Past Events

Guest lecture: “Plasticity at the Limits of Deconstruction” by Stephen Dougherty
This talk I will explore three decisive moments of engagement between Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida, moments that reveal a great deal about the trajectory of Malabou’s thought, and about the substance of plasticity as a philosophical concept. OPEN TO ANYONE INTERESTED.
The contemporary philosopher of plasticity Catherine Malabou has long positioned herself in a complex relationship with her former mentor Jacques Derrida. Malabou has been deeply influenced by Derrida, yet she has also sought to move beyond deconstruction’s limits. For my presentation I will explore three decisive moments of engagement between Malabou and Derrida, moments that reveal a great deal about the trajectory of Malabou’s thought, and about the substance of plasticity as a philosophical concept. Malabou’s books up for discussion include The New Wounded, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, and Stop Thief! Anarchism and Philosophy.
Stephen Dougherty is Professor of American Literature at Agder University in Kristiansand, Norway. He has published articles and essays on diverse topics, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. and British literature, psychoanalytic theory, cognitive science, and science fiction. His work has appeared in Configurations, Cultural Critique, Diacritics, Mosaic, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Science Fiction Studies and elsewhere. Dougherty is a co-editor at Science Fiction Studies.
Held: 30.04.2025 - 13.15–14.30 at Sydneshaugen skole grupperom M

Guest lecture: Reading the Visual: A Framework for Exploring Visual Images and Multimodal Phenomena
This open guest lecture is organized as a collaboration between the research groups Aesthetic and Cultural Studies and POTENT (Post-Truth English Teaching). All interested are welcome, and especially MA students.
by Frank Serafini
https://search.asu.edu/profile/74421 (external link)
Contemporary theories of multimodality have forced literacy researchers and educators to recognize that ideas, identities, and ideological formations are represented and communicated across a variety of modes or semiotic systems. It is of vital importance that literacy researchers continue to problematize the ways in which they conceptualize multimodality and social semiotic theories to focus on the social construction of meaning potentials, the ideologies inherent in meaning making processes, and the appropriate use of various analytical frameworks in literacy research. In addition, literacy educators need to further develop their analytic skills and vocabularies for discussing and comprehending visual images and elements of multimodal texts in order to demonstrate how to approach, navigate, and comprehend visual and multimodal texts. This guest lecture will focus on WHY we should focus on multimodal literacies, WHAT is important to consider about multimodal literacies, and HOW literacy educators can begin to support learners in their transactions with multimodal texts.
Held: 19.09.2024 - 12.15–14.00 at SH Aud Q

Reading seminar: Ranjan Ghosh, “ The Plastic Turn”
In this session, we are reading & discussing Ranjan Ghosh, “ The Plastic Turn”.
Held: 23.10.2024 - 14.00–16.00 at HF 371

Conversation with Jakob Lothe: “Does Literature Matter?"
Open to all, but we would particularly like to welcome students! 
Is there still a point in reading? What role(s) can literature play in our globalized and screenified contemporary lives? Why do we still teach literature? University of Oslo Professor Jakob Lothe will be addressing these and other questions related to literature and reading. The discussion will be linked to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.
Jakob Lothe is professor of English literature. He was associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Bergen 1987–1992 and professor of English literature at the University of Oslo 1993–2020. Lothe studied English, German and comparative literature at the University of Bergen and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been an invited visiting scholar at St. John’s College, University of Oxford (1996–1997), Harvard University (2005), University of Cape Town (2010), and Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford (2017–2018).
Held: 21.11.2024 - 16.00–18.00 at Ad Fontes

Reading seminar: Ranjan Ghosh, "Aesthetic Imaginary: Rethinking the 'Comparative'"
In this session, we are reading & discussing Ranjan Ghosh's "Aesthetic Imaginary: Rethinking the “Comparative”.
25.09.2024 - 14.00–16.00 at HF 217

Reading seminar: Tabish Khair, from Literature Against Fundamentalism
In this session, we are reading & discussing Tabish Khair, from Literature Against Fundamentalism. We are reading the introduction and the conclusion to the book.
We are reading the introduction and the conclusion to the book.
Held: 06.11.2024 - 14.00–16.00 at HF 371

Symposium: "Precarity, Polarization, Populism"
The one-year long project “After Precarity, Polarization, and Populism: Figurations for the 21st Century” is now nearing its conclusion, and in that connection Aesthetics and Cultural Studies is organizing a symposium related to ideas that have surfaced during the past seminar discussions. Please find the program below. 
Thursday 5th December
09:00 – 10:15
Welcome (research group) 
KEYNOTE LECTURE: "Democracy and Literature"
Tabish Khair (Aarhus University) 
10:30 – 11:15
"Critical Aesthetic Thinking in Action: Modes of Reading and Writing"
Timothy Saunders (Volda University College)
11:15 – 12:00
"The Transglossic: Artistic Responsibility and Deep Simultaneity in Ali Smith's
Seasonal Quartet"
Kristian Shaw (University of Lincoln)
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:45
"Precarity, Suicide and Survival in Current Fiction"
Ruben Moi (Arctic University of Norway Tromsø)
14:00 – 14:45 
"Speculative futures at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design"
Lisbeth Funck and Alma Oftedal 
16:00 - 18:00
Film: Life, Assembled, with introduction and discussion after the movie
19:00 Dinner – Café Opera  
Friday 6th December
10:00 – 11:00
"The Value Trilogy: Performances as a Laboratory in Imagining Alternative Social Paradigm"
Jingyi Wang (Bergen), ZOOM
11:15 – 12:00
"Figuring Out the Skeletal System: Female Freedom in Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography Trilogy"
Janne Stigen Drangsholt (University of Stavanger)
12:00 – 12:45 Lunch
12:45 – 13:45
"The Social Life of Close Reading"
Luseadra McKerracher/Bridget Vincent (Århus University) 
14:00 – 14:45
"Progressive Populism on the Road: An Introductory Polemic"
Holger Pötzsch (Arctic University of Norway Tromsø)
15:00– 15:45 
"The Grid, the Grain, & the Green Screen"
Henrik Gustaffson (Arctic University of Norway Tromsø)
18:00 Reception, Pausesalongen on the 7th floor og Hotel Terminus 
Saturday 7th December
10:00 – 11:00
Work-in-Progress panel     
11:00 – 12:00 
Summing up: project and plans
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch and departures 
Held: 05.12.2024 - 10.00–07.12.2024 - 15.00 at Hotel Terminus

Workshop in connection with a special issue: Transnational Literature in America: Where Do We Stand Twenty Years After Fishkin’s Transnational Turn?
"Transnational Literature in America: Where Do We Stand Twenty Years After Fishkin’s Transnational Turn?"
Special issue of American Studies in Scandinavia
Editor: Tijana Przulj
Call for papers: https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/assc/article/view/7181/7471 (external link) (pp. 84-85)
Held: 19.08.2024 - 08.30–16.00 at Hotel Terminus

Seminar: [After Precarity, Polarization, and Populism] Second research seminar
Held: 23.05.2024 - 00.01–24.05.2024 - 23.59 in Bergen

Seminar: [After Precarity, Polarization, and Populism] First research seminar (Bergen)
Held: 14.03.2024 - 00.01–15.03.2024 - 23.59 at Hotel terminus

Seminar: [After Precarity, Polarization, and Populism] Start-up seminar with local researchers
This first gathering will explore the key concepts in After Precarity, Polarization, and Populism: Figurations for the 21st Century cover, in isolation and/or in dialogue with the temporal qualifier after and/or the modality signaled by figurations. All along we should try to keep in mind the dialogue with the humanities and its imaginaries.
This first gathering will explore the key concepts in After Precarity, Polarization, and Populism: Figurations for the 21st Century cover, in isolation and/or in dialogue with the temporal qualifier after and/or the modality signaled by figurations. All along we should try to keep in mind the dialogue with the humanities and its imaginaries. Tentatively we furthermore suggest that these early explorations be related to one or more of the following overarching areas:

• Theoretical-philosophical
• Empirical analyses (visual, textual, other)
• Pedagogy (and cultural philology)

We invite short addresses (5-7 minutes) on the relevance and potential we see the concepts having from our perspective of our various areas of inquiry and empirical backgrounds. While one concept is likely to be more compelling than others, we should try to consider it in relation to aspect(s) of the project description above.

14:15 – 14:30: Brief introduction and refreshments
14:30 – 16:00: Presentations
16:15 – 17:00: Summary and final comments

Held: 10.01.2024 - 14.15–17.00 at HF 400

Seminar: Work in Progress - Everyday (Micro)Utopias
First in a series of five WiP seminars on the topic of Everyday (Micro)Utopias. We are reading and discussing: Sargent, Lyman Tower. "Utopia Matters! The Importance of Utopianism and Utopian Scholarship." Utopian Studies 32, no. 3 (2021): 453-77
In a period where the triadic web of precarity, populism and polarization form the cultural backdrop, the research group has recently reflected on where these currents emerge and manifest, showing how barely detectable shifts in political and social anticipations and demands impact on the everyday. This is what we have called microdystopias, or everyday dystopias. In the continuation of this work, we now want to focus on the interplay between the everyday dystopic and the micro-utopic in relation to precarity, populism and polarization. The project will, among other things, identify the complex aesthetic and ideological relation between the microdystopic and the microutopic.
We are reading and discussing: Sargent, Lyman Tower. "Utopia Matters! The Importance of Utopianism and Utopian Scholarship." Utopian Studies 32, no. 3 (2021): 453-77. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/839563 (external link)
Held: 11.10.2023 - 12.15–14.00 at HF 216

Guest lecture: “Prefiguring the Concept: Imagining Conceptual Ontologies in Academic Practice” by Prof. Davina Cooper
Abstract: Concepts are often treated as universalising abstractions or ordering devices, but they can also form important contributors to reimagining and reinventing social institutions. This talk builds on work I’ve been doing on prefigurative and utopian conceptual methods over the past 12 years. My focus is conceptual prefiguration – where sought-after conceptual meanings, in relation to institutions such as the state, money, law, and gender, are taken up and put into action as if they were already valid.  The talk explores reasons for pursuing conceptual prefiguration, addressing how it opens up possibilities beyond reform; and explores methods for its practice. As an academic practice, conceptual prefiguration can engage a range of methods; however, typically, these focus on specific concepts rather than the concept of the concept. In this talk, I centre the latter to consider what reimagining the form of the concept can do. What are concepts like; how are they imagined; how are they used? These and other questions were posed to 20 academics in interviews on their conceptual practice. This talk explores the conceptual ontologies that emerged and explains how these ontologies augment concepts’ value for progressive transformative projects.
Davina Cooper is a Research Professor in Law and Political Theory at King's College London. Her work addresses the prompts, stimuli, conflicts, methods, and practices involved in transformative progressive politics. Prefigurative concepts, governing out of order, and disputes over gender, sexuality, and religion anchor much of her work. Her most recent books are Feeling like a State: Desire, Denial, and the Recasting of Authority and Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (both published by Duke UP). She recently completed a 4-year funded project on prefigurative law reform methods and the dismantling of legal sex status and is now working on a fellowship book project on conceptual activism.
Held: 05.09.2023 - 10.15–12.00 at SH Aud E

Open Seminar by Aesthetic Imaginaries
We would like to welcome you to an open seminar by our research group Aesthetic Imaginaries! Our two newest members, Assoc. Prof. Astrid Haas and PhD candidate Karen Nicole Werner will present their work to colleagues and students. All interested are welcome to attend! There will be refreshments (coffee, tea, and pastry) available.

Assoc. Prof. Astrid Haas: “Undocumented Border-Crossing and Migrant Activism in Mexican American Graphic Fiction”
The research studies the entangled representations of undocumented Mexican-US border-crossing and migrant activism in the USA in selected works of recent Mexican and Mexican American graphic fiction. It draws on the concept of artivism to discuss artistic political interventions into current debates and contested practices in Duncan Tonatiuh’s graphic novel for children, Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight (2018), and Hector Rodriguez’s superhero comic series El Peso Hero (2015-). The talk examines how Tonatiuh’s and Rodriguez’s works represent two key elements in the socio-spatial social journeys of undocumented migrants to the United States: their journeys across the US-Mexican border and their fights against migrant labor exploitation in the United States. It argues that, and shows how, these narratives employ distinct elements of Mexican and US American visual cultures to educate readers about unauthorized migration, critique racist border regimes and migrant exploitation, as well as empower undocumented migrants and validate their experiences.

PhD candidate Karen Nicole Werner: “Re-imagining the Radio Station"
The radio station is a scenographic setting that shapes terms of engagement between senders and receivers while interfacing with communication infrastructures and technologies. My artistic research project, re-radio, focuses on the radio station as an artistic form within the field of transmission art and borrows from relational aesthetics and relational antagonism. Through the creation of three Bergen- based radio stations, SkottegatenFM, Radio Multe 93.8FM and an unnamed and unruly jamming/shadow station, re-radio re-imagines and enacts ways of being, communicating and creating together. Some insights so far in re-radio include the way a radio station can invite speaking-as- thinking-as-writing on air; voice as a relational indicator and instrument for intervention and the productive possibilities of interference and obscured signals.

Held: 09.05.2023 - 13.30–15.00 at HF building, Seminar room 216

Research presentation: "Contemporary Literary Negotiations: Authenticity and the Aesthetic Spaces of the Transnational"
PhD candidate Tijana Przulj presents her PhD project titled "Contemporary Literary Negotiations: Authenticity and the Aesthetic Spaces of the Transnational".
Held: 10.11.2022 - 14.00–15.00 at SH Seminarrom M

Research presentation: "Love Within the Hustle: A-Temporal Aesthetics and Yearning as Micro-Utopian Promise in Miranda July’s Kajillionaire"
PhD candidate Henriette Rørdal presents the paper "Love Within the Hustle: A-Temporal Aesthetics and Yearning as Micro-Utopian Promise in Miranda July’s Kajillionaire," connected to her PhD project "How Capitalism Impacts Working-Class Time: Temporal Depictions in American Culture".
Held: 27.10.2022 - 14.00–15.00 at HF 371

Reading seminar: Deleuze's "Foldings, or the Inside of Thought (Subjectivation)"
Held: 13.02.2020 - 15.00–17.00 at 216 (HF)

Reading seminar: on "Thinking Literature Across Continents"
This spring we meet for chapter readings taken from Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature Across Continents (external link) (Duke, 2016). The second seminar focuses on Hillis Miller's chapter "Liteature Matters Today" from part One. 
Held: 18 May 2018 in seminar room 216 (HF) at 14.15.