Course Syllabus

 

From Witches to Cyborgs: Gender, Race, and Resistance 

Semester & Location:

Summer 2021 - DIS Copenhagen

Type & Credits:

Elective Course - 4 credits

Study Tours:

Barcelona

Major Disciplines:

Gender Studies, Anthropology, Sociology

Faculty:

Nazila Ghavami Kivi

Program Director:

Tina Mangieri, tma@disstockholm.se 

Time & Place:

SU21, Session 3, DIS Copenhagen

 

 

Description of Course

The witch, an iconic and versatile figure in history and in contemporary times, is crucial to understanding the emergence of gender hierarchies, sexism, and heterosexualism in contemporary societies. Represented in fairytales, animations, novels, and scary stories, the witch, persecuted as well as resilient, is omnipresent in contemporary feminist and futurist art and media. As an icon of mystery and resistance, the witch offers us infinite possibilities to explore, interpret, and reflect on our own culture, society, and science. Historically, the witch hunts that took place in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries played a pivotal role in the subjugation of women and women-oriented knowledge systems. They were crucial in how heterosexuality, ownership of bodies, and the binary gender system came to be the hallmarks of modern societies.

In this course, we will investigate the science of gender and sexuality, knowledge production, and futurist technology through the figure of The Witch. We will start with a short historical review of the witch-hunts across Europe and in Denmark. You will acquire knowledge about the role of the witch-hunts in European colonialism, the consolidation of patriarchal systems, and how they marked the turn from The Middle Ages to modernity. This happened with what scholar Silvia Federici, the author of Caliban and The Witch, calls ‘primitive accumulation:’ the transition to early capitalist and market-based societies.

The subjugation of women healers, midwives, and experts is another important step in modern history. How are the witch-hunts, the idea of hysteria, and modern medical knowledge about women and gender related? This course explores this relationship and makes a connection between the commodification of health and the pathologization of femininity and womanhood. We will take an in-depth look at the relationship between modern medical knowledge and the science of gender, before we turn back to the present and introduce The Cyborg as a modern day witch who challenges and explores the limits of gender/heterosexualism, race, and other identities by using art, wild imagination, and futurist technology.   

 

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course you will have achieved:

Knowledge:

  • Theoretical insight into critical feminist theory and critical assessment of science and knowledge production
  • Historical awareness of the interconnectedness of the concepts of Hysteria and The Medical Gaze as the Male Gaze
  • The political history of the witch burnings, and how witches are related to colonialism, settlement, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia in Europe.
  • The origins of the heterosexual model. Medicalization and the construction of modernity and gender norms.

Skills:

  • Skills to identify, understand, and analyze how various theories operate in and influence social and cultural power relations, structures, and cultural products.
  • Skills to identify, understand, and discuss different approaches to scientific knowledge about women and gender, ideology, and agency.

Competencies:

  • Competency to carry out theory-based, critical studies of cultural, social, and technological problems that also include considerations of ideological frameworks.
  • Competency to reflect on one’s own practice in relation to power relations, cultural diversity, and socio-historical situatedness.

 

Faculty

Nazila Kivi is a writer, curator, and literary critic and writes frequently for one of Denmark’s largest cultural dailies, Politiken. She is the co-founder and editor of Copenhagen-based cultural magazine Friktion and works at the intersections of academia, art, and activism in the fields of race, gender, science, and colonialism. She hold a BA in Public Health Science with a Gender Certificate from University of Copenhagen (2016) and an MA in Cultural Encounters and Communication from Roskilde University (2020).

 

Readings

A more detailed reading list will be provided at the beginning of the term.

  • Haraway, D (1991): A Cyborg Manifesto:  Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge Press. New York, USA.
  • Federici, S (2004): Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia. USA.  
  • Valencia, S (2018): Gore Capitalism. Semiotext/Intervention Series. MIT University Press. USA.
  • Suárez-Krabbe, J (2017): The Conditions that Make A Difference. Decolonial Historical Realism and the Decolonisation of Knowledge and education. In M. Cross & A. Ndofirepi (Eds.), Knowledge and Change in the African Universities. Sense Publishers.
  • Wajcman, J (2004): Feminism Confronts Technology/Technofeminism. Polity Press. Cambridge, UK.  
  • Kivi, N (2019): A Cyborg is a Witch is a Cyborg is a Witch… in CSPA Quarterly. Center for Sustainable Arts.
  • Henningsen, G (1980): The Witches’ Advocate. University of Nevada Press. USA.
  • Said, E (2003): Orientalism. Penguin Books, USA.  
  • McClintock, A (1995): Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. Routledge Press. New York. USA.
  • Lugones, M (2007): Heterosexualism in the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia, Volume 22, Number 1, Winter 2007, pp. 186-209 (Article) Published by Indiana University Press
  • Oyewumi, O (1997): The Invention of Women. Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press. USA.  
  • Findlay, D (1993): The Good, the Normal and the Healthy: The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge About Women. Canadian Journal of Sociology, Spring 1993. Vol.18(2), pp.115-135
  • Martin, E (2001): The Woman in the Body. A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Beacon Press. Boston, USA.
  • Thorburn, E (2016): Cyborg Witches: Class Composition and Social Reproduction in the GynePunk Collective. Feminist Media Studies. Volume 17, 2017, Issue 2.

Other course material will include current media articles, works of art and activism, historical documents (Malleus Maleficarum) and films/video. The instructor will provide access to all course material through Canvas.

 

Field Studies

  • Medicinsk Museion (Museum of Medical History)
  • Walking Tour on Copenhagen’s Colonial History
  • Other sites of interest for the course

 

Guest Lecturers

  • Kasper Opstrup, Copenhagen University, on activism, the occult, and the return of the Witch in contemporary activism
  • Jualia Suárez-Krabbe, Roskilde University, on the historical origins and connections between the witch hunts, colonialism and racism in Europe.
  • Heksekreds (Witch Circle) by Krogerup Højskole or Hekseskolen (The Witch School)

 

Approach to Teaching

This class is based on your active participation and your willingness to partake in collaborative learning. While I will be your guide and provide learning goals, the responsibility of preparing and learning together with your peers is yours. You can always ask me for help in class or at the beginning or the end of each session. I will also be available by email and will reply your questions in working hours.

I don’t have a strict policy against the use of electronic devices in class, since we will be using them for assignments from time to time. I will let you know on each occasion how to proceed with electronic devices.

 

Expectations

Be on time.
Respect your classmates’ opinion.

You are here to learn, but others can learn from you as well. Don’t hesitate to share your relevant thoughts and use the classroom as a practicing ground to articulate your thoughts.

I expect you to think about the texts that we read and try to connect them with your everyday life and what you observe in the world and the media, and be willing to share your thoughts in class. Remember, this class is for you to practice your academic and analytical skills and I don’t expect you to have ‘the right answers’ from the beginning. We are on a learning journey together.

 

Evaluation

For each week in class (excluding the travel week), you will have a group assignment that I expect you to present in class before the end of the week.

I expect half a page of individual reflection notes handed in after each field study.

On your travel week, you will be handed a notebook that you will use to write down your reflections from the academic visits on the tour. These will be part of your final grading. 

A personal essay on a given topic from class readings with personal/real life reflections will conclude the course.

In all assignments, I reward the application of the theory that we talk about in class to real life phenomena in culture, politics, and/or social life and the media.

 

Grading

Late papers will be accepted, but your grade for the paper will be reduced by half a point for each day that it is late.

 

Academic Regulations  

Please make sure to read the Academic Regulations on the DIS website. There you will find regulations on:

DIS - Study Abroad in Scandinavia - www.DISabroad.org

 

Course Summary:

Date Details Due