MA Seminar taught at the Media Culture Analysis program at the Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf in Summer 2018.
In this course we will attempt to re-frame our research apparatuses by looking beyond the canon of Eurocentric research methodologies in the humanities. The wider field of post- and de-colonial studies offers us an opportunity to understand the assets of research and proposes a re-historicising of them towards a anti-colonial, non-eurocentric research standpoint. Hence throughout the semester we will revisit key authors on the deconstruction of colonial apparatuses and their influence on research methods, and will also explore key ideas and concepts in decolonising research. The course will be mostly focused on the concept of the “colonial matrix of power” — a framework developed mainly by Latin American decolonial theorists — but will expand and present students to different schools of thought within decolonial thinking from the Global South, as well as with propositions for research methods stemming from Indigenous thought. Offered as a provocative reflection on research methodologies in and for Cultural Studies, this will not provide students with new “research toolkits” or closed frameworks, but rather will encourage the development of a critical standpoint towards undertaking research in a European context within an increasingly decolonising world.