124200 SE PhD Seminar Literary & Culture and Media Studies (2024S)

Within gender and queer studies politics of in_visibility are an ongoing topic of engagement and discussion and hopefully compatible with many of the PhD projects that are currently being written at our faculty. We have decided to use the seminar to practice some skills that PhD candidates need in their career phase by pretending this seminar is a conference with the topic "Queer/Feminist Theories and Politics of In_Visibility". In a normal conference, you would have to apply by answering a call for papers (CfP: see below) by sending in an abstract, so this is the first genre we are going to practice. We would like to ask you, if you wish to participate in this seminar, to send us an abstract of 250-300 words that describes the presentation you propose. In our case, please send an abstract that describes the presentation you are going to give within our seminar. It should be i) based on your dissertation project, ii) have a clear connection to the topic of our 'conference'/course and ii) get as close to 15 min as possible. In this abstract, you need to explain: your object/s of analysis, your research question, your theory approach/method/core concept/key thinkers on whom you are proposing to draw, and your thesis statement. The talk itself, accompanied by a ppt presentation, will be the second task, and you will receive feedback for it on different levels: as a talk, but also in relation to your dissertation topic. Thirdly, each participant must act as a 'respondent' to one of the presentations. We will match presenters and respondents at the beginning of the course, and you will receive feedback on your responses as well. The last task is to produce a first draft for an article that is based on your presentation, i.e. we expect you to rewrite the piece from a form that works well in an oral genre into a form that fulfils the criteria of a piece of academic writing. We will discuss in class how, in real life, you would proceed to finding a suitable publication opportunity for your article. You will also receive feedback for the 'first draft'.

Call for Papers: "Queer/Feminist Theories and Politics of In_Visibility"
What it means to examine literature and audiovisual media as a form of making intersectional figurations of difference visible or invisible will be at the centre of this course/conference. How can 'politics of in_visibility' be identified in films, television, literature or social media? What aesthetics and discursive rules are used to 'design' differences of gender, sexuality, class, skin colour and other social positionings? And to what extent is their imaginary, aesthetic and political dimension based on these politics? Theoretical considerations and exemplary analyses go hand in hand in the course. Please send your abstract (250-300 words) to the course/conference organisers (andrea.seier@univie.ac.at and sylvia.mieszkowski@univie.ac.at) once you have been accepted into the course by central administration.