The Center for Cultural Studies sees itself as a place for basic research in cultural studies and reflection on the theory of science. The projects pursued at the Center are characterized by their interdisciplinary and comparative approach to questions of cultural forms and cultural techniques. An interest in cultural studies theory and methodology guides the research. The Center understands cultural studies as process-oriented cultural studies, with a focus on theory formation, concept transfer and practices. Culture is understood as a relational, processual concept.
The following research areas form the basis for the projects developed at the Center:
Core topics of our research
The following core topics currently form the basis for the projects of structured and practical interdisciplinarity carried out at the Center for Cultural Studies in the context of emotional cultures, media cultures and scientific cultures:
Transdisciplinary Narratology
Genre & Culture
Theater as performance
Image as text / text as image
AI & authorship
Culture in the natural sciences
Questions in the interaction process between language-text-action create the connecting framework for these core areas of our research. The following selected research projects provide an insight into the work at the Center for Cultural Studies.
Selected projects
Angela Gencarelli
- Opening lecture at the conference Doing Genre. Practical perspectives on genres and genre dynamics. Graz, 06.10.2022.
- Literary zoo of modernity. Franz Blei's satirical re-foundation of the bestiary genre. Lecture on the occasion of the conference Franz Blei. Work - Network - Ideas, Brussels, 02.06.2022.
- On the 'End of Nature'. The extinction of species in contemporary literature and culture. Lecture series "Kulturthema: Tiere", Graz. 6.12.2021.
- Bestiaries of the modern age. Project presentation at the research colloquium of the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin (online), 15.02.2021.
Karoline Gritzner
- "Thinking Through Theater: Materiality, Expression, the Sublime. On Castellucci's La Vita Nuova (2018)", for: Online Workshop "Thinking Through Art. Aesthetic Perspectives on Contemporary Practices", 07.05.2021.
- Thinking through theater: materiality, expression, the sublime, for: Thinking through Art: aesthetic perspectives on contemporary practices (Organization: Karoline Gritzner), Graz, 06.11.2020. (Postponed to 07.05.2021)
- Recovering the claims of the sublime through theater's material mode of thinking, for: Research residency at the Centre for Performance Philosophy, University of Surrey (UK), 30.01.2020.
- The Movement of the Other in the Writing Scenes of Hélène Cixous, for: Movement Scenarios 1800/2000. Theories and Writing Practices of Physical and Emotional Movement (Organization: Rita Rieger), Graz, 23.01.2020.
- Subjective dispossession in the theater of the immanent sublime, for: TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) Annual Conference, University of Exeter, 05.09.2019.
- Permanent crisis in Howard Barker's recent drama, for: Theatre of Crisis: Aesthetic Responses to a Cross-Sectional Condition, CDE (The German Society for Contemporary Drama in English), Bildungshaus Mariatrost, Graz, 21.06.2019.
Rita Rieger
- Time-Spaces of Revenge in Noverre's tragic ballet The Avenged Agamemnon, for: 11th Public Interdisciplinary Theater Workshop Graz: Stagings of Revenge and Spaces of Nonviolence in Ancient and Modern Theater, University of Graz, 22-23.06.2023.
- L'œuvre comme application et son potentiel de transformation chez Paul Valéry : des Cahiers à Poésie et pensée abstraite, for : Poétique de l'incomplétude, Plurielles, University of Bordeaux Montaigne, 06-07.04.2023.
- Medea's revenge. Emotional and representational reflections on forms of staging hatred in Corneille's tragedy and Noverre's tragic ballet, for: Enmity - contempt: forms of staging hatred in drama (1600-1800), Institute for General and Comparative Literature, Johann Wolfang Goethe University Frankfurt, March 16-17, 2023.
- Genre-constitutive functions of writing in dance theories of the 18th century. Lecture for: Doing Genre. Praxeological Perspectives on Genres & Genre Dynamics, 6-7.10.2022, University of Graz, 06.10.2022.
- Violence in dance. Jean-Georges Noverre's dance-aesthetic reflections in Lettres sur la Danse (1760 and 1803/1804) on Médée. Lecture for: 10th Public Interdisciplinary Theatre Workshop Graz: Spaces of Action and Visualization of Violence and Death in Ancient and Modern Theatre, 30.06.-1.07.2022, University of Graz, 01.07.2022.