reading groups
We hope to facilitate informal infrastructures in the form of reading groups to encourage engagement on academic topics and create richly collaborative spaces for members and interested non-members alike to discuss works in progress, contemporary trends in their field and more. Please e-mail the board if you would like to initiate an additional reading group.
The Poetics of Édouard Glissant Reading Group:
The Poetics of Glissant Reading Group explores the writings of Édouard Glissant, one of the most influential writers to have written about poetics and decolonial relations via approaches like “opacity” and “visibility”. Édouard Glissant’s writing has touched many fields like visual culture, poetry, and decolonial academic practice and we attempt to read his work by situating it within the entanglements of politics, philosophy, literature, and poetics. In this reading group, starting with his seminal text Poetics of Relation, Édouard Glissant’s poetics and politics will be explored in 90 min sessions where one of the reading group members will lead the discussion.
The reading group will aim to meet once a month during the Winter Semester 2024-2025, either online or in-person, depending on the schedule and the availability of the members. The material will be sent around in advance and interested members of the reading group can lead the conversation and discussion of the session. While the first reading of the group will be Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, related readings can be added for future sessions.To take part in the first meeting (which will take place in the first or second week of October 2024) and to participate in choosing texts etc., interested researchers can write to Priyam Goswami Choudhury (goswamichoudhury@uni-potsdam.de).
Postcolonial Environmental Humanities Working Group:
As Early Career Researchers working on environment, postcolonialism, and the Anthropocene would know, reading about the subject in an interdisciplinary manner allows us to tackle this “fuzzy” object with more clarity and care. The aim of this reading/work group is to create a collaborative space for researchers working in postcolonial studies to have peer group who would read and give each other feedback on works-in-progress and have a monthly reading group.
The reading group would aim to meet once a month, starting with the Winter Semester 2024-2025 and critically engage with different kinds of texts like book chapters, articles, etc. The material will be chosen by votes and/or suggestions. For more information about the organization of the reading group: link for the first meeting (which will take place in the first or second week of October 2024) + link to polls to choose readings, interested researchers can write to Priyam Goswami Choudhury (goswamichoudhury@uni-potsdam.de).