Kommentar: https://www.uni-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/fachbereiche/fb9/zemki/docs/comments/comments_SoSe2024/Ford_B2_1.pdf

In Zeiten aufwendiger TV-Serien lassen sich diverse Darstellungen von Familie und Familienwerte finden. Dabei lassen sich Serien mit religiöser Narration finden, wie beispielsweise Shtisel über eine ultraorthodoxe Familie in Jerusalem, Greenleaf über eine evangelikale Familie in den USA, oder auch 4 Blocks, die das Leben eines arabischer Familien-Clans in Berlin erzählt. Aber auch in den klassischen Fantasy-Serien wie Game of Thrones, Witcher oder Supernatural werden Familienkonstruktionen und damit verbundene Rollenvorstellungen präsentiert und stereotypisiert. Diese unterschiedlichen Familienkonstruktionen werden nicht nur durch Vorstellungen von Gender maßgeblich geprägt, sondern auch race, class, oder Sexualität kommen dabei zu tragen. Daher ist ein intersektionaler Blick auf diese vielfältigen Rollenvorstellungen und ihre Verflechtungen in TV-Serien im Kontext von Familienbildern und -werten notwendig. Welche Rollenbilder und welche Werte werden in den unterschiedlichen TV-Serien präsentiert und diskutiert? Lassen sich wirklich Veränderungen in Hinblick auf heteronormative Darstellungen in neuen Produktionen erkennen – oder handelt es sich auch bei Serien wie Bridgerton um Die Waltons 2.0?

Im Seminar werden wir uns zunächst einen Überblick über verschiedene theoretische Konzepte zu den Themenfeldern Familie, Rollenvorstellungen, Intersektionalität und digitale Medien erarbeiten. Die verschiedenen Konzepte werden dann anhand von konkreten Medien-Material auf ihre Tragfähigkeit respektive Anwendung diskutiert.

Darüber hinaus sollen die Studierenden im Sinne des forschenden Lernens sich selbst einen Schwerpunkt in diesem Bereich suchen, d.h. eine eigene Fragestellung entwickeln und eine eigene kleine Forschung exemplarisch an einer frei zu wählenden Serie durchführen. Am Ende werden im Rahmen eines selbstorganisierten Symposiums diese Ergebnisse präsentiert und diskutiert. Das Seminarsymposium wird zusammen mit anderen Seminaren am 09. und 10.10.2024 durchgeführt, die Teilnahme daran ist verpflichtend.

This seminar is part of series of seminars, jointly developed with the University of Rojava, with the aim to enable conversations among students of the Universities of Bremen and Rojava. The seminar will be part of the summer school of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Rojava and feed into a workshop on the role of academia in times of crisis.

The idea of the seminar is to collectively engage with questions of nationalism, racism and nation states, and discuss alternative ways of living together in difference. At the same time, the seminar asks what forms of education and academia we need in times of continuing wars and state violence, and the rise of the far-right in Europe and beyond.

The autonomous University of Rojava is based in Qamishlo in North-Eastern Syria (NES)– also often referred to as Rojava. This region has suffered heavily under the war, especially through the attacks from the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) and the ongoing bombardment by Turkey. Under the Syrian Baath regime, Kurds were banned from speaking their language, denied the right to education in their mother tongue, and denied their identity as citizens. In response to these politics of nationalism, assimilation and violence, the autonomous region of North and Eastern Syria (NES) has become the site of one of the most interesting current attempts to establish a new form of living together beyond the idea of a nation-state. Despite the hardship, the people in NES are trying to build a society which positively acknowledges its multilingual and multicultural character and is based on ideas of grassroots democracy, feminism, ecologically sustainability as well as on a model of autonomy which strives to be an alternative to the nation-state. In this way, it provides a possible model not only for the Middle East, but also the world beyond.

At the same time, in Germany, we are currently witnessing a rise of the far-right, which is pushing an anti-pluralist, racist, misogynist and homophobic agenda and committing severe acts of violence. Its ideas of white supremacy and fears of 'replacement' feed into fantasies of a homogeneous, pure nation and deporting those you do not fit. It seems Germany has not learnt from its fascist history.

Together we want to reflect on the similar understandings of nation and state that underlie these politics. In which way do they promote or go hand-in-hand with discrimination, assimilation, and various forms of violence? What can we learn from the situations in each of our contexts? And what does this mean for the role of the university? What kind of factor does education play and how can it counter these (ethno)nationalist and racist logics? This is what we want to discuss together.


The Seminar: Structure, Dates & Times
The seminar is divided into three parts: one preparational, one joint seminar part and one reflection session. The first part has the aim to give some background knowledge to the situation in Rojava, the history of the Kurdish Question, and to discuss key issues on collaborative learning, as well as to prepare presentations, which you will hold in the second – joint – part of the seminar. The joint session will be held in two workshop-style blocks. Joint discussions will be enabled through simultaneous translation. As this seminar is a research-based seminar, we develop the topics for the presentations and discussions together. Therefore, we ask the participants to actively engage in the shaping of the seminar.

The Bremen-only sessions will take place on Mondays from 10am - 2pm.
While the six joint sessions will take place on block-dates at the end of May and mid-June: Currently, we would like to suggest: Saturday-Monday, 25-27 May 2024, Saturday-Monday, 8-10 June 2023, each 10:00 am- 2:00 pm. But, we will discuss the exact dates with the participants in class!

Language
The seminar will be held in a combination of English, German and Kurdish. Knowledge of Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic or Farsi is helpful, but not a requirement for this seminar. Simultaneous translation of and to Kurdish will be provided in the collaborative work. No specific level of English proficiency is required.


Literature:


Akkaya A. H. and Jongerden, J. (2012). Reassembling the Political: The PKK and the Project of Radical Democracy. European Journal of Turkish Studies (14) [Online], http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4615
Çağlayan, H. (2020). Women in the Kurdish Movement: Mothers, Comrades, Goddesses, Palgrave Macmillian
Flader, U. & Gürer, Ç. (2019). Building Alternative Communities within the State: The Kurdish Movement, Local Municipalities and Democratic Autonomy. In: Niamh McCrea/Fergal Finnegan Funding, Power and Community Development. Policy Press
Flach, A, Ayboğa, E und Knapp, M: Anja Flach (2016): Revolution in Rojava. Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan.
McDowall, D. (2004). A Modern History of the Kurds. I.B. Tauris.
Welat Zeydanlıoğlu. 2008.“The White Turkish Man’s Burden”: Orientalism,Kemalism and the Kurds in Turkey, in: Neo-colonial Mentalities in Contemporary Europe? Language and Discourse inthe Construction of Identities, edited by Guido Rings and Anne Ife, Newcastle upon Tyne,UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008, pp.155-174.
Schmidinger T: Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds.
Film by Mylene Sauloy / ARTE: Syria stellt Frauen gleich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEpXUCMSDqA