FGSS 4876 - Humanitarian Affects

(crosslisted) ANTHR 4176, GOVT 4745, LGBT 4876
(GB) (CA-AS, GLC-AS, SCD-AS)

Fall or Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Co-meets with ANTHR 7176/FGSS 6876/GOVT 6745.

S. Hodžić.

Liberal feminists and political theorists argue that sentiments such as compassion and empathy have the capacity to alert us to suffering, injustice, and oppression, and thus incite transformative political action. This interdisciplinary seminar explores the challenges to this theory by staging a conversation between postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories of affect, and anthropological critiques of humanitarian projects. Sentiments are mobilized to defend borders, wage wars, grant asylum to refugees, provide medical care and disaster relief, and inspire feminist activism. We will analyze how these gendered and racialized ethical projects and political regimes are co-constituted, and how they mediate access to resources and survival, as well as political agency, subjectivity, citizenship, and national belonging.