Cultural Analysis

Cultural Analysis:
New Engagements – New Frameworks – New Object

IKK-Conference 2018

Organizer: Department of Arts and Cultural Studies / Holger Schulze, Isak Winkel Holm and Morten Michelsen

Location

Festsalen – Auditorium 11C-0-08A
Faculty of Humanities
University of Copenhagen
Karin Blixens Plads
2300 Copenhagen
DENMARK

Programmme

Cultural Analysis

Fee

No fee (funded by the Department of Arts & Cultural Studies IKK)

Concept

According to the recent Research Quality Assessment at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, interdisciplinary research is the core of the IKK’s mission: “it is what gives the department a unique profile and the foundation for its international reputation.”

This IKK Conference will suggest the term “cultural analysis” as a starting point for a common endeavor across the individual disciplines. In other words, the conference will explore whether the unique profile of the department is due to the fact that the researchers, in a variety of different ways, are practicing what might be termed cultural analysis.

Meanwhile, the practice of analyzing cultural phenomena is currently undergoing radical changes. Building on the methodological frameworks of the traditional art disciplines, of German Kulturwissenschaft, and of British cultural studies, cultural analysis today is challenged by new kinds of political conflicts, new kinds of theoretical insights, new kinds of cultural objects, and new kinds of relations to such ‘objects’ and their ’affects’. Perhaps the label cultural analysis – rather than, for instance Kulturwissenschaft and cultural studies – can open up a reevaluation and rethinking of the analytical practices exerted at the department.

In the words of the Research Quality Assessment, “the department researchers have developed a climate that prompts and encourages innovative thinking across disciplines.” With this conference, we wish to further a climate that enables innovative thinking across disciplines. We would suggest three main questions for discussion:

1. Which political engagements can define the way we analyse cultural phenomena?
2. Where do we find the theoretical inspiration to reformulate the project of cultural analysis?
3. How are we to think about the objects of cultural analysis?