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CULTURE STUDIES: TRADITION AND PRESENT

PhD. Antonio Penedo-Picos    Antonio.Penedo@uab.cat

 

1. The (new) communication in the digital age.

2. Postmodernism in the third millennium,

3. Fiction, History and ‘Social Reality’: digital narratives and hermeneutics.

4. (Pseudo)artificial intelligence and natural intelligence: body, mind and consciousness.

7. Economy, technology and (new) social classes: the transversal cybersubject.

8. Subjectivity, identity and ‘semiotic capacity’ of the person.

 

    Are we verbally equipped for digital citizenry? The path being cleared by digital technology will not be paved by the correct use of different formats, interfaces or channels, but by the abililty to recodify ourselves via the messages we send through them. Il will be a semiotic issue, not a computer issue. We experiencing a genetic mutation in our brain. However, in order for such a scenario to endure, we need highly literate, actively grammatical subjects, with the ability to comprehend and synthesise information, as well as transmit and generate alternatives. This is the key to the new poetics of the digital age: if life expectancy is going to reach 100 years; if parliamentary models are failing to properly manage our societies; if hitherto unquestionable ideas are being questioned; if, on top of every else, the ability to access and be shaped by information is what will define our freedom, are we analogically prepared for the digital world?

 

 

 

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF STORYTELLING IN THE CREATION OF IDENTITIES IN THE FIELD OF DESIGN

PhD. Lluís Sallés    lsdesign@grn.es

ELISAVA Escuela Universitaria de Barcelona de Diseño e Ingeniería 

 

1. The three stages of identity.

2. Merchandise as a reflection.

3. Storytelling and Storydoing.

4. Accompanying objects.

5. The commercial story.

6. The brand syndrome.

 

    The narrative structures that build identities in the different media, where fiction flowed since the appearance of the novel, and later in its audiovisual version, the cinema, today cannot compete with the great factory of desires that is merchandise.

Mercantile identity is a form of sentimental and socio-cultural imposition. It emerges in the narrative: the grand narrative, the intermediate narrative and the nano-narrative. All of them are responsible for the construction of the individual's identity.

We start from the assumption that through commodity indoctrination we fluctuate between identity multiverses. The merchandise uses a whole typology of stories and narrative structures to, through our intimate references andemotions linked to them, build artificial identities that keep our Gaussian bell of desire active, allowing the market to turn the novelty on and off with the help of the trend phenomenon.

 

 

DANTE: YESTERDAY AND TODAY: FROM TERRIBLE SERIOUSNESS TO POP ICON

PhD. Eduard Vilella     Eduard.Vilella@uab.cat

It would be hard to find an author who has raised such a diffuse and continuous interest throughout the centuries as Dante. This is a phenomenon that involves a wide range of cultural spheres of western culture. In addition to his status asone of the most prominent classics in literary history, Dante holds in contemporary culture an unparalleled vigour as regards authors of his category. My sessions aim to briefly explore these realities, presenting centrally the Divine Comedy and examining some of the recent forms of creative reception it has elicited in postmodern narrative and post-dramatictheater, as well as rock, comics, painting and film.

Bibliography:

Auerbach, E., Mímesis. La representación de la realidad en la literatura occidental, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1983.

Coetzee, J. M., “‘¿Qué es un clásico?’, una conferencia”, Costas extrañas. Ensayos, 1986-1999, Debate, Barcelona, 2005, págs. 11-29.

Metamorphosing Dante : appropriations, manipulations, and rewritings in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries / edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Fabio Camilletti, and Fabian Lampart , Weien, Turia-Kant, 2011

Dante on view : the reception of Dante in the visual and performing arts/edited by Antonella Braida and Luisa Cale. London, Routledge, 2016.

 

Komparatistische Perspektiven Auf Dantes 'Divina Commedia': Lektüren, Transformationen und Visualisierungen, Heimgartner, Stephanie ; Schmitz-Emans,Monika; Schmitz-Emans, Monika ; Heimgartner, Stephanie. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2017.

Página web "Dante Today"

https://research.bowdoin.edu/dante-today/

 

 

IBERIAN SPACES

PhD. Jordi Cerdà    Jordi.Cerda@uab.cat

 

    In the last three decades, the so-called Iberian studies have been presented as an area of knowledge that accommodates European and, of course, transcontinental Ibero-Romanic linguistic and cultural diversity. In the current context of pluralisation and problematisation of identities, the recognition of the diversity of Iberian cultures and their historical interdependence and imaginaries may be relevant. Iberian studies are a possibility of creating a practised and multipolar space, always unfished and ambiguous, as an alternative to traditional monolithic ensembles.

 

  

CULTURAL STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICA 

PhD. María Fernanda bustamente    MariaFernanda.Bustamante@uab.cat

 

    Cultural studies in Latin America have had enormous impact and a distinctive development. The historical significance of modes of circulationof Latin America's own cultural productions, located in a "peripheral modernity", the importance of Latin American cultural criticism and heightened attention to issues around the way in which culture determines identities and the political implications of this have turned the continent into a fertile space for their development. They distinctively connect with post and decolonial studies, feminist movements and debates around Latin American identity.

 

1.Genealogy and own conceptuality. Latin American identity. Otherness. Transculturation. Hybridity. Heterogeneity. Peripheral modernity. Border.

2. The roleof Latin American cultural criticism. Genealogies of the literate city. National/continental. Challenges to the western canon. Orality/writing.

3. Gender studies, postcolonial/decolonial studies and subalternities in Latin America.

4. Case studies.

 

Bibliography:

 

Andalzúa, Gloria. Borderlans. La frontera: The New Mestiza, Madrid, Capitán Swing, 2016.

Cornejo Polar, Antonio, Escribir en el aire, ensayo sobre la heterogeneidad sociocultural en las literaturas andinas, Lima, Centro de Estudios Literarios Antonio Cornejo Polar, 2018.

García Canclini, Néstor, Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad, México, Debolsillo, 2009.

Quijano, Aníbal, Modernidad, identidad y utopía en América Latina, Lima, Sociedad y Política Ediciones, 1988.

Szurmuk, Mónica (ed.), McKee Irwin, Robert (ed.), Diccionario de estudios culturales latinoamericanos, México, Siglo XXI.

 

 

 POETICS OF THE END OF THE WORLD: TRANSITS THROUGH DYSTOPIAN UNIVERSES

PhD. Iván Gómez García       ivangg@blanquerna.url.edu

UNIVERSITATRAMON LLULL-BLANQUERNA Ciencies de la Comunicació

 

   Historians and economists often remind us that they do not deal with the future, because it is something unknown and unpredictable. But there are few who have wanted to imagine, from the field of fiction, what will be the future that awaits us.

Authors as diverse as Aldous Huxley or William Gibson have explored the implications of our future through capital works, lighting up a subgenre within science fiction, the dystopian, which has shown itself as one of the most active and recurring in cinema and literature.

Through these sessions we will explorethe political implications of a series of essential works of the dystopian genre, studying cinema and literature in a comparative way, analyzing in detail the ideas and positions that important authors have developed over the last century.

Dystopia works not only as a warning of our (in) avoidable future, but also as a criticaldiagnosis of our most immediate present.

That’s why the objective of the study is not only to map the dystopia genre but to explore how, through imagination, these works have thought about the future, have developed a discourse on our present and have positioned themselves on issues essential within our cybercultural landscape.

 

Poetics of the End of the World: Transits through the dystopian universes

    1. Utopia: The questioned idea about a better future.

   2. About the (im) perfect  kingdoms: the topos of a good life.

   3. The era of turbocapitalism: a countergeography of  the"fragile" capital.

   4. The hell of a mechanized world: classical dystopias (from Orwell to Bradbury)

   5. Cyberpunk as an (inner) image of capital (from J.G. Ballard to William Gibson)

   6. (Dat) Apocalypse Snow: the world buried by information.

   7. Industrialization, modernization and rationality: Exposure to urban life.

   8. The city as an emerging system: urban environments and information.

   9. About the end of progress: poetics of the end of the world.

 

Bibliography:

Baccolini, R., Moylan, T. (eds.): Dark Horizons. Science Fictionand the Dystopian imagination. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Barber, S.: Ciudades proyectadas. Cine y espacio urbano. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2006.

Brockman, J. (ed.): Los próximos cincuenta años. El conocimiento humano en la primera mitad del siglo XXI. Barcelona,Kairós, 2004.

Brockman, J. (ed.): El nuevo humanismo y las fronteras de la ciencia. Barcelona: Kairós, 2007.

Buck-Morss, S.: Mundo soñado y catástrofe: La desaparición de la utopía demasas en el Este y el Oeste. Madrid: Antonio Machado, 2004.

Catalán, M.: El prestigio de la lejanía. Ilusión, autoengaño y utopía. Barcelona: Ronsel, 2004

Dahrendorf, R.: Conflicto social moderno. Madrid:Mondadori, 1990.

Davis, E.: Techgnosis. Myth, magic and mysticismin the age of information.London: Serpents Tail, 2004. Domingo, A.: Descenso literario a los infiernos demográficos. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2008.

Fernández Buey,F.:Utopías e ilusiones naturales. Mataró: ElViejo Topo, 2007.

Kluitenberg, E.: Delusive Spaces. Essays on Media, Culture and Technology. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008.

Kosko, B.: El futuro borroso o el cielo en un chip. Barcelona: Crítica, 2000.

Molinuevo, J.L.: Humanismo y Nuevas Tecnologías. Madrid: Alianza, 2004.

Molinuevo, J.L.: La vida en tiempo real. La crisis de las utopías digitales. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2006.

Nicholas Taleb, N.: El Cisne Negro. El impacto de lo altamente improbable. Barcelona: Paidós, 2010.

Nicholas Taleb, N.: Antifrágil. Las cosas que se benefician del desorden. Barcelona: Paidós, 2013.

Ryan, M.L.: La narración como realidad virtual. Barcelona: Paidós, 1999.

Sennett, R.: Vida urbana e identidad personal.Barcelona: Península, 2001

Sloterdijk, P.: Esferas III. Espumas. Esferología plural. Madrid: Siruela, 2006.

Wegner, Phillip E. (ed.): Imaginary Communities. Utopia, the Nations, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

 

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