This year’s meetings for the Cross-Media Research Seminar will alternate sessions, focusing on the twin terms in our title, Writing Theory/Writing Media. Every other session, the Cross Media Research Seminar meetings will discuss the challenges that different media forms bring to bear on the question of (academic) writing and explore the different ways in which media theory, philosophy, and artists have approached the question of how to write about media. From handwriting to typewriter to AI as tools of writing; from film to television to virtual realities as objects of writing: How to use media to write? How does the linearity of writing relate to media seriality and simultaneity? How does writing intersect with considerations of genre, medium, gesture, affect, form, and history? How do different media forms change the styles, modes, and epistemologies of scholarly, critical, and experimental writing?

In alternating sessions, ASCA research fellow Prof. Eugenie Brinkema will explore four controversies in the writing of theory (whether media, literary, or cultural): Interpretation (what it is and why one might be against it); Description (its promise and limitations); Auto-theory (the turn to the ‘I’); and Collaboration (the perils and pitfalls of collective writing).

The overall 7 meetings are spread across fall 2023 and spring 2024. To earn credits (6EC) students need to join at least four of the meetings. Readings include works by: Barthes, Bellour, Berlant, Dyer, Edelman, Esme, Felski, Flusser, Hayot, Hartman, Moten, Nelson, Rankine, Sedgwick, Sontag, and others.

Dates for spring 2024:

All of these will be held in BG1 0.16 from 15 - 18h:

• February 23, 2024
• April 5, 2024
• May 17, 2024
• June 7,2024 

To sign up and receive readings please email Abe Geil:  a.m.geil@uva.nl