- On 08 Jul 2021
Studying the City
“Urban transformation and Placemaking: Fostering Learning from South Asia and Germany” presents
STUDYING THE CITY – FOUR THEMATIC WORKSHOPS (2021)
How to study the many layers and narratives of city? How to trace what is often invisible, reluctant to surface and be accessible, even if it is ubiquitous? Can we find tools that facilitate to study and make visible neighbourhoods, belonging, everyday heritages and mobilities, to mention only a few? What methods can we unpack from our disciplinary toolkits and connect and share across the disciplines, for teaching changes, experiences and practices in the urban fabric of Kathmandu, Delhi and Heidelberg? Lastly: how can we study cities affected by the Pandemic in their own ways, as the Pandemic also impacts our access or restriction thereof to the ‘urban field’? We want to engage with some key approaches in the Humanities to studying the city by combining the reading of texts with discussions and, possibly, participants’ own materials.
The Pandemic and the thus enforced chains of lockdowns that paralysed our work and connections on site during 2020-21, made us develop modes of teaching and learning from each other digitally. The DAAD Themed Partnership Urban Transformation and placemaking offered four short online workshops to faculty and advanced students from SPA/Urban Design, Department of Art and Design/Kathmandu University and Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS). The workshops were co-curated by a member of each partner university, and each session was further enriched by the input from Prof. Dr. Tarini Bedi, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago (USA), at that time, International Fellow at the Department of Visual and Media Anthropology, HCTS, Heidelberg.
This initiative was possible through funding from the University of Heidelberg, to help build up an ‘urban lab’ research-based teaching structure between Chicago and Heidelberg. It supports the development of interdisciplinary research-based teaching modules that can be translated into sustainable structures of collaborative learning and the planning of excursions of faculty and students from the partnership.
Prof. Tarini Bedi, guest professor at the HCTS Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology, will co-teach a series of four thematic workshops on “Studying the City.” The initiative, which will take place online between July and October 2021, is part of the DAAD themed partnership “Urban Transformation and Placemaking: Fostering Learning from South Asia and Germany.”
How to study the many layers and narratives of the city? How to catch a sight of what is often invisible, reluctant to surface and to manifest, yet ubiquitous? Can we find tools that facilitate the study and enhance the visibility of neighborhoods, tokens of belonging, everyday heritage and mobilities – to mention only a few? What methods can we pull out from our disciplinary toolkits and share across disciplinary boundaries to teach about the changes, experiences, and practices that make up the urban fabric of Kathmandu, Delhi, and Heidelberg? Lastly, how can we study cities affected by the Pandemic in their own ways, keeping in mind that the Pandemic has restricted our access to the “urban field” itself?
Prof. Tarini Bedi, guest professor at the HCTS Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology, will co-teach a series of four thematic workshops on “Studying the City.” This is part of an initiative that started from Winter Semester 2020, facilitated by the the University of Heidelberg’s International Office.
Anthropologist Tarini Bedi, associate professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, impacts on the DAAD partnership through a four-year collaboration with Christiane Brosius and the other Partners, in the areas of mobility studies, urban transformations, and media. Professor Bedi´s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of urban and political anthropology, anthropology of infrastructure, roads and mobilities, cultural geography, and gender studies. She is also a fellow of Tasveerghar, the digital archive of South Asian popular visual culture founded by Christiane Brosius together with Sumathi Ramaswamy, HCTS associate member and professor of History at Duke University, and independent filmmaker Yousuf Saeed.
Digital Methods with Prof Dr. Tarini Bedi
Curating the City with Prof Dr. Tarini Bedi and Sujan Chitrakar
Mapping the City with Dr. Arunava Dasgupta & Prof Dr. Tarini Bedi
Walking the City with Prof Dr. Christiane Brosius & Prof Dr. Tarini Bedi
Time: 90 mins
Saturdays : Chicago: 8am – Heidelberg: 3pm – Delhi: 6.30 – Kathmandu: 6.45 / Zoom
Funded by DAAD “Subject-Related Partnerships with Institutions of Higher Education in Developing Countries