Veranstaltungen von diesen OrganisatorInnen

Oct 04, 2023 – Oct 05, 2023

Organisiert von Anne Eusterschulte (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020) und Wenchao Li (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, BBAW), Projekt Premodern Anthologies and the Selective Fictions of Tradition-Building, Research Area 3: „Future Perfect“ in Kooperation mit dem SFB 980 „Episteme in Bewegung. Wissenstransfer von der Alten Welt bis in die Frühe Neuzeit“, der Leibniz-Edition Potsdam der BBAW und der Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft e.V.

Die zu Anfang des letzten Jahrhunderts begonnene Ausgabe Sämtlicher Schriften und Briefe von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Akademie-Ausgabe) vermittelt bereits durch ihre Gliederung in acht Reihen im äußeren Erscheinungsbild einen Eindruck von der Vielfältigkeit des in ihr edierten und der Forschung zur Verfügung gestellten Materials. Von den achten Reihen ist allerdings eine noch nicht richtig begonnen worden, die gleich zwei Aspekten des universalen Geistes gewidmet ist, die Reihe V mit Leibniz’ Historischen und sprachwissenschaftlichen Schriften. Nun soll diese letzte Lücke geschlossen werden.

Im Mittelpunkt der Reihe V wird Leibniz’ Opus historicum stehen. Mit einer Geschichte des Welfenhauses beauftragt, hatte Leibniz begonnen, ein groß angelegtes Werk zu erarbeiten, das mit der Erdgeschichte einsetzen und über die schriftliche Frühzeit zum Mittelalter bis in seine Gegenwart reichen sollte. Dieses Opus historicum ist unvollendet geblieben. Lediglich einzelne seiner Teile und begleitende Arbeiten sind zu Lebzeiten und vor allem postum erschienen. Die sehr umfangreichen, in drei Jahrzehnten entstandenen Vorarbeiten sind dagegen fast ausnahmslos noch ungedruckt. Dabei handelt es sich um Marginalien, Exzerpte (auch seiner Mitarbeiter), Entwürfe und Notizen unterschiedlichster Art, darunter allein ungefähr 4.000 Zettel. Dieses Arbeitsmaterial eröffnet einmalige Einblicke in die Praxis frühneuzeitlicher Gelehrsamkeit.

Programm

Mittwoch, 4. Oktober

13:00-17:00 | Vortrag

Stephan Waldhoff: Vom „Opus historicum“ zu den „Historischen und sprachwissenschaftlichen Schriften“

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Impulsreferate

Stefano Gensini: Leibniz als Sprachwissenschaftler und Sprachphilosoph

Thomas Wallnig: Umrisse digitaler Nutzungsszenarien von Reihe V der Akademie-Ausgabe

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18:00 | Öffentlicher Abendvortrag

Bernd Roling: Leibniz‘ Erben in Hannover: Johann Heinrich Jung und das Ende der Grafen von Bentheim

Donnerstag, 5. Oktober

10:00-12:30 | Vortrag

Stefan Luckscheiter: Aus der Zettelsammlung in die historisch-kritische Edition – oder: Wie ediert man Leibniz‘ historiographisches Arbeitsmaterial?

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Impulsreferate

Holden Kelm: Ein Thesaurus für die Ästhetikvorlesungen von Friedrich Schleiermacher

Christoph Binkelmann: Schellings Weltalternotizen im Kontext

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12:30-14:00 | Mittagspause

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14:00-17:00 | Impulsreferate

Philipp Hegel: Ideen zur semantischen Erschließung in digitalen Editionen

Fabian Etling: Erschließung und Wiedergabe materieller Aspekte der Werkgenese im Kontext von Hybrid-Editionen

Christoph Valentin: Wie lässt sich der digitalisierte Leibniz-Nachlass adäquat präsentieren? – Usability, Metadaten, Schnittstellen

Freie Universität Berlin
Villa des SFB 980
Schwendenerstraße 8
14195 Berlin

Further Information

Um Anmeldung per E-Mail wird gebeten: Stefan Luckscheiter, luckscheiter@bbaw.de. 

Organised by Michail Leivadiotis, Samira Spatzek, Nina Tolksdorf, Research Area 1: „Competing Communities“.

The conference seeks to discuss the role of literature in the construction of queer communities. What is the significance and the effect of shared texts or imagery in the process of affiliation or disaffiliation, inclusion or exclusion that define queer belonging and kinship? What do literary references, canons, iconic artworks, materialities, landmarks or tunes mean in this process?

Queer community building processes stimulate connectivity that transcends national, cultural, linguistic, spatial and temporal limits. The competitive dynamics of communities, non-normative temporalities, gender-centered performativities and materialities are seen as volatile aspects of transliterary, transcultural and transtemporal relationalities. Resistance to periodisation or linear futurity, as well as resistance to fixed ontologies of identity allow a discursive, literary and cultural negotiation of the complex links between the dynamics of competing sexualities, validity aspirations, intermedial flexibility and digital re-invention of connectivity. 

The conference aspires to understand constructed or embodied perceptions of belonging and queer in-betweenness (spatial, temporal, narratological, representational and performative). Furthermore, it aims to create a theoretical space of transnational and interdisciplinary scope for the discussion of literary and artistic pronunciations that challenge essentialism and heteronormativity.

Conference language: English

Programme

Thursday, 5 October 2023

09:30-10:00 | Arrival and Coffee

10:00-10:15 | Michail Leivadiotis, Samira Spatzek, Nina Tolksdorf (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Welcome & Introduction

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10:15-11:45 | Kara Keeling (University of Southern California): On Aesthetics and Governance

Pauline Westerbarkey (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): The Futures are Queer: Collective Speculations, Imaginations and Multiplications of Queer Futurity in Contemporary Speculative Fiction Anthologies

Moderation: Samira Spatzek

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12:00-13:30 | Jasmin Wrobel (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): Un/Defining Lines-Queer Comics in Latin America

Hongwei Bao (University of Nottingham): Fabulating Identity and Desire in Verse – Queer Chinese Poetry in a Transnational Context

Moderation: Alexandra Ksenofontova (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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13:30-14:30 | Lunch

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14:30-16:00 | Till Kadritzke (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Queer Genre Practices – Observations on Non-Normative Forms of Film

Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine): Queer Fragments of Byzantium

Moderation: N.N.

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16:15-17:45 | Sima Ehrentraut (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Failing Relations – On the Ambivalence of t4t Imaging

Apostolos Lampropoulos (Universitry of Bordeaux-Montaigne): Queer Weeping

Moderation: N.N.

Friday, 6 October 2023

09:30-10:00 | Arrival and Coffee

10:00-11:30 | Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Wrestling Monsters and Entangled Periodisations – Beowulf’s Queer Temporalities

Luca L. Wirth (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Heteronormative Brotherhood or Queer Community? The „freyen Knaben“ in Michael Lindener’s Schwanksammlung Katzipori (1558)

Moderation: Peter Löffelbein (Freie Universität Berlin)

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11:45 -13:15 | Matt Brim (College of Staten Island): An Escaped Slave and a Good Person

Bart Soethaert (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Entangling Communities of Care and Concern – ‘Saint Francis and the Man with AIDS’ as a Network of Mediations (1985–1988)

Moderation: Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020)

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13:15 – 14:15 | Lunch

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14:15-15:45 | Jack Halberstam (Columbia University): Bewilderment and Other Strategies for Unbuilding Worlds

Cedric Essi (Universität Zürich): Creating Queer Kinship across the Color Line

Moderation: Andrew James Johnston

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16:00-17:30 | Jonas Nemela (Berlin): The Screenplay of ‘Adams’s Land’ – Finding a Queer Language for Cinema

Alexandra Ksenofontova: Das lila Lied: A Queer Anthem, 1920 to 2020

Moderation: N.N.

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17:30-18:00 | Michail Leivadiotis, Samira Spatzek, Nina Tolksdorf: Closing

Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Philosophie
Großer Vortragsraum (Big Lecture Hall)
Habelschwerdter Allee 30
14195 Berlin

Further Information

Samira Spatzek: samira.spatzek@fu-berlin.de. Please register by 1st October, 2023 via email.

Organisiert von Dillwyn Thier und dem Organisationsteam von der Veranstaltungsreihe „After Accumulation.“ Ein Workshop mit Maurice Soulié.

Als soziale Institutionen sind Universitäten in gesamtgesellschaftliche Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse eingebettet. In ihnen wirken Logiken sozialer Differenzierung fort, die nach dem Schema der Norm und des Marginalen entlang von Kategorien wie Geschlecht, sozialer Herkunft, Ethnie und Migration Subjektpositionen mit unterschiedlichen Privilegien und Handlungsmöglichkeiten konstruieren. Entsprechend sind auch in der universitären Gemeinschaft gesamtgesellschaftliche Phänomene der Diskriminierung und des Rassismus strukturell verankert und bestimmen Praktiken in Forschung und Lehre.

Mit diesem Workshop wollen wir Rassismus in der akademischen Lehre reflektieren und zugleich konkrete Ansätze für rassismuskritische/diskirminierungssensible Lehrpraktiken ausloten.

Aufbau des Workshops:

Teil I: Rassismus und Diskriminierung (09:00–12:00 Uhr)

Im ersten Teil des Workshops gehen wir gemeinsam den Fragen nach, was Diskriminierung und Rassismus sind und wo diese uns begegnen. Dazu werden verschiedene Formen und Ebenen dieser Phänomene aus intersektionaler Perspektive thematisiert und eigene Bilder und Stereotype reflektiert.

Teil II: Handlungsoptionen und Ideen für den Praxistransfer (13:00–16:00 Uhr)

Im zweiten Teil des Workshops werden Strategien im Umgang mit Rassismus im Kontext Lehre aufgezeigt und ausprobiert. Anhand von Übungen, Austausch, Reflexion und thematischem Input werden dabei die Ziele und Möglichkeiten, aber auch Herausforderungen und Grenzen thematisiert.

Der Workshop fokussiert auf folgende Fragen:

• Was versteht man unter Rassismus und was hat das mit mir zu tun?
• In welchen Bereichen der Hochschule tritt Rassismus auf?
• Welche Rassismuserfahrungen machen Studierende in und an der Universität?
• Wie wirken sich Rassismuserfahrungen auf den Alltag von Studierenden aus?
• Was braucht es für die Lehrenden, um Rassismus im Kontext Lehre benennen und ihm begegnen zu können?

Ziele des Workshops:

Folgende Ziele werden zum besseren Verständnis von Rassismus als Phänomen sowie dessen Wirkungsweisen mit dem Workshop verknüpft:

Sie können …

• Reflektion von Privilegien
• rassismuskritische Sprache als Teil von diskriminierungssensibler Hochschullehre.
• Fallbeispiele aus der (eigenen) Praxis
• … Strategien für eine rassismuskritische Haltung entwickeln

Maurice Soulié ist Bildungsreferent für Antirassismus und Empowerment. Er arbeitet unter anderem zum Thema Rassismus im Praxisfeld (Hoch-)Schule. Basierend auf seinen Erfahrungen als Lehrkraft und Referent zielt er darauf ab, zu sensibilisieren sowie konkrete Handlungsoptionen mit Teilnehmenden zu erarbeiten, um die eigene Arbeit rassismuskritisch zu gestalten.

Freie Universität Berlin
EXC 2020 Temporal Communities
Room 00.05
Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15
14195 Berlin

Further Information

Weitere Informationen und Registrierung: Dillwyn Thier, dthier@zedat.fu-berlin.de. 

Organised by Frank Fischer and Bart Soethaert, project Digital Observatory of World Literature, Research Area 5: „Building Digital Communities“. 

With the advent of digital platforms for collaborative information processing, we aim to explore the vast potential of utilizing Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikibase for literary analysis and research. During this interactive workshop, we will engage in brainstorming and co-exploration sessions to uncover the diverse usage scenarios of these semantically networked platforms for literary studies. We will examine the possibilities of leveraging queries and APIs to extract relevant information, develop new research questions, analyse linked data, and explore available metrics and tools. These enable us to gain insight in the collaborative and self-regulating processes of knowledge aggregation about literature, its authors, topics, and historical contexts.

Workshop Objectives:

• Explore the potential of Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikibase for literary studies
• Engage in brainstorming and co-exploration sessions to identify usage scenarios
• Examine queries and APIs to extract relevant information for literary analysis
• Utilize available metrics and tools for enhanced literature research
• Foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among participant

Programme

Tuesday, 10 October 2023: Scholarly Impulses and Discussion

13:00 | Frank Fischer and Bart Soethaert (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Opening Remarks and Introduction

13:15 | Jacob Blakesley (Sapienza Università di Roma): Measuring Literary Popularity Using Wikipedia

13:45 | Sina Zarrieß and Bastian Bunzeck (Universität Bielefeld): Where and How Do Literary Characters Figure in Wikipedia?

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14:15 | Short Break

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14:30 | Fudie Zhao (University of Oxford): Wikidata Usage Scenarios for Literary Studies: Insights from ›A Systematic Review of Wikidata in Digital Humanities‹

15:00 | Juan Antonio Pastor-Sánchez and Tomás Saorín (Universidad de Murcia): Measuring the Literary Field of Creative Works: The Case of Literary Works According to Wikipedia and Wikidata

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15:30 | Short Break

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15:45 | Marco Antonio Stranisci (Università di Torino): Deriving World Literatures from Wikidata and Other Communities of Readers

16:15 | Alan Ang and Lucy Patterson (Wikimedia Deutschland): Status and Future Plans of Wikidata

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16:45 | Short Break

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17:00 | Maria Hinzmann and Tinghui Duan (Universität Trier): Linked Open Data for Literary History: Constructing, Querying and Using the MiMoTextBase

17:30 | Marie Gunreben (Universität Konstanz) and Olaf Simons (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg): Prose Fiction and Dubious Histories of the 17th and 18th Centuries on FactGrid

Wednesday, 11 October 2023: Exploring Interfaces

09:30 | Viktor Illmer & Frank Fischer (Freie Universität Berlin / EXC 2020): Querying the Wikipedia API to Explore the Positioning of Authors and Works: A Jupyter Notebook Walkthrough

10:00 | Brainstorming and Hands-on Session I: Query Interfaces for Semantic Datasets and the Development of Research Topics

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11:15 | Short Break

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11:30 | Brainstorming and Hands-on Session II: Query Interfaces for Semantic Datasets and the Development of Research Topics

12:45 | Wrap-up and Closing Remarks

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October 10, 2023
1pm – 6:30 pm

Freie Universität Berlin
Modulbau
Fabeckstraße 35
Room 011
14195 Berlin

October 11, 2023

9:30 am – 13:45 pm

Freie Universität Berlin
EXC 2020 Temporal Communities
Otto-von-Simson Straße 15
Room 00.05
14195 Berlin

Further Information

Participation only after registration until 4 October via e-mail: Jonas Rohe, j.rohe@fu-berlin.de.

Gefördert durch den Leibniz-Forschungsverbund Wert der Vergangenheit.

Den 100. Geburtstag des Begriffshistorikers Reinhart Koselleck wollen wir zum Anlass nehmen, um die Aktualität und Grenzen des in den Geschichtlichen Grundbegriffen verfolgten Ansatzes einer sozialhistorischen Begriffsgeschichte zu bestimmen und die Konturen und Perspektiven einer ›postkoselleckianischen‹ Begriffsgeschichte auszuloten. Die Historisierung von Kosellecks methodischen Kategorien und Denkfiguren soll verbunden werden mit Fragen wie der nach der Reichweite der klassischen Grundbegriffe, nach den semantischen Umbrüchen und Zäsuren im 20. Jahrhundert, nach neuen Grundbegriffen und Begriffstypen sowie nach neuen heuristischen Leitkategorien, die zu deren Analyse dienlich sein können. Mit Blick auf Kosellecks Ansatz zu einer Theorie historischer Zeiten werden die temporalen Dimensionen neuerer Leitbegriffe untersucht. Es wird dabei angeschlossen an jüngere Beiträge, die für eine entschiedene Öffnung und Weiterung der Begriffsgeschichte hin zu einer historischen Semantik plädieren. Fragestellungen, die hier verfolgt werden, sind etwa die nach dem Einbezug ikonischer Semantiken, der neuen Medien oder der Geschichte von Gefühlen, nach der Internationalisierung oder Globalisierung der Begriffsgeschichte, der Bedeutung von Transfers und Übersetzungen etc. Die methodischen Überlegungen werden anhand konkreter praktischer Erfahrungen und Materialien zu einer Begriffsgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts entwickelt.

Programm

Donnerstag, 12.10.2023

9.00

• Falko Schmieder (ZfL): Eröffnung

9.15
Moderation: Ernst Müller (ZfL)

• Carsten Dutt (Technische Universität Darmstadt): Historisierung und Aneignung. Modalitäten der Begriffsgeschichte bei Reinhart Koselleck
• Daniel Fulda (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg): Mit Bildern über die Begriffsgeschichte hinaus?

11.30
Moderation: Stefan Scholl (Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim)

• Corentin Marion (Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris/Université Paris Cité/Universität Bielefeld): Koselleck Transnational. Für eine transnationale Begriffsgeschichte am Beispiel von ›Nation‹
• Lorenz Trein (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): Säkularisierung und Geschichtsreligion – mit Koselleck über Koselleck hinaus

15.00
Moderation: Alexander Friedrich (ZfL)

• Lisa Regazzoni (Universität Bielefeld): Geschichtliche Erfahrung in figurativen und materiellen Überformungen: Entwurf einer materiellen Semantik
• Lena M. Friedrich (Universität Koblenz): Soziale Strukturen in Zeit und Raum? Begriffsgeschichtliche Analysen in der komparativen Sozialstrukturforschung

17.15
Moderation: Falko Schmieder (ZfL)

• Faustino Oncina Coves (Universitat de València): Kosellecks aufklärerische Motive und Impulse

Freitag, 13.10.2023

9.00
Moderation: Falko Schmieder (ZfL)

• Lucila Svampa (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach/Universidad de Buenos Aires): Reinhart Koselleck und Walter Benjamin. Eine Erkundung in theoretischen Kontrapunkten
• Laura Gagliardi (Universität zu Köln): Koselleck an den Rändern: Begriffsgeschichte in Brasilien

11.15
Moderation: Barbara Picht (ZfL)

• Moritz Neuffer (ZfL): Der ›Alltag‹ der Moderne. Zur Globalisierung eines Begriffs im 20. Jahrhundert
• Patricia A. Gwozdz (Universität Potsdam): Wie viel Erfahrung verträgt ein Begriff? In den Zeit- und Begriffs(ge)schichten des Vulnerablen seit Covid-19

Organised by Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Research Area 2: „Travelling Matters“.

In the past decade or so, the profile of Japanese literature has shifted along with the role of literature at a global level and as a result of new approaches to translation and a fresh perspective on Japanese culture in the context of changed mediascapes. The history of modern and pre-modern Japanese literature is currently being rewritten in the West, including in Italy, France, Germany, Scandinavia and in the Anglophone region (with ‚Western‘ here referring to European languages). The workshop intends to bring together leading scholars to compare and discuss their concepts, designs and specificities against the backdrop of culture-specific readerships, translation policies, publishers‘ demands and new trends in Japanese literary historiography, etc. The workshop is conceived as a first brainstorming session to inquire into meaningful further meta-research on the mechanisms of representing Japanese (and eventually other) literatures, their underlying mechanisms and consequences for the perception and appreciation of literature in the 21st century.

The project has relevant links to RA 1 with respect to ‚community‘ and ‚communication‘, in terms of exploring modes of conceptualising ‚literary history‘ for different language-based communities and in relation to their ‚object‘ (‚Japanese literature‘). It is situated in RA 2, questioning the genre of literary history as a process of semantic coding and as media. It is central to RA 3 because it addresses historiography (and anthologising) as a practice ‚through which the temporalities of literature are re-written and re-constituted‘, and also to RA 4, as it focuses on canon (re-)formation, the circulation of texts and the economic dimensions of this circulation.

The workshop aims at surveying current trends and concepts, and at identifying pathways for further meta-research on this basis in the context of research questions central to EXC 2020. Ideally, subsequent workshops will lead to a more concrete research engagement and collaboration, including researchers from Eastern Europe.

Preliminary programme

Thursday, 12 October 2023

14:00-14:30 | Registration

14:30-15:00 | Welcome and introduction

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Panel 1 Afternoon Session
Moderation: Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit (Freie Universität Berlin)

15:00-16:00 | Cécile Sakai (Université Paris Cité): How to Write a History of Contemporary Japanese Literature for French Readers? Questioning Historiography, Legitimacy, and Purposes Today

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16:00-16:30 | Coffee break

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16:30-17:30 | John Treat (Yale University): National History After the Nation

17:30-19:00 | Tzvetana Kristeva (ICU Tokyo): Writing Histories of Japanese Literature in Japan

Friday, 13 October 2023

Panel 2 Morning Session

09:30-10:30 | Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: Outdated and Dispensable? Histories of Japanese Literature for Readers of German

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10:30-11:00 | Coffee break

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11:00-12:00 | Carolina Negri (Università Ca‘ Foscari Venice): In Search of the Classics – The Projekt of a New History of Japanese Literature in Italy

12:00-12:30 | 1 or 2 „Interventions“

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13:00-15:00 | Lunch

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Panel 3 Afternoon Session

15:00-16:00 | Luisa Bienati (Università Ca‘ Foscari Venice): The Project of a New History of Japanese Literature in Italy: Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature

16:00-17:00 | Daniel Struve (Université Paris Cité): Introducing Early Modern Japanese Literature in France

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17:00-17:30 | Coffee break

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17:30-18:00 | Judit Árokay (Universität Heidelberg): Thoughts on Re-Writing the History of Pre-modern/Classical Japanese Literature for Contemporary German Readers

Saturday, 14 October 2023

Panel 4 Morning Session

09.30-10:30 | Reiko Abe Auestad (Universitetet i Oslo): Japanese Literature in Translation: Tools of Literary Politics in Norway

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10:30-11:00 | Coffee break

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11:00-11:30 | 1 or 2 „Interventions“

11:30-12:30 | Final discussion

Cluster Building
Room 00.05
Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15
14195 Berlin

Organised by Christian Meyer, project The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf: Canons, Concepts and Communities, Research Area 3: „Future Perfect“. This event is part of the lecture series The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf.

Scholars across disciplines have scrutinised the historical contexts of the creation of canons and „corpora“ that many take for granted today. This process is still in its early stages in the study of what scholarship has identified as „esotericism.“ In fact, it is only recently that experts on esotericism have largely settled on an „Esoteric Corpus“ supposedly sedimented in eighteenth-century Masonic works and Protestant polemics. The lecture argues, however, that this corpus has been selectively identified on the basis of a preconceived nineteenth-century template that neglects the broader historical context, both synchronically and diachronically, reaching back to the sixteenth century. This context includes, in particular, early Orientalist studies, missionary work, and cultural exchange between Europe and Asia. By shedding new light on these sources, it is possible to gain insights not only into the subject of „esotericism“ per se, but also into the question of „religion“ within the framework of a global history of religion.

Freie Universität Berlin
Room 2.2051
Fabeckstraße 23-25
14195 Berlin

Organised by Regine Ehleiter, Research Area 4: „Literary Currencies“.

Exponential developments in the technology that conveys information about places and cultures that would formerly have seemed inaccessible, the availability and abundance of that information, along with the advent of quick and affordable means of long-distance travel, have tended to dilute our sense of the otherness of the foreign. The prevailing dogma that all geography is locatable, and by extension, it seems, knowable, through the omniscient eye in the sky of GPS software, corresponds to an emphasis, in the highly charged field of contemporary identity politics, on the coercive myth that our relation to our origins, however tenuous they may be, should define our identities.

‚On The Edge Of The Empty Quarter‘ will feature recent work by writers responding to the contemporary equation of information and experience by exploring the unreliability of their own access to their roots – or familial roots – in the Middle East. A structuralist emphasis on how knowledge of a past, which one has not experienced at first-hand, is implicitly mediated offers an antidote to the colonialist hubris of 21st Century globalism. It is complicated by an auto-fictional take on the relation between a writer’s construction of a self through language and the essential constructedness of the immigrant self, its assimilation to a contingent setting never more than provisional.

The title of the event is drawn from Wilfred Thesinger’s ‚Arabian Sands‘ (1959), a British outsider’s account of his perilous postwar travels in and around the ‚Empty Quarter‘, a vast, mostly unpopulated desert in Saudi Arabia. Viewed from a broader perspective, the regions surrounding this area not only include the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, but Iraq and Syria, which, to a remote vantage, are also empty in the figurative sense of not having been fleshed out by first-hand experience, or in many cases even first-hand information.

Yvonne Albers is a postdoctoral researcher in the EXC 2020 Temporal Communities. Her research focused on how the arts have emerged in Lebanon after the civil war, and how print magazines enrich and complicate our reading of 20th century Arab intellectual history. Having grown up in Germany, her exploration of her father’s background in mid-century Syria comprehends how his spoken testimony constitutes the limits of her access to that history, if not to contemporary war-torn Syria itself.

Mark Prince is an English writer and critic, who joined the EXC 2020 Temporal Communities in 2022 as a Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence. The fellowship supported his work on ‚The Beirut Picture‘, which he describes as an anti-memoir, in that it approaches his mother’s experience as an exile from Iraq to England, during the anti-Jewish purges, only through material related to her – images, objects, language – which happens to have come down to him.

Cluster Building
Room 00.05
Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15
14195 Berlin

Organisiert von Zaal Andronikashvili (ZfL), Susanne Strätling (FU Berlin)

Annual workshop of the Research Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association

Literary theories maintain a rather ambiguous relationship to literature, meandering between participation and alienation. On the one hand, they attempt to assume a neutral, abstract meta-position, for which the dogma of disinterestedness has been decisive since Kant. It presupposes an analytical aloofness to the object of reading, freeing itself from the entanglements of an involved reading and placing the text as an object of knowledge at safe distance. This holds true even where theoretical approaches claim particular proximity to the poetic text (as, for example, in strategies of close reading) or where they take into account the impact of affects as an essential element of both writing and reading literature (as, for instance, in empathy aesthetics [Einfühlungsästhetik]).

On the other hand, literature and literary theory are so intimately entwined that they can hardly be neatly separated. This close bond is not only exploited by hybrid genres such as autotheory or autosociobiography, which have turned literature into a field of artistic research and theory formation. An even larger aspect of this connection is the irreducible literariness of theory itself. We witness this poeticity of theoretical thought on several levels, be it the narrativization of theory, the long tradition of embedding theoretical treatises situationally,  for instance, in the form of travel essays, or the extent to which theories operate with tropes and figures.

This literariness of the theory does not only concern the overtly metaphorical (and therefore sometimes castigated as “crypto-jargon”) vocabulary of poststructuralism. It extends to all theoretical reasoning, even in its sincerest attempts at avoiding any figurativity or the semantic shifts of rhetorical alieniloquium in order to meet scientific standards of precision and analytical rigor. One thinks, for instance, of keywords such as “unraveling“ (Verfransung) in the descriptive and analytical theoretical language of Critical Theory, of the “circulation of social energy” in New Historicism, or the ambiguous notion of “evolution” in Formalism. Furthermore, as Blumenberg has shown in his “theory of non-logicity”, basic concepts of literary theory such as “reading” and “readability” are fraught with an intellectual history that goes back to antiquity as pre-conceptual instruments of cognition in the natural and technical sciences.

The workshop builds on the groundwork of this metaphorological history of science but focuses on the field of conceptualization in literary theory since theoretical metaphors in literary theory remain a largely unexplored area to this day. Crucial questions in this regard are: Which tropes does literary scholarship employ to develop its theoretical language? What functions do different figures of speech assume as theoretical figures of thought? What kind of knowledge on poetics do they confer? How do the demands of objectivity and evidence in theory collide or, possibly, collaborate with the confusing imagery of figurative speech? Does a heightened awareness of tropical language in literary theory reshape our understanding of the difference between theoretical (as purportedly non-figurative) and poetic (as figurative) texts?

Friday, 20 October

10:00 | Welcome

10:15-12:15 | Panel I: Figuring Theory

Chair: Susanne Strätling (Freie Universität Berlin)

Robert Young (New York University): Theory as Trope

Divya Dwivedi (Indian Institute of Technology): Theory and the Trope of Reading

Rok Benčin (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, ZRC SAZU): The Miracle of Analogy and the Displacement of Concepts

Robert Stockhammer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): Synecdoche and Representative Anecdote (Kenneth Burke) in Theory

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12:15 | Lunch

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13:30-15:30 | Panel II: Mining the History of Tropology

Chair: Natalya Bekhta (Tampere University)

Amy Li Xiaofan (University College London): Illumination: The Solar Trope in Literary Theory from a Comparative Perspective

Susanne Strätling (Freie Universität Berlin): Poetics as Energetics? Trajectories of Modern Literary Theory

Anne Duprat (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne): Elegance, or: How Stylish Can Literary Theory Be?

Maya Kesrouany (New York University Abu Dhabi): Figural Hauntings in Contemporary Arabic Literary Theory

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15:30 | Coffee Break

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16:00-17:30 | Panel III: Reading Tropes

Chair: Maya Kesrouany (New York University Abu Dhabi)

Stefan Willer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Ties: Metaphors of Postcritique

Woosung Kang (Seoul National University): Reading Freud Reading: How Blindness Drives Theories

Marco Caracciolo (Ghent University): Tropes for Complexity in Literary Theory

Saturday, 21 October

10:00-11:30 | Panel IV: Politics of Tropes

Chair: Anne Duprat (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne)

Ivana Perica (Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research): Polysemy of ‚the Political‘

Davide Giuriato (Universität Zürich): Drastic: Breakdown of Tropes? (Jankelevitch, Abbate, Dath)

Zaal Andronikashvili (Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research): Small and Minor: Figures of Minority in the System of World Literature

11:30 | Closing remarks

Organisiert von Cornelia Ortlieb und Anita Traninger, Projekt Digital Constructions of Authorship, Research Area 4: „Literary Currencies“.

Eventsprache: Deutsch

Programm

Donnerstag, 26. Oktober

14:00-14:15 | Begrüßung und Einführung

14:15-15:15 | Anita Traninger: Naming, Blaming, Shaming: Digitale ’novantiquitates‘

15:15-16:15 | Mona Körte: Strafende Blicke. Zu Fahndungsfoto und Phantombild zwischen Forensik und Kunst

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16:15-16:45 | Kaffee

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16:45-17:45 | Hannah Baader: Scham und Stadt im Italien des 15. Jahrhunderts

17:45-18:45 | Steffen Martus: Entschämung. Praktiken des Peinlichkeitsmanagements im literarischen Feld seit 1989

Freitag, 27. Oktober

9:30-10:30 | Kai Bremer: „O zischt den Starrkopf aus!“ Männlichkeitsstereotype in der philologischen Kontroverse zwischen Lessing und Lange?

10:30-11:30 | Nina Tolksdorf: Kleist, Lasker-Schüler und Hemingways Beine. Naming in der Literatur um 1800, 1910, 2020

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11:30-12:00 | Kaffee

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12:00-13:00 | Lea Schneider: Mit der Scham arbeiten: Feministische Traditionen der Selbstentblößung

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13:00-14:30 | Lunch

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14:30-15:30 | Paul Wolff: „Präraffaelitsche Girls erklären blamen das Internet“. (Phantom-)Memes als Sprachrohr der Kritik

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15:30-15:45 | Kaffee

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15:45-16:45 | Florian Fuchs: Die Abwehrkräfte der Scham 1930/2010

16:45-17:45 | Cornelia Ortlieb: Variationen über Willy. Adressierte Schmäh-Huldigungen in gelegentlichen Versen Mallarmés

Freie Universität Berlin
EXC 2020 „Temporal Communities“
Raum 00.05
Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15
14195 Berlin

Organised by Torsten Jost and Friederike Schäfer, Reasearch Area 2: „Travelling Matters“. In cooperation with Ramona Mosse, Head of Theatre at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

The workshop “How Mobilities Matter” explores the production, reception and understanding of material mobilities in the arts. It focuses on how art practices and processes activate the mobilities afforded by different human and non-human materials, thus contributing to the emergence of material mobilities that operate in different dimensions: sensory, affective, temporal, spatial, ethical, epistemic and political.

The workshop seeks to explore material mobilities in the arts by focusing on the pressing challenges associated with the notion of the “Anthropocene”, which refers to the destructive effects of our current environmental state that are unevenly distributed across the globe. These challenges require significant changes in material practices and processes. They call for the activation of other possible material mobilities in the arts. In order to think about both the possible media and the possible effects of material mobilities, in their interrelatedness, the workshop proposes two specific focus areas: “Digital Materialisations” and “Mobilising Epistemologies”.

The first focus area, Digital Materializations, centres on the influence of digital technologies on materiality, mobility and art. It acknowledges the expanding scope of reality shaped by digital technologies and explores the impact of digital materialities on transforming and facilitating social encounters. In light of the challenges addressed with the term Anthropocene, this focus area prompts workshop participants to reflect on how digital matters travel and how they reshape social encounters and modes of knowledge acquisition. 

The second focus area, Mobilising Epistemologies, deals with the knowledge-related aspects and effects of material mobilities. On the one hand, it acknowledges the indispensable, active role of non-human materials and things in artistic practices and processes of (re)generating knowledge. On the other, the workshop brings into focus an important tendency in the arts today to frequently (re)activate and combine diverse ways of knowing in order to critically engage with the destructive effects of our environmental state today. In short, this focus asks workshop participants to reflect on how material mobilities activated and shaped in the arts might foster a diversification of ways of knowing, thus potentially contributing to the emergence of new models of action––not least in relation to the globally unequal challenges addressed with the term Anthropocene.

Programme

Thursday, 26 October 2023

Evening Get-together

Friday, 27 October 2023

10:00 | Roundtable: Configuring Mobilities in the Anthropocene

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12:30 | Lunch Break

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14:00 | Workshop: Digital Materilaziations

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16:00 | Break

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16:30 | Workshop: Mobilizing Epistemologies

18:30 | Closing

Saturday, 28 October 2023

10:00 – 12:00 | Final Discussion & Outlook

Freie Universität Berlin
EXC 2020 „Temporal Communities“
Raum 00.07
Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15
14195 Berlin

Further Information

For further information and registration please contact: Friederike Schäfer, f.schaefer@fu-berlin.de or Torsten Jost torsten.jost@fu-berlin.de.