among the personnel of these institutions who are located in the Global North. In this lecture, I suggest that racism needs to be understood materially, and as operating globally, structuring the global inequalities and patterns of exploitation, extraction and accumulation within which development is embedded, and inseparable from ongoing processes of imperialism. I consider some of the forms of embodied racialised violence in development, which are always also gendered. And I suggest that we must recognise sources of resistance to these racialized structures of global capital accumulation in political and social movements taking place across continents, in which other kinds of worlds are being envisioned and fought for.
Kalpana Wilson is a Lecturer in the Geography Department at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research explores questions of race/gender, labour, imperialism, fascism and reproductive rights and justice, with a particular focus on South Asia and its diasporas. She is the author of Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating History, Discourse and Practice (Zed Books, 2012) and co-editor of Gender, Agency and Coercion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She has written widely on themes of international development, revolutionary social movements and reproductive justice. She is a founder member of the campaigning organisation South Asia Solidarity Group.
14.12.2022 - Marginalisierung und Anerkennung in der Klimabewegung: Eine intersektional-feministische Analyse - Sheena Anderson
Session in German
ONLY ONLINE
The climate crisis does not affect everyone equally, quite the opposite. It differentiates according to race, gender, geographical location, socio-economic background, age, physical limitations and many other categories. Using the example of Black, Indigenous and Women of Colour (BIWoC), this lecture shows that, on the one hand, marginalised groups are particularly affected by the climate crisis and, on the other hand, it is precisely BIWoC who not only take on leading roles in the climate movement, but from whose specialised knowledge, based on their intersectional oppression, their (survival) struggle and their way of producing and passing on knowledge, the climate movement can learn in unexpected ways. Contrary to what is often assumed, the climate movement in a broad sense is not "too white", it is actually Black, Indigenous and People of Colour who have been shaping this movement for decades. It is time that they receive the recognition and appreciation they deserve. A brief analysis of the origins of intersectional feminism in Black feminisms and Black women's struggles is followed by theory-based and intersectional feminist guidelines for the climate movement gained through interviews with BIWoC climate activists. These guidelines are a proposal to help the climate movement to have a vision, to take into account the interconnectedness and interdependence of global challenges in its protest; to recognise that these have different implications for marginalised people and to prioritise the protection of people as well as the environment. To confront the climate crisis, radical systemic change is needed, climate justice is the strategy to be applied and intersectional feminism provides the perspective to implement it.
Sheena Anderson explores intersectional perspectives and how they can promote greater global justice and responsibility. She wants to contribute to the hearing and visibility of marginalised voices and question discriminatory structures. She gained work experience at the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung BW in the area of strengthening democracy and as a freelancer in political education work. She also completed further training as an anti-bias multiplier. In the course of her studies, she specialised in peace and sustainability, intersectionality, war and gender, post-conflict states and international law. She is an activist with the Black Earth Collective in Berlin and has been working at the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy since 2020.
21.12.2022 - Panel Discussion: Gelebter Anti-rassismus in Passau? - Till Hoffmann, Bellvue de Monaco; Perdita Wingerter, Gemeinsam leben und lernen in Europa e. V.
Session in German
As a "Christmas present", we will discuss with Passau citizens and students their concrete approaches to anti-racist solidarity. Till Hoffmann from Passau, organiser of the Eulenspielfestival, reports on his involvement in the Bellevue de Monaco in Munich, a house project with refugees that has nationwide appeal. Perdita Wingerter, chairwoman of the active and multi-award-winning association „Gemeinsam leben und lernen in Europa“ (Living and Learning Together in Europe) in Passau gives insights into what anti-racist work can look like on the ground in our small university town. Together with them we discuss where there is still room for improvement at the University and in the city and what needs to be done to make Passau safe for everyone.
Till Hofmann, born in 1970 and raised in Passau, is a culture and concert organizer. He runs cabaret and music stages in Munich and Vienna, operates a label and is responsible for festivals with the Eulenspiegel Flying Circus.
He is also founder and chairman of the social cooperative "Bellevue di Monaco" for refugees.
Perdita Wingerter is the managing director of the non-profit association "Gemeinsam leben und lernen in Europa" (Living and Learning Together in Europe), which successfully implements a variety of projects and actions to combat racism and xenophobia and to promote tolerance and diversity. In addition, as the owner of IQM Wingerter, she works as an independent project consultant and lecturer. As an expert on the topic of volunteering, integration and equal opportunities as well as on the topic of combating racism and xenophobia, she regularly gives seminars and/or lectures at regional, national and European level.
11.01.2022 - Politischer Rassismus in der post-homogenen Gesellschaft - Prof. Dr. Lorenz Narku Laing, Evangelische Hochschule Rheinland-Westfalen-Lippe
Session in German
Session only online
Racism is political and the political is shaped by racism. In many parts of German society, homogeneity advocates and diversity enthusiasts are irreconcilably opposed to each other. Lorenz Narku Laing analyses the post-homogeneous society and shows that racist politics are part of the core business of homogeneity advocates. His postcolonial critique examines the deeper reasons for this and at the same time provides a critical intervention in (political) scientific research. It becomes clear that racism is much more than discrimination and disadvantage: Racism is a political ideology.
Prof. Dr. Lorenz Narku Laing is a Professor of Social Sciences and Racism-Research at the Evangelische Hochschule Rheinland-Westfalen-Lippe. Dr. Laing is founder and managing director of Vielfaltsprojekte GmbH, certified diversity trainer and racism researcher. In 2020, Dr Laing was honoured as 30 under 30 of the #GenerationGrenzenlos by the Hertie Foundation. He received the Zeppelin University Award for Excellence in Teaching and his latest project on discrimination in sports won the Innovation Award for Volunteerism from the State Government of Bavaria. In 2022, his book on "Political Racism" was published by transcript-Verlag. As a diversity consultant, he accompanies Dax corporations, TV stations and theatres.
18.01.2023 - Zur Bedeutung rassismuskritischer Bildung und postkolonialer Perspektiven in Schule und Hochschule - Dr. Andreas Eberth, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
Session in German
Based on an analysis of exemplary work materials of the school subject geography, it will be shown to what extent stereotypes can be reproduced and sometimes categorised in the sense of postcolonial othering even and especially in lessons that stand for global learning and education in sustainable development. Based on this, the necessity and potential of education critical of racism and postcolonial perspectives in the classroom are reflected upon. Selected interview excerpts with teachers will be used to outline the extent to which awareness of various dimensions of discrimination should be raised, especially in the first phase of teacher training at university. In doing so, intersectional interrelations with other areas will also be addressed.
Trigger warning: In the first part of the lecture, few examples (text and image) are shown that can evoke negative emotions.
Dr. Andreas Eberth studied geography, German language and literature studies and educational science at the University of Trier. From 2014-2022, he was a research assistant in the Didactics of Geography department at the Institute for Didactics of Science at Leibniz Universität Hannover. In the winter semester 2022/2023, he is representing the professorship for Didactics of Geography at the Justus Liebig University of Gießen. His work focuses on education for sustainable development/global learning, visual geographies, education critical of racism and postcolonial perspectives in education as well as regionally in East Africa.
25.01.2023 - Ver_Lernräume? Rassismuskritik, Critical Whiteness und Diversität in der Politischen Bildung am ausgewählten Beispiel der Broschüre "Demokratie und Partizipation in der Migrationsgesellschaft" -Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tuider, University of Kassel
Session in German
Based on empirical surveys of welcome initiatives within the framework of the BMBF joint projects "Welcome Culture and Democracy in Germany", the brochure "Democracy and Participation in the Migration Society" that was developed in the project will be discussed. The analysis of the post-migrant German society and the embedded racism, sexism and heteronormativity represent the methodological starting point of the lecture. How can racism, sexism and heteronormative orientations be unlearned? How is this unlearning connected to raising awareness and acknowledging privileges? In the lecture, a multimethod, racism-critical, and diversity-sensitive approach is presented and discussed as an anti-essentialist approach.
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tuider has held the chair of Sociology of Diversity with a special focus on the dimension of gender since 2011. Her work and research focuses on gender and queer studies, cultural and postcolonial studies, the critique of racism and migration research. She is influenced by social inequality studies and social movements in Latin American countries. She was also on the board of the "Fachgesellschaft Geschlechterstudien" and has realised several BMBF-funded research projects, including the joint project "Willkommenskultur und Demokratie in Deutschland" (Welcome Culture and Democracy in Germany).
01.02.2023 - Higher Education and Decolonial Feminist Horizons – Dr. Rosalba Icaza, Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam
CANCELLED
Can Higher Education respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of the life of earth and others? In this lecture, I will set some of the elements of decolonial feminism that can help us to address the erasure of experiences that can teach us about overcoming the destruction of the earth and of ways of knowing and forms of knowledge.
Dr. Rosalba Icaza is a decolonial feminist and Full Professor of Global Politics, Feminisms and Decoloniality at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is member of the Red Transnational Otros Saberes (RETOS), co-convenes the transnational learning group "Nurturing (each) Other” and collaborates with Suumil Mookt’an in Sinanche, Yucatan, Mexico.
08.02.2023 - Walk the Talk – Input für das universitäre Diversity Audit - Vice President Prof. Dr. Christina Hansen, Prof. Dr. Martina Padmanabhan, Prof. Dr. Karsten Fitz, Prof. Dr. Karin Stögner
After a semester with current and theoretical input on anti-racism and intersectionality, we will have the chance to discuss possibilities and needs for shaping the University together with Vice President Prof. Dr. Christina Hansen. The specific occasion is the Diversity Audit that the University is currently undergoing. This is a concrete window of opportunity to address structures and processes, but also informal routines and speechlessness in the face of multi-layered discrimination. Prof. Dr. Karsten Fitz and Prof. Dr. Karin Stögner, who have each organised successful lecture series on intersectionality from the sociological and Americanist perspectives, are also involved. We want to use all the insights, flashes of inspiration and productive rage from the passionate lectures and debates at "Walk the talk" to spark short- and long-term change at our University and beyond in our city, and to dream on with our eyes wide open. We are counting on YOUR contribution, wherever you stand on this topic.
Intersectionality: Sociology between Theory and Practice
Prof. Dr. Karin Stögner, Lehrstuhl für Soziologie
Intersectionality as a concept for analysing social inequality focuses on the multidimensionality of social processes of domination and shows that discrimination and inequality of opportunity along the lines of class, gender/sexuality, ethnicity/nationality are to be understood as intertwined. Influenced by Black Feminism, intersectionality was not only an analytical concept but also a political programme from the beginning. Social movements that are intersectional in their self-understanding fight for social, political and economic recognition of structurally marginalised groups. In the process, tensions repeatedly arise both in the formation of theory and in political practice. This field of tension between ideology critique and identity politics makes intersectionality a dynamic and contested field and raises contemporary questions and problems, which the lectures in this interdisciplinary lecture series address.
Except for the last lecture (19 July), all lectures are held in German. For more information on the lectures, see the German version of the page.
The lecture will take place on Tuesdays from 6 to 7:30 pm in the room WIWI HS 5 (and online via ZOOM).
26 Apr 2022 - Introduction. Intersectionality between Ideology Critique and Identity Politics - Inclusions and Exclusions (in German)
Karin Stögner, Universität Passau
03 May 2022 - Processual Intersectionality and Conflict? How social movements change inequalities (in German)
Ilse Lenz, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
10 May 2022 - Racism and Intersectionality. On the overexploitation of racialised people in capitalism (in German)
Ulrike Marz, Universität Rostock
17 May 2022 - And where is the intersectional? Exploring Perceived Discrimination in Migration Studies (in German)
Eunike Piwoni, Universität Passau
24 May 2022 - Constructions of Gender, Jewishness and Nation as Constellation - Intersectionality and Critical Theory (in German)
Christine Achinger, University of Warwick
31 May 2022 - Universalising Universalism. Intersectionality, Critique of Religion and Post-Particular Feminism (in German)
Petra Klug, Universität Bremen
14 Jun 2022 - The ongoing argument about Islam: radical feminism, postcolonial critique and the problems of semi-intersectionality. (in German)
Ina Kerner, Universität Koblenz
21 Jun 2022 - Why we should not respect foreign cultures. And not our own either (in German)
Sama Maani
28 Jun 2022 - The headscarf and intersectional feminism (in German)
Lale Akgün
05 Jul 2022 - Diversity - Intersectionality as a normative concept. A critical analysis (in German)
Andrea Maihofer, Universität Basel
12 Jul 2022 - Intersectional psychodynamics in right-wing extremist gender ideologies (in German)
Sebastian Winter, Universität Passau
19 Jul 2022 - Intersectionality and identity debates in Brazil today (in English) - Ana Claudia Lopes, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil)
The aim of this lecture is to present some issues related to intersectionality and identity debates in Brazil. We will see them against the background of their historical development, from the 1970s onwards, and how they became a heated topic in Brazilian politics nowadays. To understand these debates, that is, the uses (and abuses) of gender, race, and, more recently, intersectionality, we will pursue two analytical levels: how the terms develop and are challenged both in the broader public discourse and in academic and intellectual venues. We will disentangle the traps and potentialities of contested issues that are at the heart of many controversies which are not exclusive to Brazil, but that here acquire particular traits and implications.
Ana Claudia Lopes, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) and Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Philosophy at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). She works on ethics and political philosophy, critical theory, gender and feminism. She has earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Campinas in 2019 with a dissertation on the relationship between practical philosophy and Critical Theory in the work of Seyla Benhabib. She was a visiting researcher at the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at the Goethe University (Germany) (2014/2018). She also works as a translator, being one of the translators of Situating the Self (Seyla Benhabib, 1992) and Justice Interruptus (Nancy Fraser, 1996) to Brazilian Portuguese. She contributed a chapter to the recently published Kritische Theorie und Feminismus, edited by Karin Stögner and Alexandra Colligs.