Who Cares? Arts and the Politics of Care

Seminar, Wintersemester 2025/26
Termin: Mi. 16–18 c.t., Raum F 312
Dozentin: JProf. Dr. Lisa Beißwanger

Modulzuordnung: KuWi: BA Mod. 8+13, MA Mod. 4; CV 02KW1007-1; Anglistik M 6.1 B.Ed./4.1, 7.1 2FBA

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the concept of care at the intersection of aesthetics and praxis, bringing together perspectives from art history and cultural studies. Through readings, discussions, and student-led analyses, we will probe the concept’s critical and transformative potential: How do artists and artworks address vulnerability, maintenance, and healing? Can aesthetic approaches to care act as catalysts for structural change, or are they but a symbolic response to crisis?

The seminar considers care both as a subject and as a theoretical lens. Drawing on recent debates in queer-feminist theory and posthumanist critique, it will examine how care is negotiated in the visual, performative, and spatial arts. Case studies will reach from Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art (1969) to more recent approaches to “radical care” in performance, and discourses around health, repair and reuse in architecture.

The seminar will be held in English, it will be open to students from various disciplines.