Anthropology of Gender and Labour

Dozent:innen: Melda Demir
Kurzname: GenderLabour
Kurs-Nr.: 07.798.22_035
Kurstyp: Seminar

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches

The course will be conducted in English, including all readings, discussions, and presentations. There is a strong emphasis on active class participation, by critical comments and questions by students as well as slow and collective scholarship.

Inhalt

The main objective of this course is to engage students with the anthropology of labor, work, and working-class history through a gendered lens. The course examines case studies from Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean region in order to provide a regionally grounded and ethnographically informed perspective on these themes.

The seminar is structured around alternating sessions of slow reading and student presentations. The slow-reading sessions focus on one anthropological-ethnographic monograph, which will be selected collectively during the first session and read over the course of the semester. The presentation sessions are organized around specific thematic topics and require students to read and discuss selected academic articles. At the beginning of the semester, the course introduces key Marxist feminist analyses, drawing in particular on the work of Silvia Federici and Marjorie Mbilinyi. Central concepts such as care, racial capitalism, and feminism will be examined through a range of reading materials, including academic texts as well as excerpts from novels and zines. In the following weeks, the seminar explores social reproduction theory, including the notion of “labor of love,” from an anthropological perspective. Further topics include the history of labor unions and labor struggles (Arbeitskämpfe) in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a regional focus on Eastern Africa and its historical and contemporary connections to the Arabian Peninsula, the European Union, and China. The course concludes with in-depth case studies of female seaweed farmers in Zanzibar.

Termine

Datum (Wochentag) Zeit Ort
16.04.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
23.04.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
30.04.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
07.05.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
21.05.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
28.05.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
11.06.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
18.06.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
25.06.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
02.07.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude
09.07.2026 (Donnerstag) 16:15 - 17:45 00 691 Kleiner Übungsraum
1111 - Hauptgebäude