Institute for Cultural Studies and Theater History
The Vienna Institute for Cultural Studies and Theater History (IKT, until 2008 Commission for Cultural Studies and Theater History ) is a research center of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and is part of the Center for Cultural Research . The institute's research is culturally and transdisciplinary and includes the focus on memory - remembrance - identity or narration - translation - staging . The institute employs around 20 people.
history
In 1998 the historian Moritz Csáky took over the management of the commission for theater history at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and implemented new cultural studies research approaches. In 1999 it was renamed the Commission for Cultural Studies and Theater History (KKT); since 2006 she has belonged to the Center for Cultural Research together with other commissions and institutes of the Academy . On January 1, 2007, the Commission for Literary Studies and the Joint Literary Studies Committee of the Austrian and Hungarian Academy of Sciences were integrated into the KKT. The commission was upgraded to an institute on January 1, 2009 with the appointment of the new director, the Romanist Michael Rössner . In recent years the institute has been expanded to include 20 scientists from different disciplines with around 25 research projects; around half of the projects are financed by third parties . The tasks of the institute include, on the one hand, the publication of the results of its own research projects and, on the other hand, the organization of several jours fixes (monthly), workshops , the ernst mach forum (every six months) and an international conference per year. The Institute for Cultural Studies and Theater History also publishes the periodical Sprachkunst Contributions to Literary Studies , and until 2009 also the cultural studies yearbook Moderne .
Current research interests
The term cultural studies , which has been widespread in the German-language academic discussion since the 1990s, is not understood to mean a new academic discipline, but rather a research interest in specific, interdisciplinary problems and issues. According to this conception, cultural studies are fundamentally interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, a fact that is also taken into account by the staffing of the Institute for Cultural Studies and Theater History , whose employees from different disciplines ( history , theater studies , political science , philosophy , comparative literature , German studies , Slavic Studies and Romance Studies ). The research projects of the Institute for Cultural Studies and Theater History are based on a concept of culture understood in terms of communication theory , which not only includes phenomena of so-called high culture (such as religion , science and art ), but also understands culture as a dynamic ensemble of signs , symbols and codes by means of which individuals and groups - verbally and non-verbally - communicate with each other, whereby this communication is always based on translation services - understood in a comprehensive, not only verbal sense. The research projects of the institute are shaped by the guidelines memory - recollection - identity and narration - translation - staging and are organized in four main research areas:
Theater in the Habsburg Monarchy
The projects summarized in this focus aim to investigate various forms of theatrical staging and representation. Theater and festivals are understood as socio-cultural communication spaces, theatrical artefacts are read as the primary sources of communicative signs, symbols and codes. Staging and representation work with updated memories of diverse experiences. The values and norms conveyed in this process support the construction of collective identities; in doing so, cultural memory can be constituted and changed performatively through different receptions in the national and transnational context.
Places of memory - memory spaces
Under places of memory refers to places in topographical and metaphorical sense, where a collective for a particular community reminder is given. The relationship between memory and identity forms the knowledge-guiding framework for the analysis of representations of memory in different areas of social practice, e.g. B. the markings of the culture of remembrance in public space or of narratives in which the own and the other are constituted. One thematic focus is the examination of the crimes of National Socialism in cultural memory , with which an ethical requirement of remembrance is often associated.
Cultures of knowledge
Knowledge as the basis of social action is always tied to the socio-cultural constitution of societies. If knowledge is generated to cope with the realities of life in society, it is inevitably linked with power . Cultures of Knowledge therefore focuses on research approaches that ask about the specific functions that knowledge systems fill in their respective sociocultural contexts: how social knowledge regulates the formation of individual and collective identities through the distribution of certain norms and values, as it is through synchronous and diachronic acts of Seeks to legitimize and establish the appropriation (and rejection) of other cultures. By analyzing the connection between knowledge and societal power constructions, mechanisms of complex cultural processes should be shown and a critical understanding of current regulative social action should be promoted.
Translation
In a transdisciplinary approach, translation is not only understood to mean translation from language to language, but also all those processes that enable communication in the context of cultural interaction through de- and recontextualization. Research is therefore also carried out into transmedial and transdisciplinary transfers and their environment, as well as cultural translations between different historical epochs and social subsystems. The focus is on the role of narratives, representations and stagings in negotiating identities and creating collective memory.
Literature (selection)
- Moritz Csáky : The memory of cities, cultural entanglements - Vienna and the urban milieus in Central Europe, Vienna: Böhlau 2010 ISBN 978-3-2057-8543-9
- Johannes Feichtinger: Science as a reflective project, Austrian History of Science 1848–1938. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag 2010 ISBN 978-3-8376-1523-4
- Moritz Csáky, Peter Stachel (eds.), Memory of Memory. Libraries, museums, archives. 2 vol., Vienna: Passagen Verlag 2000-2001 (Passagen Places of Memory) ISBN 3-85165-454-4 ISBN 3-85165-458-7
- Moritz Csáky, Elisabeth Großegger (ed.): Beyond borders. Transnational, translocal memory. Vienna: Praesens Verlag 2007 ISBN 978-3-7069-0475-9
- Johannes Feichtinger, Moritz Csáky (ed.): Europe - united by values. The European debate on values put to the test of history. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag 2007 ISBN 3-89942-785-8
- Johannes Feichtinger, Elisabeth Großegger, Gertraud Marinelli-König, Peter Stachel, Heidemarie Uhl (eds.): Schauplatz Kultur - Central Europe. Transdisciplinary approaches. Innsbruck-Vienna-Bozen: StudienVerlag 2006 (Memory - Memory - Identity 7) ISBN 978-3-7065-4216-6
- Rudolf Jaworski, Peter Stachel (ed.): The occupation of public space. Political places, monuments and street names in comparison. Berlin: Frank & Timme 2007 ISBN 978-3-86596-128-0
- Christoph Leitgeb : Barthes' myth in the context of concrete irony. Literary constructions of the own and the foreign. Munich: Fink 2008 ISBN 978-3-7705-4620-6
- Andrea Sommer-Mathis, Corinna Herr, Herbert Seifert , Reinhard Strohm (eds.): Italian Opera in Central Europe, 1614–1780. Vol. 2: Italianità: Image and Practice. Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag 2008 (Musical Life in Europe 1600-1900) ISBN 978-3-8305-1537-1
- Heidemarie Uhl , Monika Sommer (eds.): Mythos Alt-Wien. Tensions between urban identities. Innsbruck-Vienna-Bozen: StudienVerlag 2009 (Memory - Memory - Identity 9) ISBN 978-3-7065-4386-6
- In the series “Slavica in the Wiener Zeitschriften und Almanak des Vormärz” five volumes have been published since 1990, most recently: Gertraud Marinelli-König: Oberungarn (Slovakia) in the Wiener Zeitschriften und Almanak des Vormärz (1805-1848). Views of a pre-modern cultural landscape. Attempt to take a critical inventory of the contributions on the historical region and its cultural connections to Vienna. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2004 (SBph 711; publications of the commission for literary studies, no. 23) ISBN 3-7001-3258-1
- The “Edition Feuchtersleben” has published three volumes since 1987, most recently: Hermann Blume: Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Complete Works and Letters, Critical Edition. Volume III / 3: Educational and Political Writings and Speeches. Text. Apparatus. Arranged by Horst Pfeiffle. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2006. (SBph 751; Publications for Literary Studies No. 26.) ISBN 978-3-7001-3801-3
- The magazine “Sprachkunst. Contributions to literary studies ”has been published every six months since 1971.