Doctoral Workshop in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies in English 04/12

2nd April 2025

Patrick Jones

Dr. Patrick Jones, UNIGE

Prof. Simon Swift, UNIGE

Dr. Isis Giraldo (UNIL)

The Modern and Contemporary fortnightly workshop (Mod Con) is a well-attended workshop for PhD students and staff from all CUSO universities. The workshop is popular among doctoral students and early career scholars from the CUSO network. The workshop is a valuable space for the exchange of ideas between doctoral students working on modern and contemporary literatures of the English-speaking world. The 2025 programme will include talks, workshops and professionalisation seminars and it will remain an important space for work-in-progress papers from doctoral students.

The Case for Critical Cultural Studies in the AI Age –Isis Giraldo (UNIL)

This lecture addresses cultural studies from a historical, comparative, and transnational perspective, offering an outline of its state-of-the-art developments. It will make the case for revitalising the critical strand of the study of culture (understood broadly) that was developed by the team of the Birmingham school in the 1980s, arguing that it is a key tool in responding to the advancements of AI and its direct threat to the humanities. It will introduce participants to key concepts of critical cultural studies, and explain – taking George Orwell and Albert Camus as examples – how its main approach, i.e., “conjunctural analysis”, works and can raise the stakes of research within literary studies.

UNIGE

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