Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Culture and the Arts

Aim

After completion of the course the student shall on an advanced level be able to:

• account for the ways in which cultural and aesthetic expressions have sustained notions of race and ethnicity in European history;
• analyze how aesthetic narratives and images problematize and question stereotypical accounts of racial and ethnic groups, migrants, and migration;
• make historically informed assessments of the principle of free speech in relation to discursive violence in the context of contemporary depictions of race, ethnicity, and gender.

Content

The course deals with the relation of cultural and aesthetic expressions – such as literary narratives, visual arts, photography, cinema, and the performing arts – to race, ethnicity and migration. The premise of the course is that cultural and aesthetic expressions provide specific ways of understanding crucial aspects of ethnicity and migration, for instance, the stereotyping of minorities, intercultural encounters, and conditions of exile and diaspora. Aesthetic tendencies and genres in which race and ethnicity seems particularly prevalent, such as caricature, primitivism, travel writing, and war journalism, are examined in the course. Students will make in-depth observations of contemporary debates in which art and culture serve as an arena for new forms of racialization as well as new forms of anti-racism. In this context, attention is given to the ways in which contemporary depictions of race, ethnicity and migration may be analysed in relation to principles of free speech, on the one hand, and prohibitions against hate speech, on the other. The course employs an intersectional approach to ethnicity and migration.