Photo: Deyan Georgiev, Giuseppe Porzani, Yasar Unlutas, all Mostphotos. Jacques Bertaux.

A symposium 18 – 19 January arranged by the Cultural memory studies network as a termination of the PhD studies course Contested Sites of Memory: History, Politics, Emotion. Open to all.

Conference website

30 November – 2 December, 2023

A symposium organized by Nordic Summer University & The Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University.

Conference website

H. Lyman Saÿen, Child reading, 1915-1918

The international workshop ”Multilingualism and Children’s Literature – New Perspectives” took place 5–6 October, in connection to the planned special issue of Barnboken – Journal of Children’s Literature Research.

Workshop website

5 – 6 May, 2023

Location: Moderna museet, Stockholm

Arranged in association with Moderna Museet.

Conference website

21 April 2023

Time: 09:00 – 17:00
Location: The Auditorium, Department of Culture and Aesthetics

An open symposium on cultural transfer from a broad and multifaceted perspective.

Conference website

Jan Davidszoon de Heem 1628, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague.

The Department of Culture and Aesthetics arranged this international conference 9–10 February.

It concluded the research project Another Humanism, Gendering Early Modern Libertinism and the Boundaries of Subjectivity that addresses the history of subjectivity through an exploration of female libertinism and freethinking in French literature 1500–1700.

The conference took place at Stockholm University.

Confirmed keynote speakers were:

• Alison Calhoun, Associate Professor of French/Francophone Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington.
• Zahi Zalloua, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Whitman College.

Conference site

Paul Cézanne, Les Grandes Baigneuses, Wikimedia Commons.

Symposium 9 May 2022.

Forum Modernism at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics arranged the symposium Intimate with Modernism. A panel discussion between modernist scholars Bryony Randall (University of Glasgow), Jane Goldman (University of Glasgow), Elsa Högberg (Uppsala University) and Axel Englund (Stockholm University), was followed by a workshop on the concept of modernism for PhD students.

Conference page for Intimate with Modernism

A mural in Istanbul depicting Tokyo from Netflix's Casa de Papel/Money Heist. Photo by Sebnem Baran. Source: http://henryjenkins.org/.

The Department of Culture and Aesthetics arranged the conference Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination with Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California) as key note speaker. The conference took place 2–3 May, 2022, at Stockholm University.

The conference brought together scholars – PhD students as well as senior researchers – interested in all kinds of popular media. The conference’s specific concerns included, but were not limited to, the relations between popular culture/ media and the civic imagination and between participatory culture and political activism.

Conference page for Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

This is an open seminar within the research programme DIGARV, a research programme aimed at promoting the digitisation and availability of cultural heritage collections, appealing primarily to the humanities and social sciences.

Photographer Jack Delano. General view of one of the classification yards of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Chicago, Ill. 1942 Dec.

The seminar is arranged by the coordinators for the Swedish Research Council's research program DIGARV:

Anna Dahlgren, professor of Art History at Stockholm university
Pelle Snickars, professor of Media Studies at Umeå university

Presentations

Dr. Katherine McDonough, researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, the national research institute for data science and AI in the UK placed at British Library in London. "Building Collaborations for Historical Research"
Training as a historian rarely includes an education in collaboration. And yet, humanities and social science researchers interact regularly with archivists, librarians, research software engineers, student research assistants, and community members, not to mention scholars in other disciplines. What does it mean to learn to collaborate? Where does it happen? What kinds of social and institutional infrastructures support it? In this talk I will share my experience of approaches to interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration, with a focus on new developments at places like The Alan Turing Institute in London.

Dr. Annika Rockenberger, Oslo University Library "Why Digitisation Isn’t Enough. A Case for Developing Big Data Humanities Training and Teaching alongside Cultural Heritage Mass Digitisation"
Annika Rockenberger head of research support service for digital research methods in the humanities and social sciences leading a team of seven research librarians at Oslo University Library will talk about this infrastructure for collaborations between researchers and diverse library collections.

Marcia Reed, Chief Curator and Associate Director Getty Research Institute "The Archives You Take Become the History You Make: Selecting and Connecting Diverse Collections"
Marcia Reed has developed the Getty Research Institute’s library and special collections since its founding in 1983. She acquired many of its notable rare books, prints, and archives. Her curatorial research and publications focus on works on paper, especially the literature of art history and the history of collecting. Her most recent publication is a catalogue for her 2021 exhibition on Dada, Surrealist, and Fluxus works: Fluxus Means Change: Jean Brown’s Avant-Garde Archive.

The Swedish Research Council's research programme DIGARV

11-12 October 2021. This colloquium is a follow-up on the one held in Nice 2018: ”Tolérance(s)”, arranged in cooperation with the MSHS – Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, Sud-Est, Nice and the one in Paris 2019 (Université Paris IV La Sorbonne).

The venues will be the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and on Campus, Stockholm University, at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics.

Immediately after the colloquium, on the 12th of October, all participants are specially invited to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm where Lilian Thuram (Honorary Doctor at Stockholm university, world champion of football and founder of the Thuram Foundation advocating tolerance and preventing racism) will speak at a public seminar followed by a reception.

'Tolerance' by Mary Mackay, 1990. Wikimedia Commons.

Keynote speakers

Denis Crouzet, Professor, Université Paris-Sorbonne
Emmanuel Fraisse, Professor Emeritus, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3
Christer Mattsson, PhD, Director of the Segerstedt Institute, University of Gothenburg
Jenny White, Professor, Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University
Cornel Zwierlein, Privatdozent Dr, Freie Universität Berlin

Sensuous Governing Sensuous City by Sisters Hope. Photo. Photo: Diana Lindhardt.

30 September to 2 October 2021.

Theatre and performance engage in proposing such utopian visions as a remedy, as a critical stance in times of crisis, as an imaginary flight from straight realisms, as practiced performativities potentially materializing different futures. For the 2021 ANTS conference we invite contributions which investigate all utopian aspects that demonstrate the relevance and also the urge to practice, discuss, rethink and envision theatre and performance in manifold ways. The Theatre and Dance Department at Stockholm University celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2021. With the proposed theme, we also celebrate the Utopian spirit of its foundation and its future.

See the Conference website

Online Symposium at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, August 26–27, 2021.

June 21st - 23rd 2021.

This online conference puts the searchlight on contemporary and historical revolutions of reading with four main streams of inquiry: “Critical and Postcritical Reading”; “Reading Across: Multilingualism, Translation and Comparison”; “Materialities of Reading”; and “Zooming In and Out: Reassessing Reading Methodologies”.

Conference programme

Illustration by Mariusz Stawarski.

Hippolyte Bayard, 1842 (public domain)

A symposium on Photography in Children's Literature will be held online at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics on 20-21 May 2021. The symposium should have been held 19–20 March 2020 but was postponed due to participating guests' travel restrictions.

Photographs have been used to illustrate a great variety of genres within children’s literature. While many photographic illustrations from the beginning of the 20th century use staged scenes, or were part of the avantgarde experimentations within the media, documentary ambitions became increasingly common during the 1930s and 1940s and the photographic picturebook becomes a modern, educational and ideological medium. Many photographers and authors have created photobooks for children by combining photography with other artistic techniques, such as collage, photomontage and photograms. Inspired by ideas of a vanguard aesthetics, modernist artists often regarded photography as an aesthetic means to differentiate from the past in terms of form, style, and language. Similar kind of ideas can be traced in radical publishing for children during the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, within children’s literature, the choice of photography as a medium often expressed high aesthetic demands, but also ideological objectives. Thus, research concerning photography within children's literature is also closely connected to ideas and changes in the conceptions of childhood, which impact on the depiction of children in relation to cultural transformation and social change.

The symposium at Stockholm University will introduce leading scholars from seven countries and offers a meeting point for exchange of knowledge and research results within children's literature, illustration history and photography. The symposium is admission free and open for all.

Speakers

Laurence Le Guen, Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Jörg Meibauer, Jane Wattenberg, Monica Ruethers, Marnie Campagnaro, Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna and Elina Druker.

Have you got any questions regarding this event? Please contact Elina Druker: elina.druker@littvet.su.se

Presentations

Day I 20 May
Marnie Campagnaro, “A successful photograph is worth as much as a story”: The influence of Photography on Bruno Munari’s picturebooks

Monica Rüthers, "The visual construction of an all-Soviet childhood in Soviet Photobooks"

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer, "Portrait of the child as a socialist: An inquiry into photographic picturebooks of the GDR"

Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer, "Immigrants and Elves: The Everyday and the Fantastic in Danish Photographical Children’s Books"

Jane Wattenberg, "Spellbound: Lona, Dare Wright’s Haunting Photo-Fairytale"

Day II 21 May
Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna, "From Halley's Comet to Scout Kwapiszon: On Photomontage in Polish Children's Fiction in the 20th Century"

Laurence Le Guen, "From the ‘Children of all Lands Stories’ to the ‘Enfants du monde’ collection, providing a view of the Other in children’s literature"

Elina Druker, "In and out of focus: Anna Riwkin’s photojournalism and photographic picturebooks"

Future plans and discussion

Code, Narrative, History schema.

Live-streamed International symposium at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, 11 May 2021.

In the past decade, archaeology has become enriched with a new source material: ancient DNA (aDNA). As technological advancements have made large-scale DNA analysis of ancient human remains a relatively inexpensive and simple affair, the number of aDNA samples have grown exponentially. According to leading researchers in archaeogenetics, we are in the midst of a “scientific revolution” which will generate groundbreaking insights into archaeology, history and anthropology.

But if empirical aDNA studies abound, less attention has been paid to the ethical, social and political aspects of archaeogenetics. How does the research field relate to an older tradition of categorizing human beings according to biological differences? In what ways does archaeogenetics activate and reify ideas of identity, ethnicity and nationality? What kinds of cultural or historical narratives are generated through aDNA research, and what kinds of energies might such narratives unleash? How does the entanglement of research laboratories, funding agencies, scientific publications and popular media shape the production of knowledge around aDNA?                  

In order to explore these questions, we invite you to Code Narrative History: Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA, an international symposium at Stockholm University, Department of Culture and Aesthetics on 11 May 2021. Hosted by the research project “Code, Narrative, History: Making Sense of Ancient DNA in Contemporary Culture”, the symposium features nine experts on the social and cultural practices and effects of ancient DNA research.

Keynote speakers

Amade M’charek, University of Amsterdam: “Doing time with ancient DNA: The trouble with naturalization, race and colonialism”
Erika Hagelberg, University of Oslo: “Challenging the narratives in ancient DNA”

Speakers

Magnus Fiskesjö, Cornell University: “Ancient DNA and the politics of ethnicity in neo-nationalist China”
Alexandra Ion, Romanian Academy: “Framing identities in mixed-methods research: The case of aDNA data and archaeological research”
Elizabeth Jones, North Carolina State University: “Ancient DNA as celebrity science: The role of contamination in a discipline’s development”
Venla Oikkonen, Tampere University: “Archeology of the future in permafrost: The cryopolitics of past pathogens”
Mélanie Pruvost, University of Bordeaux: “Ancestra: Conflicts and contributions of interdisciplinarity and the impact of archaeogenetic studies on society”
Marianne Sommer and Ruth Amstutz, University of Lucerne: “Making human genetic diversity visible”

For more information, go to: https://conahi.wordpress.com/2021-symposium/

Bild från sidan 290 of "Chess and playing cards" (1898). Culin, Stewart, United States National Museum University of Pennsylvania. University Museum.

The seminar was held via Zoom, November 6th 2020.

Presentations

Welcome and introduction: Anna Dahlgren & Pelle Snickars

”Digital Technologies in Museums: A Field of Interdisciplinary Research”: Katrin Glinka, Humboldt-University Berlin

”Measuring the invisible: digital tools and methods for the documentation of movement”: Stuart Dunn, King’s College London

”IIIF & the Future of Interoperable, Digital Cultural”: Tom Cramer, Stanford University

Concluding panel and discussion

This seminar is part of the research program DIGARV funded by The Swedish Research Council.

Photo: Sonia Soberats and Mark Andres: Portrait in Paper (2009). Seeing With Photography Collective.

October 29th 2020.

Who counts as normal, and how can we ask this question so that the answers give us keys to a more inclusive society? Warmly welcome to discuss this topical question with internationally leading scholars and artists working on the theme of bodies, technologies and norms – a central theme in a digital world where images govern who is included and who is excluded. This symposium presents diverse challenges to the image of normality – the image that identifies us as normal or not – so that we may confront stereotypes about what we can do and be.

The symposium is held in English and is free of charge. For questions, please contact the organiser Vendela Grundell Gachoud: vendela.grundell@arthistory.su.se

Folder Normal Now Art and Disability in a Digital World (801 Kb)

Allegory of Grammar (1650). Laurent de La Hyre - Walters Art Museum. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

September 17th 2020.

This one-day workshop addresses the history of subjectivity through an exploration of female freethinking in European literature 1500–1700. The purpose is to discuss the diversity of early modern subjectivity by giving due attention to female writers that in unconventional ways responded to the period’s dominating subjectivation of bodies, thinking and desires in various senses and genres, such as novels, maxims, drama, poetry, letters, fairy tales. By this focus the workshop wants to give new historical insight on other forms of subjectivity than the ones usually related to a humanist narrative based on the idea of human sovereignty that was first articulated during the renaissance and that later on became established as the rational and autonomous modern subject.

The workshop brings together international and national senior scholars and postdoctoral researchers in early modern literary studies interested in a revaluation of the humanist tradition and its relevance today.

The workshop is part of the research project Another Humanism: Gendering Early Modern Libertinism and the Boundaries of Subjectivity.

Carin Franzén and Nan Gerdes

Presentations

Welcome by Carin Franzén and Nan Gerdes

Keynote lecture, Nancy Frelick

"Invoking Echo: Representing Female Subjectivity in the Works of Early Modern Women"

This presentation focuses on appropriations of the Ovidian figure of Echo in creative and critical discourses that explore female subjectivity in Renaissance poetry. While Echo has been used by both male and female authors – to evoke the sorry state of the desiring subject or poetic persona, regardless of gender, or even to denote poetry itself – some readers relate this mythological figure to the situation of women in the early modern period, not least with respect to sanctions on speech, sexuality, and other forms of self-expression, which were generally reserved for men. So, we may ask: do female writers simply echo or mimic Petrarchan models and forms created by male predecessors, as some critics suggest? Or do their poetic responses constitute – like Echo’s – repetitions with a difference, creating spaces for the expression of uniquely feminine forms of subjectivity, as other scholars affirm? Our exploration of such issues will lead us to consider examples from a range of poets and to reflect on various critical approaches and theoretical questions related to gender and representation.

Karine Durin: "Feminine Heroism in the Age of Prudence – The Influence of the Moral and Political Works of Baltasar Gracián on Women’s Literary Production in 17th Century Europe"

Matilda Amundsen Bergström :“When heroes tumble in a common heap” – Heroick women and visions of virtue in Katherine Philips’ royalist poetry

Johanna Vernqvist: "Body and Soul: Epicurean Traces in the works by Tullia d’Aragona"

Ellen Söderblom Saarela: "Responding to Tradition: the Female Body in Ana Caro’s Comedies"

Anna Carlstedt: "Queen Christina and the role of Astrology in her Discourse of Self-Glorification"

Nan Gerdes: "Responsive selves? Subject formation in Hélisenne de Crenne"

Carin Franzén: "Queen Christina – in Response to Early Modern Subjectivation of Bodies and Desires"

Concluding Discussion

Bild från ”Reminscent rhymes, and other verse”, (1911), Library of Congress.

An open seminar on digitisation and cultural heritage collections. November 13th 2019, at 1 - 4:30 pm.

Programme

13:00 Welcome and introduction
Anna Dahlgren & Pelle Snickars

13:15-14:00 Losing Born-Digital Heritage: Living Archive and Bridging Thesaurus. For a Concerted Museum-Network
Oliver Grau, Professor of Image Science, Danube University Krems

14:00-14:45 Museums and Machines: Digital Cultural Heritage Horizons
Kathryn Eccles, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and Pembroke College, University of Oxford

14:45-15:15 Coffee

15:15-16:00 Digital Heritage as 'Big Historical Data' in Humanities Scholarship: Digital Methods, Research Infrastructure and Collaboration
Julia Noordegraaf, professor of Digital Heritage, University of Amsterdam

16:00-16:30 Concluding panel and discussion

Omslaget till New Directions in Philosophy and Literature, utgiven vid Edinburgh University Press 2019.

October 18th 2019.

"New Directions in Philosophy and Literature", Ridvan Askin (University of Basel), David Rudrum (University of Huddersfield), Frida Beckman (Stockholm University)

“Beyond the Postmodern: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of the Contemporary”, David Rudrum

“Beyond the Subject: Posthuman and Nonhuman Literary Criticism”, Birgit Mara Kaiser (Utrecht University)

“Beyond the Object: Reading Literature through Actor-Network Theory, Object-Oriented Philosophy, and the New Materialisms”, Ridvan Askin

“Ordinary Language Criticism: Reading Literature through Anglo-American Philosophy”, Ingeborg Löfgren (Uppsala University)

“Embodiment as Ethics: Literature and Life in the Anthropocene”, Astrid Bracke (University of Nijmegen)

“Politics after Discipline: Literature, Life, Control”, Frida Beckman

Round table: Ridvan Askin, Frida Beckman, Astrid Bracke, Birgit Mara Kaiser, Ingeborg Löfgren, David Rudrum, participants of the symposium.

Reception.

September 12 2019.

It has become more and more evident that there is a need of theories that allow the historian to take aspects of transfer in history into account. Key concepts in a theoretical orientation of that kind can be ‘cultural transfer’, ‘mobility’, and ‘process’.

Cultural transfer is vital for the understanding of the dynamics of the 18th century. With this approach, relational and processual aspects can come into the fore, having the consequence that national borders do not divide but connect countries to each other. Networks were built across the borders, something that can be observed within the philosophical, artistic, and scientific fields. Cultural transfer has by now become established internationally within historiography, but questions should be raised about its relation to for example postcolonial hybridity and issues of gender.

Mobility – as essential to cultural, scientific, and artistic practitioners who moved into areas defined by diverse socio-political and religious discourses – is a key concept that may question the idea of sheer ‘influence’, showing how a processing activity can be capable of generating entirely new expressions. The juxtaposition of models can be examined without imposing the static frame of centre/periphery.

The theme of the workshop is the methodological and theoretical advantages that a processual perspective can give, allowing a better understanding of the specific meaning a cultural phenomenon can have within different contexts, be they regional, national, or continental.

Presentations

"The Process of Cultural Transfer: Feminist Utopianism as Example"
Open Lecture, Alessa Johns, Professor of English, University of California, Davis.
"Comparative History and Cultural Transfer: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations"
Open Lecture, Andreas Åkerlund, Associate Professor of History, Södertörn University.

Panel discussion

Panel: The keynote lecturers: Alessa Johns and Andreas Åkerlund
Karin Sennefelt (Professor of History, Stockholm University),
Kristina Fjelkestam (Professor of Gender Studies, Stockholm University)
Moderator: Anna Cullhed (Professor of Literature, Stockholm University)

The panel discussion focuses on how concepts such as ’cultural transfer’, ’process’, and ’mobility’ are productive for specific disciplines within the humanities. In what sense can these concepts pave the way for a transnational study of culture? Are they relevant for the study of the eighteenth century? The panel continues the discussion about issues raised by the keynote lectures, and contributes with perspectives from several theoretical and historical fields of study.

About the Guest Lecturers

Alessa Johns is Professor of English at University of California, Davis. Her work focuses on the long eighteenth century; her interests include British literature and culture, European women writers, Utopian literature and theory, Travel, the study of Disasters, Jane Austen, and Anglo-German cultural exchange. She is an affiliated faculty member in German and Comparative Literature. She served as Reviews Editor for Eighteenth-Century Studies from 2004-2011. Her current book project is The German Invention of English Studies, 1735-1820.

Andreas Åkerlund is Associate Professor and senior lecturer of History at Södertörn University. His research focusses international contacts and exchanges within the fields of science and education as well as the foreign policy and public diplomacy aspects of scientific and educational internationalization. Åkerlund is presently investigating the Swedish governmental steering of public diplomacy 1998-2018, the history of Swedish post-World War II internationalization policy as well as interwar German propaganda in Swedish newspapers.

The Judgment of Paris, Porcelain, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, Connecticut, USA.

An open symposium at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics on May 28th 2019.

Michael Yonan, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri, visits the Department of Culture and Aesthetics for some weeks in May and June, 2019. In recent years, Yonan has been an important voice in the discussion of materiality and material culture (see e.g. M Yonan, ”Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies”, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, Vol. 18, No. 2, 232-248; M Yonan, ”Materiality as Periphery”, Visual Resources, 2018. About the article at the Taylor & Francis Online website.

In connection to Yonan’s visit, a symposium is arranged, with the aim to create a fruitful exchange of ideas between scholars from different disciplines who have taken an interest in materiality, material culture and new materialism; to discover and discuss similarities and differences in the ways in which these concepts and theories are being used within different disciplines.

A keynote lecture by Michael Yonan is followed by a number of short papers (15-20 minutes) by scholars from different disciplines.
Welcome!

Anna Bortolozzi, Sabrina Norlander Eliasson, Mårten Snickare.

Presentations

Keynote lecture: Michael Yonan, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri, "But Does It Matter? The Place of Materiality in the Interpretation of Art"

Panel I
Petra Dotlačilová, theatre studies, Stockholm University, "Between Image, Description and Object of Costume: Recovering Materiality"
Ellen Frödin, literature, Stockholm University, "The Material in and of the Book. Water and Paper Flowers in Jacob’s Room"
Emma Jansson, art history, Stockholm University, "Dirty Pictures: condition, material histories and their impact on viewer perception in paintings"

Panel II
Magnus Ljunge, archaeology, Stockholm University, "Things, Animals and Images: Material Relations in Bronze Age Visual Culture"
Adam Wickberg Månsson, media history, KTH, "Singular Causality and Contingent Singularity: Towards a Theory of Post-digital Handwriting"

Concluding remarks

Abstracts

Keynote lecture, Michael Yonan, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri, "But Does It Matter? The Place of Materiality in the Interpretation of Art"

This paper discusses the multiple roles of materiality in creating an interpretation of a work of art, with focus on a complex porcelain figural group from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Connecticut, USA, which represents The Judgment of Paris.  Does it matter if a mythological subject like this is represented in a specific medium, and if so, how does that affect its broader materiality?

Petra Dotlačilová, theatre studies, Stockholm University, "Between Image, Description and Object of Costume: Recovering Materiality"

In my research of theatre costumes by Louis-René Boquet (1717-1814), the design and textual description are the main sources. However, I approach the costume not only as an idea or as a picture, but also as an object: as an important part of the material culture, that contributed with its physicality in the theatrical as well as metatheatrical communication. By expanding the research method formulated by Jules David Prown (usually used by dress and costume historians for analysis of surviving garments) to what could be called “traces” of the object, I aim to recover their materiality. Their analysis will offer insights into the form of the costume and its agency.

Ellen Frödin, literature, Stockholm University, "The Material in and of the Book. Water and Paper Flowers in Jacob’s Room"

Kittlerian media theory has traditionally positioned itself as the material view on literature. According to this stance, material is opposed to meaning. This division into material bearer or medium on the one hand, and meaningful content on the other, is not very helpful when approaching a work like Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922). This text seems to track different material movements, especially the flow of water and the spreading of paper in the form of letters, paper flowers and books. At the same time, it draws attention to itself as a material object, as circulating paper. Karen Barad’s notion of materiality and meaning as always co-present enables a reading of the material circulations in the text as connected to the material circulations which the book itself is part of.

Emma Jansson, art history, Stockholm University, "Dirty Pictures: condition, material histories and their impact on viewer perception in paintings"

‘Materiality’ acts as a mode of enquiry where the tangible entities of artworks come to the fore. Through this framework, an art object’s materials and physical structures are assigned meaning. However, in order to make semantic interpretations relating to the materiality of artworks, it is first necessary to have an in-depth understanding of their material constituents and how these may have changed over time. This paper will address the issue of an art object’s condition, discussing various ways in which this can influence our aesthetic appreciation, as well as art historical interpretations. Referencing paintings specifically, I will discuss how aspects such as discoloured varnishes, instances of overpaint removal, and also degradation patterns in specific pigments can impact the reading of artworks.    

Magnus Ljunge, archaeology, Stockholm University, "Things, Animals and Images: Material Relations in Bronze Age Visual Culture"

Traditionally, Bronze Age rock art has been interpreted as symbolic representations of cosmological narratives or social interactions such as metal trade. In this paper I wish to explore the idea of rock art as part of relational networks between images, objects and beings. By addressing the material setting of rock art, both in terms of landscapes and the micro-scale of the stone surface, I will discuss how figurative rock art images could have been meaningful in direct relation to the specific materialities of certain objects and beings. Hence, the production of rock art could have functioned as means of controlling or altering features of the world.

Adam Wickberg Månsson, media history, KTH, "Singular Causality and Contingent Singularity: Towards a Theory of Post-digital Handwriting"

In this talk I will argue that handwriting re-emerges in the 2010’s as post-digital artifact, through which the agency of the singular object is highlighted. I will give two examples of this phenomenon, first in the performative politics of post-truth Trumpism through the image of the presidential signature and then in what Timothy Morton calls the “aesthetic dimension,” taking the large-scale curation of handwritten post-it notes on the Instagram account of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist as my second case. Using these examples, I will discuss the way in which New materialism can useful in analyzing the post-digital and other complex forms of materiality.

May 23rd 2019.

Twenty-five years ago, Charles Martindale famously called for a “redemption” of ancient texts, casting doubts on the concept of a pure, original work of art in favour of an ever-changing understanding and interpretation of Greek and Roman literature, always depending on the horizons – linguistic, social, learned, and religious – of its readers. This one-day conference, keynoted by Martindale himself, brings such a hermeneutic take on premodern texts up to the present day.

This symposium is made possible by the generous support of Literature as Leading Research Area at Stockholm University.

Presentations

• Welcome. Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre, Professor, German, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Deputy Vice President for Human Science, Stockholm University.
• Keynote lecture: Reception Revisited. Charles Martindale, Professor emeritus, Latin, University of Bristol.
• Lunch for speakers at The Faculty Club
• Augustine-Reading-Virgil. Monika Asztalos, Professor emerita, Latin, Oslo University
• Ovid and Medieval satire. Olle Ferm, Professor emeritus, Centre for Medieval Studies, Stockholm University.
  Chair: Anna Carlstedt.
• Becoming Godlike by Means of Ovid: The Latin Poetry of Tycho Brahe. Martina Björk, PhD, Latin, University of Lund.
• Divine Revelation and Human Reception of Hildegard of Bingen’s Visions. Dinah Wouters, PhD student, Latin, Literature / RELICS, Ghent University.
  Chair: Helena Bodin.
• Feminist and/or Feminine? The Empress Theodora in Modern Reception.
• Ellen Saarela Söderblom, PhD student, Literature, Linköping University.
• Recycling Latin Classes in Western Poetry. Anders Cullhed, Professor emeritus, Literature, Stockholm University.
  Chair: Susanne Tienken.
• Reflections and Future Perspectives. Carin Franzén, Professor, Literature, Linköping University
• Christian Høgel, Professor mso, Greek, Medieval Literature, Southern Denmark University.
• Sofia Lodén, PhD, French, Pro Futura fellow, SCAS / Stockholm University.
  Chair: Maria Plaza

May 20th 2019.

Ecology has become one of the most important concepts in the humanities as well as in the social and natural sciences. No longer limited to a traditional notion of nature and natural environments, the concept of ecology is now also applied with a wider scope, investigating, for example, technological environments and media ecologies, as well as ecologies of perception and cognition. This conceptual expansion of ecology reflects the profound overlapping of natural and technological elements constituting contemporary environments. The current situation of environmentality demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also entail an ecological transformation of thought itself is required.

Conference Programme and Abstracts (560 Kb)

May 7th 2019.

PhD students and senior researchers were invited to participate in the workshop aimed at bringing together scholars interested in narrativity and queer/feminist narrative theory. The workshop functions as a forum to exchange ideas and forge new academic alliances, and, not least, to discuss your own project.

​The workshop's specific and more general concerns include, but are not limited to: contextualist narratology, queer/feminist narrative theory, historicist narratology, and other identity- and context-based approaches.

The sessions are based on case studies and ideas generated and presented by the participants. The discussions are intended to encourage participants to explore specific approaches, challenge assumptions and develop new perspectives on their work. The participants are provided with a short reading list before the workshop so that they can be prepared to discuss particular aspects of their own research projects in relation to narratological research. These sessions are facilitated and chaired by Susan S. Lanser and Robyn R. Warhol.

Susan S. Lanser and Robyn R. Warhol are the originators of feminist narrative theory. They co-edited Narrative Theory Unbound: Queer and Feminist Interventions (2015), awarded Honorable Mention for the 2015 Perkins Prize for the most significant contribution to narrative studies. It is the first edited collection to bring feminist, queer, and narrative theories into direct conversation with one another, and places gender and sexuality at the center of contemporary theorizing about the production, reception, forms, and functions of narrative texts.

Presentations  

Robyn Warhol, “Reading Like a Victorian: How to Experience Novels in their Serial Moments”. This is an open Lecture.

Susan Lanser, “Narratology at the Checkpoint: Israel-Palestine and the Poetics of Entanglement”. This is an open Lecture.

Discussion of queer/feminist narrative theory and the chapters (to be distributed) from the edited volume Narrative Theory Unbound: Queer and Feminist Interventions

(Including breaks) Workshop: narrative and medium, narrative and political context, and other concerns related to contextualist narratology, queer/feminist narrative theory, historicist narratology, and other identity- and context-based approaches.

About Lanser and Warhol

Susan Lanser is Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. Her scholarship concentrates on three areas: narrative theory and the novel, with a particular interest in women writers; eighteenth-century European studies; and gender and sexuality studies. She is the author of The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction (1981), Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice (1992), The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830 (2014). Lanser is currently pursuing projects in the history of sexuality, in representations of the French Revolution, and in Israeli-Palestinian narratives.

Robyn Warhol is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at The Ohio State University. Her scholarship has focused on: narrative theory, feminist theory and the novel; Regency and Victorian novels, British and American women writers; television narrative and graphic memoir. She is the author of Gendered Interventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel (1989), Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Popular Forms (2003) and Love Among the Archives: Writing the Lives of Sir George Scharf, Victorian Bachelor (2015). Warhol’s current project is a website, “Reading Like a Victorian,” (victorianserialnovels.org). The site allows readers to get easy access to serial installments of Victorian novels alongside installments of other novels that were appearing in the same “serial moment,” or month and year.

Organising committee: Frida Beckman, Kristina Fjelkestam, Boel Hackman, Christer Johansson, Tiina Rosenberg.

Illustration: Stina Wirsén.

April 5th 2019.

National borders, geographical boundaries and refugee experiences are motifs in children's literature that underline the importance of considering the role that different kind of borders play in children’s lives. These motifs often include obstruction of movement or a racialization of children and young people. But the topic of borders is not merely confined to national borders in children’s literature. Imagined or not, current or remembered, borders can surround or enclose, they can marginalize or adjoin. Even bodily restrictions, contacts between self and other, child and adult are topics that raise questions about borders and boundaries. The matter of bodies in children's literature and young adult fiction also includes depictions of sex and gender as well as transgender experiences by or about young people.

Speakers

Elisabeth Wesseling, University of Maastrich
Peter Cumming, York University
Evelyn Arizpe, University of Glasgow
Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, Pennsylvania State University
Åsa Warnqvist, The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books
Mia Österlund, Åbo Academy
Sara Pankenier Weld, University of California

Presentations

Elisabeth Wesseling: “'Brown Nieces' in the Netherlands (1890-1920): Dutch colonial children’s literature as historical source"

Sara Pankenier Weld: "People Without Borders: Nomadism and Indigeneity in Classics of Swedish Children’s Literature"

Vivian Yenika-Agbaw: "Problematizing Home in Two Adolescent Novels"

Åsa Warnqvist: “'I’m sure this whole boy thing is just a phase': Transgender Characters in Contemporary Swedish Children’s and Young Adult Literature"

Peter Cumming: "Writing and Reading an Indigenous Adolescent: 'Cultural Appropriation' or 'Imaginative Empathy' in Lesley Choyce’s Jeremy Stone?"

Mia Österlund: "Confronting the Trauma of the War Child in Picturebooks"

Evelyn Arizpe: "Walking in Shoes that Cross Borders: Material Testimony and Embodied Simulation in Children’s Literature on Migration"

Final words and discussion

History Symposium at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters History and Antiques and the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, 22-24 November, 2018.

From Local to Global: Interrogating Performance Histories (858 Kb)

Strandade encyclopedier. Foto Magnus Hjalmarsson, Uppsala universitetsbibliotek.

September 14th 2018.

The impulse to collect and order human knowledge may be as old as writing itself. Encyclopedias – in all their shapes and sizes – are some of the strongest expressions of this desire. Yet, dreams of complete knowledge have rarely been easily achieved. Throughout centuries, people have tried and failed.

Stranded encyclopedias is the first international symposium devoted to abandoned encyclopedic works, their forgotten production histories and compilers. During two days, fifteen scholars from eight countries present cases from a three-hundred-year period. Together they give insights into the varieties, motivations, changes, and global diffusion of alphabetical encyclopedic practice, as well as the continuous development of our modern knowledge society.   

If published encyclopedias are the top of an iceberg, how large is the body below the surface, and what – and who – will we find there?

The symposium is a collaboration between Stockholm University (Department of Culture and Aesthetics) and Aalborg University (Department of Culture and Global Studies), funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and the Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond).

Presentations

Thursday, 13 September
Introduction and rationale of the Symposium: Linn Holmberg

Session 1. Stranded encyclopedias in eighteenth-century France
Chair: Lynda Mugglestone (University of Oxford, UK).
Annelie Grosse (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities, Germany): ‘Christian philosophy in the Enlightenment’s flagship encyclopedia: Jean Henri Samuel Formey’s unfinished philosophical encyclopedia (1742–1747) as a source of the Encyclopédie’
Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Saarland University, Germany): ‘Reinventing economic encyclopedias: Abbé Morellet’s ambitious projet of a Nouveau Dictionnaire de commerce (1769) and its (provisional) failure’
David Eick (Grand Valley State University, USA): ‘Stranded dictionaries during the French Revolution’
Lisanne Jansen (Leiden University, Netherlands): ‘From Abécédaire to Aval via Absalon: Mme de Genlis’ unfinished encyclopedia’
  
Session 2. Stranded encyclopedias across the globe
Chair: Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Saarland University, Germany)

Clorinda Donato (California State University, USA): ‘Stranded geographies: Italy for Italians in the Dizionario di geografia moderna composto per l’Enciclopedica metodica (1797)’
Linn Holmberg (Stockholm University, Sweden): ‘Stranded encyclopedias in eighteenth-century Scandinavia’
Ana Maria Alfonso-Goldfarb, Marcia H M Ferraz & Elaine de Souza (co-author: Silvia Waisse) (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil): ‘Stranded Brazilian encyclopedias: a late affair’
Poster: Bertha M. Gutiérrez Rodilla (University of Salamanca, Spain) and Carmen Quijada Diez (University of Oviedo, Spain): ‘Stranded encyclopedic medical dictionaries in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spain’

Friday, 14 September
Session 3. Stranded encyclopedias in the modern era
Chair: Clorinda Donato (California State University, USA)

Marianne Brooker (University of London, UK): ‘Bringing knowledge into encyclopaedic forms: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the ‘materials of method’
Lynda Mugglestone (University of Oxford, UK): ‘Stranded in time: Andrew Clark and the language of WW1’
Marija Ivanovic (co-author: Stefanie Kremmel) (University of Vienna, Austria): ‘The Arnold-Lissance-Archive – A stranded translator’s dictionary’
Maria Simonsen (Aalborg University, Denmark): ‘From printed to digitized: the history of how the Danish national encyclopedia stranded twice’

Closing remarks: Linn Holmberg and Maria Simonsen

Mini-workshop: “Stranded encyclopedias – the anthology” (symposium presenters and guests only)

Organizers: Linn Holmberg, PhD, Researcher and teacher in History of Science and Ideas, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Sweden
linn.holmberg@idehist.su.se

Maria Simonsen, PhD, Assistant professor in History, Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark
simonsen@cgs.aau.dk

Aalborg University, Riksbankens jubileumsfond, Stockholm University.

May 31st - June 2nd 2018.

Theatre as an art form was of great importance to the late Enlightenment. With the radical developments in the arts during the late eighteenth century, normative poetics and hierarchic didacticism gave way to artistic experimentation and an emphasis on the personalized aesthetic, emotional, intellectual and moral response of spectators as a path towards emancipation from inherited thought patterns and lived practices. On the one hand, intellectuals were concerned with the stage as a medium for emancipation through aesthetic experience; on the other hand, dramatic poets, composers, choreographers, performers and designers revolutionized the art of the theatre, developing new forms and practices that contributed in various ways to the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment.

In this conference, we want to put focus on the relation and interaction between the philosophical discourse on aesthetic experience, the stage works, and the new theatrical (including the musical-theatrical) practices of the Enlightenment. Moreover, we want to discuss this historical theme in relation to today’s performance and aesthetic experience of eighteenth-century stage works, not least when they take place in historical sites such as Confidencen, the venue of the second day of the conference.

Presentations

Living and Acting the Enlightenment
Thursday, 31 May 2018. Moderator: Willmar Sauter.

Dorthe Jørgensen (Aarhus University): “Felix Aestheticus and the Good Life”

Elisabeth Mansén (Stockholm University): “Wanting to Live the Enlightenment: The Sincere Wishes of Mary Wollstonecraft and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht”

David Wiles (University of Exeter): “Acting the Enlightenment”

General discussion.

Respondents: Astrid von Rosen and Magnus Tessing Schneider.

Performing the Enlightenment
Friday, 1 June 2018, Ulriksdal Palace Theatre Confidencen. Moderators: Mark Tatlow (morning) and Meike Wagner (afternoon).

Performing Premodernity was a five-year research project (2013-2017) funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and based at the Department of Culture And Aesthetics, Stockholm University. Through a combination of academic and artistic research, the project brought together research in historical theatre practices, theatre aesthetics and dramaturgy while aiming to contribute to the revitalizing of historically informed performance today. The following short presentations will offer an introduction to the issues raised and examined by the participating researchers.

Mark Tatlow and  Maria Gullstam: “Five Years of Performing Premodernity: A Video Introduction”

Meike Wagner: “Historiographical Perspectives of Theatre Praxeology”

Willmar Sauter: “Aesthetic Historicity: The Historical Theatre Space as Protagonist”

Magnus Tessing Schneider: “Historically Informed Performance and the Problem of Contemporaneity” 

Jed Wentz (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University): “Reconstructing John Kemble’s Neo-Classical Style: Sources, Problems, Beloved Scenes”

Maria Gullstam, João Luís Paixão and Laila Cathleen Neuman: “Research on Stage: Rousseau’s Pygmalion-A Performing Premodernity Production”   

Petra Dotlačilová , with Noah Hellwig (on the stage) and Anna Kjellsdotter (behind the scenes): “Materiality in Action”

Mark Tatlow, with Rodrigo Sosa Del Pozzo: “Peperl, Gasparo, Nancy, Bianca and Emma-and Haydn’s Arianna”

General discussion

Gli Elisi, Gustavian soirée at Confidencen

The evening will begin in Gustavus III’s Stockholm, with short extracts from operas by Uttini, Grétry and Kraus. The second part will feature the modern premiere of the cantata Gli Elisi o sia L’ombre degli Eroi by Calzabigi and Millico, written and performed as a tribute to Gustavus III during his visit to Naples in 1784. There will be introductory presentations about the music and its Gustavian context.

Speakers

Jennie Nell: “Musical Enlightenment at the Court of Gustavus III”
Lucio Tufano: “A Musical Tribute to Gustavus III in Naples: Gli Elisi o sia L’ombre degli Eroi”
Mark Tatlow, musical director
Laila Cathleen Neuman, soprano
João Luís Paixão, baritone
Sigrid Vetleseter Bøe, soprano
Rodrigo Sosa del Pozzo, countertenor
Drottningholms Barockensemble
The Chamber Choir of Lilla Akademien

Experiencing the Enlightenment, Then and Now
Saturday, 2 June 2018. Moderator: Magnus Tessing Schneider.

Michael O’dea (Université Lyon): “Before the Revolution: New Forms of Drama Criticism in the French Press, 1777-1789”   

Bent Holm (University of Copenhagen): “Orfeo ed Euridice 2018: Music and Myth in a Modern Context”

Felicity Baker (University College London): “The Discourse on Inequality in the Don Giovanni Libretto”   

Anna Cullhed (Stockholm University): “Mediating Medea: Aesthetic Potential on Stage and Page in the Late Eighteenth Century”

Concluding general discussion. Respondents: Inga Lewenhaupt and Melania Bucciarelli.

Miss Clairon in Medea, by Charles-André van Loo, Neues Palais in Potsdam.

25−26 April, 2018.

The sheer number of Medea dramas 1750−1800 is considerable, which raises questions about why this particular and rather extreme character of ancient tragedy is placed on stage and on the page throughout Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. As a transgressive character Medea seems to overstep a number of eighteenth-century borders: language borders, nation borders, cultural borders, borders of ideal motherhood and femininity, and genre borders. How is this surging eighteenth-century interest in Medea, one that moves beyond national borders, to be interpreted within a European perspective?
A collaboration

The symposium is organized by Professor Anna Cullhed, Department of Culture and Aesthetics (Literature) at Stockholm University, in collaboration with Theatre Studies, Stockholm University, Uppsala Interdisciplinary 18th Century Seminar, and the research network AGORA, Uppsala University. It is generously supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, which is currently funding the project “Moving Medea: The Transcultural Stage in the Eighteenth Century”, by Sven and Dagmar Salén Foundation, and by the Faculty of Humanities, Stockholm University.

Presentations

Keynote speakers in Uppsala, at April 25. The lectures were open to the public and the event is a collaboration with Uppsala University, the research network AGORA, and the Interdisciplinary seminar for eighteenth-century studies.

“Pushing the Boundaries of Operatic Convention and European Identity: Generic and Historical Perspectives on Georg Benda's 1775 Medea", Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at King’s College London, and Co-Founder and Consultant Director of Oxford University’s Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama (APGRD).

“From hearth to Hades: adventures with Medea and ballet d'action”, Fiona Macintosh is Professor of Classical Reception and Fellow of St Hilda's College, University of Oxford. Director of the APGRD.

Thursday, April 26, Symposium - Open to the public.
Introduction by Professor Anna Cullhed, organiser  

Katherine Heavey (University of Glasgow): “Seneca’s Medea in English Manuscript Translation: MS Sloane 911”  

Zoé Schweitzer (Saint-Etienne Unversity): “How can Medea be infanticide in late 18th century theatre?” 

Petra Dotlačilová (Stockholm University): ”Tragedy à la rococo: Costumes for Noverre’s ballet Médée et Jason”  

Larisa Nikiforova (Vaganova Ballet Academy): “Ballet “Medea and Jason” on the Russian Stage of the 1780s and 1790s and the “Greek Project” of the Empress Catherine II”

Anthony Lappin (National University of Ireland): “’Ó mágica Medéia!’: colonies, empire, and the politics between. Spain, Portugal, and their dominions”

Roland Lysell (Stockholm University): “Fate, characters and dramatic structure in Klinger's Medea dramas”

Anna Cullhed (Stockholm University): “Inverting the Barbarian. Estrangement and Excess in the Eighteenth-Century Medea”

Sabrina Norlander Eliasson (Stockholm University): “An Illustrious Woman for Polite society? On the presence of Medea in Eighteenth-Century Portraiture”

Stockholm Academic Male Chorus/Stockholms Studentsångare