About the seminar
From the beginning of the twenty-first century, digital media technologies have changed the production, distribution and consumption of cultural practices. Scholars have studied how the logics of these technologies affect the categorization of cultural artifacts–and of the individuals and communities they become associated with. One way of thinking about these categorizations is through the concept of genre, which has both been a vernacular category for structuring culture and a well-established concept across disciplines such as literature and media studies and musicology.
In this seminar, we seek to consider how digital media technologies have impacted formations of genre across fields including music, media, and literature. The workshop will discuss possible technological, economic, cultural, and identity-related issues emerging within and across disciplines. We have invited scholars from the fields of literary studies, musicology and media studies to present both analytically and theoretically oriented approaches as well as to contribute in a cross-disciplinary panel discussion.
This will be a one day seminar, and the morning session will begin with a short introduction by the organisers, followed by four presentations by scholars in literature, media studies, and musicology. We are excited about learning about both similarities and differences between these fields and look forward to a diverse range of perspectives and focus areas.
The afternoon program will begin with a panel with all presenters, that provides the opportunity for further interdisciplinary exchange and discussion. The final part will be a workshop dedicated to group work and a plenary discussion with doctoral candidates. In these sessions, each group will work on an assignment based on a case study prepared by the presenters. Attending doctoral candidates will be expected to relate their group work to the assigned reading (Frow 2006) and reflect on the relationships of the workshops’ theme to their own research interests.
Program
Part 1 - Presentations
08.45-09.00: Mingling and coffee/fruit
09.00-09.30: Welcome and introduction: Genre in the Context of Digital Media Culture (Eirik Jacobsen, Veronika Muchitsch, Yngvar Kjus)
09.30-10.00: The Fuzzy Edges: The Digital Mediation of Genre Literature (Miriam Johnson)
10.00-10.30: Do Genre Boundaries Belong to a Bygone Era? (Ragnhild Brøvig)
10.30-10.45: Break
10.45-11.15: Post-Genre (Timotheus Vermeulen)
11.15-11.45: The Mediation of Genre, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary (Popular) Music Streaming (Veronika Muchitsch & Ann Werner)
11.45-12.30: Lunch
Part 2 - Workshop for Doctoral Candidates
12.30-13.15: Panel Discussion
13.15-14.00: Group Work
14.00-14.15: Break
14.15-14.45: Plenary Discussion
14.45-15.00: Rounding Off
In preparation for the workshop for doctoral candidates
We expect the doctoral candidates to read the introduction chapter of John Frow (2006) “Introduction,” in Genre. London: Routledge.
Registration
The workshop is open for doctoral candidates from UiO and from other research institutions.
Doctoral candidates who attend the full seminar and workshop and submit a short paper (3-5 pages) within 2 weeks, reflecting on the relevance of the concept of genre to their own research, will receive 1 ECTS point.
The paper is to be submitted by email to (yngvar.kjus@imv.uio.no).
Participants are asked to register by 15 November 2022. Registration is now closed.
Questions? Please contact the course convener, Yngvar Kjus by email (yngvar.kjus@imv.uio.no).
Presenters
Miriam Johnson is a senior lecturer in publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Her current research examines the intersections of social media and the publishing industry, including how these new outlets give rise to new types of authors, the role of community, and issues of gender and power.
Timotheus Vermeulen is Professor in Media, Culture and Society at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. He is co-founder of the webzine Notes on Metamodernism and is a regular contributor to frieze. Vermeulen has published widely on cultural and aesthetic theory, close textual analysis of film and television, and contemporary art, both academically and in a popular context.
Ragnhild Brøvig is Professor of Popular Music Studies at RITMO and the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her interdisciplinary research explores the aesthetic and sociopolitical implications of experimenting with technology in popular music, including via sampling and remixing, glitches and musical fragmentation, sound and spatialization, and rhythm and groove. She is the author of Parody in the Age of Remix: Mashup Creativity vs. the Takedown (MIT Press, forthcoming 2023) and Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound (with Anne Danielsen, MIT Press, 2016). Her research has been funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Arts Council Norway.
Ann Werner is an associate professor in Gender Studies at Södertörn University and a senior lecturer in Musicology at Uppsala University. One area of interest in Werner’s research has been how music streaming technology constructs gender algorithmically, which she discusses in the article ’Organizing music, organizing gender: algorithmic culture and Spotify recommendations’ (2020).
Yngvar Kjus is Associate Professor of Music and Contemporary Media at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo. He is interested in the relationship between music and media, in terms of the creation as well as the mediation and communication of music. Kjus currently leads the research project “The platformization of music production: Developer and user perspectives on transformations in music production technology” (PLATFORM). He is author of Live and Recorded: Music Experience in the Digital Millennium.
Veronika Muchitsch is a postdoctoral research fellow in Gender Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm, and at the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. In her ongoing research, she investigates mediations of gender in music streaming, as they emerge at the intersections of discursive, algorithmic, and curatorial practices of Spotify.
Eirik Jacobsen is a doctoral fellow in Music and Media at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo. His research investigates the implications of integrating social media into the work of carrying out music projects for independent artists and bands in contemporary culture.
Development
The seminar is developed by the Department of Musicology with support from the Faculty of Humanities.