120692 PS Proseminar Cultural and Media Studies (2021W)

In the second half of the 19th century and the onset of the 20th century, at the high point of European imperialism, the colonial powers started dividing up large parts of the world amongst themselves according to their interests. The African content, in particular, as well as the Middle East, were victims to these policies, in which the colonial powers almost literally drew lines in the sand in order to determine the borders between their possessions. In doing so, local groups that belonged together were separated, groups that were hostile to one another were joined together, and colonies were forced to adopt an alien concept of nationhood that destroyed their tribal structures. Nowadays, we see the late consequences of these policies both in Africa and in the Middle East – civil wars, fundamentalism, genocides, terrorism – but hardly to we stop to think that these events are causally connected to colonial – and neocolonial – policies. We rather tend to see violence in some parts of the world as being intrinsically a character trait of particular states and people.
In this course we will therefore deal with Great Britain’s policies in the late 19th as well as US and UK policies in the 20th century in order to analyze how these can be connected to contemporary events throughout the world. In doing so, we will concern ourselves also with lesser known chapters of British and US foreign policy (interventions, development policies) and ask ourselves why these policies and their consequences (wars, disfranchisement, terrorism etc.) are hardly discussed in the media and why colonialism is being seen as a thing of the past rather than as the cause of many of the problems that haunt the world these days.

Goals:
- to become familiar with lesser known aspects of British and US foreign policy
- to be able to link past events to current ongoings
- to recognize the complex nature of world events as well as Western responsibility in the creation of many of these
- to question the simplicity in which these complex relations are often represented in the media

Methods:
- Teacher input
- Reading assignment and discussion of relevant texts
- Documentary and video viewings
- Research tasks throughout the semester