In the past decades, the “mobilities turn” (Hannam, Sheller and Urry 2006, Addey 2013) has opened up new agendas of research, addressing globalization, migration, and mobile lifestyles. At the same time scholars have pointed to various mobility regimes and their production of uneven forms of movement related to power structures. Mobility takes place in particular spatial settings, which are often produced through histories and geographies of privilege and oppression, inclusion and exclusion, as well as conflict and containment. In a U.S. American context, racial territoriality and mobility are closely connected as the reality of Jim Crow and its control of black spatial mobility in the South demonstrate. Urban „ghettoes“ and gated communities are spaces linked to differential forms of mobility. Borders emerge as prominent sites where different mobilities intersect and where the stark asymmetries between them become particularly obvious. In this course we will discuss intersections of space, mobility, and power as well as their representation in U.S. literary texts and cultural productions. The last three sessions in this course will be dedicated to student group projects.
- Trainer/in: Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez