Courses

Prof. Dr. Ghosh-Schellhorn

VL: "'Black Lives Matter!': A Transcultural Survey"

Wed. 8:30 – 10:00

The year is 2020, and one of its more enduring slogans is: "BLM!". We will be asking ourselves why this is so, given that the world seems to have moved ahead. Human rights seem to be affirmed on a daily basis, while reparations for the ravages of colonization, and slavery in particular, are being addressed at last. And yet, the aftermath of the enforced 'globalization' of the world as practised by the European powers that be, from as early as the fifteenth century onwards, is especially visible to the peoples who bear the brunt of this undertaking.

Since, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her talk, "The Danger of a Single Story": "Show a people as one thing – as only one thing – over and over again, and that is what they become", we will be looking at a diverse range of materials relevant to our transcultural analysis of the topic of "BLM!".

Participation
Course material will be made available online via Moodle, and is to be read in preparation for the relevant session; regular participation in the full lecture series, which will be held in accordance with the guidelines established by the UdS; end of term written test.
Please check the TAS website under "Your Studies" for some useful advice, especially on note-taking during a lecture series.

Tina Helbig M.A.

PS: "Representing the South Pacific: From Captain Cook’s Travelogues to Contemporary Indigenous Fiction"

Fr. 10 – 12 c. t.

Ever since European explorers like Samuel Wallis and James Cook returned from their voyages to the South Pacific with reports about, from a European perspective, newly discovered islands and their human inhabitants, stereotypes about the foreign ‘other’ have been established in European writing about the South Pacific and its peoples, with the more idyllic of them, such as the idea of the South Pacific as a Garden of Eden, still being used by the contemporary tourist industry.

In this course, we will have a look at how the region and its peoples have been represented by Europeans, and how contemporary indigenous writers have reclaimed their right to represent themselves and their interests. We will discuss excerpts from James Cook’s Journals (1768-1779) and from Robert Louis Stevenson’s autobiographical account In the South Seas (1896), we will read contemporary short stories from Oceanian writer Epeli Hau’ofa and from Māori author Patricia Grace, and we will analyse the movies Whale Rider (2002) and Once Were Warriors (1994), which are both based on novels by Māori writers.

Texts:

James Cook, The Journals of Captain Cook (excerpts).

Richard Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas (excerpts).

Epeli Hau’ofa, Tales of the Tikongs.

Patricia Grace, Waiariki.

Lee Tamahori (dir.), Once Were Warriors.

Niki Caro (dir.), Whale Rider.

Course Archive

You can find our past courses here.