The course is part of HF's PhD week.
Course description
Epistemic de-centering is a way of acknowledging that our world can be understood and experienced in different ways. This course will equip the PhD candidate with de-centering as a methodological strategy for those working on visual, sonic, and material matters. The course will, through playful exercises, challenge each student’s PhD project by making course participants re-think the ways in which they approach their objects of study.
How can your research benefit from methods of de-centering? This question is based on a belief that our academic disciplines are based on systematic elitisms and that we all gain in multiple ways from critically re-thinking the research we do in relation to class, gender, and race. In this course the candidate can explore how de-centering can be introduced as an ongoing methodological awareness in their project in light of recent and contemporary positions. How can we re-imagine what we do in our research by paying attention to questions of canonization and marginalization as well as other issues at the heart of present debates on the arts? And how does this relate to how the system and society may be changed?
The course literature draws on texts dealing with theory and methods of de-centering related to gender studies, de-colonial and post-colonial approaches, eco-criticism, pedagogics, and disability studies.
This is a 1 ECTS course.
Course preparations and guidelines for the assignment
Assignment in three parts:
- Required course reading: Odumosu article (14 pages) & further required reading of your own choosing (ca. 200 pages). We have made a list of suggested readings.
- Written assignment (a): Re-thinking of your project (2 pages).
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Written assignment (b): Re-visit your project description (2 pages).
Assignment part 1: Readings
The goal of this course is to reframe your materials/objects of study through a method of de-centering that is new or less familiar to you. So, each student is invited to choose one method of de-centering (that is not already part of their portfolio of approaches as used in their project) and try to look at their own project through new eyes.
Everyone is required to read Temi Odumosu’s “What Lies Unspoken. A Remedy for Colonial Silence(s) in Denmark”. We ask you to bring at least one question or comment to the seminar that is related to (or inspired by) the text so we can discuss it in plenum.
In addition, all course participants are required to read 200 pages related to your newly chosen method of de-centering. You can find suggested readings in our list or find them on your own. A bibliography of these readings must be submitted alongside the written assignment.
Assignment part 2: Re-thinking your project
In the written assignment you are asked to choose five texts from your bibliography (for example journal articles, book chapters, interviews, exhibition catalogues) and summarize how each item could potentially inform a re-thinking of your “materials/objects of study” in a paragraph of 200 words per text (ca. 2 pages). Choose the methods of de-centering that was new or least familiar to you.
Assignment part 3: Re-visit your project description
Please revisit the PhD proposal you wrote at the very start of your project or as part of the application process for your position. Reframe your project description through one the methods of decentering introduced in your chosen readings.
Alternatively, you can do the same exercise with a preliminary Table of Contents that you drafted at some point during your PhD trajectory.
If both – proposal and Table of Contents are equally unavailable – please do this exercise with a chapter proposal or a single chapter’s preliminary (or final) Table of Contents.
The deadline for submission is May 5, 2025 via Canvas.
Tentative structure of the day
- 09.15: Introduction, "ice breaker" exercise, presentation by convenors
- 12.00: Lunch
- 13.00: Student work, discussion with Temi Odumosu (online)
- 16.00: End of the event
Registration
Registration opens at noon on March 3. Courses are open for PhD fellows, completion grant holders, and post-doctoral fellows at the Faculty of Humanities, other UiO faculties and external PhD fellows. Candidates admitted to the PhD programme at HF are given priority.
Course convenors
- Professor Anna Grasskamp, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
- Professor Øystein Sjåstad, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
- Associate Professor Áine Mangaoang, Department of Musicology