| Semester | spring semester 2019 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Emilio Distretti (emilio.distretti@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | Across centuries the Mediterranean has stood at the center of questions of conquest, trade, capitalism, racial subordination and migration. This course takes this analysis further, re-envisaging the Mediterranean basin not simply as a space for domination but as the platform of spatial, political and social experimentations in the southern shores of Europe, in North Africa and the Levant. Across revolutions, war, nationalism, colonialism, decolonization and globalization, the course investigates Mediterranean history by looking at the way in which the sea has governed the relations across time between people, cultures, indigenous and settler, native and foreign, metropolitan and peripheral, tradition and innovation, colonial and anti-colonial. In so doing the course looks at the sea as cognitive space that allows us to understand identity, colonial linkages and temporal entanglements: from the Muslim/Arab Mediterranean, through the invention of the New World, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to colonialism, the impact of Modernism in the 20th century and the continuities in today’s border regimes in the Mediterranean Sea. The course investigates a series of case studies that span from architecture and urbanism, science and technology studies, aesthetics and geographic imaginaries, to countering strategies of knowledge production and practices of resistance and their interrelations with postcolonial theory, critical theory and de-colonial thinking. Students will be introduced to the works of Dubois, Fanon, Gilroy, Mignolo, Sayad, Shohat and Sharpe, at the intersection of architectural history, critical geography and postcolonial studies. |
| Learning objectives | Throughout the course, students will (I) study the Mediterranean region as space of encounter between continents: Europe, Africa and the Levant. Students will (II) understand the crucial role the Mediterranean sea plays in colonial and postcolonial global histories, as a space of conflicting narratives where issues of representation, migration, diaspora, slave-trade, border, mobility, citizenship, and human rights are debated and contested. Students will (II) learn how to engage with a variety of voices and case studies that challenge the Western dominated global representation of the Mediterranean, as the cradle of European civilization. By looking at the Mediterranean as the crucial site of the African diaspora since the classic era, students will (III) learn how to adapt Black Atlantic theory to the Mediterranean in relation to architectural and material histories. Finally, students will (IV) learn how to look at spatial products and architecture as a way to ‘map’ linkages and discontinuities between the colonial past and the (post)colonial present, with particular attention to what is happening today with the Mediterranean migration crisis. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Modul: Europäisierung und Globalisierung (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) Modul: Fachkompetenz Globaler Wandel (Master's degree subject: Geography) Modul: Fields: Governance and Politics (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Transfer: Europa interdisziplinär (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Module: Projects and Processes of Urbanization (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 | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |