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Sommersemester 2011

For more detailed information on the SCM Study Group and the Study Group's sessions see below.

Convenors: Daniele Cantini, Anna Lissa, James Thompson,
Ralph Buchenhorst

Nowadays the tension between local and one or more globalized identities is becoming increasingly tense. Local identities are suffering from the stress and tension attributed to the ‘attack of globalization’. The aim of this semester’s study group texts is to thematize the relation between local actors and global homogenization from several points of view, i.e. in terms of economy, sociology, philosophy and historical perspectives. The concept of alienation/estrangement (Befremdung) will also be involved in the debate through accurate discussion of theories conceptualizing the dominate local / global distinction within the discourse.

The semester schedule also includes two films dealing with the topic of identity – more specifically, with identities at the fringe of ‘normal’ society. Such is the case of the Israeli film Eyes Wide Open, which is about homosexuality in Orthodox Israeli communities.

Key topics will include, but not be limited to the following concepts:

• Translocality
• Globalization
• Transnationalism
• Alienation
• Integration
• Gender Identities

• Feldmann, Yael S. No Room of Their Own Gender and Nation in Israeli Women’s Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Either Chapter 2: “Alterity Revisited: Gender Theory and Israeli Literary Feminism”, 43-60.
• Glick-Schiller, Nina. “Transborder Citizenship: An Outcome of Legal Pluralism with Transnational Social Fields”. Von Benda- Beckmann, Keebat von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths (eds). Mobile People Mobile Law. Expanding Legal Relations in a Contracting World. England: Ashgate Publishing House, 27-50.
• Lachman, Renate. “Remarks on the Foreign (Strange) as a Figure of Cultural Ambivalence”. ). Budick, Sanford and Iser. Wolfgang (eds.). The Translatability of Cultures - Figurations of the Space Between. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, 282-293.
• Pfeiffer K. Ludwig. “The Black Hole of Culture: Japan, Radical Otherness, and the Disappearance of Difference (or ‘In Japan Everything normal’). Budick, Sanford and Iser. Wolfgang (eds.). The Translatability of Cultures - Figurations of the Space Between. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996,186-203.
• Waldenfels, Bernhard. Expanding the Horizons of Phenomenology. London: Routledge, 2004.
• Waldenfels, Bernhard: The Question of the Other: Experience of the Other. The Chinese University Press Hong Kong, 2007.
• Zhang, Li. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China’s Floating Population, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001, “Introduction”, 1-21.
• Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Chapter 6 “Longing for Recognition”, 131-151.

Reading Group „Latin-American Thought“

The aim of the reading group is to read texts of Latin-American thinkers dealing with the particular situation of societies in the Ibero-American linguistic and cultural realm. The main issues are the colonial past, questions of the specific cultural identity and alternative representations of social and epistemic orders in South-America. While many of the texts are in Spanish we will also consider English and German translations. The reading group is open for everyone who is interested!

Time: Wednesdays 12-2 p.m.
Venue: seminar room Reichardtstr. 6
Contact person: Stefan Knauss
e-mail: stefan.knauss@scm.uni-halle.de

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