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| Semester | fall semester 2018 |
| Course frequency | Every fall sem. |
| Lecturers |
Kenny R. Cupers (kenny.cupers@unibas.ch)
Manuel Herz (manuel.herz@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | Highway Africa is a research studio that explores the past, present, and future of the trans-African highway network. With the end of colonization in Africa came unprecedented ambitions of modernization. These coalesced around plans for highway networks linking the continent’s newly independent nations. For members of the elite, such networks were first and foremost economic propositions, to facilitate the movement of goods and materials across Africa and for export abroad. Political actors saw in the projected networks opportunities to forge a new era of pan-African cooperation and trans-continental development. For a fledgling middle class, the highways conjured imaginaries of upward social mobility and for entire communities they opened up hopes of movement unlike anything experienced before. With the gigantic boom in infrastructure investment across the continent today, the trans-African highways are experienc-ing second lives. Chinese developers, the African Development Bank, and other international organization are laying vast multi-lane highways that are radically transforming African urban centers and countrysides. How does highway infrastructure shape the course of history? What are the stakes of such large-scale ambitions of development? Focusing on the multiple dimensions of development on the ground, Highway Africa questions conventional approaches to infrastructure and urbaniza-tion in and beyond Africa. When highways or railways figure in urban or Africa-focused re-search, they tend to appear as merely technical problems of development: either they are de-scribed as lacking, or they are treated as magical solutions to reduce poverty and conflict. The aim of the research studio is to contribute to new understandings about the relationship be-tween material infrastructure and the everyday realities of urbanization, by taking account of its historical complexity, lived experience, and the multivalent dreams and projects it generates. |
| Learning objectives | The aim of the research studio is to equip students with collaborative and multi-disciplinary research skills. Combining existing formats such as lectures, reading seminars, and tutorials, the studio allows students to work together in a shared space. The studio immerses students in collaborative, interdisciplinary research practice that combines humanities and social-scientific methods with visual and spatial analysis and representation. Jointly taught by core and affiliat-ed faculty, with regular visits by external experts, the studio takes place in a dedicated space, which acts as a laboratory in which small teams of students hailing from different disciplinary backgrounds can work closely together. You will work on a range of different and complemen-tary outputs, ranging from essays to illustrated booklets, maps and diagrams, photographic projects, videos, and installations. This work will be assembled and edited to be made public as a collective outcome of the research studio. |
| Comments | The “research studio” a new and unique teaching format at the University of Basel, and is the central element of the new MA in Critical Urbanisms, which started in the autumn 2017. |
| Admission requirements | 1st year students of the MA Critical Urbanisms |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Module: Interdisciplinary Research Practice (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |