course-schedule

Cultural Studies (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Ben Trott

Termin:
wöchentlich | Montag | 14:15 - 15:45 | 07.04.2025 - 07.07.2025 | C 40.146 Seminarraum

Inhalt: This seminar introduces Cultural Studies, as it emerged in Britain in the 1950s and 60s. It looks at the ideas and approaches that shaped it (including those associated with the ‘New Left’), it’s development as an academic field, and the ways in which it has been taken up by others. Students will engage with the work of some of the key figures within (British) Cultural Studies, including Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige and Angela McRobbie. We will look at how these authors have variously drawn on (and re-thought) Karl Marx’s account of the relationship between (economic) ‘base’ and (political/ideological) ‘superstructure’, Louis Althusser’s work on ‘ideology’ (and ‘ideological state apparatuses’), and Antonio Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemony’. Students will also explore the resonances and dissonances between Cultural Studies related fields, including Queer Studies, Transgender Studies and Post-Colonial Studies.

Introduction to Queer Studies (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Ben Trott

Inhalt: Students will be introduced to Queer Studies as a field that addresses the ways in which contested gender and sexual norms play an important role in shaping society as a whole. The seminar also explores the ways in which key figures within Queer Studies have refused to study gender or sexuality in isolation from other axes and hierarchies of difference or from contemporary forms of capital accumulation and nationalism. Students will critically engage with key works by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, José Esteban Muñoz, Kadji Amin, Petrus Liu and others.

Queer Digital Cultures (FSL) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Ben Trott

Termin:
wöchentlich | Montag | 16:15 - 17:45 | 07.04.2025 - 07.07.2025 | C 40.146 Seminarraum

Inhalt: Digital media, digital technologies and digital infrastructures shape contemporary culture in many and far-reaching ways. This seminar examines their impact on 'queer' culture in particular – understood here as both LGBT (i.e. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) cultures as well as, more broadly, cultures that contest or subvert dominant norms around gender and sexuality. Students will explore recent efforts to theorise the relationship between transformations in information, digital and other technologies, and transformations in the fields of gender and sexuality. They will examine recent empirical as well as theoretically-informed work on the ways that digital media and technologies are shaping queer life and culture. And they will address the extent to which the study of digital cultures can be productively approached from a queer perspective. Issues that will be explored include the following: • The role of digital media in transgender self-representation • How social media hashtags (like #lesbian) can facilitate both the production of community and the (de-)stabilisation of identity categories • How LGBT and queer intimacies are being transformed through dating and ‘hook-up’ apps (such as Tinder and Grindr) • Digital labour and online pornography • The possibilities and limits of digital queer activism • Histories of the transgender internet

Feminist Social and Political Philosophy (FSL) (Vorlesung)

Dozent/in: Ben Trott

Termin:
wöchentlich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 15:45 | 09.04.2025 - 21.05.2025 | C 40.255 Seminarraum

Inhalt: This lecture-based class introduces feminist philosophical approaches to thinking the social and political world. It entails, first, an exploration of feminist engagements with, appropriations from, and critiques of the modern, western canon of social and political philosophy – including the ways it has thought justice, equality, the social contract, freedom and rights. Here the focus is primarily on feminist and queer engagements with liberal social and political thought, which is itself shown to be a highly heterogeneous enterprise. In the second part of the seminar, students address feminist contributions to social and political philosophy that break with or move beyond liberal traditions. Students will engage work by Susan Okin, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Angela Davis, Emma Goldman, Judith Butler and others.

Master Forum (English language) (Kolloquium)

Dozent/in: Armin Beverungen, Ben Trott

Inhalt: This Master Forum, which will be held entirely in English, provides first and foremost an opportunity for students embarking on their MA theses to present an outline of their projects, with the goal of receiving productive critical feedback – both from instructors and from student peers. In addition, it also aims to facilitate critical reflection on a set of what may initially appear to be quite practical or even technical issues – around how scholarly research is carried out and presented – and yet often ultimately prove to be caught up with questions of content, argument and approach. In the first meeting of the Master Forum, Ben Trott and Armin Beverungen will introduce some of the common issues confronted by those carrying out scholarly research or writing in Cultural Studies, the Humanities and the Social Sciences. This will include general questions, including: how to arrive at and formulate a research question and a suitable framework for your project; how to begin thinking about method and methodology, and starting to conducting research; and ways of referencing and of acknowledging the use of sources. Students are invited to sign up to present an outline of their MA thesis in the subsequent meetings of the Master Forum, with presentations set to take place in English. While this will ultimately depend on the number of students participating, students should expect to have around 30 minutes in total for the presentation and discussion of their projects, and presentations themselves should last between 10 and 15 minutes, allowing plenty of time for discussion. Students are required upload a two-page summary of their project to myStudy one week before they are due to present. This should include: • a working title for your thesis as well as your research question; • the approach, method or methodology that you plan on using, and the theoretical framework or points of reference for your project; • what you anticipate discovering or arguing in your thesis; • and a list of up to five key works that you will use, along with any additional information about sources you plan on using – such as archives, exhibitions or interview partners. Students are asked to attend all sessions of the Master Forum, not the simply the session in which they will present, and to have read the two-page summaries ahead of time. Please be ready to provide your fellow students with productive critical feedback on their projects! This Master Forum is open to all Cultural Studies MA students but the expertise of the instructors lies in the fields of cultural and political theory, organisation and critical management studies, critical political economy, social movement studies and gender and queer studies. The Master Forum is examined (pass/fail) as a combined scholarly work [Kombinierte wissenschaftliche Arbeit] made up of (a) your two-page summary and (b) your presentation.

Course Schedule

Veranstaltungen von Ben Trott

Lehrveranstaltungen

Cultural Studies (Seminar)

Introduction to Queer Studies (Seminar)

Queer Digital Cultures (FSL) (Seminar)

Feminist Social and Political Philosophy (FSL) (Vorlesung)

Master Forum (English language) (Kolloquium)