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Arts, Media and Culture

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The Arts, Media, and Culture (AMC) research programme gathers some 50 researchers whose interests converge on the dynamics of cultural change, both historically and contemporaneously. Researchers come from a variety of disciplinary practices, including literature, history, philosophy, archaeology, linguistics, media and cultural studies.

Researchers work within situated practices: not only reading culture through social, theoretical, and historical lenses, but through the material, the digital, and bodily practices in which cultural artefacts are produced, distributed, and received. 

AMC scholarship is underpinned by critical theory, history, philosophy, and digital and environmental humanities. It relies on paradigms such as post-humanism, post-and de-colonialism, and new materialism that are in the process of transforming the humanities beyond its anthropocentric foundations.

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Director: Prof. Susan Schreibman

Academic secretary: Dr. Tullio Viola

 See here for recent AMC publications

Topics AMC scholarship

Inclusive society
Histories
Digital
Narratives

Inclusive societies

AMC research typically approaches mechanisms of exclusion from a gender and diversity studies perspective and highlights intersections of social identities, such as gender, sexuality, religion, age, disability, ethnicity, and nationality. The development of more inclusive societies is explicitly understood in terms of moving beyond an anthropocentric paradigm and includes the human-environment relation. We focus specifically on how the arts, new technologies, and language practices function as vectors of social change in multiple settings, such as playgrounds, factories (including cattle farms), and care facilities.

Living histories

Knowledge of the material and immaterial traces of the past in the present can help us tackle present and future societal challenges. Living histories refers to the analysis of how representations of history are produced and contested in the public domain. AMC research contributes to making history available and relevant today by focusing on issues related to heritage formation and conservation. We have special expertise in the theory and ethics of the conservation of contemporary art, the role of monuments and buildings in memorial practices, cultural landscapes as heritage, and cultural education through participation.

Digital transformations

In relation to the question how the rise of the digital transforms cultural practices, AMC scholarship concentrates on the transformation of scholarly practice itself and the way knowledge is produced. We study and develop digital tools that support our research, use them to communicate with audiences and turn them from consumers to knowledge producers. In addition, we examine how people outside of academia acquire digital skills and to what end, as well as how the arts speak to experiences and understandings of digital transformations. We have a special interest in how the intersections of the physical and digital (“phygital”) contribute to the development of cultural literacy.

Engaging narratives

In a rapid changing landscape of narrative credibility (cf. “post truth”), form (cf. social media), duration, and impact, (cf. “surface” versus “deep” attention), the engagement with various types of narratives takes on a new urgency. We respond to this challenge by studying how narratives across media intervene in contemporary societal issues, such as climate change, population aging, and post-coloniality, and how we can re-invent approaches to reading to deepen our understanding of the different uses of narrative. In addition, we focus on how people rely on narrative scripts in practices of self-fashioning.

AMC scholarship responds to the challenges that come with the following four topics. These topics are dynamic, and most scholars identify with at least two: inclusive societies, digital transformations, living histories, and engaging narratives.

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