Podcast 'Rethinking the Global'

Reena Saini Kallat, Woven Chronicle, 2022 © Kunstmuseum Thun

Reena Saini Kallat, Woven Chronicle, 2022 © Kunstmuseum Thun

What is "the global" since its purported turn in the 1990s and more current contexts, such as: nationalist resurgence, the recognition of climate history and other developments in the humanities? 

This podcast is a series of conversations with various scholars (re)thinking what the global means in our present now. This project is an initiative by the Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities' Global Studies Doctoral Program at the University of Bern and co-created by its doctoral students.

 

List of episodes

#3: Reading the Globe

Reading the Globe: World-Literature as Research and Form

In this episode, we discuss how Sharae Deckard and her colleagues in the Warwick Research Collective are bringing world-systems theory to bear on world-literary analysis. Her explanations take us from the global as the interpretive horizon of fiction, to the role of collective work in studying the connection between global capitalism and literary genres, and then all the way to the usefulness of her approach in media beyond the purely literary such as graphic novels and videogames (and TikTok).

Guest: Sharae Deckard, Professor of World Literature at UC Dublin

Host: Michael Boog, PhD student at the Department of English Languages and Literatures, University of Bern

Listen to the episode on Spotify.

#2: The Aesthetics of Not-Knowing

The Aesthetics of Not-Knowing: Agnotology and the Spectre of Disavowed Narratives

In this podcast episode, we will explore the interplay between Agnotology and Literature within a global framework. We shall examine how traditions and institutions have both contested and contributed to the production, circulation, and politicization of ignorance across diverse historical and geopolitical contexts. We ask: What are the ethical dimensions of not knowing? In what ways does literature articulate or embody uncertainty? And what are the implications when ignorance is not a mere gap in understanding, but rather a purposeful construct?
 

 

Guests: Simone Broders, affiliated with the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), and Anna Auguscik, who holds joint affiliations with the University of Oldenburg and the University of Bremen

Host: Aishwarya Khale, PhD student at the Department of English Languages and Literatures, University of Bern

Listen to the episode on Spotify.

#1: Reimagining the Ocean

Reimagining the Ocean in times of Global Warming

In this episode we discuss marine ecosystems and their entanglements with other systems such as ‘the Earth’. We question our understanding of  ‘the Globe’ and discuss if it comprises oceans and other bodies of water equally as terrestrial zones.

 


 

 


 

Guest: Kai Schulz, Visiting researcher at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and Associate Professor with the School of Environment, Southern Cross University Australia

Host: David Castillo, PhD student at the Institute of Theatre Studies, University of Bern

Listen to the episode on Spotify.