HKKK00016U The politics of infrastructure and mobility

This course explores the interrelations of infrastructure and mobility in contemporary contexts. How may we understand the events surrounding migratory routes, borders and fences? What are the local consequences of new tourist infrastructures? Which intended and unintended outcomes in terms of marginality and invisibility are created by particular architectural designs? What is the relation between modernity and concrete? And how do roadside infrastructures affect upon the movement of traders, troops and trafficked women? These are some of the questions that will be examined throughout the course. Theoretically the course provides an introduction to key texts and themes concerning infrastructure, materiality and spatiality, while empirically focusing on various forms of movement and (im)mobility along and across the Black Sea. Geographically, the Black Sea region is a focal point in recent East European history as a borderland of changing dominant regimes and political entities: the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and more recently the EU. Concrete cases will include the current building of fences against refugees, the aftermaths of the Sochi Olympics and the annexation of Crimea, the trafficking of women, tourist development projects, and informal cross-border trade. The course will be a mix of regular classroom teaching, with lectures, student presentations and discussions, and seminar-days with invited guest-lecturers from Denmark and abroad.