Winter Term 2018/19

IPP Workshop Series

 

"Reading Culture: Established and Emerging Approaches"

 

for BA, MA & PhD students

 

Literary Studies | Teona Micevska | 05.12.2018 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Performative Imaginations: Dandyism between Literature and Reality

 

In this workshop we will look at the origin of dandyism through the texts and contexts which shaped it, focusing on its English iterations. Through queer theory we will examine the gendered contexts in which dandyism was imagined in literature, and practised by real life dandies. Concepts of performativity grounded in queer theory will help us analyse the simultaneously developing discourses and histories of dandyism. Among the questions thereby addressed are the following: what dandyism meant in specific contexts and for specific people? How did dandyism intervene in the existing gender conventions? What role did style and fashion play in the (self)creation of a dandy? What is the legacy of dandyism? A closer look at this complex interaction between the imagined literary dandy and the lived reality will be given through the case studies of two paradigmatic essays that defined literary dandyism by Charles Baudelaire, and Barbey D’Aurevilly. We will further consider the case of an exemplary literary and real life dandy – Oscar Wilde.  

 

Literary Studies | Anna Kuutsa | 18.12.2018 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Rhetorical narratology: Introduction and case study on dialogue narration

The workshop introduces the basics of rhetorical narratology and demonstrates how it can be used when analyzing dialogue narration in particular. When the core of classic narratological understanding is on the structures of the narrative, rhetorical narratology focuses on the various audiences and authorities – or communicational levels – these structures contain. The theoretical part will be based on explaining the basic definitions by James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz. After that, the focus will be on dialogue narration, which will be used as a case study on how the basic concepts of rhetorical narratology can be applied in literary analysis.

 

Cultural Studies |Marie-Christine Boucher | 16.01.2019 | 14-16 Room B340, Phil I

 

Transcultural. On the use of translation in comparative literature.

 

In recent years, scholars from various fields, including literary and cultural studies, have been increasingly making use of the concept of translation to describe 'hybrid' and transnational/transcultural social phenomena. By putting the focus on mediation, movement and exchanges, it avoids on some of the pitfalls of the concept of hybridity: On the one hand, it allows for contextualization, while on the other hand departing from potentially essentializing and deterministic understandings of culture and identity.

 

The first part of the workshop will offer a brief overview of the evolution of the concept in cultural and literary studies. This will be followed by an introduction to the recent applications of translation as a concept in the field of comparative literature. Finally, theory will give way to practice, as small teams will analyze a corpus of selected text excerpts with the help of the newly acquired conceptual tools, before discussing their results with the whole group.   

 

 

 

Literary Studies | Dennis Friedrichsen | 17.01.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Literary and Cultural Theory: Key Topics, Methods and Concepts

 

In this workshop, I will introduce the literary notions of recognition, enchantment, knowledge and shock as detailed in Rita Felski’s 2008 book Uses of Literature. Felski’s theory is a key component in my own dissertation, and while it does not yet fit within an established school of literary criticism (except perhaps Literature & Agency), Felski’s work and insight offer an approach different from many traditional literary theories. We will discuss why Felski wants to challenge the “hermeneutics of suspicion” (and what this is) and focus on modes of human interaction that illuminate generative properties of literature. Felski wants to engage with literature from a less passionless and distanced perspective and argues against contemporary interpretive tendencies which largely focus on having a critical distance to the analytical object.

In the workshop, I will introduce the key concepts which we will discuss, attendees will get a chance to engage with their own primary texts using this theory (insofar as that is possible), and thereby hopefully gain perspective on their own work. We will discuss findings, problems and applicability at the end.         

 

Literary Studies | Oriol Guni | 22.01.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil I

 

Said’s Orientalism: Concepts/Critiques

 

This workshop will outline the main concepts that offer the basis for a critical analysis of the literary works and scholar research that have been situated in oriental contexts, according to the concepts elaborated by Edward Said in his seminal work Orientalism. Said’s main contention is that literary works and research written about the Orient are deeply political and have become a part of the imperialist machinery of exploitation and control. According to Said, the systems of thinking and representing that were constructed during the colonial era still persist today when it comes to writing about the Orient.

 

In the second part of the workshop the main critiques that have been produced over Said’s text will be outlines.

The workshop envisages that some texts will be read according to Said’s concepts, and then the same texts will be read according the lines of his main critics, offering thus a concrete discussion of Said’s contribution and that of his critics.

 

 

Cultural Studies | Melanie Kreitler | 24.01.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Reading from T. S. Eliot to Star Wars: Theories of Popular Culture

 

When we think of Popular Culture, we most likely turn to examples of our every life: a book we have read, a blockbuster at the cinema, a series on Netflix. The popular in Popular Culture immediately suggests that its products are well liked by the masses. This assumption gave rise to the notion that Popular Culture is trivial and inferior to other forms of culture and can, therefore, not be regarded as art in its own right. It is always compared to something other, something more; that is culture in its pure form. However, since there is not one definition of culture, we have reached an impasse. Differing interpretations of these two terms prompt numerous ways to approach the topic. As there is not one way to resolve this issue, this workshop offers six theoretical approaches as solutions that attempt to grasp Popular Culture’s broad conceptual landscape. By looking at Popular Culture through the lenses of mass, folk, or working-class culture, this workshop will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each theoretical approach and its application.

 

 

Cultural Studies | Sapir Hubermann | 30.01.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Framing War, Conflict and Violence: Approaches to the Photographic Gaze

 

"The act of representing others almost always involves violence to the subject of

representation.” Edward Said, In the Shadow of the West

 

Since the invention of photography, modern life has been characterized by the countless possibilities to look at the atrocities that occur in the world. On the one hand, documenting horrors is perceived as humanitarian and innocent, but on the other hand as a visual operator of contemporary imperialism, neo-colonial capitalism and neoliberal regimes of control. Nowadays, especially in the era of digital photography and the proliferation of circulating images, it becomes even more crucial to analyze the position of the photographers, the subjected to be looked at and us, the beholders. The way we understand and read photography, or develop relationships towards the participants in the photographic act, influences our gaze on those images - the relation of seeing and being seen between objects and subjects. Although the concept of the gaze appears in various disciplines such as psychoanalysis, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and communication studies, in this workshop, we will focus mostly on how the gaze comes into play in the practice of photography of atrocities, and what the different critical approaches to photographing such events are.

 

We will analyze several photographic works. Some of them are used as examples for the orientalist, exoticized imagery gaze, while others, such as Sekula's Waiting for Tear Gas (1999), intend to disturb the known visual rhetoric of representing atrocities and suggest a more transgressive practice. We will also refer to canonical writings such as John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) and Butler's Frames of war (2009).

 

Cultural Studies | Ewelina Pepiak | 05.02.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Intersectionality: Analytical Tool or a Black Box?

 

Since the publication of an influential 1991 article written by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality has been both a methodological approach and an object of study in cultural theory (Lutz, 2011; Hill Collins 2016). Framed most commonly as a nodal point (see Lykke 2010), intersectionality is a method deployed to enable a multi-faceted analysis of oppressive cultural settings and identities characterized by an ongoing hyphenation. We will discuss a few focal questions, such as the function of intersectional theory within and beyond gender studies, analytical proceedings in intersectional approaches, as well as the possible limits and future of intersectionality. During the proposed workshop, participants will be invited to reflect on the origins of intersectionality by comparing its present understanding with earlier notions of “articulation” in British cultural studies and “hybridity” in postcolonial theory. Moreover, a practical part will include samples of intersectional analysis based on visual material and literary texts.  

 

Literature:

Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1991): Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, “Stanford Law Review”, Vol. 43, No. 6.

hooks, bell (1992): Black Looks. Race and Representation, South End Press: Boston, MA.

Lutz, Helma  (ed. 2011): Framing Intersectionality : Debates on a Multi-faceted Concept in Gender Studies, Farnham: Ashgate.

Lykke, Nina (2010): Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing, Routledge: New York and London.

 

 

Literary Studies |Marija Spirkovska  | 05.02.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Waylosing and Wayfinding: Studying Space in Literature

 

This IPP workshop will revolve around a study of space and place, particularly that of the urban environment, as represented in literary projects spanning modernism and postmodernism. More specifically, we will be interested in exploring narrative experiences of being lost, perplexed, anxious, and/or paranoid in the spaces of the city.

 

In the first part of the workshop, the basic theoretical equipment for this analysis will be located in a brief overview of the importance of space in literary and philosophical thought, made especially prominent by the ‘spatial turn’ of the last three decades of literary study. Additionally, drawing on scholarship in the burgeoning fields of literary cartography and literary geography, background will be provided on the concept of sense of place and its anchoring in phenomenology. A complementary concept will be that of the mental map – a seemingly unremarkable yet highly subjective way in which we navigate our everyday habitats and actively partake in place-making. In the second part, participants will have the chance to create their own mental maps and reflect on their psychical responses to the places in the city they choose to include (or exclude). Finally, to make the leap from real to fictional places, and probe literary means of ‘making sense of place’, we will examine these concepts in a selection of excerpts from prose fiction originating from the 20^th century.

 

Cultural Studies | Vera Herold | 14.02.2019 | 14-16 Room B25, Phil 1

 

Whose (Hi)story Gets Told? Memory and the Archive

 

Our memories are immaterial and embodied, because they reside in individuals. They are often deemed unreliable because humans are subjective and ruled by self-interest, unlike documents, which are material and reside in archives and are the basis of historiographic account. However, archives are constituted by archons who have the power to ‘identify’ the archive material, by deciding what is archived, and to ‘arrange’ it, by defining how the archive is accessed. Thus some accounts are favoured and perpetuated while others are ignored (Derrida, 1995). Collective memory practices and official memory discourse that are shaping the public perception of the past are always enmeshed with the archive.

 

Micro-history, oral history, and memory studies challenge the archive by zooming in on a microcosm, drawing on personal accounts, or engaging with mnemonic practices. They all problematize “history’s silent assumptions” (Bal, 1999). As memories are non-linear, incomplete, and often contradictory, they require a conceptual toolbox when they are narrated by rememberers or invoked through private documents, ad-hoc archives or cultural objects. Sometimes, memories surface in the second or third generation, becoming postmemories.

 

In this workshop we will discuss how memories can help illuminate, challenge and even contradict official discourse. How can the archive and its historiographic power be deconstructed? Which alternative archives can be constructed and, finally, what happens when we use alternative archives or memories to retell a (hi)story?

 

Memory / Postmemory / Archive / (hi)story