This complementary seminar to the lecture “Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology” is held in English language.
It has been especially designed to offer students the opportunity to begin their studies in anthropology and cultural research in English. Like all other seminars accompanying the lecture, it aims at giving an engaging and hands-on introduction into the world of anthropology. It addresses key approaches, questions and methods used in the discipline, and provides students with an initial ‘tool kit’ for studying anthropology and cultural research. At the same time, this seminar provides to opportunity to improve English skills in reading, writing and discussing academically in this field.
There are no requirements regarding the level of language proficiency needed. However, participants should be interested in doing the exercises in English.

Literature:
Augé, M. (1995) “From Places to Non-Places” in: Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London: Verso, pp. 75-115
Bourgois, P. (2002) ‘Respect at Work: ‘Going Legit’’, Stephanie Taylor (ed.) Ethnographic Research. A Reader. London: Sage, pp. 15-35
Miller, D. (2008) The Comfort of Things, Cambridge: Polity Press
Rhys-Taylor, A. (2013) ‘The essences of multiculture: a sensory exploration of an inner-city street market’, Identities, 20 (4): 393-406
Tranberg Hansen, K. (2004) ‘Helping or Hindering? Controversies around international second-hand clothing trade’, Anthropology Today 20 (4): 3-9

Dieses Seminar wird zusammen mit VAK 09-50-M2b-5a studiert!

Start date: Nov 16 !

(1) IMPORTANT: The course will only start on NOVEMBER 16, 10:15 - 11:45! There are no sessions between Oct 19 and Nov 2. After Nov 19, the course will continue as planned, weekly on Wednesdays 10:15-11:45. In January there will be an extra date for the sessions lost - you can discuss with the lecturer what date works best for you.
(2) The course will be on Zoom.
(3) In the course you will not only look at key texts, but also at films, which address key questions of the Anthropology of Religion and Religiosity.
(4) The course will be taught by Grzegorz Brzozowski, an exciting documentary filmmaker, sociologist and anthropologist from Warsaw, Poland. Feel free to check out the trailer of one of his films: https://vimeo.com/291101938 (it's a great film ...)

Abstract:
This course intends to familiarize the students with the essential discussions and topics in the subfield of political anthropology. We will begin with different theoretical conceptualizations of politics/the political that have left a mark on the anthropological literature and then explore a number of themes including statehood, sovereignty, policing, bureaucracy, resistance, liberalism/neoliberalism, violence and hegemony. The readings and our discussions will touch on the study of the political/politics in armed struggles, street activism, and everyday life, taking into account their practical, bodily, discursive and psychic components and manifestations.




Literature:

Navaro, Yael (2012). The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Duke University Press

Fassin, Didier (2013). Enforcing order : An ethnography of urban policing. Polity Press

Shoshan, Nitzan (2016). The management of hate: Nation, affect, and the governance of right-wing extremism in Germany. Princeton University Press

Feldman, Allen (1991) Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago University Press.

Yonucu, Deniz (2022) Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul. Cornell University Press.

Graeber, David (2016) The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Melville House

Weiss, Erica (2011) “The Interrupted sacrifice: Hegemony and moral crisis among Israeli conscientious objectors”, American Ethnologist.

This seminar is designed as a hands-on workshop to learn the key techniques of doing research. Over the course of the seminar, you will work through the entire research process from designing the research, to data collection, analysis and presentation of the findings in written form. You will learn about the specific qualitative methods, including their difficulties, ethics and practicalities, as well as how to code, interpret and write-up the data you have generated. This seminar aims at enhancing your practical skills by a series of exercises for each step of the research process. Besides this, you will be learning “by doing” research in an instructive and supportive environment, which provides space for learning, practicing and reflecting on the methods of qualitative research.
This seminar will be conducted in English. This is an opportunity for all those who enjoy doing their studies in English or just want to try it out. There are no requirements regarding the level of language proficiency needed. However, participants should be interested in doing the exercises in English.

Literature:
Agar, M. H. 1980. The Professional Stranger. San Diego: Academic Press
Ballestero, A. and Winthereik, B. R. (eds.) 2021. Experimenting with Ethnography. A Companion To Analysis, Durham: Duke University Press
Bernard, Russell H. 2011. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (5th ed.), Plymouth: AltaMira
Burgess, R.G. 1990. In the Field. An Introduction to Field Research, London: Routledge
Emerson, R., Frentz, R. and Shaw, L. 2011. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2nd ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gilham, B. 2005. Research Interviewing. The range of techniques. Maidenhead: Open University Press
Gubrium, T. et al. (eds.) 2012. Sage Handbook of Interview Research. The Complexity of the Craft (2nd ed.), London: Sage
Madison, D. Soyini. 2005. Critical ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks: Sage Press
Mason, Jennifer 2002. Qualitative Researching. 2nd edition. London: Sage
Somekh, B. and Lewin, C. (eds.) 2005. Research Methods in the Social Scienes, London: Sage
Saukko, P. 2003. Doing Research in Cultural Studies. An Introduction to Classical and New Methodological Approaches. London: Sage
Kvale, S. 2007. Doing Interviews, London: Sage
Roulston, K. 2010. Reflective Interviewing. A Guide to Theory and Practice. London: Sage

This lecture series is designed to engage students with debates and trends in contemporary anthropological research, and will ideally be taken together with the Anthropology of the Contemporary Seminar (09-50-M89-A3). Topics may include right-wing nationalism/fascism, maritime anthropology, migration and labor, policing borders, slavery and memory, religion and queerness, and environmental governance. The majority of presentations will be in English.

This seminar is designed to engage students with debates and trends in contemporary anthropological research, and will ideally be taken together with the Vorlesungsreihe/Institutskolloquium (09-50-M89-A2). Topics may include right-wing nationalism/fascism, maritime anthropology, migration and labor, policing borders, slavery and memory, religion and queerness, and environmental governance. The seminar will combine mini-lectures, analysis of text and other media, and discussion of research presented in the Institutskolloquium of the Department for Anthropology and Cultural Research (IfEK). The majority of readings, discussion, and presentations will be in English.




Literature:

A list of course materials provided at the start of the semester.

2 SWS

An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Senses (online), with practical elements in Sound Studies (offline).

This is an English-speaking hybrid module which combines online- and offline elements following principles of research based learning. It has been conceptualized in cooperation with anthropologists from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), which is an Erasmus and YUFE partner of the Institute of Anthropology and Cultural Research (IfEK) at University of Bremen.
The course is embedded in the long-term project “Making Sense! Entering the Field of Sensory Studies” (https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/makingsense/), funded by the International Fonds of University of Bremen.

Important notice: In this M8-9 course (2 SWS) conducted by Dr. Holzscheiter during winter term 22/23 you will receive max. 6 CPs: 3 CPs for active participation plus 3 CPS for a multimodal work (graded exam); in addition you have the opportunity to continue in a further digital course, more theoretical based, which is conducted by Prof. Dr. Heikki Uimonen, UEF and Dr. Cordula Weisskoeppel (UB) since mid of January 2023 until May 2023 ⇐our summer term 2023 at UB). For this additional E-course you will receive also 3 CPs (active participation) in order to be able to complete 9 CPs for a full M8/9.

Short description for the course during winter term 22/23:
The course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary Field of Sensory Studies. We will explore some important theories on the senses but mostly on the sense of listening. So, our ears will have some “sidekicks” from the other senses: This implicates the idea that our memories of sounds also includes odours, visual sensations or sensations of touch. We will travel through the ideas why European societies used to focus on the visual sense or tended to classify the human senses in better or worse ones.

The course is explorative, so you’ll be trained on using your own senses, as it has become central in the field of sensory studies to use our human body with all the different sensory potentials. But how does it work to focus on only one sense? What happens if you follow the daily sounds and try to document them? Or if you try to catch the smells in your kitchen? How do you look at certain locations in your neighbourhood after contemplating on them just by gazing?

The central approach in this course will be listening, but you will have also the possibility to smell, feel, watch, taste or whatever you are able to sense, maybe with your sixth sense.

A dominant tool of the course is the use of podcasts. We have created them as first instructions to explore landscapes of smells or sounds in specific environments, but you will also be able to create your own soundwalk e.g. in your neighbourhoods. At the end of the course you have the possibility to produce a podcast on your personal experience or to produce another media-project (so called “multimodal exam”), e.g. a map of your childhood-sensations, your sensory experiences of a food trek on the market or whatever.

First reading:
Howes, David (Hg. 2005): Empire of the senses. The Sensual Culture Reader, Oxford/New York: Berg.
Pink, Sarah 2009: Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles: Sage.
Sterne, Jonathan (ed. 2012): The Sound Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Gruber, Martin/ Holzscheiter, Javier Gago/ Weisskoeppel, Cordula (eds. 2021): “Making Sense! Entering the Field of Sensory Studies” at: https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/makingsense/;

This seminar reckons with the intellectual and political possibilities of disability. It draws on an analytics of “crip worldmaking” in order to think about disability as something that brings new worlds into being. This involves anthropology in a broad sense, including ethnography as well as accounts from disability studies, queer theory, critical philosophy, and more. Each week of the seminar explores the ways that crip worldmaking challenges dominant assumptions about key facets of being human, including time, space, embodiment, thought, labor, gender, sexuality, reproduction, belonging, politics, and more-than-human entanglements.

Description:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/fachbereiche/fb9/zemki/docs/comments/Comments_WiSe22-23/M8_Pohlmann.pdf

Seminar Language: English!

Description:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/fachbereiche/fb9/zemki/docs/comments/Comments_WiSe22-23/M8_Gellrich.pdf

Seminar Language: English!

2 SWS

An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Senses (online), with practical elements in Sound Studies (offline).

This is an English-speaking hybrid module which combines online- and offline elements following principles of research based learning. It has been conceptualized in cooperation with anthropologists from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), which is an Erasmus and YUFE partner of the Institute of Anthropology and Cultural Research (IfEK) at University of Bremen.
The course is embedded in the long-term project “Making Sense! Entering the Field of Sensory Studies” (https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/makingsense/), funded by the International Fonds of University of Bremen.

Important notice: In this M8-9 course (2 SWS) conducted by Dr. Holzscheiter during winter term 22/23 you will receive max. 6 CPs: 3 CPs for active participation plus 3 CPS for a multimodal work (graded exam); in addition you have the opportunity to continue in a further digital course, more theoretical based, which is conducted by Prof. Dr. Heikki Uimonen, UEF and Dr. Cordula Weisskoeppel (UB) since mid of January 2023 until May 2023 ⇐our summer term 2023 at UB). For this additional E-course you will receive also 3 CPs (active participation) in order to be able to complete 9 CPs for a full M8/9.

Short description for the course during winter term 22/23:
The course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary Field of Sensory Studies. We will explore some important theories on the senses but mostly on the sense of listening. So, our ears will have some “sidekicks” from the other senses: This implicates the idea that our memories of sounds also includes odours, visual sensations or sensations of touch. We will travel through the ideas why European societies used to focus on the visual sense or tended to classify the human senses in better or worse ones.

The course is explorative, so you’ll be trained on using your own senses, as it has become central in the field of sensory studies to use our human body with all the different sensory potentials. But how does it work to focus on only one sense? What happens if you follow the daily sounds and try to document them? Or if you try to catch the smells in your kitchen? How do you look at certain locations in your neighbourhood after contemplating on them just by gazing?

The central approach in this course will be listening, but you will have also the possibility to smell, feel, watch, taste or whatever you are able to sense, maybe with your sixth sense.

A dominant tool of the course is the use of podcasts. We have created them as first instructions to explore landscapes of smells or sounds in specific environments, but you will also be able to create your own soundwalk e.g. in your neighbourhoods. At the end of the course you have the possibility to produce a podcast on your personal experience or to produce another media-project (so called “multimodal exam”), e.g. a map of your childhood-sensations, your sensory experiences of a food trek on the market or whatever.

First reading:
Howes, David (Hg. 2005): Empire of the senses. The Sensual Culture Reader, Oxford/New York: Berg.
Pink, Sarah 2009: Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles: Sage.
Sterne, Jonathan (ed. 2012): The Sound Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Gruber, Martin/ Holzscheiter, Javier Gago/ Weisskoeppel, Cordula (eds. 2021): “Making Sense! Entering the Field of Sensory Studies” at: https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/makingsense/;

This lecture series is designed to engage students with debates and trends in contemporary anthropological research, and will ideally be taken together with the Anthropology of the Contemporary Seminar (09-50-M89-A3). Topics may include right-wing nationalism/fascism, maritime anthropology, migration and labor, policing borders, slavery and memory, religion and queerness, and environmental governance. The majority of presentations will be in English.

This lecture series is designed to engage students with debates and trends in contemporary anthropological research, and will ideally be taken together with the Anthropology of the Contemporary Seminar (09-50-M89-A3). Topics may include right-wing nationalism/fascism, maritime anthropology, migration and labor, policing borders, slavery and memory, religion and queerness, and environmental governance. The majority of presentations will be in English.