420011 SE Culture and Style - Methods of Cultural Analysis (2023S)

Reflecting on the concept of culture is an ongoing task in cultural studies and philological studies. To strive for this through the concept of style means that style is understood, for example, with Angelika Linke, as a "significant form of actions as well as artefacts" and thus as a medium "in which the culture-specific mental models of perception, experience, interpretation and knowledge have their material resonance and find their symbolic expression". Style can thus make culture visible and tangible. The discussion of styles is thus not only an indication of different discussion styles of respective cultures, but above all an attempt to make the rather unpopular category productive also and precisely in its unifying potential, as was already attempted in the volume by Gumbrecht and Pfeiffer. In the process, it could be shown that the concept of style, especially in connection with the concept of culture, serves as a viable analytical tool for those artefacts that philological-cultural studies dissertations deal with.
In the seminar, different concepts of culture will be discussed and related to the dissertation projects. The variance can be determined by concrete historiographical attributions ("semi-oral culture of the manuscript age", "digital culture"), theoretical settings ("cultures of the performative") or current terms of struggle ("woke culture", "cancel culture").
A selection of canonical cultural studies texts (e.g. by Georg Simmel, Aby Warburg, Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu) as well as specific literature on the connection between culture and style will create a common basis in the first phase of the seminar in consultation with the participants. For a second phase of the seminar, which will focus on the ongoing doctoral theses, this should enable a focussing of discussions on methodological aspects.