Conference Report: New Perspectives on Imagology, April 2018 (original) (raw)
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2019
Since ethnic stereotyping gained new political virulence in the current ethnopopulist climate, the three-day conference, organized by five researchers from the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna, aimed to promote academic discussion on new perspectives on imagology. In twenty-six presentations, international scholars shared their findings on strategies of Othering within a transdisciplinary framework of different theoretical approaches from postcolonial theory to gender studies, from intermediality to musicology, in order to fathom the boundaries of imagological research today. An additional poster session gave students the opportunity to present their research on hetero- and auto-stereotypes within literature
CFP: New Perspectives on Imagology
Conference Date: April 3–5, 2018 Location: Department of Comparative Literature, University of Vienna, Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Wien, Austria Organizers: Katharina Edtstadler, Sandra Folie, Andrea Kreuter, Sophie Mayr, and Gianna Zocco for the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Vienna Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Prof. Dr. Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam) Deadline for Proposals: January 7, 2018 Contact: imagology2018@univie.ac.at Conference Website: http://imagology2018.univie.ac.at Conference Fee: regular: EUR 30 / reduced: EUR 10
JOEP LEERSSEN SURVEY ARTICLES dominant into the Enlightenment ‚ witness the national-psychological investment of Montesquieu•s Esprit des lois, of Hume•s essay ƒOf National Characters", of Voltaire•s Essai sur les moeurs and even of Vico•s Scienza nuova . However, with the thought of Vico and even more with that of Johann Gottfried Herder, culture and cultural difference increasingly came to be seen, not as ethnographical phenomena, but as anthropological categories: as the patterns of behaviour in which €nations• articulated their own, mutually different, responses to their diverse living conditions and collective experiences, and which in turn defined each nation•s individual identity.
CFP : New Perspectives on Imagology Conference
2017
In her widely known introduction to comparative literature, Angelika Corbineau-Hoffmann (32013, 195) relates the emergence of this discipline to the development of one of its most traditional fields: imagology. Both have their roots in the early nineteenth century when the academic study of literature along national categories was closely linked to political demands for national unity, and when comparisons between both different literatures and different nations as represented in literature were thought to contribute to the field of ‘Völkerpsychologie’. The ties of early imagology in an ethnically-deterministic way of thinking have led to a relatively problematic status of this field within comparative literature as studied after 1945. Although imagologists such as Marius-François Guyard, Hugo Dyserinck, and Joep Leerssen have long since introduced a constructivist approach, which studies representations of national character as “discursive objects: narrative tropes and rhetorical f...
Between Aachen and America: Bhabha, Kürnberger and the ambivalence of imagology
Davor DUKIC (ed.): Imagology today: achievements, challenges, perspectives. Bonn: Bouvier, p. 137-160., 2012
This article gives a brief survey of the main theoretical traditions and issues of Imagology: its initial “French connection” within Comparative Literature, its legendary bashing by René Wellek, the “Aachen School”, and, eventually, the research groups evolving around Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen. As common denominator, a central methodological problem will be identified: the basic ambivalence of aesthetic structures, or the “instability” of literary meaning, respectively. In this respect Homi Bhabha ́s essay on the stereotype will be considered as a prolific contribution to redraft the theoretical basis of Imagology from a Post/Colonial point of view. Ferdinand Kürnberger ́s novel “Der Amerikamüde” (1855) will serve as a brief case study to exemplify this, leading to a short summary / outline of what the future objectives of the discipline might be.
Imagining historical imagology: possibilities and perspectives of transdisciplinary/translational epistemology According to the dominant epistemological trends marked by the global exchange of theoretical paradigms, this paper is aimed at examining possibilities of the epistemological constitution of the historical imagology as a transdisciplinary and translational research practice. Defining images as interferential configuration of the mental images, representations and practice patterns within certain socio-historical context, the main focus is put on the interpretative and explanatory landmarks stemmed from neurobiological and psychoanalytical theories of the self, discourse and dispositive analyses and praxeological theories. Final part of the paper highlights some theoretical impulses of intermedia, performance, visual and postcolonial studies for examining complex dynamics of the process of appropriation, modification and distribution of images, or, more generally, for understanding insolvable dialectics of the mutual constitution of identity and alterity in sign of Werner Kogge's hermeneutics of non-understanding.
Cosmopolitan Theory: Examining the (Dis-)location of Imagology
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, 2021
Being interdisciplinary, reflexive and analytical, theory has practical effects, questioning assumptions such as those related to discourse, meaning or identity, and exploring the circumstances in which texts are produced. It offers new conceptual tools and provides an argumentative method. Fields such as imagology have benefitted from the outset from the variety of theories reflecting the intellectual progress of their times, in particular in connection with the study of the relationship between Self and Other, thus providing new perspectives on the uses of preconceived ideas in artistic, written and visual, representations. In view of the current context of migratory flows and societal upheavals, it seems topical to examine the theories feeding the field of imagology today. Traditionally, history, psychology and sociology have proved instrumental in the building of essential notions pertaining to the sphere. More recently, studies have drawn on new approaches connected to receptio...