Cultural and Media History

Cultural theoretical research has become an integral part of our discipline. In terms of analytical perspectives such research focuses on the mechanisms and materialities of cultural meaning-making. This empirically broad field is characterized by a historical interest in values, emotions, and sensory experiences. The searchlight is directed at the micro-infrastructures of the everyday, the naturalization of what is taken for granted and to connections between the micro- and macro levels, for example by setting phenomena such as pressed flowers, coffee drinking, illustrations in newspapers, credit cards or training courses in sensuality in broader historical, political and social context.

Research at the department includes consideration of how the historically-changing ways in which the world is represented, in which knowledge is communicated and learning organized, has been tied to certain media preconditions and the development of specific media competences. Drawing on cultural theory, this research uses a broad concept of 'media' that includes far more than the traditional mass media. The academic lecture, the museum, the statistical diagram the x-ray photograph, as well as different forms of money for instance, have been analysed as parts of shifting mediascapes.