Ansgar Nünning

Focussing on three key concepts highlighted in the title, the essay pursues three main aims: First, it attempts to demonstrate that any conceptual breakthrough and institutional innovation in an interdisciplinary field like the study of culture requires imagination first. Secondly, this essay offers modest reflections on why it would be desirable to acknowledge both the perspectivity and positionality from which we conduct research in the humanities, and the fact that European ways of doing research are anything but ›normal‹ or universal, but rather highly culture-specific and shaped by the factors that the acronym WEIRD stands for, i.e. »Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic« (Henrich 2020, p. 21). Thirdly, the essay argues that in the face of aggressive assaults on science and truth, and the humanities and fields like cultural studies in particular, it is more necessary than ever before to foster the internationalisation of Kulturwissenschaften. The essay also provides some concrete proposals for enriching and transforming the forms of publication in the study of culture through a spirit of experimentation and imagination. mehr

In response to Hartmut Böhme’s programmatic sketch of future directions for the study of culture, this contribution wants to sensitize readers to the significance of culturally specific academic traditions, which continue to inform research on cultural phenomena. Because of the great disciplinary and institutional differences between Kulturwissenschaften (in Germany) and the respective traditions of ‚cultural studies‘ in Britain and the US, questions about the future of the study of culture can only meaningfully be posed in the context of the discipline’s internationalization. Since any kind of research is inevitably embedded within specific discursive contexts, exchanges and dialogues between the German and international research traditions of studying culture appear indispensable. Following the lead of Mieke Bal’s idea of ‚travelling concepts‘, there arises a need for scholars in the study of culture to engage with issues of translation and translatability. mehr