The Posthuman & New Materialism

Theme and structure

The 2021 intensive Summer School course will continue the tradition of neo-materialist, critical feminist posthuman theory that Braidotti is known for. It focusses on the intersections and divergences between two movements of thought that are close, but distinct. The posthuman turn is defined as the convergence, within the context of advanced or cognitive capitalism, of post-humanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentrism on the other. Neo-materialism is a theoretical framework that straddles several research fields and emphasizes the embodied, embedded, relational and affective interconnections across human and non-human entities. The intersections between these two lines of critical enquiry generated some of the most exciting contemporary debates. The course offers a selected overview of this scholarship across a trans-disciplinary range of fields that includes philosophy, literature, law, media, pedagogy and the arts. Mindful of the patterns of exclusion of the sexualized, racialized and naturalized “others” that were not recognized as belonging to humanity, special attention is devoted to perspectives emerging from Black and indigenous epistemologies and to the efforts to think beyond anthropocentrism. Priority will be devoted to art practices as forms of advanced research and methodological issues in general.

The course is offered entirely online and is sub-divided in 5 groups of 25 students maximum. Each group is led by a lecturer/tutor and Braidotti visits all of them in turn.
Each day is structured by a mixture of pre-recorded and live lectures by the course director and invited

lecturers; live Q&A sessions with all the lecturers; tutorial groups, seminar sessions and artists labs. Informal meetings will also be encouraged at lunchtime and at leisure.

PLEASE NOTE: The groups are organized by different regional time-zones: one for Australia and the Pacific; one for North and South America; and three groups for Europe.

• The European time-zone programme runs from 9:00-15:00 CET daily.
• The Americas time-zone programme runs from 8:00-14:00 PST/11:00-17:00 EST.
• The Australia-South Pacific programme runs from 14:00-20:30 AEST daily

Applicants are free to select which time zone they prefer to attend, (e.g. Europeans may want to select the North American time zone if they work full time) but the content is the same for every region. Please state in your letter of motivation for which time zone you would like to apply.

Competition for registration is strong so you are advised to apply early, as places are allocated on the basis of first come, first served.

Confirmed Lecturers (and more to come…):

Prof. Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University), Dr. Simone Bignall (University of Technology Sydney), Dr. Natalie Harkin (Flinders University), Assoc. Prof. Mai Al Nakib (University of Kuwait), Dr. Ruth Clemens (Utrecht University), Dr. Emily Jones (University of Essex), Kay Sidebottom (Leeds Beckett University), Fiona Hillary (RMIT University), Goda Klumbyte (University of Kassel).

Assigned reading

Posthuman Knowledge (Polity Press, 2019), by Rosi Braidotti
o Posthuman Ecologies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), edited by Rosi Braidotti and

Simone Bignall

Background reading

o The Posthuman (Polity Press, 2013), by Rosi Braidotti
o Selected entries from the Posthuman Glossary (Bloomsbury Academic 2018),

edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova

Application procedure
Course fees Course fee for students: €350 Course fee for non-students: €550

Application deadline: May 1, 2021.
For more information, contact R. Braidotti’s assistant at gw.braidottiass@uu.nl.

SUMMARY OF KEY ACTION POINTS:

• Due to high demand applications GO on a first-come, first-served basis
• When maximum participation is reached, the applications will be closed
• Pick and indicate your favourite time-zone in motivation letter
• Your registration is finalized only after the fees have been paid
• You are expected to do the background reading before the start of the course
• You are expected to buy the assigned books by Braidotti
• Apply via this linkIf you no longer wish to receive emails about Rosi Braidotti’s Summer School course, send an email with the subject line “Unsubscribe” to gw.braidottiass@uu.nl