Winter Term 2021/22
IPP Workshop Series
Reading Culture: Established and Emerging Approaches
for BA, MA & PhD students
The sessions of the IPP Workshop Series are open for BA, MA and PhD students. The participants do not require any previous knowledge to take part.
The workshops will be accessible five minutes before 14:00. The links to join can be found next.
Cultural Studies | Candace Goodrich | 09.11.2021 | 14-16 | Online via Webex
The Virtual Lecture-Performance
As we are intimately aware, the novel Coronavirus pandemic has forced educational institutions across the globe to suddenly move their teaching almost exclusively online, in many cases without a pedagogical 'gameplan' as to how to ensure continued cognitive and affective stimulation and active dialogic participation of students. Academic conferences have also been greatly affected by this shift to virtual space, making an already dry format barely palatable. Consistent with furthering investigations into digitization in the study of culture, this workshop will explore the innovative methodologies and formats offered by the lecture-performance, as a potential model for students.
Lecture-performance is by nature a hybrid practice, routinely experimenting with and challenging normative configurations and relations between presenter and public, as well as disciplinary boundaries. The lecture-performance incorporates dramaturgy, discursive narration, voiceover, and montage, includes physical materials, objects, archival evidence, and documents, and may be categorized as self-reflexive, situational, participatory, and interactive. Critical both of traditional rubrics of knowledge production and dissemination and constrained institutional structures, its origin can be traced historically to the video essay and cine-essay, as well as conceptual and performative arts of the 1960s and 1970s, and contemporary dance discourse of the 1990s.
Prior to our session, participants are asked to watch a 28-minute contemporary, virtual lecture-performance independently in preparation for our collective discussion. Please watch Raqs Media Collective's 'Where Do You Wander Alone,' which was supported by Akademie Schloss Solitude. We will discuss this together during the workshop.
The session will begin with a 30-minute expanded introduction to the lecture-performance genre which will include clicks from an array of examples, followed by an open dialogue in response to the assigned lecture-performance. Our main objective will be to explore how we can use lecture-performance methods to enhance our own research.
Find here the complete bibliography of the session.
Literary Studies | Richard Vargas | 01.12.2021 | 14-16 | Online via Webex
An Introduction to Comics Narratology
Narratology has been established as an ever-expanding method to analyze narrative texts. However, there is still scant research on its use to explore verbal and pictorial configurations in comics and graphic novels. This workshop aims to provide a concise introduction of heuristic approaches to comics narratology.
The session will be divided into two parts: In the theoretical and conceptual framework section, some key theories, concepts, and premises related to the idea of storyworld and its key components in graphic narratives will be discussed. The second part will follow a case study, in which the internal subjectivities of two characters will be scrutinized. The participants will examine the subjectivities and perceptions of 'Hawley Griffin' (the Invisible Man) from the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Moore & O'Neill, 2012). Then, there will be an exploration of the states of mind as internal sub-storyworlds of the character 'Wallace' from the comics collection Sin City – Hell and Back (Miller, 2006).
The workshop incorporates the competency-based teaching and instructional approach (Bauch et al., 2011) to introduce concepts, and premises, and to engage the attendees. In this workshop, participants will get acquainted with comics narratology; discuss important concepts used in graphic narratives, and analyze characters' internal subjectivities: point of view, visual perception, and state of mind.
References
Bauch, W., Maitzen, C., & Katzenbach, M. (2011). Auf dem Weg zum kompetenzorientierten Unterricht – Lehr- und Lernprozesse gestalten: Ein Prozessmodell zur Unterstützung der Unterrichtsentwicklung.
Miller, F. (2006). Hell and Back. In D. Schutz (Ed.), Sin City®: The Frank Miller Library. Dark Horse Books.
Moore, A., & O'Neill, K. (2012). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Volume 1. DC Comics.
Please click here to log in and join the meeting. (Log in using any JLU G-/S-Kennung. This will take you directly to the meeting.)
Cultural Studies | Juan Brigard | 02.12.2021 | 14-16 | Online via Webex
Critical Approaches to Representations of (Non)Violence
How to define "violence" and distinguish it from semantically neighbouring terms such as "harm", "coercion", "aggression", "domination", "force" or "power"? Which critical risks or potentials accounts do exist extending this notion to epistemes, ecosystems or political structures? How can we understand different approaches to nonviolence, as a way to channel the destructive potential immanent in social relations? How can we describe (non)violence in different cultural and narrative artifacts, such as videos, images or texts?
The workshop will present, on the one hand, micro or "narrow", mid and "broad" definitions of violence as presented by contemporary political philosophers such as Koloma Beck/Schlichte (2014) and Müller-Salo (2018). On the other, in the case of nonviolence, it will expose classical definitions of nonviolence from social resistance studies, like "principled" and "holistic", in contrast to "pragmatic" or "technical" definitions, as characterized by scholars such as Schock (2003, 2013) and Martin (2015).
As specific case studies, the workshop will offer scenes from S. Bier's film The Revenge (2010) and reading and discussing two short stories, H. Téllez' "Just Lather, That's All" (1950) and G. García Márquez' "One of these Days" (1962). Please, read the short stories before the workshop.
Please click here to log in and join the meeting. (Log in using any JLU G-/S-Kennung. This will take you directly to the meeting.)
Literary Studies | Sijie Wang | 07.12.2021 | 14-16 | Online via Webex
Introduction to Conceptual Metaphor Theories
Our life is filled with metaphors, from the "defense" of our dissertations to the "waste" of our time. These metaphorical thoughts and expressions can be better examined with the help of metaphor theories, which have shifted from an emphasis on authorial creativity to the mapping of source-target projection and then to the notion of conceptual blending. Referring to the well-known research by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner and Monika Fludernik, this workshop introduces the basic concepts of source and target domains, input spaces and multiple blend networks.
Based on this theoretical background, participants will be invited to analyze photos, poems as well as prose texts. Organized through a series of think-pair-share activities such as freewriting and peer feedback, this interdisciplinary workshop draws on visual images and verbal texts in its multidimensional approach to metaphors and metaphor theories. At the end of the workshop, the participants should have a general understanding of conceptual metaphor theories, be able to analyze metaphorical expressions from a theoretical perspective and acquire new insights into their own use of language in everyday life.
Please click here to log in and join the meeting. (Log in using any JLU G-/S-Kennung. This will take you directly to the meeting.)
Cultural Studies | Marie-Christine Boucher | 18.01.2022 | 14-16 | Online via Webex
A Critical Exploration of Word Processing: Plain Text Writing in the Humanities
Scholars in the humanities spend a lot of time composing texts, yet typically spend much less time reflecting on the technical environment in which they compose them. Even though print represents an increasingly small part of the way scholars interact with texts, the widespread use of omnipresent word processing software imposes the framework of printing on the digital writing workflow. This results in text files kept in closed, inflexible and unsustainable formats. In their critique, some digital edition researchers even go as far as to argue that humanities scholars who do not possess basic technical writing skills "do not know how to write, and therefore, should not do it" (Vitali-Rosati 2018, my translation). Yet, the topic is rarely addressed as part of the formal curriculum of humanities degrees.
In the first part of the workshop, the participants will be invited to briefly reflect on the technical aspects of their own writing workflow. After a brief theoretical overview of different word processing methods, the participants will learn about alternative ways to write texts using a plain text workflow: the concept of semantic markup, transformation tools that allow outputting the text in various formats (.docx, .odt, .pdf, .html, etc.) and available software. The second part of the workshop, which will be more hands-on, will allow participants to observe a demonstration of the methods, or experiment it themselves if they wish to do so, and point to resources that can help them implement their own plain text workflow.
Literary Studies | Oriol Guni | Postponed | 14-16 | Online via Webex
Balkanism: Recurring Themes and Tropes in British and American Literature
Balkanism emerged in the late 1990s as a scholarly critique focused on untangling predominantly, but not exclusively, British and American production of knowledge about the Balkans. Grounded in the postcolonial critique of Euro-American scholarship, this framework has seen broad use in identifying and problematizing Balkanist tropes, particularly in scholarly, literary, film, and travel literature production. Constructed along the lines of Orientalism as problematized by Edward Said, these tropes have served a self-congratulatory purpose for the Euro-centric auto-images, in contrast to Orientalist ones, which, as a repository of allegories, has been an escape from the impetus of nineteenth-century industrialization.
The workshop will offer participants a critical overview of the major trajectories of Balkanist tropes, primarily in British and American literary production. The main themes and tropes of the Balkanist discourse will be presented through transmedia examples, allowing the participants to identify the key themes found in this discourse. These examples will lead participants towards the identification of the potential of the critique of those tropes. Finally, the participants will be invited to reflect collectively on whether Balkanism has been employed as a totalizing discourse about the Balkans, or whether it intersects with alternative ones.
Given the focus and the approach, the workshop should be of interest to both students who focus on the study of British and American Literature, the Balkans, and those interested in the nexus of power and knowledge.
References
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Hammond, Andrew. British Literature and the Balkans: Themes and Contexts. Brill, Studia Imagologica Series, 2010.
Goldsworthy, Vesna. Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination. Yale University Press, 1998.
Please click here to log in and join the meeting. (Log in using any JLU G-/S-Kennung. This will take you directly to the meeting.)