Seminar SoSe25 by Dr. Michelle Pfeifer: Race, Borders, and Digital Technology

Race, borders, and technology mediate distinctions between inside and outside, global inequalities, and hierarchies of human life. This course introduces students to foundational concepts and themes in border studies. Students will learn to understand the coproduction of race, borders, and technology and gain an understanding of how specific technologies work to identify, control, surveil and police people and space. We will focus on specific technologies including biometrics, visual, sonic and algorithmic technologies. Our course materials include readings from Science and Technology Studies, Geography, Anthropology, Political Science, Media Studies, Ethnic Studies, as well as work by artists, novelists, and essayists. Materials will cover a range of geographical areas. With the readings we will move from an understanding of borders as territorial boundaries to the internal borders of asylum procedures, immigration detention, and labor. Taking a capacious understanding of technology, we will learn to understand technology not simply as tools, but as embedded social and political phenomena, thereby challenging the perceived neutrality of technology. Throughout, we will not only pay attention to how borders and race are policed, but also look at how borders are contested through struggles over the freedom of movement and how these struggles might disturb hegemonic hierarchies of race.