Seminare im Wintersemester 2026/27

Prof. Dr. Ole W. Fischer | Seminar integrated with Urban Design Studio 

Meeting Time: Tuesdays 11–13; 14–17 (please check studio schedule for meetings days)

Location: Neubau 1 Raum 208

Mauerbau Berlin 1961

This seminar is integrated with the urban design studio “Infrastructure of Violence: Divided Cities and the Spatial Politics of Separation” by Prof. Fabienne Hoelzel. It aims to address the phenomena of urban divisions and to contextualize them within history and critical theory. While the studio’s case studies cover 20th and 21st century divided European cities, the seminar proposes to look into division as recurrent urban technology for governing populations – the Jewish ghetto, the cordon sanitaire, the confessional quarter, the colonial dual city, the class-segregated faubourg, the medieval division between burger and bishop cities – of which the wall is only the most legible recent form. Like the studio, the seminar wants to ask: “whose lives counted?” and follow closely the infrastructures of social production and reproduction.

Methodologically, the seminar moves back and forth between the case studies of the studio, historically divided cities and theoretic texts addressing division based on class, gender, religion, race and ethnicity or health. Mobility and immobility of bodies, their visibility and invisibility, and the regimes of governance will be as much a topic as the labor performed by those bodies. In response to the focus of the studio, a special focus will be put on infrastructure and maintenance of the segregated quarter – water-carrying, laundering, waste-handling, provisioning – labor that is always both classed and gendered.

Students are expected to present at one session in class, prepare readings from the suggested literature, participate in class discussions and submit a written statement together with the integration of their findings into studio presentations.

Expectations: Readings of texts provided, in class presentation and discussion, written statement based on presentation and/or topic of interest (after consultation with the instructor), integration of findings into the studio project

Kick-off: Studio We, Oct. 21, Seminar Tue, Oct 27th (tbc.)