Digital Culture Studies in Modern Languages: Theories, Methodologies and Future Perspectives

The ‘digital turn in the humanities’ has inevitably raised a number of questions about how digital technologies have transformed research, teaching and dissemination in Modern Languages. While hybridity still tends to dominate our teaching and research methods and objects of study – we mix traditional/analogue and new/digital practices to acquire knowledge and develop skills -, digital technologies are significantly changing the way we understand literacies and pedagogy; publishing, research materials, our objects of study, and the notion of ‘culture’.

In order to discuss these transformations in our subject, on 15th February 2019, the Centre for Visual Culture at Royal Holloway hosted a one-day international symposium titled ‘Digital Culture Studies in Modern Languages’ (see programme below), co-organised by Emanuela Patti and Giuliana Pieri as part of the Humanities and Arts Research Institute programme of events (HARI) on ‘Digital Culture & Creativity’. This symposium aimed to explore theories, methodologies and future perspectives in the field of digital culture and creativity in Modern Languages, by bringing together scholars in Modern Languages and Digital Humanities, as well as artists, Media Arts historians and curators. We had the honour and pleasure to discuss these questions with a wonderful line-up of speakers, including the two keynote Claire Taylor (Liverpool) and Sean Cubitt (Goldsmiths), together with Paul Spence (King’s College), Erika Fülöp (Lancaster), Valentino Catricalà (Media Arts Festival), María Mencía (Kingston), and our chairs James Williams (Royal Holloway), Sarah Wright (Royal Holloway), Guyda Armstrong (University of Manchester).

The overarching question of the symposium, as Emanuela Patti highlighted, was how to address the new wave of interdisciplinarity in Modern Languages which has been rapidly triggered by digital convergence. Arguably, Modern Languages, Digital Humanities and Digital Culture & Creativity intersect in new forms. What are already very ‘interdisciplinary disciplines’ such as digital humanities, electronic literature, media/digital arts, post-cinema collide and merge in different ways. As scholars and teachers of modern languages, cultures and societies, we are in fact increasingly exposed to texts and ‘signifying practices’ which are digitally-born or mix media, as it typically happens in the era of convergence culture. What forms of collaboration could we envisage between DH, ML and Digital Culture and Creativity?

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Programme

Friday, 15 February 2019

10.30  Arrival, Refreshments

11.00-11.10 Emanuela Patti (Royal Holloway), Introduction

Modern languages and the digital: theories, methodologies, case studies

11.10-12.00 (chair: Sarah Wright, Royal Holloway)

Keynote Lecture 1: Claire Taylor (University of Liverpool), ‘Digital Humanities, digital culture, and Modern Languages’

12.00-13.00 (chair: Guyda Armstrong, University of Manchester)

Paul Spence (King’s College), ‘Key elements of a critical Digital Humanities-Modern Languages (DHML) research agenda’

Erika Fülöp (Lancaster), ‘Digital culture in French Studies in the UK’

13.00-14.00 Lunch

Modern Languages and digital arts: national and transnational perspectives

14.10-15.00 (chair: James Williams, Royal Holloway)

Keynote Lecture 2: Sean Cubitt (Goldsmiths), ‘Telegraph, Airmail, Satellite: The Visual Imaginary of Global Media’

15.00-16.00 (chair: Emanuela Patti, Royal Holloway)

Valentino Catricalà  (Media Arts Festival, Rome), ‘Rethinking the medium through media art. The Italian case’

María Mencía (Kingston), ‘The Winnipeg: the poem that crossed the Atlantic’

16.00-16.30 Coffee break

16.30-17.00 (chair: Emanuela Patti)

Closing discussion, ‘The interdisciplinary challenges of Digital Culture Studies: what forms of collaboration between Modern Languages, Media Arts and Digital Humanities?’