Coordinator

Sudeep Dasgupta, Abe Geil and Markus Stauff

Participants

Carolyn Birdsall, Thomas Ernst, Misha Kavka, Jaap Kooijman, Toni Pape, Jan Teurlings

Other participants

approx. 15 additional researchers, PhD/RMA students from several Dutch universities

Previous seminars:

• Rethinking Cross-Media: Intermediality, Convergence, Assemblage 2019-2020
• Race in Philosophy and Media 2018-2019
• Forms of Complexity 2017-2018
• Forms of Attention 2016-2017
• Transparency/Opacity 2015-2016
• Conjunctures of the Image 2014-2015

Description of the research programme of the research group

Displacement, convergence and hybridity are some of the terms through which transformations across media have been described. Cultural theory now regularly crosses the borders between medium-centered disciplines (e.g. Film Studies, Television Studies, Art History, New Media, etc.) to trace forms of subjectivity that overflow the borders of specific media as well as theories that have accompanied them. The Cross Media research group discusses this dynamic between specific media subjects and the crossmedia dimensions of cultural experience, technological interactions and textual transformations as ongoing "cultural reinvention".

Each year we identify a specific topic or set of themes as guiding threads to analyze these transformations across media. Combining disciplinary perspectives including media studies, social history, the social sciences, and the Humanities in general, the seminar offers a cross-disciplinary space for the study and discussion of crossmedia transformations.

Envisaged results

The activities and output of the Cross-Media research group include: a monthly research seminar, guest lectures by international scholars, and an annual workshop based around the seminar topic.

Work plan and time schedule

As the research group deals with the on-going transformations of contemporary media culture and scholarship, it will adapt its work forms and the perpetuation of the group itself to the development of new questions.

Societal relevance

The research group contributes to a mapping and critical conceptualization of the most recent developments of media culture. It especially aims at insights into how agency, subjectivity, community and society are reinvented through the ongoing divergence and convergence processes of different media.

This research group is active in the following constellations:

Description of the research programme of the research group

Displacement, convergence and hybridity are some of the terms through which transformations across media can be described. Practices of interaction with media forms like television and cinema for example, combine elements which were hitherto segregated by disciplines like Film Studies and Television Studies. Cultural theory has also crossed the borders between specific media disciplines and underlined how forms of subjectivity and embodied spectatorship overflow the borders of specific media theories.
The Crossmedia research group discusses this dynamic between specific media subjects and the crossmedia dimensions of cultural experience, technological interactions and textual transformations as ongoing "cultural reinvention". Every year we identify specific themes as guiding threads to analyze these transformations across media. Combining disciplinary perspectives including media studies, social history, the social sciences, and the Humanities in general, the seminar offers a cross-disciplinary space for the study and discussion of crossmedia transformations.

Envisaged results

The activities and output of the Cross-Media research group include: a monthly research seminar, guest lectures by international scholars (one per semester), a workshop (once a year)

Work plan and time schedule

As the research group deals with the most recent and on-going transformations of contemporary media culture, it will adapt its work forms and the perpetuation of the group itself to the development of new questions. For now, at least two more years (until summer 2018) are planned.

Societal relevance

The research group contributes to a mapping and critical conceptualization of the most recent developments of media culture. It especially aims at insights into how agency, subjectivity, community, society are reinvented through the ongoing divergence and convergence processes of different media.

This research group is active in the following constellations: