ECTS:

4

Code:

ΚΕ0Ε49

Cycle / Level:

Undergraduate

Compulsory / Optional:

Optional

Teaching Period:

Spring

Course Content:

Lesson I. The basic notions of our course. Roma, Romani language, Porrajmos, slavery, diasporic peoples. Capitalist world-system and capitalist mode of production. Modern state, and interstate system. Debt, ideology, patriarchy. Political Left and Right. Nationalism and national movements. Imperialism and colonialism. Racism and Orientalism. Conservatism, Liberalism, Radicalism.
Lesson IΙ. Basic terms and facts: The journey of the Roma from India to Byzantium and to slavery, 11th-19th centuries. A people in the periphery of European nations. Economic integration, basic facts about the Romani language, culture, religion, and material civilisation.
Lesson IIΙ. Landmarks of Romani Studies, 18th to 21st centuries.
Lesson ΙV. Antiromanism and Counter-revolution in Europe, 1789-2020. Economic and political aspects. The Porrajmos.
Lesson V. The journey of the Roma in Greece, from the birth of the Greek state to their acquisition of citizenship during the Metapolitefsi.
Lesson VI. Roma political mobilization, from the Interwar to our days. Greek and European Romani organisations. The European Union and the Roma: promises and realities.
Lesson VΙΙ. The Roma in Greece today: an overview.
Lesson VIII. The Roma in Europe today: where and how do they live. How do they face the current syndemic.
Lesson IX. Roma, universality and capitalism. What do the Roma offer to the companion peoples.
Lesson X. Sexual discrimination in Romani communities in Greece and Europe.
Lesson XI. Roma political mobilisation in Greece and Europe: perspectives and proposals.
Lesson XΙΙ. Proposals and perspectives on exiting the crisis.
Lesson XΙΙΙ. Recapitulation.

On successfully completing this course, non-Romani students will have a rudimentary but historically informed knowledge of the history, the culture, and the current life of the diasporic Romani people. You will have a basic knowledge of the scientific field of Romani Studies, and of its main theories. You will have learnt important facts about the constitution of the Romani people during its journey from Northern India and its spread around our continent. Also, about the persecution the Roma suffered in Western and Northern Europe, and their five centuries of enslavement in present-day Romania. You will know how to demystify racist stereotypes and other stereotypical ideas developed about the Romani people by its neighbours in Europe, from eleventh century Byzantium to our own days. Also, about the development of antiromanism and its culmination in the Porrajmos during WW2. Finally, you will know about the Romani efforts for political organisation and representation in Greece and Europe, about the worsening of the problems they face during the last decades and especialy during the present syndemic, and about the fundamental dilemmas of their struggle for justice and amelioration of their social position.