Culture and political education

More culture on campus - for you and with you!

We want to create more cultural programmes on campus - for you and together with you. Film screenings, readings, concerts, exhibitions or other art forms: We try to support student projects and realise our own ideas from the AStA. Our cultural activities are not merely intended to compensate for the stress of everyday student life: Where appropriate, we also aim to initiate political debates and shed a critical light on current social conditions. At the heart of our work in the area of culture is the cultural course programme.

Political education: social criticism instead of training for the labour market

When we as the AStA organise political education, we reflect on the conditions at the university under capitalism. The majority of university teaching is geared towards the requirements of existing society and mostly trains students for the labour market. The way in which society - i.e. politics - is thought about at university is determined by the purposes that prevail within it: ideological, legitimising ideas about current conditions are therefore often taught; or criticism of the conditions - as there are only different ‘narratives’ but no truth - is declared impossible.

As AStA, we see it as our task to initiate political debates across the student body. In joint discussions, we want to get to the bottom of the causes of exploitation, domination and ideological delusion and expose legitimising interpretations as such. To paraphrase a well-known political thinker: we want to promote a critique of society and ideology that is ‘ruthless both in the sense that the critique is not afraid of its results and just as little of the conflict with the existing powers’. For political education in this sense, we organise discussion and lecture events, workshops, congresses, panel discussions and exhibitions. Permanent projects in the area of political education include the event series ‘Schnöde Neue Welt’ and the socio-critical tutorials.

Emilia
Consultant for culture and political education
kultur"AT"asta.uni-hamburg.de
Office hours by appointment

Cultural course programme

the start of each semester, we put together a comprehensive programme of around thirty to forty courses from a wide variety of disciplines: Would you like to learn a new language, perform theatre together with others, try out new types of dance, make music together, take photographs or fold origami? Courses from these and similar areas are part of our programme. In many cases, the courses are led by students themselves.

If you would like to find out more or offer a course yourself, go to www.kulturkursprogramm.de or send us an email to: kulturkurs"AT"asta.uni-hamburg.de

Socio-critical tutorials

At the start of each semester, the socio-critical tutorials that we initiated a few years ago also begin as part of the cultural course programme.

The socio-critical tutorials are events organised by students with a seminar character. In a mixture of seminar, tutorial and reading group, they deal with various social issues and theories that are underrepresented in the prevailing university environment.

Participation in the tutorials is free of charge and open to everyone.

If you would like to find out more or would like to offer a tutorial yourself, go to www.kulturkursprogramm.de or send us an email to: kulturkurs"AT"asta.uni-hamburg.de

Schnöde Neue Welt (‘Brave New World‘)

We would like to continue the successful event series ‘Schnöde Neue Welt’, which has introduced basic concepts of social criticism with over 30 different evening events over the past 3 years.

The event format wanted and wants to awaken the interest of students in conducting political debates and discussions on a wide range of different topics. From criticism of capitalism, feminism or anti-Semitism to questions of university history or climate change - the variety of topics was always an opportunity for first-year students and newcomers to engage with relevant topics in a socio-critical way for the first time. At the same time, the series was also able to fulfil its own aspiration of providing new food for thought for students who have already dealt with these topics through the selection of speakers. We would like to continue the series in this spirit. In line with the current situation surrounding the development of the coronavirus pandemic, we will be trying out new formats.

As a department, we will once again be organising the series in close cooperation with the Department for Anti-Discrimination and Social Movement in particular.

You can find the latest information at: https://www.facebook.com/SchnoedeNeueWelt/