Summer School

CFP: IX LISBON SUMMER SCHOOL FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE

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IX LISBON SUMMER SCHOOL FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE

Neurohumanities: Promises & Threats
Lisbon, July 1-6, 2019
Deadline for submissions: March 15, 2019

When the US government declared the 1990s “The decade of the brain”, it aimed at raising public awareness toward the use of neuroscience for the enhancement of life quality and as a way to better address the challenges of growing life expectancy. The initiative was further supported by substantial research funding, which not only impressed public opinion but appealed to many research fields. Finding a link to brain research and the processes of the human mind, many disciplines were repositioned and adopted the “neuro” prefix, promising new insights into age-old problems by reframing them from the angle of the brain-mind continuum.

Neuroscience seeks to explain how the brain works and which neurophysiological processes are involved in complex cognitive abilities like sensation and perception attention and reasoning, memory and thought.

One of the most striking and unique features of the human mind is its capacity to represent realities that transcend its immediate time and space, by engaging complex symbolic systems, most notably language, music, arts and mathematics. Such sophisticated means for representation are arguably the result of an environmental pressure and must be accounted for in a complex network of shared behaviors, mimetic actions and collaborative practices: in other words, through human culture. The cultural products that are enabled by these systems are also stored by means of representation in ever-new technological devices, which allow for the accumulation and sharing of knowledge beyond space and across time.

The artifacts and practices that arise from the symbolic use, exchange and accumulation are the core of the research and academic field known as the Humanities. The field has been increasingly interested in the latest developments deriving from neuroscience and the affordances they allow about the conditions and processes of the single brain, embedded in an environment, in permanent exchange with other brains in an ecology that is culturally coded.

This turn of the humanities to neuroscience is embraced by many and fiercely criticized by others. The promise of the Neurohumanities, the neuroscientifically informed study of cultural artifacts, discourses and practices, lies in unveiling the link between embodied processes and the sophistication of culture. And it has the somewhat hidden agenda of legitimizing the field, by giving it a science-close status of relevance and social acknowledgement it has long lacked. Here, though, lies also its weakness: should the Humanities become scientific? Can they afford to do so? Should they be reduced to experimental methodologies, collaborative research practices, sloppy concept travelling, transvestite interdisciplinarity? Is the promise of the Neurohumanities, seen by some as the ultimate overcoming of the science-humanities or the two cultures divide, in fact not only ontologically and methodologically impossible and more than that undesirable? And how will fields like Neuroaesthetics, Cognitive Literary Theory, Cognitive Linguistics, Affect Theory, Second-person Neuroscience, Cognitive Culture Studies or Critical Neuroscience relate to the emerging omnipresence and challenges of Artificial Intelligence?

The IX Summer School for the Study of Culture invites participants to submit paper and poster proposals that critically consider the developments of the Neurohumanities in the past decades and question its immediate and future challenges and opportunities. Paper proposals are encouraged in but not limited to the following topics:

  • 4E Cognition: embodied, embedded, enacted and extended
  • performance and the embodied mind
  • spectatorship and simulation
  • from individual to social cognition
  • mental imagery
  • empathy
  • memory, culture and cultural memory
  • cognition and translatability
  • mind-body problem
  • life enhancement
  • neuro-power
  • (neuro)humanities and social change
  • AI, cognition and culture

The Summer School will take place at several cultural institutions in Lisbon and will gather outstanding doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers from around the world. In the morning there will be lectures and master classes by invited keynote speakers. In the afternoon there will be paper presentations by doctoral students.

Paper proposals

Proposals should be sent to lxsummerschool@gmail.com no later than February 28, 2019 and include paper title, abstract in English (max. 200 words), name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation and a brief bio (max. 100 words) mentioning ongoing research. Applicants will be informed of the result of their submissions by March 15, 2019.

Rules for presentation

The organizing committee shall place presenters in small groups according to the research focus of their papers. They are advised to stay in these groups for the duration of the Summer School, so a structured exchange of ideas may be developed to its full potential.

Full papers submission

Presenters are required to send in full papers by May 30, 2019.

The papers will then be circulated amongst the members of each research group and in the slot allotted to each participant (30’), only 10’ may be used for a brief summary of the research piece. The Summer School is a place of networked exchange of ideas and organizers wish to have as much time as possible for a structured discussion between participants. Ideally, in each slot, 10’ will be used for presentation, and 20’ for discussion.

Registration fees

Participants with paper – 290€ for the entire week (includes lectures, master classes, doctoral sessions, lunches and closing dinner)

Participants without paper – 60€ per session/day | 190€ for the entire week

Fee waivers

For The Lisbon Consortium students, there is no registration fee.

For students from Universities affiliated with the European Summer School in Cultural Studies and members of the Excellence Network in Cultural Studies the registration fee is 60€.

Organizing Committee

  • Isabel Capeloa Gil
  • Peter Hanenberg
  • Alexandra Lopes
  • Paulo de Campos Pinto
  • Diana Gonçalves
  • Clara Caldeira
  • Rita Bacelar

For further information, please contact us through lxconsortium@gmail.com

Call for Applications: London Critical Theory Summer School

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‘The Summer School has been one of the best academic experiences I have ever had’ 2017 Participant

The 2018 London Critical Theory Summer School will take place from 25 June – 6 July 2018.

Run by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, the internationally renowned London Critical Theory Summer School enables graduate students and academics to engage in a two-week course of day-time study with acclaimed critical thinkers.

2018 Participating Academics

The School combines critical theoretical thought, at the most advanced level, with a sense of the political urgency of the times, an urgency that has so dramatically increased in this past year with the advent of Brexit and Trump, the massive global inequality to which they both attest and will exacerbate, the increasingly licensed ethno-nationalism, racism and misogyny which they sanction, the forms of historical forgetting which they appear to demand.

‘The transdisciplinary approach of the Summer School was really impressive’ 2017 Participant

The key to our Summer School is that theory is engaged theory, that is, it pursues, elucidates and complicates its own genealogy and intellectual elaboration at the same time as attempting to show how theory, and the necessity of sustained reflection which it demands and enacts, can contribute to progressive, dissident thought and being in the modern world.

More details and what to expect

Bursaries

Apply now – deadline 16 March 2018

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

Calcutta: City/Contemporaneity (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School 2018 @ Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata)

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Dates: 18- 29 JUNE 2018.

Think modernism, political strife, street fighting, literature, theatre, and cinema – and think one Indian city. This Summer School is set in, and is about, one of the most emblematic of them all: Calcutta. Returning to the original name before it was changed in 2001, we refer to the colonial port city that was once capital of British India, and the city where, through the twentieth century, some of the most intense debates in history were played out: around colonialism, nationalism, partition, suffering, refugeehood, along side its intense articulation through literature, theatre and cinema.

Calcutta: City/Contemporaneity is a two-week multidisciplinary Summer School hosted by the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, which celebrates its 25th Anniversary in 2018. The School uses several converging spaces that make up the moving image across South Asia both physically and metaphorically meaningful. From College Street, the local book publishing area, to famous ‘Tollywood’ movie studios, and from the Kalighat temple, site of one of India’s best known ‘bazaar’ painting traditions, we engage with spaces where modern public life emerged, and morphed into new spaces for making and distributing diverse cultural contents. On the way we will encounter architecture, film, contemporary literary modes, public art, musical forms, television, video and other media, from print through to digital.

The course features several contemporary debates that have informed the city’s intellectual traditions as much as they have defined the spaces of their action: its streets and public spaces, its coffee houses, bazaars, and its universities. Lectures on scholarship on the city, its political history, culture, and contemporary media practices, will take place alongside walks in actual spaces showing how Calcutta’s twentieth century unfolded, and where its key present-day struggles lie. While the city’s past and present will be the main focus, our sessions will address the intense Inter-Asia links and will include discussions of comparable Asian locations such as Dhaka, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Manila, Taipei and other ports and cities.

Speakers include Partha Chatterjee, M. Madhava Prasad, Tejaswini Niranjana, Stephen Chan, Melani Budianta, Soyoung Kim, Moinak Biswas, Abhijit Roy, Firdous Azim, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Nishant Shah, Madhuja Mukherjee, Audrey Yue, Naifei Ding, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, and many others.

Coordinator: Madhuja Mukherjee, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University (email: madhuja_m@yahoo.co.in)

Summer School Team: Subhajit Chatterjee and Arijeet Mandal.

Departmental faculty: Moinak Biswas, Abhijit Roy, Anindya Sengupta, Manas Ghosh, Subhajit Chatterjee, Shradhanjali Tamang, Arijeet Mandal, Madhuja Mukherjee.

Course fees:

USD 200 for international participants.

This would include ‘double-sharing’ accommodation at Jadavpur University Guest House (June 17th check-in, June 30th check-out), welcome dinner, lunches (during classes/ week days), tea/ coffee, and transportation for most off-campus tours.

USD 100 for local participants. (Local participants will not be offered accommodation).

Fee Waiver: Very limited ‘Fee Waiver’ is available for those in need.

(In such cases the participants will not be offered accommodation. However, we can help you find cheap/ reasonable accommodation).

Note, IACS Society will not be able to support your travel.

Important Dates:

Application deadline – 2nd February 2018
Acceptance announcement – 24th February 2018
Deadline of offer confirmation by students – 24th March 2018

Application Procedure:

Please provide the following information in your application form and send it to the IACSS Society Office by email to iacss@ln.edu.hk before 2nd February 2018

Name, age, sex
Affiliated Institution and current programme of study / teaching position
Areas of academic / research interests
Have you participated in previous IACSS Summer Schools? If yes, where and when?
Reasons for joining this particular Summer School
Expectations from this Summer School
Reference letter from your supervisor /an appropriate senior colleague (Please attach pdf )
If you need fee waiver please write to us about your needs.

Download: 2018 IACSS Summer School Application Form2018-IACSS-Summer-School-Application-Form2

For more on the same follow the link – http://culturalstudies.asia/calcutta-citycontemporaneity/

ANN: Summer School: The Knowledge of the Curator (Groningen, 8-14 Jul 18)

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ANN: Summer School: The Knowledge of the Curator (Groningen, 8-14 Jul 18)

Groningen, July 8 – 14, 2018
Deadline: May 1, 2018

Summer School
The Knowledge of the Curator II. Curating Art and Science

The Department of Art History at the University of Groningen, in collaboration with the Groninger Museum and Ghent University, offers a unique and innovative summer school program that puts students in direct contact with internationally renowned scholars, museum directors, and curators, including Andreas Blühm, Koenraad Jonckheere, Eric Jorink, Sue-an van der Zijpp, and special guest Ivan Gaskell (Bard Graduate Center, New York City).

Scope:
In recent years, the multifaceted role of the curator in museums, exhibition spaces, and cultural heritage sites has expanded significantly. In addition to making new acquisitions, developing exhibitions, employing educational strategies, and engaging diverse audiences, curators are also expected to produce innovative scholarship. This course asks how curatorial research relates to academic research conducted at universities. The particular focus of the summer school will be on the increasing interest in interdisciplinary projects that blur the boundaries between art and science. How can objects of artistic and scientific origin forge meaningful relationships? Can contemporary art serve as an ‘enhancement’ of historical scientific collections? How do collections of modern and contemporary art incorporate scientific objects?

Intended for art historians aiming for a career in academia, museums and cultural institutions, as well as junior professionals in those fields, this summer school is devoted to the knowledge, expertise, and skills required to meet the challenge of curating art and science.

In a curriculum that unites critical reading, thinking, and discussion with hands-on experience, the participants will
– be familiarized with recent theories and methods of an object centered art history
– develop theoretical knowledge and practical skills for a curatorial career
– bridge conventional boundaries between art and science, chronological periods, traditional genres, craft, and design as well as material and visual culture

A key feature of the summer school – in addition to lectures, presentations, and discussion – is the creation of an experimental exhibition with objects from the collections of the Groninger Museum and the University Museum. An excursion around the Netherlands enables participants to meet with curators on site.

For more information, and the online application form: https://www.rug.nl/education/summer-winter-schools/summer_schools_2018/knowledge_of_the_curator/

Contact: summerschoolarthistory@rug.nl

*If you are a ReMA/PhD student associated with the Dutch Postgraduate School of Art History (OSK), you may apply for a small stipend. Please email us for inquiries.

Reference / Quellennachweis:
ANN: Summer School: The Knowledge of the Curator (Groningen, 8-14 Jul 18). In: ArtHist.net, Dec 11, 2017. <https://arthist.net/archive/16954>

Call for Applications|Penn State Asian Studies Summer Institute on “Infrastructure”

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Penn State University invites applicants for its annual Asian Studies Summer Institute, to be held June 10-16, 2018. This year’s Institute, co-directed by Leo Coleman (Hunter College/CUNY) and Jessamyn Abel (Penn State), focuses on the topic of “Infrastructure.”

Institute participants spend a week reading and thinking about the annual theme, as well as significant time workshopping their work in progress. Particularly strong work will be considered for publication in an upcoming special issue of Verge: Studies in Global Asias (https://www.upress.umn.edu/…/…/verge-studies-in-global-asiashttps://www.upress.umn.edu/…/…/verge-studies-in-global-asias).

Penn State will cover housing and meals, and offer an honorarium to help defray travel costs (USD 400 from the East Coast, 600 from the Midwest, 800 from the West Coast; USD 1000 from Europe; USD 1350 from Asia). Applicants must have completed their PhDs no earlier than June 2013, or be advanced graduate students who are completing their dissertations.

On the theme:

We invite applications from the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences for projects that examine “infrastructure” as both concept and material reality in Asia, Asian America, and Asian diasporic communities around the world.

The infrastructures of the modern world shape everyday life, popular perceptions of space and movement, and prominent images of the individual, corporation, nation, region, and world. This includes not only physical infrastructures, such as sewer systems, communications networks, roads, and airports, but also the virtual systems that define spaces, control movement, and mediate interactions: computer operating systems and platform designs; the international system of passports and visas; and legal definitions of borders, territoriality, and citizenship. Attention to infrastructure, which has recently emerged as a key site of study across the social sciences and humanities, brings together disparate concerns with space, mobility, and circulations (of images, commodities, resources, people, and ideas). It enables a focus across scales and boundaries (whether political boundaries or those that run between rural and urban), highlighting political ecologies, physical processes, and material connections that link places and people while illuminating the often-hidden categorizations and mediations that inform local aspirations and political understandings.

In this workshop, we will explore the relationships between real and conceptual infrastructures, concrete materials and codes of practice, and means and motivations, both in particular parts of Asia and as Asian people, goods, and ideas circulate globally. We will examine how the study of infrastructures, broadly conceived, can help us better understand urban spaces and rural landscapes, development projects, technological changes, and emergent political and social realities. Key questions will include how infrastructure studies might renew classic approaches to Asian societies and their national or global histories, provide new insights into Asian and Asian diasporic literatures or arts, or help focus attention on current ecological and political concerns—for example, by mobilizing new concepts such as redundancy, resiliance, and repair. We will also consider how the study of infrastructure impacts our understanding of Global Asias—itself a nebulously defined, contested, and generative concept. A close examination of the evolution of the infrastructures that are fundamental to economic and political relations, and to the daily lives of billions of people, reveals the ways in which material technologies, sociotechnical processes, legal forms, popular culture, and the natural environment interact to produce the physical and imagined spaces of city, nation, region, and empire.

To apply, please send the following documents in a single PDF file to verge@psu.edu by March 15, 2018.

1. An abstract of 1500 words outlining research project and clarifying its connection to
the Institute theme.
2. A sample of current work.
3. A current c.v. (no longer than 2 pp).
4. A letter from a principal advisor about the advanced status of work (in the case of graduate students).

Decisions will be made by the first week of April 2018. Other inquiries regarding the Summer Institute may be directed to Jessamyn Abel (jua14@psu.edu).

Nineteenth International Baroque Summer Course of the Werner Oechslin Foundation

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Introduction
Memoria is more than history and more than history turned into a monument. The focus is on the conscious act of remembering. And this always means drawing historic objects and events into one’s own realm of experience; hence, it concerns a visualization at each corresponding point in time. History is not situated “vertically” through various epochs as a sequence in a presumably causal context. Instead, it is integrated horizontally in the vivid realm of lived experience. (Precisely this aspect is very often foregrounded in tomb inscriptions, in the sense of overcoming time and transience.)
Thus, for its representation, Memoria particularly requires a whole series of mental capabilities and efforts, covering the entire spectrum from “spetie & forme dell’animo”; it possesses its own force (“vigore della memoria”) and avails itself furthermore of some specific devices. In his “Dialogo” dedicated to Memoria (1562), Lodovico Dolce speaks with relation to Cicero of an “imaginaria dispositione delle cose sensibili nella mente” and adds: “sopra lequali la memoria volgendosi & piegandosi, viene a eccitarsi, & a ricevere giovamento.” It concerns how one handles the comprehensive world of imagination, our “imaginaire.” One can, according to Dolce, appropriate and avail oneself of a memory by this method “con più agevolezza, più distintamente.” Taken by itself, that has long been an “art”. But if one adds the specific artistic means, then the possibilities of representing and shaping Memoria seem nearly limitless.
Inasmuch, art history shows us the virtually overwhelming riches of various characteristics and manifestations. Cathedrals and major churches become receptacles of entire cycles of tombs and monuments. In Mainz, generations of prince bishops are posed and demonstrate in their daily presence the union – in their case a special one – of worldly (dominium temporale) and spiritual (dominium spirituale) power. For this they employ the entire repertoire of images and signs, from the “effigies” to inscriptions and symbols.

The course is open to doctoral candidates as well as junior and senior scholars who wish to address the topic with short papers (20 minutes) and through mutual conversation. As usual, the course has an interdisciplinary orientation. We hope for lively participation from the disciplines of art and architectural history, but also from scholars of history, theology, theatre and other relevant fields. Papers may be presented in German, French, Italian or English; at least a passive knowledge of German is a requirement for participation.

Conditions: The Foundation assumes the hotel costs for course participants, as well as several group dinners and the excursion. Travel costs cannot be reimbursed.

Please send applications with brief abstracts and brief CVs by e-mail to:
anja.buschow@bibliothek-oechslin.ch

The CFP deadline is 10 December 2017.

Concept / Organization: Dr. Anja Buschow Oechslin (Einsiedeln), Prof. Dr. Axel Christoph Gampp (Uni Basel), Prof. Dr. Stefan Kummer (Uni Würzburg), Prof. Dr. Werner Oechslin (Einsiedeln) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke (ETH Zürich).

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Baroque Summer Course Werner Oechslin Foundation (Einsiedeln, 24-28 Jun 18). In: ArtHist.net, Nov 15, 2017.
For more follow the link – https://arthist.net/archive/16728

Workshop Proposals: International Summer School at Gottingen

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The International Summer School “Globalization and Diversity” will provide students with an overview of current debates on social diversity, taking place both on a global and a local scale. First, students will gain theoretical knowledge through lectures by international scholars. The lectures will cover current trends in diversity research, different dimensions of diversity and their intersections and explain the importance of diversity-related knowledge in education and management. Secondly, they will learn about specifically German perspectives and topics related to diversity. Part of this includes excursions to a variety of local sites. These include a concentration camp memorial site as well as the museum and transit camp Friedland. Finally, students will be able to pursue their own research in student-led seminars and group work in order to prepare essays or BA- and MA- theses. Students will also present their own work in one of the classes.

Program

In a first module students will be introduced to different perspectives on diversity in the context of globalization This will be done through lectures and seminars. In a second module students will experience and discuss further diversity-related topics, approaching specifically Germany-related topics and perspectives dealing with aspects to diversity in the past and present.

Module I: The students will be introduced to different perspectives on diversity in the context of globalization through seven lectures, seminars and student led seminars. Thus, different didactic strategies will be used to

 

  • Prepare discussions with key note speakers and/or
  • Clarify specific views on globalization and diversity and/or
  • Reflect on individual research proposals
  • Reflect differences of academic cultures

Module II: The excursions are meant to cover further diversity-related topics such as memory culture, activism or cultural heritage sites with the achievement of intercultural competencies

 

  • Mittelbau-Dora, concentration camp site memorial of the Third Reich (one day excursion)
  • Friedland Transit Camp – Perspectives on Migration, the Transit Camp from 1945 to today (one day excursion)
  • Guided City Tour: Science with Charme – historical women of the city and in the university

The Summer School also includes preparation, a short presentation, and a concluding essay.

 

  • August 2 to August 16, 2018
  • Application deadline: January 19, 2018

ECTS

Upon successful completion of the program including the submission of a term paper, participants will be granted 9 ECTS credit points (6 Credit points will be gained through lectures and seminars, 3 Credit points will be gathered through participation at the excursions.).

Credits in ECTS can only be obtained after successful completion of the work load required. Student workload in ECTS consists of the time required to complete all planned learning activities such as attending lectures, seminars, independent and private study, preparation of projects, examinations, and so forth.
International participants who wish to receive credits for attending short term programs should check transfer policies with their academic advisor or the international office at their home institution.

Fees & Funding

Participation is free of charge for the selected candidates.

Due to funding by the University of Göttingen the Summer School will be able to offer travel grants for international participants. The travel grants are paid as fixed country-specific travel allowances.
The Summer School also provides free organized accommodation.

All other individual incurred costs related to the participation in the summer school (entrance fees on excursions, food, etc.) have to be covered by the participants themselves (or by their respective home institutions).

Application

The Summer School is open to 30 participants. All students from Social Sciences including transdisciplinary study programs, such as Gender, Disability or Postcolonial Studies, either MA students or advanced BA students are invited to apply. Participants will be selected based on their abstracts for a planned piece of research.

For an application please submit:

 

  • A CV (one page including a short statement of motivation) and
  • An abstract of a planned research project (max. 2000 characters).

If you attend, you will need to prepare an oral presentation introducing yourself and your work. Please fill in the application form online (including CV and abstract). After a successful submission of the application you should receive an automatic confirmation via eMail.

The application portal will open December 2017.

Application deadline: January 19, 2018.

Organizers

Acting professor Dr. Astrid Biele Mefebue, Faculty of Social Sciences, Göttingen Diversity Research Institute

Kristina Schneider, Faculty of Social Sciences, Göttingen Diversity Research Institute

Professor Dr. Andrea D. Bührmann, Faculty of Social Sciences, Göttingen Diversity Research Institute

For more follow – http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/569981.html