Spring Seminar on Infrastructure, 11 February 2020

Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to welcome all of you to the first MOVE seminar of the Spring 2020 semester, which takes place Tuesday 11 February, 12:00 15:00, at MF, room 412.

The topic of the upcoming seminar is infrastructure. Infrastructure is a key concept both in current and classic attempts at theorizing movement of ideas and artefacts, etc., and is thus an obvious MOVE priority. As always, the goal of MOVE seminars is to raise theoretical literacy in ways that is helpful to ongoing research projects among the members of the group. In the seminar we will explore how a focus on infrastructure can produce new vistas in studies of both historical and contemporary materials.

We have invited Professor Espen Ytreberg (Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo) to join us and to present the paper “Infrastructures in the study of media”:

The talk addresses the ways one might want to talk about media as being infrastructural – as a means of pointing towards their organising and disciplining functions; to highlight phenomena of distribution, scale, labour, and materiality. A cross-disciplinary development is sketched that has led researchers toward the infrastructural and (at least in part) away from content, semiotics and language. The talk highlights the ways we might want to talk about infrastructures as involving functional relationships between media and other technologies of production and transport. Also, the concept of infrastructure may help conceptualise forms and functions of movement. These latter points are illustrated using the case of media and other technological infrastructures in the 1914 Frogner Jubilee Exhibition.

A generous time slot is set aside for discussion and Q&A, as well as for putting together a reading comprehensive list.

Ytreberg recommends that we read the two following articles before the meeting:

Espen Ytreberg, “Networked Simultaneities in the Time of the Great Exhibitions: Media and the 1914 Oslo Centenary Jubilee Exhibition,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 5284-5303.
• Please find the article uploaded on the password-protected area of the blog (for the password, we refer to the email sent to all members of MOVE)

Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski (eds) Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures (The Geopolitics of Information). Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
• Please read the editors’ introduction (and whatever else might be of interest to you)
• This edited volume is available online, for instance through Oria

Please note that we start with a light lunch at noon. Please remind us about food allergies and dietary restrictions.
We encourage all of you to join us, also, at the MF CASR brown bag seminar at 11:30, where MOVE member Ragnhild J. Zorgati (UiO,IKOS) will give a brief presentation of new findings from her her ongoing research on European Islam and contemporary literature.

We looking forward to seeing you all there!
Kristin and Liv Ingeborg

National Library Excursion

12 November

8:20-11:30

Henrik Ibsens gate 110, Oslo

Dear colleagues,

The second autumn 2019 MOVE-meeting is fast-approaching. Erling Sandmo has generously agreed to guide us through the collections of the newly opened “Kartsenteret” at the National Library. Have a look at the wonderful, new center here: https://www.nb.no/kartsenteret/

In line with the general focus of MOVE, Sandmo will talk with us about “Maps and movements: representing a changing world.” In preparation of the meeting and to enable discussion, Sandmo challenges us to reflect on the following three questions: What is the world – in your material and in your research? How is space made present in the material you work with? How is movement across space represented, and how are barriers, connectivities and infrastructures imagined?

Sandmo also recommends that we read the two attached articles before the meeting:

  • Greg Anderson, “Retrieving the Lost Worlds of the Past: The Case for an Ontological Turn,” American Historical Review (2015): 786-81.
  • Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité (1984/1967): [1-9].

We meet Tuesday 12 November, at 8:20 am at the stairs in front of the National Library (Henrik Ibsens gate 110/Solli plass). The tour/presentation starts at 8:30 sharp. Lunch will be served in the cantina at 11:00.  The formal program ends at 11:30.

Please let us know at your first convenience, and no later than Thursday 1 November, whether you will join us or not. We need the information to order lunch.

We look very much forward to seeing you there!

Fall Reading Seminar

17 September 2019

09:30-12:00

MF room 412

Literary figures and metaphors traveling across time and place: tracing (and challenging) a theoretical thread that starts with E.R. Curtius’ classic work on the tradition of European literature. Brief introduction by Kristin B.Aavitsland, comments by Matthew Monger, and Per Kristian Hovden Sætre. Plenary discussion.

You can find the related reading under the Literature tab.

Lunch to follow. Please inform us about any dietary restrictions.