410006 SE Interdisciplinary Seminar for doctoral candidates: Media and Mediality in Historical Research (2018W)

The seminar will discuss the role of media in historical research from two different perspectives, both highly relevant for researchers in all fields of the humanities. The first approach will critically focus on the use of media representations of historical processes, figures, and events. For this approach we have chosen a European narrative film of the postwar period, i.e. the visualization of the Habsburg Empire after 1848 by the Viennese film director Ernst Marischka and the creation of a postwar persona of Empress Elisabeth (played by Romy Schneider), who came to replace all other visualizations of the historical figure. The so called Sissi-Trilogy informed (perhaps still informs?) popular but also public history representations of 19th century Austrian history to a large extent. Its manifold international reception through all kinds of spectator groups until this day bears testimony to the significance of non-academic visions of the past with which the academy needs to interact, if the humanities wish to remain a substantial dialog partner in public discourse. The screening of the film will take place in one of the fine, small movie theaters, which will be made available to the seminar for the entire day, in order also to recreate the filmic experience.
The second focus will be on the history of media, its research methods and conceptual challenges. It will be presented by Brendan Dooley, an eminent historian of early modern media from the university of Cork. He will use two long morning sessions to discuss the premodern dimension of communicating information, knowledge, and values to a broad audience. The numerous approaches to this history share an interest in understanding the impact such structures have had on societies, the particular forms they have taken, and the dynamics of historical change. Each of these areas is the subject of a significant body of theoretical and empirical work, with many intersections and overlaps, which will be examined taking examples from the various media, their spatial contexts, and development over time.
The first session in the history of media-part will look at The Birth of News, considering definitions of concepts such as ‘event,’ ‘news,’ ‘medium’ in regard to premodern news; history of news from letters to newsletters, newsletters to newspapers, newspapers to magazines; the development of a mixed media landscape; the role of controls by church and state; the application of the concept of propaganda to the early press; problems of narrative and verification; postal routes and circulation; regional trajectories.
The second session will look at the The Power of Reading and Writing, considering literacy and instruction; the arrival of the book; places of reading; places of writing; acquiring and collecting; notes and note-taking; readers becoming authors; reading and gender; measures and methods. The third session will continue with a reflection on research methods, considering the types of documents and repositories; prizes and perils of content analysis; topic modeling; literary criticism; network analysis; narrative analysis; historical criticism; examples and experiments with each.
The fourth and final session will discuss Media Impact and history: problems and approaches, focusing on continuities and discontinuities; revolution vs evolution; the structure of media revolutions; the emergence of contemporaneity; history of communication as method; major paradigms: Henri-Jean Martin, Marshall McLuhan, Jürgen Habermas, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Benedict Anderson, Andrew Pettegree, Wolfgang Behringer, Jürgen Wilke, Robert Darnton
The last part of the seminar is reserved for the presentations of individual research projects of participating doctoral students. They are invited to discuss their research from the perspective of the readings and discussions of the seminar.