In this year’s Theory Seminar we focus on what it means to situate our research in the humanities and, more specifically, within the newer fields of the humanities that are often explicitly oriented towards interdisciplinary research that also looks beyond the humanities. As Jeffrey J. Williams notes in his 2019 Chronicle of Higher Education article “The New Humanities,” “these new alloys emphasize commerce between other disciplines, particularly STEM or professional fields, and humanistic ways of thinking.” What do we still have in common as humanities scholars when we work in vastly different fields like the digital humanities, the environmental humanities, the medical humanities or the blue or oceanic humanities? And what is truly new about these fields and what perhaps not so new? In this regard, it is important to note that Williams is by no means the first to proclaim a new humanities – similar claims were made in the 1990s and go back at least as far as Felix E. Schelling’s 1914 “New Humanities for Old” in The Classical Weekly. There, Schelling states: “The humanities! the very term is redolent of times long gone and smacking of generations before the last. Beside glittering, new-minted epithets like 'sociology', 'criminology', and 'degeneracy', 'civic service', 'conservation', 'equal suffrage', the very word 'humanities' looks dim and faded in this new century.” Can the new humanities of our time make the humanities – widely perceived as under attack and in crisis – glitter and shine again, and do so in a way that unsettles old and new humanities’ eurocentrism, anthropocentrism, phallogocentrism, ableism, etc.?    

Session 1: Humanities Past and Future
Wednesday 2 October, 15:00-18:00 | PCH 210/211

Hall, Stuart. "The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities." October 53 (1990): 11-23.

Mignolo, Walter. "Globalization and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: The Role of the Humanities in the Corporate University." Nepantla: Views from south 4.1 (2003): 97-119.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. "Both/and: Critique and Discovery in the Humanities." pmla 132.2 (2017): 344-351.

Malabou, Catherine. "The Future of the Humanities." Transeuropeennes: Revue internationale de pensée critique (2018). https://www.transeuropeennes.org/en/articles/voir_pdf/The_future_of_Humanities.pdf

Session 2: Blue Humanities
Wednesday 13 November, 15:00-18:00 | PCH 114
Organizers: Serra Hughes, Bogna Bochinska, Xinyi Zheng, Julee al Bayaty de Ridder.

Oppermann, Serpil. "Storied Seas and Living Metaphors in the Blue Humanities." Configurations 27.4 (2019): 443-461.

DeLoughrey, Elizabeth. "Toward a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene." English Language Notes 57.1 (2019): 21-36.

González‐Ayala, Sofía N., and Alejandro Camargo. "Voices of Water and Violence: Exhibition Making and the Blue Humanities for Transitional Justice." Curator: The Museum Journal 64.1 (2021): 183-204.

Session 3: Environmental Humanities
Wednesday 11 December, 15:00-18:00 | PCH 114
Organizers: Maarten Arnoldus, Chen Zhou, Castor Brouwer, Nick Psomas, Maria Suarez Caicedo

Neimanis, Astrida, Cecilia Åsberg, and Johan Hedrén. "Four problems, Four Directions for Environmental Humanities: Toward Critical Posthumanities for the Anthropocene." Ethics & the environment 20.1 (2015): 67-97.

Whyte, Kyle. "Critical Investigations of Resilience: A Brief Introduction to Indigenous Environmental Studies & Sciences." Daedalus 147.2 (2018): 136-147.

Moulton, Alex A. "Plotting a New Course for Environmental Humanities: Provision Grounds, Race, and the Future." Environmental Humanities 16.2 (2024): 271-290.

Session 4: Digital Humanities
Wednesday 12  February, 15:00-18:00
Organizers: Alex Zakkas, Jie Shen, Ilker Bahar

Liu, Alan. "The Meaning of the Digital Humanities." pmla 128.2 (2013): 409-423.

Murray, Padmini Ray, and Chris Hand. "Making Culture: Locating the Digital Humanities in India." Visible Language 49.3 (2015).

Ruberg, Bonnie. "Queer Indie Video Games as an Alternative Digital Humanities: Counterstrategies for Cultural Critique through Interactive Media." American Quarterly 70.3 (2018): 417-438.

Venturini, Tommaso, et al. "A Reality Check(list) for Digital Methods." New media & society 20.11 (2018): 4195-4217.

Session 5: Global Humanities
Wednesday 19 March, 15:00-18:00

Pillay, Suren. "The Humanities to Come: Thinking the World from Africa." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37.1 (2017): 121-131.

Lowe, Lisa, and Kris Manjapra. "Comparative Global Humanities After Man: Alternatives to the Coloniality of Knowledge." Theory, Culture & Society 36.5 (2019): 23-48.

Denecke, Wiebke. "Comparative Global Humanities Now." Journal of World Literature 6.4 (2021): 479-508.

Session 6: Medical Humanities
Wednesday 23 April, 15:00-18:00

Atkinson, Sarah, et al. "‘The Medical’ and ‘Health’ in a Critical Medical Humanities." Journal of Medical Humanities 36 (2015): 71-81.

De Schauwer, E., et al. « Animating Disability Differently: Mobilizing a Heterotopian Imagination.” Qualitative Inquiry 23.4 (2017): 276-286.

Wright, Shain. "Biohacking Queer and Trans Fertility: Using Social Media to Form Communities of Knowledge." Journal of Medical Humanities 44.2 (2023): 187-205.

The aim of the ASCA Theory Seminar is twofold:

First, we propose to explore broad theoretical and methodological paradigms, and discuss influential texts in relation to ASCA PhD projects. Participants of the Theory Seminar will become acquainted with current practices in cultural analysis and learn how to integrate them in their own work.

The second important aim of the Theory Seminar is community building. The seminar aims to bring together PhD candidates from the diverse disciplines within ASCA to learn about each other’s research projects, struggles and joys, and to make new friends. To serve this latter purpose, each session will end in a café with drinks.

The sessions will be prepared and chaired by a team of (two to four) PhD candidates from different disciplines. They are expected to show how the particular theoretical paradigm under discussion is of use to them in their project, and to lead the discussion of the group.

We want to create a regular group for all six sessions, so if you register you are making a commitment to participate in all sessions. We recommend that all PhD candidates in their first and second year follow the ASCA Theory Seminar integrally. PhD candidates who are in their third year or further along are very welcome to join, too, as are ASCA staff members.

Please register for the ASCA Theory Seminar by sending an e-mail to Eloe (asca-fgw@uva.nl) indicating a preference for one of the sessions you would like to co-organize. Please register before 15 September 2024.