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Students possess fundamental skills in academic research and can apply them to questions in critical urban and housing studies.

Perspectives of critical urban and housing geography

This proseminar introduces critical urban and housing studies. We will discuss key texts and foundational perspectives on these fields while deepening the basics of academic work. The focus is on working with scholarly literature, critically reflecting on its content, developing independent arguments, and writing academic texts.

Cities concentrate a multitude of societal (nature-)relations. Critical urban research takes this as a starting point to understand cities as crystallization points of power relations and multiple crises, as well as bases for resistance. The introductory part of the seminar addresses conceptual foundations and the question: “What does it mean to study and research critically?” The course then engages with seminal texts and discourses in critical urban studies, including political economy, (queer-)feminist geography, and (post-)colonial and power-critical approaches to urban space. Finally, we apply these perspectives to the question: “How can critical approaches help to examine dominant paradigms of ‘housing’ in a differentiated way and explain apparent or real contradictions and crises?” This includes engagement with social movements, resistances, and alternatives.

Critical urban research and human-geographical housing research

Students possess basic skills in academic research and can apply them to questions in critical urban and housing studies.

Text discussions, group work, written assignments.

As this is a literature-based proseminar, a willingness to read (and work with) texts on a weekly basis is a key requirement for successful participation in this course.