420009 SE Interdisciplinary perspectives mobility studies (2018S)

Our PhD seminar responds to the insight that socio-cultural mobility cannot be theorized from a single disciplinary perspective, given its highly performative nature. We set out to discern the intertwinings of various interdisciplinary layers of analysis-forms and formations, representations, and agents and practices of (im)mobility-to enable a broad approach towards the study and complexities of socio-cultural (im)mobility in diverse contexts. One basic tenet of this course is that (im)mobilities have to be studied in diachronic depth, correcting a contemporary focus often geared too narrowly to the present. We aim at a comprehensive assessment of the potentialities of cultural mobility studies together, while different PhD projects will of course add diverging disciplinary perspectives to our debates.
Grounded in the interdisciplinary context of the Research Platform "Mobile Cultures and Societies" (www.mobileculture.univie.ac.at), we will discuss the theoretical basis of mobility studies for the analysis of literary and other cultural forms of communication and representation by means of parallel reading, oral presentations followed by plenary discussions, and the mutual cross-checking of work in progress via project presentations.