Current events

The workshop "Linguistic features of erotetic structures " for the project "The erotetic and the aesthetic" (FWF + DFG) took place from February 06-08, 2024.

As part of the workshop, lectures open to the public were held, to which the organizers cordially invited.

Location: SPRACHLABOR (Mozartgasse 8, 2nd floor)

Program:

Tuesday, 6.2.2024

9:30-11:00 Beata Gyuris: Interrogative and declarative form types realizing polar questions in Hungarian: remarks on the division of labour

11:00-12:30 Edgar Onea: An erotetic theory of narration

BREAK

14:00-14:30 Melanie Loitzl: Definite articles and proper names in discourse

15:00-16:30 Edgar Onea and Maya Cortez Espinoza: Theme-Setting Questions

Wednesday, 7.2.2024

9:30-10:00 Anita Riedl: surprised again and again

10:00-10:30 Simon Dampfhofer and Maya Cortez Espinoza: German eh operates on Biased Questions

10:30-12:00 Discussion of the short presentations

BREAK

14:00-17:00 Discussion of all presentations

Thursday, 8.2.2024

9:30-17:00 Discussion (not open to the public)

Venue: University of Graz, Institute for German Studies. Mozartgasse 8, 8010 Graz, LingLab language laboratory

Organizers: Edgar Onea

Program:

10:00-11:00 Eric Fuß: Verb second

11:00-11:30 Break/Discussion

11:30-12:30 Eric Fuß: The historical development of 'prefield' expletives

12:30-13:00 Discussion

Following the workshop (up to and including January 9, 2024), there was also the opportunity to discuss your own research with the speaker.

The workshop "Interdisciplinary and Experimental Approaches to Suspense and Related Phenomena" took place from 09.10.-10.10.2023 at the University of Graz.

Organization:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Victor Edgar Onea Gaspar
E-Mail: edgar.onea-gaspar(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2633

Dr. Vesela Simeonova
E-Mail: vesela.simeonova(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2637

Here you can find the program.

Following the 16th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (ICSH 16), a workshop on "Finiteness, Clause Types, and Cartography" was held on June 30, 2023.

Main organizers were Hans-Martin Gärtner, PhD, from the Hungarian Research Center for Linguistics (NYTK) and Mag^.a Maya Cortez Espionza from the University of Graz.

Here you can find the program.

The 16th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (ICSH16) took place on June 28 and 29, 2023 at the University of Graz.

The main organizers were Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Edgar Onea from the University of Graz and Prof. Balázs Surányi from the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics (HRCL) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Further information on the conference can be found here.

The workshop was jointly organized by the project M 3361-G "Deriving Discourse Configurationality of East Slavic" (Svitlana Antonyuk) and the Theoretical Linguistics Lab of the University of Graz.

Program

09:00-10:30: Daniel Hole (Stuttgart, invited guest)
Argument alternations and theta-induced binding

10:30-12:00: Boban Arsenijevic
Intensified pronouns and reflexivization: a reflexive cycle

12:00-14:00: Lunch Break

14:00-15:30: Svitlana Antonyuk
Internal arguments and what to do with them

15:30-17:00: Edgar Onea
Topicality and intentionality: A new analysis of embedded and matrix topics

Organization

Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Victor Edgar Onea Gaspar
E-Mail: edgar.onea-gaspar(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2633

Svitlana Antonyuk, MA PhD
E-Mail: svitlana.antonyuk(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2524

Correspondences between Critical Theory and (Post-)Structuralism using the example of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes

The interdisciplinary conference took place from 29.09.-01.10.2022 at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Graz.

The international conference focused on the works of cultural theorists Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Roland Barthes (1915-1980). While the literary scholar Benjamin published in the first half of the twentieth century in the context of the critical theory founded in Germany, the French semiologist Barthes was significantly involved in the establishment of structuralism and its reformulation in post-structuralism in the second half of the twentieth century. Despite the biographical, historical and theoretical distance and regardless of their different writing styles and ways of thinking, there are - according to the initial idea of the conference - many points of contact and overlaps in the research interests and fields of work of the two intellectuals.

Both authors helped to prepare the so-called material turn in the humanities, which reflects the inescapable connection between writing conditions, working methods and work structure. What the literary scholars have in common is the expansion of the genuinely linguistic or literary analysis to other areas such as fashion, architecture, visual arts, photography, cinema, advertising, opera, etc. as well as the consideration of the media-historical foundation of literature. Both Barthes and Benjamin rejected the idea of a supposed naturalness and universality of social values; instead, they focused on the fundamentally historical signature of culture, which is dependent on production conditions and ideologemes, and saw an analytical benefit in the radically present-oriented perspective of their own thinking, research and remembering.

As a working method for the conference, it was planned to juxtapose and constellate fields and topics on which Benjamin and Barthes worked - such as photography, novel and drama theory, autobiography, the authors Brecht, Goethe, Kafka and Proust. In addition, individual central texts or groups of works by one of the two thinkers - for example on memory, myth, the connection between literature and media, the relationship between structure and history - will be subjected to (re)readings close to the text and illuminated in the discussion against the theoretical framework of the other theorist. One aim was to adopt a productive change of perspective as an alternative to the rather closed and linear historiography of schools of thought and theory and to expand the figure of direct influence, which lives on in the historiography of literature and theory in the history of ideas, through the concept of "circulation" in the sense of "theoretical comparative studies".

The international conference at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Graz took place in cooperation with members of the International Walter Benjamin Society (IWBS), the Leibnitz Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin (ZfL) and the Institute for German Literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Contact
Univ.-Prof^.in Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Anne-Kathrin Reulecke
E-mail: anne.reulecke(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-2449

7th Annual Conference of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (KWG)

In the face of expanding bio- and information technologies, the question of what it means to be human is being raised anew. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, AI research and, last but not least, the human-machine interactions that have become commonplace through the digitalization of everyday life all aim to "improve humans" by exceeding their limited biological capabilities. Popular representatives of so-called transhumanism, which aims to modify and optimize the unspecialized biological "deficient being" that is the human being, predict a not-too-distant future in which artificial superintelligences will determine and "facilitate" everyday human life and free people from reifying production and reproduction processes, in which the functions of the human body will be gradually optimized and technologies such as "mind-uploading" will ultimately enable "immortality".

For Critical Posthumanism, on the other hand, which primarily discusses the ethical and philosophical consequences of seemingly unstoppable technological progress, the dissolution of the boundaries between mind and matter, human and nature, human and thing also "erases the spatial, ontological and epistemological distinction that separates human beings" (Karen Barad). The insight that we are no longer the "measure of all things" could also promote a reflective and sustainable approach to our environment and so-called resources.

The conference will shed light on this wide-ranging topic from various angles, but primarily from a cultural studies perspective.

Concept and organization
Assoz. Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Hildegard Kernmayer
E-mail: hildegard.kernmayer(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-8168

Marietta Schmutz, MA
E-mail: marietta.schmutz(at)uni-graz.at

The international symposium took place from 10.12.-12.12.2020 at the University of Graz.

Graz cooperation partner: Assoz. Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Hildegard Kernmayer
Graz Junior Fellow: Marietta Schmutz, MA

Incoming Senior Fellow: Assoz. Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in Anna Babka (Institute of German Studies, University of Vienna)
Incoming Junior Fellows: Mag^.a Jasmin Doubek (University of Vienna), Julia Lingl, MA (University of Vienna)

What is "the human being"? What do the terms "human" or "being human" mean in the age of rapid bio- and communication-technological, scientific, cultural and social developments that are increasingly influencing our everyday lives? Is the category of the "human" still tenable in view of the blurring of traditional oppositions, such as human/animal, organism/machine, nature/culture? What role do these developments play for feminist theory formation in the 21st century, not least with regard to the ethical, philosophical, cultural and artistic questions that go hand in hand with them?

In addition to questioning humanistic-epistemological categories that continue to shape Western societies and their knowledge production to this day, critical posthumanism questions modern models of knowledge and progress such as human enhancement (mental, genetic/prenatal interventions) or visions of an "artificial superintelligence". The development and application of new technical strategies is often based purely on the euphoria of progress, which ignores the political and social consequences. Conversely, technology and its applications make it possible to imagine breaking out of conventional gendered dichotomies.

Points of overlap between modern humanism and current transhumanist currents include both a pronounced anthropocentrism (man as the "measure of all things") and a tendency towards hostility towards the body. For representatives of critical posthumanism, this conceals patriarchal strategies of subjugation, especially as chaotic matter or corporeality is considered "female" in traditional binary discourse. Critical posthumanism shares this power-critical perspective on knowledge with the theoretical approaches of gender and queer studies, as well as postcolonial studies, which emerged at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The latter note the interconnectedness and mutual influence of diverse structures of difference and inequality or privilege with the aim of developing emancipatory strategies.

In posthumanism, on the other hand, the active agency of (human and non-human) matter is placed alongside the power of discourse. Donna Haraway, for example, outlines the idea of a reinvention of nature in her groundbreaking text "A Manifesto for Cyborgs": in view of new communication and biotechnologies, the entire social network, such as the household, workplace, market, public sphere and the body, could be dissolved in an almost unlimited, multifaceted way. The comprehensive merging of the world into coding practices makes a monstrous world without gender conceivable.

The symposium should pose the question of how "gender" is (re)negotiated under "posthumanist" conditions.

The international and interdisciplinary conference "Proximity and Distance. Elements of an Anthropology of the Letter" took place from 03.10.-05.10.2018.
People who read letters that are not intended for them often have the experience of being close to a stranger in their imagination. Letter research considers this to be naïve; it sees it as the power of a staging strategy that justifies the fictional character of the letter and should generally be treated with caution.
The Graz conference develops a different perspective: it considers the letter as a medium of "symbolic distance regulation" (Norbert Bischof). This refers to those culturally universal practices that modulate the spatial distance between people through a broad spectrum of symbolic distance equivalents. Such cultural practices develop from the elementary need to maintain an optimal distance to conspecifics - to be close to those who are close to you; to avoid those who you do not trust.
You can find more information in the exposé.


Contact
Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Robert Verllusig
E-Mail: robert.vellusig(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-8171

Apl. Prof. Dr. Jochen Strobel
E-Mail: jochen.strobel(at)uni-marburg.de
Tel.: +49 6421 28-24651

Here you can find the program.

The Graduate Student Symposium took place from 14.06.-16.06.2018.

Concept and organization
Assoz. Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Hildegard Kernmayer
E-Mail: hildegard.kernmayer(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-8168

Georg Reiter, BA

Caterina Richter, Bakk. phil. MA

Marietta Schmutz, MA

The interdisciplinary conference explored the images and narratives used in art and media today to reflect on the afterlife. It opened on 18 May with a reading by Büchner Prize winner Sibylle Lewitscharoff from her Dante novel "Das Pfinstwunder" (Suhrkamp 2016) at the Literaturhaus Graz. In a discussion moderated by Anne-Kathrin Reulecke, the audience also had the opportunity to ask the author about her reading of Dante's "Divine Comedy".

The conference is part of the research focus "Limits of the Human".

You can find the program here.

Concept, organization and management
Univ.-Prof^.in Dr^.in phil. Anne-Kathrin Reulecke
E-Mail: anne.reulecke(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2449

Johanna Zeisberg, MA
E-Mail: johanna.zeisberg(at)uni-graz.at

An anthology of the conference was published in 2021.

Socially relevant and much-discussed repositioning of the limits of human life, as made possible by scientific advances in transplantation, reproductive and ageing medicine, are conspicuously frequent themes in contemporary art and literary production. The workshop "The Limits of the Human. Biomedical Borderline Phenomena in Contemporary Literature and Culture" offered international doctoral students and postdocs as well as professors from various universities the opportunity to present and discuss their current projects on the topic.

Concept, organization and management
Johanna Zeisberg, MA
E-Mail: johanna.zeisberg(at)uni-graz.at

Mag^.a phil. Sabine Schönfellner, MA