Previous seminar 

SPRING 2018

28 February - Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, Irene Molina, and Karina Raña. ”From Welfare to Warfare: Exploring the Militarization of the Suburb.” Discussant: René Leon-Rosales, MKC.

20 March - Dominic Teodorescu. Cultural Geographics, Uppsala University och Irene Molina, Director of Research at CEMFOR. ”The extremely excluded? Roma EU migrants’ precarious living conditions in Uppsala.” Discussant: Simon Wallengren.

3 April - "Violence in the Myth of the Revolutionary Heroine: Analysis of Narratives of Russian Female Terrorist at the beginning of the 20th century". Nadezna Petrusenko, Örebro University. Discussant: Professor Elena Namli. 

Abstract: The purpose of the presentation is to investigate the question about the way participation in political violence was represented and explained in revolutionary biographies of Russian female terrorists from the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, Russian authorities were challenged seriously by systematic political terrorism of revolutionary socialist groups and anarchists. Women played a prominent role in these violent activities, both as assassins and chemists responsible for producing bombs for assassinations. I will focus on narratives constructed by comrades and sympathizers of these women within the discourse of heroism and martyrdom, which was used in Russian revolutionary underground to tell stories of revolutionary terrorists as stories of idealistic young people willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of people. In this way, revolutionaries would get sympathy from the wider public and would become the role models for the other revolutionary fighters. Portrayals of female terrorists as revolutionary heroines were more complicated in comparison to the similar portrayals of the other revolutionary women due to their direct or indirect participation in political violence. Authors of revolutionary biographies represented terrorist women as “good” women in accordance with the dominant ideal of femininity that existed in Russian society at that time in order to challenge the claims of conservative authors that terrorist women were unnatural and unfeminine. Participation in political violence was, however, the opposite of what was expected of a “good” woman. Narrative structures of revolutionary biographies of Russian female terrorists at the beginning of the 20th century in general have received remarkably little scholarly attention. Narratives of political violence in these accounts haven’t been studied at all. Analysis of representations of women’s violence in biographical accounts of Russian female terrorists written by their comrades and sympathizers shows a clear tendency of feminization of violence performed by women and the authors’ reluctance to represent them as agents of political violence. Thus, the myth of the ideal revolutionary heroine constructed in the revolutionary underground couldn’t include the heroine’s violent activism: in order to be remembered and sympathized with she had to be a “good” woman and not a political assassin. Her martyrdom and femininity were in the focus of biographical accounts and not her political violence for the revolutionary cause. 

25 April - Garbi Schmidt, Roskilde University. ”The generations before us? On the ahistorical articulation of national identity in the Danish context.” 

Abstract: Public and political debates of the present often argue ethnic homogeneity to be a part of Denmark’s past. However, as this talk will show in detail, ethnic diversity has actually played a role throughout Denmark’s history, although the country was never the destination of mass migration until the second half of the 20th century. This chapter will discuss debates over, legislation towards and not least underline the presence of immigrants and ethnic minorities in Denmark before World War I. Importantly, historical data reveals that while some immigrant groups (and individual immigrants) almost unnoticed settled in Denmark, others were subject to sincere scrutiny and moral panic. Such incidents may form the basis for understanding more current debates over migration.  

At the same time as my presentation will give insights in Denmark’s diverse religious and ethnic past, I will also dwell on the question of national forgetting. Why is the idea of national ethnic homogeneity so strong? How may we as researchers challenge such perceptions? Finally: How does the perception of ethnic homogeneity relate to processes of racialization? This final part of my talk will build on ethnographic fieldwork in two neighborhoods in the capital city of Copenhagen.

2 May - Shalini Grover, Associate Professor, Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi/Honorary Fellow, Social Anthropology and Gender Studies, University of Edinburgh (UK). ”Transnational race dynamics and migration in India.” 

23 May - Postponed. Jayna Brown, Professor of Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt Institute, NY. ”Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds." Duke University Press, which traces black radical utopian practice and performance, from the psychic travels of Sojourner Truth to the cosmic transmissions of Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra.” Discussant:  Ylva Habel.

23 May - "Read All About It": Socially Unjust Newspaper Discourses and At-Risk Students in Sweden." Lory Janelle Dance. Associate Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).  

Abstract: The children of immigrants in Western Nations face educational inequities including placement in lower tracks, residence in segregated communities, and enrollment in inferior schools (Alba et al. 2011). This paper illuminates another inequity: Dehumanizing media representations. Using the theoretical frames and methodological approaches of Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper reports findings from over 1300 articles about a low-income urban area in Sweden, published from 2005 to 2011 in The Gothenburg Post. The authors demonstrate how the children of low status immigrants are demeaned via discourses of “difference, deviance, and threat” (van Dijk 2002) and Social Death (Cacho 2012). The authors conclude that dehumanizing newspaper discourses are among the main obstructions thwarting high educational achievements for the children of low status immigrants in Western Nations.

Lory Janelle Dance, an Associate Professor of Sociology & Ethnic Studies at UNL, since 2009, has also been a Visiting Senior Researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University (Sweden). Recent article: Performativity Pressures at Urban Schools in Sweden & New York (Ethnography & Education 2014). Book-in-progress: Gone With the Neo-Liberal Wind: Minority Teens, School Reform, & Urban Change in Sweden & the U.S. Established cross-national symposia using poetry to engage urban youths in empowering dialogues www.streetposia.org. 

AUTUMN 2018

29 August 12.00–20.00 i Engelska parken/Carolinaparken
​Utställning, föreställning och samtal: Mödrars Manifest / Manifiesto de las Madres / Mothers' Manifest

Program
12.00 Utställningen öppnar för allmänheten. 
18.00–​19.30 Föreställningen Mödrars Manifest. Därefter följer ett samtal mellan Irene Molina och Patricia Lorenzoni från CEMFOR, och medverkande från föreställningen.

Mödrars Manifest är ett internationellt konstprojekt av konstgruppen Ful (Sverige), musikern och konstnären Paulina Lasa (Mexico) och det feministiska transborder-bandet Quiquiriquí Coyotas (Mexico/USA). Med premiär valsommaren 2018 är Mödrars Manifest del två av Fuls arbete om migrationspolitik, nationsgränser och dess förödande konsekvenser i form av familjesplittringar, trafficking, tvångsdeportationer och kriminalisering av människor som vill ha ett värdigt liv. Den turnerande föreställningen och utställningen är en uppföljning på kabarén Europa Europa (Ful i samarbete med The Knife) med premiär valsommaren 2014 och turné i Sverige, Europa och Nordamerika 2014-16.

Mödrars Manifest / Manifiesto de las Madres / Mothers' Manifest är en sorgeritual för 80 deltagare med nyskriven musik av Quiquiriquí Coyotas och Paulina Lasa + en turnerande utställning i det offentliga rummet i augusti 2018.

Koncept och idé: Konstgruppen Ful
Medverkande: Cristina Cruz Herrán, Cristina Juárez García, Paulina Lasa, Sandra Ruíz, Nasim Aghili m fl.
Musik: Quiquiriquí Coyotas och Paulina Lasa
Scenbild: Konstgruppen Ful, Aminullah Rezai, Khalid och Naim Mohammadi
Språk: Svenska, spanska, persiska, engelska

5 September - Marta Kolankiewicz och Leo Schclarek Mulinari: Rasism inom rättsväsendet – från mötet med polisen till domstolarna. Rasism finns i alla led inom rättsväsendet. Från polisens rasprofilering till det som händer i domstolar under rättegångar, finns det forskning som varnar för denna relativt föga kända problematik. 

Marta Kolankiewicz är verksam som forskare och lärare vid Genusvetenskapliga institutionen, Lunds universitet. Disputerade i sociologi 2015 med en avhandling med titeln Anti-Muslim Violence and the Possibility of Justice. Tillsammans med Maja Sager driver hon för närvarande forskningprojektet Domstolen som arena för kamp mot och om rasism.​ Leandro Schclarek Mulinari är verksam som forskare och lärare vid Kriminologiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet. Hans aktuella forskningsprojekt har titeln ”Rasism och konstruktionen av hotbilder: slaget om Malmö”. Moderator: Irene Molina (CEMFOR). ​​

20 September - Rasism, ojämlikhet och arbete i Sverige – aktuella perspektiv. Lokal: Sydney Alrutz 13:026, Campus Blåsenhus, Uppsala

Program
13.00-13.45 Presentation av CEMFOR-rapport Diskriminering av afrosvenskar inom arbetslivet, av Ylva Habel m.fl.
13.45-14.30 Kapitel ur antologin om (O)jämlikhet på arbetsplatser, red. Kristina Boréus och Anders Neergaard: Paula Mulinari, Malmö Universitet, "De bästa jag gjort är att föda barn, det andra är att strejka"; Rebecca Sellberg, Lunds universitet, "Vardagsrasism på sjukhuset"; Mia Liinason, Göteborgs universitet, ”Gatans politik och infiltration som taktik: Om att rekrytera rätt”; Paulina de los Reyes & Stefan Carlén, Stockholms universitet, “Olika villkor? Utvecklingen av ojämlika arbetsplatser 1990–2015”. 
14.30-15.00 Paus/kaffe
15.00-16.00 Diskussion

26 September - Anna Bredström: "The Swedes and their fathers": DNA-Genealogy as Biological Citizenship

Abstract: Anna Bredström will present a critical reading of the popular scientific book, The Swedes and their fathers during the past 11000 years (Svenskarna och deras fäder de senaste 110000 åren) where renowned authors Karin Bojs and Peter Sjölund use DNA-genealogy and DNA-archeology to tell the history of the Swedish population. The analysis focuses on how genetic knowledge is linked to ideas about nationhood, race and ethnicity in the book. Bredström contextualizes her interpretation in the theoretical debate on biological citizenship and the question of to what extent we may understand DNA-genealogy as a reification of race as biological or not. 

Anna Bredström is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University. Her research focuses on bodies, health and medicine, and she is currently working with the VR-funded research project Swedish Genes? Ancestry and Ethnicity in Human Genetics Research where she, together with Shai Mulinari (LU), examines the politics and ethics of translating Human Genetics Research to popular science and clinical medicine. 

11 October - Linda E Thomas: Racism and/in Religious Studies

Linda E Thomas, Professor at University of Chicago, will lead a workshop on Racism in/and Religious Studies. Date: 11 Oct, 10-12 am. Venue: 22-1017. 

17 October - Claes Tängh Wrangel: ​The use of hope – Security and the limits of political imagination.

Abstract:
This seminar probes into the relationship between hope and security as it is expressed in contemporary discourses and practices of global security. Empirically, focus is on the Obama administration’s instrumentalisation of hope as a ’weapon of war’. Provoked by this empirical incursion are questions of larger ethical and political weight: what happens to the radical contingency that often is associated with hope, when hope is rendered into a technology of security? What remains of the capacity to envision another world and another future, when this capacity is used to secure this world, when hope becomes a necessity, a use of force? 

Claes Tängh Wrangel lectures in International relations at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, where he holds a PhD in Peace and Development Research. His thesis, The Use of Hope: Biopolitics of Security During the Obama Presidency (2018), analyses key strategic narratives designed to infuse hope within so called risk populations of radicalisation, in particular the global poor and the global Muslim population. He has published his work in journals such as Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

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