KWI NEWS 4/2024

From cheap flights to binge watching, guilty pleasures are ubiquitous. The associated gestures of distinction, aesthetic judgements, and political desires have effects beyond the private realm: guilty pleasures, a complex mixture of enjoyment, shame, and regret, constitute a nebulous arena of societal and cultural dispute. Through a variety of events including our CineScience series, the KWI annual theme for 2024/25 aims to do more than investigate the negative reputation of such pleasures by probing their various forms, functions, and historical contexts.

+ Alice Morin is a postdoctoral researcher and associate member of the Center of Research on the English-Speaking World at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and the Visual Studies Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on fashion and “lifestyle” periodicals, the production of editorial photographs, and US-European print cultures. At KWI, she will work on her first monograph, proposing a cultural history of the “media empire” Condé Nast throughout the 20th century.

+ Ádám Havas is a sociologist whose interests lie at the intersection of cultural sociology, postcolonial studies, and popular music studies. He most recently held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the University of Barcelona, Department of Sociology, with a project comparing improvised music scenes in Spain, the UK, and Hungary. At KWI, Ádám will develop a grant proposal focussing on a comparative empirical study about music and migration in Afro-Latin Iberia and the Balkans. 

+ Kristina Lepold is a social and political philosopher whose research focusses on the politics of recognition and its ambivalences, questions of race and racism, and the contested relationship between identity and knowledge. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin. At KWI, she will work on a project on current critiques and defences of standpoint theory in the public sphere, examining the politics of knowledge involved.

+ Spiros Chairetis is a queer poet and media scholar with research interests in the relationship between television and its audiences, queer anthropology, and the representational politics of fatness. He earned his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2021, and he is currently a fellow at the Research Centre for the Humanities in Athens. At KWI, he will work on an edited volume provisionally titled Humor and Its Political Affordances: From Nostalgia to Cancel Cultures, exploring understandings of humour from Europe and other parts of the world.

+ Karel Pletinck is a postdoctoral researcher interested in the interconnections between history, philosophy, and the arts, with a focus on post-war Europe. He holds a PhD in literary studies from the University of Antwerp. At KWI, he will develop a research proposal focussing on how left-wing writers renegotiated their political engagement in the post-war period, examining the strategies employed to navigate the intersection of the literary, intellectual, and political fields.

+ Opolot Okia is a professor of modern African History at Wright State University in the USA. His research examines forced labour in colonial East Africa and the impact of changing international discourses on acceptable labour practices. He has also served as a Fulbright Scholar at Moi University in Kenya and Makerere University in Uganda. At KWI, he will complete his manuscript, entitled Making Africans Work: Forced Labor in Colonial Africa, 1885–1961.

+ Veronica Ferreri is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo. She earned her PhD in 2018 from SOAS, University of London. Part of her research explores Syrian displacement into Lebanon, while another research strand deals with paperwork and bureaucracy. At KWI, Veronica will work on her first monograph, entitled The Aftermath of War: Survival and Displacement across the Syrian-Lebanese Border.

+ Katia Schwerzmann is a philosopher and media scholar whose research explores the intersection of the body, technology, and politics. She earned her PhD from a joint programme between the Freie Universität Berlin and University of Lausanne, and she most recently held a postdoctoral position at Ruhr University Bochum. At KWI, Katia will work on a grant proposal framing current AI as a normative endeavour that impacts subjectivity and identity formation as well as knowledge production.

In conjunction with our March 2025 workshop on practices and aesthetics of coming to an end, the call is open for contributions to the KWI Blog for a series on "Letzte Sätze". Beginning in January, the series will explore poetological functions of last sentences in relation to questions of reception, genre, and criticism, welcoming perspectives from literature, film, music, and theory across history. The deadline for short proposals is 4 October, and you can find the full call here.

The workshop “Was war Faschismustheorie?”, organized by Morten Paul and Stefan Höhne, took place at KWI from 18–20 September. With a full programme devoted to more than a century of heterodox thought, the workshop explored recently renewed interest in fascism theory with a sober eye to political climates past and present. An evening podium discussion brought out different perspectives on the role and value of theoretization in the face of current threats to democracy, and culminated in a call for everyday civic engagement to combat right-wing ideologies.  

In December KWI will host a conference – to be held in German – on the capacity of photographs to articulate critique. The panels will explore implications of transposing conceptual definition and linguistic logic into the ambiguous, affective arena of images. Organized by Jakob Schnetz and Lukas Schepers in cooperation with Pixelprojekt Ruhrgebiet and with support from the Museum Folkwang, this event will also include an exhibition visit and evening podium discussion on the border areas of photo critique for journalists, activists, and artists. The deadline for registration is 22 November.

“'Consider Margaret Thatcher’s Premiership as Ground Zero': The British Housing Crisis in Non-Fiction” by Flemming Falz in German Historical Institute London Blog

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“Aufzugkonstruktionen als Wahrzeichen. Zur ästhetischen Form von Fördertürmen im Spiegel ihrer technischen Entwicklung” by Lukas Schepers in IM/Mobil. Schnittstellen zwischen Architektur und Technik

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“Provozierendes (Ver)Lachen. Heilung, Hygiene und Vorsorge bei Gottsched und Lessing” by Roxanne Phillips in Praktiken der Provokation. Lessings Schreib- und Streitstrategien

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“Schwerarbeit” by Simon Avramis, Roxanne Phillips, and Marilisa Reisert in Slapstick. Ein Kompendium Teil I

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“The Intrusion of Play into Time: Alexandre Kojève’s Ludic Philosophy of History” 
by Danilo Scholz in Tyrants at Work: Philosophy and Politics in Alexandre Kojève

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“Israel, Palästina und Bilder-Fragen. Eine erste Kartierung bildethischer Debatten und Herausforderungen nach dem 7. Oktober 2023” by Evelyn Runge in kommunikation@gesellschaft

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“Serial Metaphors: Revising and Rewriting in Rachel Cusk's Life Narratives” by Ricarda Menn in Rachel Cusk: Contemporary Critical Perspectives
 
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