Section III: Critical Practices
PANEL: New Practices of Literary Reception | 5 July 2024 10:15–11:45
Panel "New Practices of Literary Reception"
Image Credit: Tobias Bohm 2024 for EXC 2020
In the first panel on Friday, Cluster member Barbara Bausch gathered three scholars who presented their current research with a special focus on reception practices.
Lianna Mark, a former fellow of the Cluster now working at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, compared autofictional narratives about social mobility and their theater adaptions in London and Berlin. Sophia Brown, also formerly a Cluster fellow and currently a fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, presented her work on the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh and his reception in different media environments, emphasising how the political dimension of Shehadeh's work is often pushed into the background in Western reception environments. Finally, Christian Junge from Marburg University talked about reception practices in social media in the field of Arabic Literature, focusing especially on the role of affect as aesthetic judgement.
ROUNDTABLE: Praktiken der Kritik – Ein Werkstattgespräch | 5 July 2024 12:00–13:30 (Practice of Critics – A Talk From the Laboratory)
Roundtable "Praktiken der Kritik – Ein Werkstattgespräch"
Image Credit: Tobias Bohm 2024 for EXC 2020
with Elke Buhr, Gregor Dotzauer, Georg Kasch, Ekkehard Knörer and Lea Schneider
In this roundtable talk, the only event of the conference in German language, five distinguished critics talked about the current state of criticism and cultural journalism in Germany. The topics addressed ranged from changes in the job market to the challenges raised by new practices of online criticism to the persistent homogeneity of the German feuilleton. With participants bringing experiences from writing about a wide variety of art forms – literature, film, theater, poetry, and art –, the discussion also tapped into the commonalities and differences between these art forms and their reception. The discussion was moderated by writer and poet Nadja Küchenmeister.
ROUNDTABLE: Whose Values, Which Politics? Defaults and Exclusions in the Public Reception of Literature | 5 July 2024 14:30–16:00
Roundtable "Defaults and Exclusions in the Public Reception of Literature"
Image Credit: Tobias Bohm 2024 for EXC 2020
With Maryam Aras, Dominique Haensell, Girish Shambu and Ana Teixeira Pinto
Chair: Till Kadritzke
The final event of the Critical Practices section addressed the politics of value-making and the exclusions that allegedly universal notions of value or aesthetics bring with them. The discussion gathered a diverse range of perspectives on the hidden defaults of specific reception contexts like global cinephilia or German literary criticism but also took a step back to reflect on broader political contexts such as the colonial history of writing about aesthetics. The four participants exchanged ideas and collected examples from their different backgrounds, also discussing which emerging reception practices might confront the defaults and exclusions of established forms of criticism.