'Re-' Interdisciplinary Network [2018-20]

Convenors

Convenors

Clare L. E. Foster  (Founding Coordinator, CRASSH)
Cristina Baldacci (Contemporary Art, ICI Berlin)
Francesco Giusti (ICI Berlin)
Lucy Delap (Modern British History, Cambridge)
Jason Scott-Warren (Centre for Material Texts, Cambridge)
Daniel Margocsy (HPS, Cambridge)
Martin Zeilinger (Senior Lecturer. ARU)
Ross Cole (Music, Cambridge)
Rachel Stroud (Music, Cambridge)

Previous Convenors

Anne Alexander (Cambridge Digital Humanities, CRASSH) [2018-19]
Michael Byrne (Dance and Technology, Cornell, NY) [2018-19]
Satinder Gill  (Music and Science,Cambridge) [2018-19]
Margherita Laera  (Drama and Theatre, University of Kent) [2018-19]
Sophie Seita  (English, Cambridge) [2018-19]
Francesca Root  (MA Sociology, Cambridge) [2018-19]
Freddie Rokem (Theatre Studies, Chicago/Tel Aviv) [2018-19]
Ruichen Zhang  (PhD Sociology, Beijing, Cambridge) [2018-19]

Faculty Advisors

Dr Mischa Twitchin  (Theatre and Performcance, Goldsmiths)
Dr Anne Alexander (Coordinator, Digital Humanities)
Prof Peter de Bolla (Faculty of English, Cambridge)
Dr Satinder Gill  (Music and Science,Cambridge)
Dr Margherita Laera  (Drama and Theatre, University of Kent)
Prof Richard Coyne (Architecture, Edinburg)

Previous Advisors

Lucy Delap  (Lecturer in History and CI for The Business of Women’s Words: Purpose and Profit in Feminist Publishing)
Ella McPherson (Lecturer in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology, co-Director of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights)
Renaud Gagné (Reader in Classics, The History of Cross Cultural Comparatism)
Jason Scott-Warren  (Co-director of the Centre for Material Texts, Faculty of English)
John Rink (Professor of Musical Peerformance Studies, Faculty of Music)

Programme 2020-21

An event reschedule, possible date June 2021 TBA

Re Interdisciplinary Network
Women Beat Poets and the Naropa Archive: Rewriting an American Experimental Lineage 1 Dec 2020 5:00pm - 6:30pm, ONLINE SESSION (UK Time) Melody London (Filmmaker), Emma Gomis

External events where the Re-Interdisciplinary Network was involved:

• International conference organised by Crirstina Baldacci ans Susanne Franco: On Reenactment Concepts, Methodologies, Tools (19-20 November 2020.
• Webinar: Art, AI and Everything Else_flyer (3-5 December 2020)

CRASSH is not responsible for the content of external websites and readings.

Blogs

• Why ‘Re-’?: Thinking Twice About Repetition by Clare L.E.Foster (Dec 2018)
• New Dark Age: Technology and How Bridle Gets It Right, by Francesca Root (Jan 2019)
• When are Copies More Authentic Than Originals? Factum Arte’s Adam Lowe in Conversation with Simon Schaffer (Nov 2018)
• A Conversation About Re-: An Errant Glossary with Cristina Baldacci and Francesco Giusti by Clare L.E. Foster (March 2019)
  See also at ICI Berlin
• Why Thinking about the Tacit is Key in a Digital Age by Satinder Gill
• Down the Rabbit Hole (CAM magazine interviews Clare Foster) by Lucy Jolin
• Passionate Affinities: Literature and Networks – Prof Rita Felski on her forthcomimng book ‘Hooked: Art and Attachment’ (Fall 2020)

Follow the Re- Network’s own blog here.

Past Programmes

Programme 2019-20

Easter Term 2020
Secularization and Periodisation

This term, as well as some rescheduled events, our theme is Secularization and Periodisation – a series co-convened by Daniel Margocsy (HPS, Cambridge) and Daniel Reeve (UC Santa Barbara).

The Continuous Recurrence of a Much-Debated Concept.
The demise of secularization narratives has long been recognized, yet they continue to exert a tenacious hold over the structures of scholarly histories. This term, we consider the persistence of secularization narratives today, asking whether there is something about their form or forms – rather than the content – that accounts for their persistence. Through this focus on form, borrowed from recent conversations in literary and cultural studies, we hope to provide a new approach to ongoing debates about secularization and periodization.

What do persistent, large-scale narratives of historical development contribute to the histories of literature, the arts, sciences, and culture?

Are there other narratives of the past – perhaps those of untimeliness, disjunction, re-emergence, repetition – that successfully refuse secularism’s unidirectional structures?

Lent Term 2020
Canons versus Icons
The affordances of the book as a repeatable object, of iteration in publishing, and the relationship of both to publics.

Michaelmas Term 2019
Canons versus Icons
The Re- Network series this Michaelmas term is ‘Canons Versus Icons’, 5 sessions co-curated by Cristina Baldacci (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice), Clare Foster (CRASSH, Cambridge), and Francesco Giusti (Bard College Berlin)

A canon has been understood as a historical selection of cultural objects, characters, or persons imposed by an institutional or cultural elite via a top-down model of propagation, which tends to repress multiplicity; icons, on the other hand, have been more associated with popularity, chosen and shared according to a more horizontal process of circulation.

Canonical objects are often associated with objective qualities and a shared cultural identity; iconicity with an inherent power to generate personal affective responses. Looking at canons and icons together raises questions of agency; of community formation; and of the interplay between deliberate and inevitable repetitions in any set of cultural conditions. It asks whether cultural objects and subjects are mediated by gatekeeping authorities, or end-users; and encourages a view of culture not as encounters between subjects and objects (however intermedial) but as sets of tensions and relations in a constant state of change – a kind of resource for saying, or doing, something else.

Canon vs. Icons aims to discuss the cultural production and reproduction of aggregates across time and space, and the social corollaries of these imaginary formations, along with their putative ‘queering’ potentials.

• How do aggregates form? Who or what controls their criteria of inclusion, their status as a group – and in what action or experience does their reperformance consist?
•  Who or what forms a canon? Is there always involvement of BOTH the visual and verbal?

Re Interdisciplinary Network
Towards An-Iconology: Environmental Images 16 Oct 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Andrea Pinotti (Milano), Cristina Baldacci (Venice)
Iconising the Classical: Pompeii in Silent Cinema 30 Oct 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Maria Wyke (UCL), Paul Cartledge (Cambridge)
Tragedy and the Global South: A Conversation with Prof Martin Puchner 11 Nov 2019 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Seminar Room S2, 2nd Floor, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT. NB Different room today. Prof Martin Puchner. Limited places. Registration required by 1st November.
CANCELLED Re-Enacting Icons: Self-Portraiture and Selfies 13 Nov 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Gabriella Giannachi (Exeter), Cristina Baldacci (Venice)
RELOCATED: Passionate Affinities: Literature and Networks 2 Dec 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Audit Room, King’s College, Cambridge, CB2 1ST Rita Felski (Virginia), Francesco Giusti (Berlin)
Re-/Un-working Tragedy: Perspectives from the Global South 6 Dec 2019 - 7 Dec 2019 All day, SG1/2, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT This conference aims to scrutinize the literary, political, and philosophical relevance of reworking/unworking tragedy in cross-cultural contexts. It takes up the notion of ‘tragedy’ in a world shaken by global conflicts, deterritorialization, and migration crises.
CANCELLED: Dance and the Archive. Politics of a Re- Perspective 9 Dec 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Changed to Monday 5.00pm Gabriele Brandstetter (Berlin), Lucia Ruprecht (Cambridge), Lars Maagerø (Kent)
Re-printing: From the Paperback to Virago Modern Classics 4 Feb 2020 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT. NB Different time and day, Peter Mandler (Cambridge), D-M Withers (Sussex), Lucy Delap (Cambridge), Sarah Cain (Cambridge)
Re-Thinking the Book 7 Feb 2020 2:00pm - 5:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT. *Different day and time Juliet Fleming (NYU) Alexandra Gillespie (Toronto), Deidre Lynch (Harvard), Adam Smyth (C Oxford), Gill Partington (Exeter), Jason Scott-Warren (Cambridge and CMT).
Anatomies of Re-printing: The Case of Rembrandt’s Dr Tulp 19 Feb 2020 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Dániel Margócsy (Cambridge),  Annja Neumann (Cambridge), Andrew J. Webber (Cambridge)
CANCELLED: Memorable Language’: Lyric, Community, Society 7 May 2020 7:30pm - 8:30pm, ICI Berlin, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119 Berlin, Germany Jonathan Culler (Cornell), Francesco Giusti (Berlin)
POSTPONED: Secularization in a Global Context: A Repeating Narrative 13 May 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm, Venue TBC Mary Brazelton (Cambridge), Luna Sebastian (Cambridge), Huiyi Wu (Needham Research Institute)
CANCELLED: Performing Canons – Shakespeare, Ibsen and Brecht 20 May 2020 4:30pm - 6:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Lars Maagerø (Norwegian Theatre Director, Kent)
CANCELLED: Re-Enacting Icons: Self-Portraiture and Selfies 27 May 2020 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Gabriella Giannachi (Exeter), Cristina Baldacci (Venice/ICI Berlin)
POSTPONED Secularization: Narratives from Literature and Science 12 Jun 2020 1:30pm - 6:00pm, Venue tbc Workshop

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Programme 2018-19

The ‘Re-‘ Interdisciplinary Network asks how and why we repeat, revive, re-enact, restage, reframe, remember, represent, and refer – to whom, when, where and why — and why this a topical question in a digital era. It gathers researchers, teachers, writers and artists whose interest in topics related to cultural reproduction, repetition and reference extends beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and the university/public divide.

It has long been understood that repetition in a public context is socially identifying: to repeat can never be neutral. The very concepts of culture and society — as learned, shared, traditional — depend on repetition. But understanding these mechanisms is a pressing issue in a technological present where repetition and recognisability are intimately related to power. From translation, adaptation, preservation, memorial and ritual to brand and social media ‘sharing’, our primary research aim is to explore whether different socially-driven practices of repetition might have meaningfully related structures, implications, and dynamics. We hope by bringing different knowledge systems and approaches together, new questions and principles might emerge: the agency of apparent consensus, for example; or the work done by label, category, and association, or how familiarity itself establishes, legitimises and persuades. What starts and changes a prevailing narrative, and for whom? How should we approach a thing that exists in reciprocity with its own notoriety?

Repetition is everywhere: embedded in human practices inevitably, as well as deliberately. “Re-“ takes a critical lens to this by asking, of any instance of repetition:

what constituencies/audiences are implied by a particular act of (re)address;
what else is being performed other than the repeated thing itself: values such as status, legitimacy, commemoration, continuity, authority, participation, legitimacy, identity, nation;
whether an act of repetition works to reinforce a status quo or change it – or both.

The network aims to shift public attention from what artworks and other kinds of public statements are, to what they do. Its long term goal is to help equip the public with a more fluent grasp of how cultural repetition offers an identity, frames a particular worldview, implies a consensus, and performs a persuasive past.

• Michaelmas 2018: Beyond Originals and Copies (how ideas of original/copy differ from culture to culture, and the extent to which a focus on ‘originals’ is a characteristically Western intellectual tradition, including sessions with Factum Arte).
• Lent 2019: Technologies of Reproduction (how different technologies of reproduction have different social and political affordances, including sessions with ICI Berlin and Cambridge Digital Humanities).
• Easter 2019: Iteration as persuasion in a digital world (how social processes driven by repetition such as cultural memory, belief-creation, and ideas of consensus change in digital contexts); in collaboration with AI and Society Journal

Keynote lectures 2018-19
Professor Freddie Rokem (Theatre Studies, Chicago/Tel Aviv) Nov 30th
Professor Richard Coyne  (Architecture, Edinburgh)  Feb 6th
Professor. Salvatore Settis  (Classics, Columbia/Pisa) Feb 12th
CRASSH is not responsible for the content of external websites and readings. All speakers’ views are their own.

Re Interdisciplinary Network
Authenticities: Shakespeare’s Globe, Anatomical Drawings and Bach 10 Oct 2018 3:00pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room, SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Penelope Woods (QMUL), Dr Dániel Margócsy (Cambridge), Rachel Stroud (Academy of Ancient Music) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
The Concept of the ‘Original’: Japan, African and Indonesia 7 Nov 2018 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Doris Jedamski (Leiden), Ashley Thorpe (RHUL), Osita Okagbue (Goldsmiths) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
Replicas: Perspectives from the History of Art and Science 21 Nov 2018 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Adam Lowe, (Factum Arte, Madrid), Simon Schaffer (Cambridge) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
The Repeating Work: Adaptation and Appropriation 30 Nov 2018 12:00pm - 3:45pm, Seminar Room S1, 1st Floor Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road. Freddie Rokem (Chicago, Tel Aviv), Mischa Twitchin (Goldsmiths), Ross Cole (Cambridge), Martin Zeilinger (ARU) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
‘Re- As an Embodied Practice (Workshop) 23 Jan 2019 4:00pm - 6:00pm, Judith E. Wilson Studio, Faculty of English, 9 West Road *NB Different venue and time today* Sophie Seita (Cambridge/New York), Peter McMurray (Cambridge), Emma Attwood (Playwright, Director), Chana Morgenstern (Cambridge), Claudia Tobin (Cambridge & Royal Drawing School) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
Repetition as Claiming Space 6 Feb 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road NB longer session Richard Coyne (Edinburgh), Cristina Baldacci (Venice), Francesco Giusti (Berlin) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
Reimagining ‘The Classics’ 12 Feb 2019 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road *NB Different time and room Salvatore Settis (Columbia/Pisa) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
Translation as Performance 23 Feb 2019 11:00am - 5:30pm, Room G21, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue. NB Different venue and day. Caroline Vout, Caroline van Eck, Peter McMurray, Rebecca Lämmle, Renaud Gagné, Robin Osborne, Simon Goldhill, Sam Barrett, Sean Curran (Cambridge), Erika Fischer-Lichte (Berlin), Martin Revermann (Toronto), Ross Parry (Leicester) – Joint event Re-Interdisciplinary and Performance Networks
The Performer as Interpreter: an Embodied Double (Artist’s talk) 27 Feb 2019 4:30pm - 6:00pm, Judith E. Wilson Studio, Faculty of English, 9 West Road *NB Different venue and time today* Raphael Sbrzesny (Bremen) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
Technologies of Reproduction and the Craft of Activism 6 Mar 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Annabelle Sreberny (SOAS),  Anne Alexander (CDH, CRASSH) – Re-Interdisciplinary Network
Re-Mediating the Political: Digital Culture and Temporality​ 1 May 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Rebecca Coleman (Goldsmiths), Carolyn Pedwell (Kent)
The Psychology of Data 15 May 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Alan Blackwell (Cambridge), John Manton (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), Eva Giraud (Keele)
The (Re)Shaping of Collective Memory 29 May 2019 2:30pm - 4:30pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT John Sheridan (UK National Archives), Dacia Viejo Rose (Cambridge), Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes (Cambridge), Martin Zeilinger (Anglia Ruskin)
Rethinking Repetition in a Digital Age 12 Jun 2019 12:00pm - 7:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, First Floor, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Symposium. Online registration is now closed.
Repetition, Revival, Reconstruction: The Visual Culture of Architecture 1750-1900 14 Jun 2019 9:15am - 6:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT Joint Colloquium
Tacit Engagement in the Digital Age 26 Jun 2019 - 28 Jun 2019 9:00am, Seminar Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT and Faculty of Music on 28 June, 11 West Road Online Registration is closed