Course convenor
Katalin Orban
Course content
The course explores the representation of the – anthropological, political, and cultural – Other. Upon familiarizing themselves with significant concepts and theories of difference/otherness, students test theories against case studies and apply them in their observation and analysis. The first unit of the course examines (post)colonial power relations that have shaped the representation of the Other. Subsequent units examine the frames and limits of discourse on particular groups – including people with disabilities, sexual minorities, ethnic and religious groups – under a democratic rule of law.
Indicative reading
Erdogdu, Ayshe. 2002. Picturing Alterity: representational strategies in Victorian type photographs of Ottoman men. Colonialist photography: imag(in)ing race and place. Eds. Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson. New York: Routledge.
Geertz, Clifford. 1984. Anti-antirelativism. Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism. American Anthropologist 86:263-278.
Davis, Lennard. 1997. Constructing normalcy: The bell curve, the novel, and the invention of the disabled body in the nineteenth century. In The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Lennard Davis. New York: Routledge.
Lane, Harlan. 1997. Construction of Deafness. In The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Lennard Davis. New York: Routledge.
Gilman, Sander. 1985. The Hottentot and the Prostitute. In Difference and pathology: stereotypes of sexuality, race, and madness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 76-108.
Schiffauer, Werner. 1997. Fremde in der Stadt – Zehn Essays über Kultur und Differenz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.