Ken Victor Hijino invited by Andreas Eder (March 2018)

 

^{Ken Victor Hijino and Andreas Eder}

Andreas Eder is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Japanese Studies of Freie Universität Berlin and currently writes his dissertation entitled „Where do ‚the people‘ matter? Populism in Japan between local contention and national conformity“, based on post-structuralist political discourse theory by Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe. Ken Victor Leonard Hijino is an associate professor at Kyoto University. In his latest book Local Politics and National Policy: Multi-level Conflicts in Japan and Beyond (2017) describes an intensifying conflict between different levels of politics (local vs. national) in Japan’s democracy from an institutional and structural perspective. The increasing emergence of populist discourse in this context is, as an additional element, the main focus for this project. Especially, since populism as a phenomenon has reached global importance, it is a common wish of both to introduce the Japanese case in the wider discussion on the matter. The goal of this project is to have a discussion from multiple perspectives and lay the groundwork for future cooperation. Additionally, consulting for a planned field research stay in Japan by Andreas Eder and an intra-departmental workshop with interested colleagues are among the main goals.

Romuald Tchibozo invited by Verena Rodatus (March–April 2018)

 

^{Romuald Tchibozo and Verena Rodatus}

The main research interest of both Romuald Tchibozo and Verena Rodatus concerns the art history of the West African country Benin. They have already worked together in the past, for example in the context of the exhibition “Object Biographies” (Humboldt Lab Dahlem 2015), for which they collaboratively conducted a series of filmed interviews in Benin.

Romuald Tchibozo is professor for art history at the University Abomey-Calavi in Cotonou and deputy director of the Institut National des Metiers d’Art, d’Archéologie et de la Culture (INMAAC). Verena Rodatus is lecturer and post-doctoral researcher in the department Arts of Africa at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Freie Universität Berlin), where she currently works on her habilitation Modern and Contemporary Art in Benin – an „Oral Art History“-Project.

Their cooperation within the framework of the Dahlem Junior Host Program focuses on the analysis of video film footage derived from artist interviews conducted by Verena Rodatus in 2016. The project aims to experiment with new forms of multiperspective arthistorical writing. The results will be methodologically reflected and published in an article.

Valérie Bénéjam invited by Elizabeth M. Bonapfel (May–August 2018)

 

^{Valérie Bénéjam and Elizabeth M. Bonapfel}

Elizabeth M. Bonapfel is a German Research Foundation (DFG) Research Associate at the Peter Szondi Institute for Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin with a project that traces the evolution of punctuation in modern English literature. She received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University in 2014. She is a specialist on Joyce’s punctuation, and her work on the topic has appeared in Doubtful Points: Joyce and Punctuation (of which she is co-editor), the Dublin James Joyce Journal, Joyce Studies in Italy, and the collected volume Interpunktion im Spannungsfeld zwischen Norm und stilistischer Freiheit.

The guest invited within the frame of the Dahlem Junior Host Program, Valérie Bénéjam,is Maître de Conférences in English Literature at the University of Nantes (France). She is a specialist of Joyce’s œuvre who has written widely on the subject and is currently studying the role of theatre and drama in Joyce's fiction.

James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914) was never published as he wrote it. Bonapfel and Bénéjam’s project, “The Authentic Reconstructed Dubliners,” is a revised edition of the text that aims to come as close as possible to Joyce’s compositional practices in his earlier fiction, particularly with regard to the representation of dialogue and idiom. The remaining manuscripts for the text reveal more unorthodox compositional practices than are traditionally acknowledged. In his early writings, Joyce wrote not with the single dash only, but instead with what he termed “dialogue between dashes.” This editionwill be the first to reintroduce the double dashes into a printed edition of Dubliners, and will thus demonstrate the importance of this essential early step in Joyce’s representation of character and speech.

Martin Hartung invited by Norma Ladewig (June–July 2018)

 

^{Martin Hartung and Norma Ladewig}

Norma Ladewig is a doctoral student in contemporary history. She is working on an interdisciplinary dissertation project examining relationships between the art market, politics and the art scene of 1960s and 1970s’ Rhineland. She invited Martin Hartung, doctoral candidate at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich to be her guest. They met at a conference on “art fairs” in London in 2017, where they both tackled controversies during the first contemporary art fairs in the late 1960s’ Rhineland and analyzed the mutual influence between a highly politicized atmosphere and a commercial drive in the art market. During Martin’s 4-week-stay at the FU in July 2018, they want to continue exchanging ideas on the political dimension of the art market. With an interdisciplinary conference, they want to enable an exchange of historical and art historical perspectives on the politicization and commercialization of culture in the 1960s and 1970s. During Martin’s visit at the FU they will draft a call for papers and an organizational concept.

Nicole Sütterlin invited by Isabel von Holt (June–July 2018)

 

^{Nicole Sütterlin and Isabel von Holt}

Isabel von Holt is research associate at Freie Universität’s Department of German and Dutch Philology, where she currently finishes her PhD thesis on “Figurations o Evil in Baroque Mourning Plays”. Nicole Sütterlin is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. While her first book project on “Poetics of the Wound” proposes a re-reading of early 19th-century German literature from the perspective of traumatology, her current research project “Bodies of the Digital Age“ explores the tension between biopolitics, auto-immunity, and new media in post-Wall literature.

Nicole Sütterlin and Isabel von Holt are both interested in corporealities and their representations in literary texts. Especially through transgressions of physical boundaries, anthropological, medical and political concepts, as well as the irritations they provoke, are negotiated. In their collaboration, Sütterlin and von Holt are interested in the continuities and iterations of poetics of the body across different time periods – continuations, which challenge the idea of epistemic ruptures.  

The aim of this project is to discuss the representation and actuality of concepts of the body by looking at two specific moments in time. Within the frame of the Dahlem Junior Host Program, Nicole Sütterlin and Isabel von Holt will draft a seminar on “poetics of the body – corporeality – biopolitics” for an international conference. In order to discuss these key concepts, they will host an international workshop at Freie Universität. Experts in the field of literary anthropology and biopolitics Prof. Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff (Freie Universität Berlin), as well as Klaus Birnstiel (Universität Basel) and Mario Grizelj (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) will be participating.

Nicole King invited by Ana Nenadovic (July 2018)

 

^{Nicole King and Ana Nenadovic}

Nicole King and Ana Nenadovic dedicate a considerable part of their research to the literary productions by Afro-American women and men. While Nicole King concentrates on Northern American authors, Ana Nenadovic focuses on Latin American writers. The plurilingual and pluriethnical Caribbean area constitutes the point of intersection of their interests.

Nicole King is a lecturer at the Department for English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. Ana Nenadovic is a research and doctoral fellow at the Institute for Latin American Studies (area Latin American Literatures and Cultures) at Freie Universität.

Within the framework of the Dahlem Junior Host Program, they intend to prepare a joint publication on the representation of female friendships, sisterhood and sorority in anglophone and hispanophone Caribbean literary texts. The project’s aim is not only to contribute to the research on Caribbean literatures, but to deduce specifically Caribbean forms of representation, which cross national and linguistic borders.   

Bence Nanay invited by Jakub Stejskal (October 2018)

 

^{Bence Nanay and Jakub Stejskal}

Bence Nanay is a leading voice in contemporary philosophy of perception and aesthetics. He has recently begun researching what he calls ‘global aesthetics’, that is, an investigation into possibilities of articulating inter-cultural differences in aesthetic attention. His host, Jakub Stejskal, is a DFG fellow at FU’s Institut für Philosophie (‘Eigene Stelle’ in Prof. Georg Bertram’s Arbeitsbereich) where he pursues a project titled ‘Towards a Post-Formalist Aesthetics’ that moves in a similar direction. What connects Nanay's and Stejskal's research projects is their interest in devising a philosophical framework for comparative aesthetics. Given the increasing overlap of research interests, Jakub Stejskal has invited Bence Nanay to co-organize with him a workshop on the topic of global aesthetics.

During Bence Nanay’s spell at FU in the second half of October 2018, two workshop sessions on global aesthetics will be held at the premises of the Institut für Philosophie and both would be scheduled as part of Prof. Georg Bertram’s regular colloquia: Kolloquium zur Gegenwartsästhetik and Forschungskolloquium. During the workshop, Stejskal and Nanay will each present a paper on global aesthetics.

Noah Gardiner invited by Laurenz Kern and Benedikt Reier (October 2018)

   

^{Noah Gardiner, Laurenz Kern and Benedikt Reier}

Noah Gardiner (Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, University of South Carolina) is hosted by Laurenz Kern (Research Associate and Lecturer, Institute for Islamic Studies) and Benedikt Reier (Doctoral Fellow, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies). They all work on various aspects of Arabic and Ottoman manuscript cultures in the late medieval and early modern period and their research focuses on the publication, distribution, reception, and function of texts in their social, cultural, and intellectual environment.

During Noah Gardiner’s stay, we plan to conduct various activities. There will be a workshop under the title “Making Sense of Manuscript Corpora”, in which we will address issues relevant for any kind of research on manuscripts: What advantages/disadvantages does working on a particular work, author, genre or paratextual element entail? How do we deal with autographs and how do we confront the problem of survival bias? How can we measure the reception or popularity of a particular work? Furthermore, Noah Gardiner will give a lecture on “Manuscripts, reception networks, and Islamic intellectual history: The case of the occult sciences”, which will be based on his research about the reception of Occult Sciences in late medieval Egypt and Syria.