52nd Cologne Media Conversations & CMC Master Class
Public Evening Lecture
Wednesday, 12 April 2023 | 06.00 pm | Neuer Senatssaal (main building, main campus)
THE ONLINE CULTURE WARS:
A FORMATION STORY
with John Postill
(RMIT University)
In this talk John Postill links up three distinct research areas – digital anthropology, causal ethnography and social practice theory – to track the messy, complex, open-ended effects of media practices in the making of a new digital world (Postill 2022). To this end he draws on long-term anthropological research on the ‘anti-woke’ movement – a loose transatlantic network of online personalities fighting the recent rise of ‘wokism’ that includes Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Bari Weiss and Andrew Doyle within its ranks. Extending recent sociological advances in the ethnographic study of causality, Postill tells the ‘formation story’ (Hirschman and Reed 2014) of this new movement through four critical media events, namely the Trump election, the Covid-19 pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and the Ukraine war. Each event, he suggests, yields ‘luminous’ ethnographic data (Katz 2001, 2002) about the hidden causal relations shaping this rambunctious space of ‘content creation and cultural criticism’ (Johansen 2021, 2023).
The lecture will be followed by the CMC Master Class open for undergraduate and graduate students:
Digital ethnography as a flat methodology:
Comparing hybrid and online research on digital activism
Thursday, 13 April 2023, at 10.00 am S22 (NSG (106), new seminar building)
For this class, you will have to register by writing an email to PD Dr. Cora Bender (info-memo
uni-koeln.de).
Then, you will receive a confirmation email and the preparatory reading
51st Cologne Media Conversations & CMC Master Class
Public Evening Lecture
Wednesday, 01 February 2023 | 06.00 pm | Lecture Hall S 01 (new seminar building (NSG), main campus)
DANCES WITH CATEGORIES:
TOWARDS THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF “TECHNOLOGY”, TECHNICITY AND TECHNODIVERSITY
with Ludovic Coupaye
(University College London)
This lecture explores how “Technology” is a category vernacular (emic) to modernity which, when used, inscribes the phenomena it refers to within an utilitarian, rationalist and Eurocentric frame. Building on the works of the Francophone Technologie Culturelle, the paper suggests going back to Marcel Mauss’s definition of “technical acts”, focalising on the issue of efficacy. The paper claims that it is by taking seriously the efficacy according to the actors – be they computer engineers, long yam growers or shamans – that one can built a methodological frame able to empirically analyse technical (or ritual or aesthetic) phenomena, and their profound axiological import, without sacrificing their material or conceptual diversity, or their spatial or temporal complexity. It opens up with a call for an anthropology of technicity and technodiversity which analyse the different modalities of actions and relations between humans and their milieus.
The lecture will be followed by the CMC Master Class open for undergraduate and graduate students
Thursday, 02 February 2023, at 5.45 pm S23 (NSG, new seminar building)
For registration and further information please contact PD Dr. Cora Bender (info-memouni-koeln.de)
50th Cologne Media Conversations & CMC Master Class
Public Evening Lecture
Thursday, 19 May 2022 | 06.00 pm Lecture Hall XI (main building)
THE POLITICS OF (IN)VISIBILITY: REFLECTIONS ON JACQUES RANCIÈRE’S READING OF THE RWANDA PROJECT BY ALFREDO JAAR
with Moya Lloyd (University of Essex)
The lecture will be followed by the CMC Master Class open for undergraduate and graduate students at a.r.t.e.s. Skyfall
Friday 20 May 2022 | 10.00 - 11.30 am a.r.t.es. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne Aachener Str. 217 | 50931 Cologne
For registration and further information please contact PD Dr. Cora Bender (info-memouni-koeln.de)
49th Cologne Media Conversations & CMC Master Class
PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE PRACTICE OF HISTORIES
with Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University)
Friday, 21 January 2022 | 10.00 am | on Zoom
Please click here for the Zoom Registration
For contact & registration for the CMC Master Class (Thursday, 20 January 2022, 6.00 – 7.30 pm) please email Christoph Lange (c.langeuni-koeln.de)
"What is it to write history in a photographic age? This is the opening question of my new book in which I argue that the existence of photographs in the historical landscape disturbs some of the deep-seated concepts underpinning the practice of history - such as distance, scale, context or materiality. In this conversation I hope to use this argument as a springboard to explore its significance for historical practices, from museum narratives to academic writing."
A visual and historical anthropologist, Professor Edwards has worked extensively on the relationships between photography, anthropology and history, on the social practices of photography, on the materiality of photographs and on photography and historical imagination. She has previously held posts as Curator of Photographs at Pitt Rivers Museum and lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Oxford, and at the University of the Arts London. She is currently working on late nineteenth and early twentieth century photographic societies and networks of photographic knowledge, on the market in ‘ethnographic’ photographs across scientific and popular domains in the nineteenth century, and the relationship between photography and historical method.
The lecture will be accompanied by a Master Class for undergraduate and graduate students on Thursday 20 January from 6.00 - 7.30 pm. All interested please contact Christoph Lange (c.langeuni-koeln.de) to get the zoom link and the course reading.
48th Cologne Media Lectures
Prof. Dr. Erhard Schüttpelz (Universität Siegen)
"Das Museum, die Moderne und das Ende der Archaischen Globalisierung"
am Mittwoch, den 16.6.2021 von 17.45 bis 19.15 Uhr (per Zoom)
Anmeldung zum Vortrag:
https://uni-koeln.zoom.us/s/95861244039
Meeting-ID: 958 6124 4039
Passwort: 672767
Das Museum für alle ist eine moderne Erfindung und nicht älter als die Französische Revolution, deren Bilderstürmerei und Vandalismus durch Sammlungen von Denkmälern, ihren Schutz als unveräußerliches Eigentum und ihre (partielle) Ausstellung beantwortet wurden. So sagt es die Überlieferung. Aber was geschieht, wenn man diese Geschichte in einen anderen Rahmen stellt oder etwa durch Christopher Baylys Prisma einer „Archaischen Globalisierung“ von Sammlungen und Reisen im Dienste imperialer und religiöser Kosmologien betrachtet? War das moderne Museum ein Ende archaischer Sammlungen oder ihre eklatante Fortsetzung? Sind die Museumsdebatten der Gegenwart ein solches Ende oder der Triumph der modernen Museumsidee? Der Vortrag geht die Kriterien für diese Antworten durch.
MeMo
Das Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften und Moderneforschung (MeMo) ist eine Einrichtung der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln.
Die Medienwissenschaft und die Moderneforschung sind in der Philosophischen Fakultät strukturbildende, verschiedene Fächer und Fachbereiche verbindende Lehr- und Forschungsrichtungen. Das Zentrum vernetzt die kulturwissenschaftliche Medien- und Moderneforschung und ihre Akteure und entwickelt Drittmittelprojekte im Bereich der Medienwissenschaft und Moderneforschung. Es bündelt die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit für medien- und modernebezogene Forschung und bietet mit den Cologne Media Lectures eine Plattform für die Auseinandersetzung mit gegenwärtigen Entwicklungen der Medienwissenschaft in internationaler Perspektive.