Winter Semester 2025/2026

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Jie Yang

Time and Place: Tue. 12:00 – 14:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room, the course will start on October 21st

Synopsis:

Contemporary human life is characterized by the accelerated movement of people and objects; the explosion of information and new technologies; emerging transnational cultures; changing forms of class, gender and race/ethnicity exploitation; new health concerns and the global rise of therapy culture; and economic and environmental disruptions. These new trends resist traditional scholarly treatment within the discipline of anthropology. This course explores anthropology’s history of interdisciplinary theories and methods that address the human consequences, dislocations, challenges, and opportunities encompassed in social and cultural change. It offers a rethinking of basic concepts, methods and formulations of research projects to engage altered ethnographic objects and shifting ethnographic field. The course addresses the shifting conditions of the analysis of cultural practice in anthropology, particularly as boundaries between those who study and those who are the objects of study erode and the discipline itself is reorganized. It aims to answer broad questions, such as how information and communication technologies and mass media re-demarcate the private and the public and mediate social relations at many levels of social action; how globalization and transnational processes have challenged the centrality of the nation-state in theorizing culture and power; and how the concept of culture has been redefined within the changing social contour, with its ongoing debates on the ontological turn in anthropology.

This course examines major concepts that provide the context for understanding contemporary theory and methods in anthropology. This includes a focus on key theorists (e.g., Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Foucault, Byung-chul Han, Williams, Ahmed, Ortner, Massumi), themes (e.g., affect/emotion, agency, body, practice, discourse, ideology, governmentality, hegemony, power, subjectivity, voice) and main approaches (critical, poststructural, discursive, feminist, global). The course also provides an opportunity to apply these concepts to ethnography and focus on recent ethnographic innovations that restructure relationships between science and government, between researcher and research subjects and between academic and public discourse.

Lecturer: SDAC team members

Time and Place: Mon. 14:00 – 18:00 c.t., bi-weekly, SDAC Seminar Room, starting on October 13th 2025

Synopsis:

What distinguishes a sociological study from an historical or ethnographic one? What methodology is employed in the field research or interview process? What are the ethical issues associated with conducting research involving human subjects, and how can these challenges be addressed? How might one navigate the interplay between emotions, subjectivity, and the ways in which interlocutors situate and evaluate their or your identity and position in society? How might one approach the analysis of politically sensitive issues? This course will address these questions and others through an examination of methodology texts, exemplary pieces of research, and concrete practice. The aim is to equip students with a range of methodological tools for the production of qualitative data, which is the material of qualitative social sciences.

Organizer: Dr. Ferdiansyah Thajib

Topic 1: Balancing academic knowledge “in the wild”, by Prof. Dr. Tijo Salverda

Dates: November 7th, December 5th, January 23rd, 9:00 – 14:30 s.t., SDAC Lecture Room.

At university, the emphasis is on academic rigour and theories that help explain the (social) world. However, when you begin your professional life, academic knowledge is often only one of several factors that matter. Business strategies, public policies, organisational practices, and the communication of scientific insights to the broader public are frequently the result of balancing academic knowledge with consensus-building among different interests, considerations of power, (emotional) narratives, and more. In this course, we will discuss the application of academic knowledge in non-academic settings in greater detail and learn from guests with diverse professional backgrounds about how they balance academic knowledge with other influences in their work.

Organizer: Prof. Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier

Time and Place: SDAC Guest Lectures (SDAC Seminar Room). The CAS Colloquium happens on Tuesday 18:00 – 20:00 c.t., weekly.

Synopsis:

Lecturer: Dr. Maria Bondes

Time and Place: Mon. 8:00 – 10:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

This course introduces students to the co-called “dictator’s dilemma” (Svolik 2012, Dickson 2016) and authoritarian rulers’ varying strategies towards public participation and political control, focusing on the case of China. Rulers of authoritarian regimes around the globe face a fundamental dilemma: They live in the constant threat of being overturned by the masses over which they rule. However, without elections they have incomplete information about citizens’ preferences and are uncertain how best to please public opinion so as to stay in power. While authoritarian regimes are often associated with hard political control, it has become common ground for non-democratic regimes to choose a strategy for survival that combines “hard” elements of coercion and repression with “soft” elements of responsiveness and inclusion. Authoritarian rulers integrate bottom-up input mechanisms and institutions of public participation into their system of governance with the goal of enhancing political stability and effective policymaking. Such an instrumental approach to public participation faces the challenge of mobilizing citizens without promoting political pluralism or democracy.

The course will address questions such as: Why do rulers of authoritarian regimes choose varying strategies of political control and how do these relate to authoritarian resilience? Through which formal and informal institutions do authoritarian regimes integrate public participation into their system of governance? Why does an authoritarian regime like China permit civil society and public protest? And how do political actors at different political levels respond to public demands? The course will approach these issues through the reading of relevant academic literature, in-class group exercises and discussion rounds.

Lecturer: Dr. Maria Bondes

Time and Place: Mon. 10:00 – 12:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

This course introduces students to the basic tenets of academic writing, focusing on how to write a term paper or master thesis. The course will start out with discussing the basics of academic writing, the functions, structure and main parts of academic texts. The course will then turn to the process of academic writing. Here students will develop their own project – either working on a concrete term paper, their master thesis or an exemplary piece of work. We will look at questions such as: How do I find a topic for my paper/thesis? Where do I find information on my topic, what are valid sources, and how do I search, organize and archive academic materials? Here, students will be introduced to the reference management program Zotero. Students will get familiar with how to formulate a research question (RQ), what kinds of questions are “good” questions, and how to use the RQ as red thread throughout the paper/thesis. We will look at what is a literature review and how do I identify a research gap from the existing literature. And how do I then turn this into an analytical framework (and what is that anyways)? We will discuss how to set up the data and methods part (but not dive too deep into individual methods or research designs, that would require another course). Then we turn to the analysis part, how to organize it, how to present your data, concluding with a discussion of results section. In the end we turn to the conclusion (what’s the difference to the discussion of results section?) and the introduction. Throughout the semester students will be working on their own project and hand in regular assignments that accumulate to the term paper required for this class.

Lecturer: PD Dr. Violat Thimm (she/her)

Time and Place:

Lecture Series (Ringvorlesung): Mon. 18:00 – 20:00 c.t., Kollegienhaus KH 1.019

Seminar: Tue. 8:00 – 10:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

This public lecture series (Ringvorlesung), based at FAU’s IZGDD (Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Gender-Diversität-Differenz) and accompanying seminar deals with current discussions and debates in Queer Studies from an interdisciplinary angle. To understand where the relatively recently emerged field of Queer Studies stands and how it is positioned within the broader academe, especially scholars who are based at FAU will provide insights into their ongoing research in the lecture series. Academics mainly from anthropology, but also theology, religious studies and media studies will present cross-culturally on queer ageing and care in Indonesia, intersections of crip and queer in Germany, queer ethics in Chinese male sex work, queer colonial encounters in Sri Lanka or queer sensibilities in university teaching in Germany, for example. In doing so, queer research will be made visible within and outside FAU. This is of particular importance given the anti-queer politics and policies that are ongoing on regional, national, and international scales, starting from the right-wing.

The lectures will be accompanied by a seminar which, on the one hand, deals with theoretical discussions of the topics presented in the lecture series. On the other, it will reflect on queer studies as a research field in its own right.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Jie Yang

Time and Place: Tue. 14:00 – 16:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room, the course will start on October 21st

Synopsis:

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier

Time and Place: Wed. 10:00 – 12:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

Lecturer: Jessica Wengel, M.A.

Time and Place: Thur. 12:00 – 14:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

Lecturer: Wen “Alvin” Wang, M.A.

Time and Place: Thu. 14:00 – 16:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

Looking at a world map and searching for the very far east of the Eurasian super-continent, we find China, North and South Korea, Japan… The names of these few countries strike our mind as being part of the same region: East Asia. Cultural common points also seem to unify these populations in our imagination: chopsticks, buddhist temples, traditional roofs, martial arts, rice and tea, or filial piety… Yet like so many other similar territorial divisions, the more we try to make sense of it, the more elusive the unity becomes.

Are these populations not too different to be assimilated in the same space? Does East Asia exist outside our geography textbooks? What do these populations really share in common? And what separates them?

This course examines the construction of this region and its present realities. Breaking away from the discourses of the nation-states as well as the orientalist vision of a little differentiated cultural space, we will investigate, in a transversal manner, several major themes, ranging from the writing system to the governmental structures, or the food and drinks. At the end, students will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the complex links that interconnect this region.

Lecturer: Dr. Ferdiansyah Thajib

Time and Place: Wed. 8:00 – 10:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

As a modern history invention, Southeast Asia has come to have a living reality which bears critical investigation and articulation. `Southeast Asia’ and its various constituent countries are being made and remade through the movements and flows of goods, peoples, ideas and technologies across and beyond the region. This course is an introduction to how the region is shaped through a history of similarities and differences, and why it remains an important area to study today. The first part of the course focuses on the region’s historical evolution through diverse typologies of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial encounters. We will critically engage with the complexity of Southeast Asian cultures and societies, by studying its diverse ethnicities, plural patterns of gender and sexuality and vernacularized forms of world religions and local beliefs. The final part examines the dynamics that constitute the region’s sociopolitical realities in current times, including democratization, populism, religious bureaucracy and gendered mobilities.

Lecturer: Dr. Mingqing Yuan

Time and Place: Mon. 14:00 – 18:00 c.t., bi-weekly, SDAC Seminar Room, starting on October 20th 2025

Synopsis:

What is Africa? Where is Africa? When is Africa? What is the meaning of Africa and being African? Who has the right to define it? This course traces how the idea of Africa is invented, discursively constructed and performed through various historical moments and (post)colonial knowledge production. It will start with a brief introduction to area studies, especially African studies and invites the students to critically reflect on the categorization of knowledge and compartmentalization of the world. Then the course is organized in a chronological order to discuss the invention of Africa from the perspective of various disciplines. The specific topics range from the history of the black Atlantic, construction of race, and discussion of cultural authenticity to pan-Africanism, Afropolitanism and African futurism. It is designed to acquaint students with African philosophy, history, African political thoughts and African literature in general, through which students could connect daily issues with larger social and political contexts. At the end of the course, students will be familiar with the intellectual history of Africa, current debates within African studies, and the role of human agency and decision-making in historical processes.

Aims of the Course:

• Acquire knowledge of the history, main topics, and concerns of Africa and Africans
• Develop the ability of fundamental reflection and critical analysis of issues related to the discourses and African philosophy
• Develop a critical approach to the underlying cultural and socio-political contexts of political thoughts and movements
• Develop presentation skills and learn to produce high-quality academic writing

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier

Time and Place: Wed. 16:00 – 18:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

Morality remains the great question of human life. How do we split the good from the bad, how do we associate with others, and how do we make these decisions? The study of moral phenomena is a core issue for the understanding of how society and culture work. What is the role of ethics in human life? How do people deal with their moral sentiments in complex situations, and how can we distinguish individual moral sentiments from collective and socially induced moral representations? But moral phenomena go beyond questions of distinguishing the good from the evil. They include all dimensions of life concerned with beliefs, symbols, and how we tie ourselves together.

By contrast with the seminar Introduction to the Anthropology of Morality and Ethics, which covers a large number of classical and contemporary readings concerning the anthropological study of morals, this research colloquium is conceived as a space of exchange on ongoing research. It is reserved for MA students and PhD candidates working on their dissertations, but also open to all researchers with an interest in the issue.

In parallel to the discussion of ongoing research, the seminar follows, semester after semester, the study of classical thinkers on the issue of ethics and morality. After dedicating time to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Émile Durkheim in the previous semesters, this winter semester will focus on the reading of work on ethics of the American philosopher John Dewey. As John Dewey lived in China from 1919 to 1921, his pragmatist philosophy was engaged in a dialog with Chinese classical thoughts and the contemporary revolutionary historical context of his times. The first sessions of the semester will be dedicated to studies on the influence of this experience on his thought, before turning to the reading of his later works on ethics.

In order to register, please write to jean-baptiste.pettier@fau.de

Lecturer: Dr. Ferdiansyah Thajib

Time and Place: Wed. 12:00 – 16:00 c.t., bi-weekly, SDAC Conference Room. The first session will be held on October 15th 2025 from 14:00 – 16:00 c.t.!

Synopsis:

This seminar is intended to create a collaborative environment for SDAC students who are about to start  preparing and writing their thesis. It is not a substitute of the thesis supervision process, but rather aimed at complementing it. The focus of the seminar is to craft student’s capacities for embarking on their thesis project, from getting ready for fieldwork to planning the first steps to take once they are in the field;  on how to navigate supervision process, how to incorporate feedbacks,  crafting literature review and drafting a research report. The seminar is to facilitate this peer learning process rather than prescribing how it should evolve.

Lecturer: Dr. Ferdiansyah Thajib

Time and Place: Wed. 12:00 – 16:00 c.t., bi-weekly, SDAC Conference Room. The first session will be held on October 15th 2025 from 12:00 – 14:00 c.t.!

Synopsis:

This course examines the possibilities and challenges of engaged anthropological practice, foregrounding the intersections of collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and scholar-activism. Moving beyond anthropology as an extractive knowledge project, we explore how researchers work with, rather than merely study, communities, institutions, and movements. Drawing on critical debates in race, environmental, and disability justice, we consider how public anthropology intervenes in structures of power and inequity. Special attention is given to art as an epistemic site, expanding anthropology’s methodological and expressive repertoire. Participants will develop a collective research proposal that reflects on the ethical, political, and epistemological stakes of public engagement, asking: What does it mean to think and act publicly as anthropologists? How might anthropology’s conceptual tools be reoriented toward transformative collaboration? Through these questions, the course invites a rethinking of anthropological knowledge production as an entangled, situated, and accountable practice.

This course is only intended for second year students and will have an oral exam as its examination form.

Lecturer: PD Dr. Viola Thimm (she/her)

Time and Place: Tue. 16:00 – 18:00 c.t., SDAC Seminar Room

Synopsis:

This seminar focuses on a well-founded discussion of religious women’s movements and queer approaches. On the basis of regional comparative examples from Morocco, Egypt, the USA, Germany and others, the theoretical approaches of Muslim and Islamic feminists will be conveyed. Theological, Quranic exegetical approaches play a role as well as secularly argued positions for gender justice. As early as the 1980s, the Moroccan Fatima Mernissi examined the hadiths, i.e. the tradition of the sayings and practices of the Prophet Mohammad, with regard to the work of women at the time of the Prophet. In the mid-2000s, the Pakistani academic Asma Barlas assumed that the Quran’s message was fundamentally anti-patriarchal. At the same time, the Islamic theologian Amina Wadud proclaimed a “gender jihad” in the USA. The transwoman Leyla Jagiella refers to the “third gender in Islam” in her current analyses and practices.

On the other hand, the focus will be on everyday struggles of Muslim activists who rebel against women’s and transgender oppression, as well as their approaches to (international) networking. Since around 2018, there has been a development of young Muslim women and trans* presenting themselves self-confidently online, acting against racism and misogyny. Through the digital social media networks, this has become a matter of course, in which the actors directly support each other (e.g. against so-called “shitstorms”) and thus strengthen each other. Through their presence and their actions, they challenge many stereotypes, prejudices, rejections and discriminations.

The following questions will accompany the seminar: What worldviews do the believing theorists and activists follow? What colonial pasts and current social orders are their beliefs and practices linked to? How do cultural, religious and gender-related ideas, ideologies and practices interlock on a broader level in this field? The aim of the seminar is to gain insights into the lives and beliefs of religious protagonists, to make the intersections between religion and gender analysable and discussable, and finally to learn to critically reflect on one’s own thought patterns.

This course is only intended for second year students and will have an oral exam as its examination form.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Dominik Müller

Time and Place: Thur. 8:00 – 12:00 c.t., bi-weekly, Seminarraum EG (Glückstr. 10), starting on October 16th 2025.

Synopsis:

This course examines how human rights are claimed, denied, and reconfigured in everyday life. Rather than treating rights as universal and uncontested, we approach them ethnographically: as fragile, negotiated, and embedded in unequal social and institutional relations. Today, the acceptance of human rights is under mounting global pressure—from authoritarian resurgence and right-wing populism to the consequences of digitalization, the planetary crisis, posthumanist critiques, economic de-globalization, and intensified migration debates. Through conceptual readings, selected case studies, and ethnographic research (especially from the “Anthropology of Human Rights”), we will explore how rights are translated into practice – and how they are challenged, by whom, and with what consequences. The seminar invites students to engage critically with the promises, paradoxes, and limits of human rights in the contemporary world – and whether/how they might need to change in order to survive and be more impactful.

This is an introductory seminar. No prior knowledge of Anthropology (Ethnologie / Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie) or social-scientific perspectives on human rights is required. However, participants, typically B.A. students in Sociology, should be interested in the Institute of Sociology’s optional interdisciplinary specialization in Anthropology (offered by my Chair for Cultural and Social Anthropology and its teaching team), as the framework of our course readings and discussions will be decidedly anthropological.

Merry, Sally Engle. 2009. “Human Rights and Vernacularization.” In Anthropology and Human Rights, special issue of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32 (2): 38–55. Wiley-Blackwell.

Fassin, Didier. 2011. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press

Niezen, Ronald. 2020. #HumanRights. Stanford University Press.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Dominik Müller

Time and Place: Thur. 12:00 – 13:45, Seminarraum EG (Glückstr. 10), starting on October 30th 2025.

Synopsis:

This advanced seminar is open for advanced BA students, MA students, and PhD candidates whose research focus is related to the Chair of Cultural and Social Anthropology, or who are interested in pursuing related research. During the sessions, we will discuss research projects which are being conducted within the group “LawTech Ethnographies.” Students who are interested in writing an (under-) graduate thesis or PhD dissertation in the field of legal, political and/or religious anthropology, are encouraged to join this advanced seminar to discuss and present their ideas.

Lecturer: Oleg Vasilchenko, M.A.

Time and Place: Tue. 12:30 – 13:45, Seminarraum EG (Glückstr. 10)

Synopsis:

This close-reading seminar examines a broad spectrum of themes. Beginning with precolonial statecraft and customary orders, moving through colonial administration and nationalist movements, and extending into post-independence development strategies, religious revival and migration. Legal institutions and plural jurisdictions serve as a continuous frame, allowing us to explore how governance, social structures and ideologies have both shaped and been shaped by historical forces. The course also addresses contemporary challenges around citizenship, identity, public authority and the influence of technology on governance in Malaysia and its Malay-speaking neighbours. Through intensive engagement with foundational texts and detailed case studies, students will trace the region’s evolving relationships between society, power, authority and technological change over time.

Lecturer: Oleg Vasilchenko, M.A.

Time and Place: Wed. 8:00 – 10:00 c.t., Seminarraum EG (Glückstr. 10)

Synopsis:

This course introduces ethnographic research methods, primarily through sociocultural anthropology, while emphasizing their applicability across various social science disciplines. We explore how ethnographers plan and conduct fieldwork, analyze qualitative data, and (re-)present their findings. Central themes include the evolution of participant observation, the redefinition of “the field” in global and local contexts, and the politics of (re-)presenting people and culture(s). Students will gain hands-on experience in essential methods such as participant observation and ethnographic interviewing, complemented by an introduction to visual techniques. Practical instruction in fieldnote-taking and interpretation will guide students to recognize and articulate meaningful social patterns. Throughout the course, we critically engage with feminist, post-colonial, and decolonial perspectives, alongside discussions of ethical considerations, to foster responsible and reflexive ethnographic practice. Students will develop and conduct their own small-scale ethnographic projects throughout the semester.