course-schedule

Organizing Culture (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes, Maximilian Schellmann

Inhalt: The seminar is dedicated to contemporary transformations of the forms and processes of cultural organization. The seminar is broadly structured into three parts: In Part I, we will draw upon recent sociological and organization-theoretical work to reflect on the transformation of the sphere of art and cultural production, and its implications for understanding organization and organizing. In Part II, we will zoom in on specific fields and sites in order to discuss how cultural organizing has been reconfigured (or not). This entails, for instance, a) the (contested) transformation of urban space in and towards ‘creative cities’ and its emphasis on the fields of art and culture; b) the (related) rise of ‘culturepreneurship’ as a kind of entrepreneurial turn in cultural production, and its implications; c) the technological and socio-cultural transformation of (art) museums as key cultural institutions and the demands to reorganize how they operate; d) contemporary art’s keen interest in the nature of sociality and social transformation, where artistic production has turned to organization as a cultural form itself, as artistic material to be worked on and with. In Part III, the students will conduct their own empirical investigations of contemporary forms and processes of organizing culture. The participants will be asked to identify and form groups around specific cases, sites, initiatives or platforms (not limited to the fields and sites listed above), on which to conduct fieldwork in the form of on-site visits, interviews, participant observation, and other fieldwork techniques. The groups will present their findings in a research conference (in the form of a mini-exhibition) in a local art space (location tbd).

Knowing Colour (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes

Inhalt: Colour is inescapable. It fills and forms the world, shaping what can be felt and known, desired and expressed. Yet where colour is and how it works are notoriously tricky and contested questions. Is it in our minds or bodies, or is it ‘out there’ in the word? Is colour perception culturally specific or universal? Does the way we talk about colour influence how we perceive it? Is it a mere appendage to social status – the black of intellectualism and artistry, say, or the muted colours of refinement – or does it shape social organization, e.g. as a tool of marketing or the manipulation of moods? As if behaving on its own terms, colour has proved to be supremely indifferent to scholarly categories, definitions and ordering systems. In Wittgenstein’s memorable words, ‘[w]e stand there like the ox in front of the newly-painted stall door’. That colour remains one of the most puzzling phenomena for academic inquiry might explain its comparable neglect in the social sciences. This seminar is dedicated to noticing colour and investigating the perennial problem of knowing colour. The emphasis lies on historic and recent attempts to understand colour as a cultural and social force: what it does rather than what it is. How can we think and explore colour as a ‘medium of transformation’ (Walter Benjamin) that shapes, and that is shaped by, the social?

Organizing culture: The art museum as site of organizational change (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes

Inhalt: +++ If you would like to participate please send an email to haniel_esa@leuphana.de until October 1st, 2024 (max. 1 page covering your motivation why you would like to attend the course. You will be notified on October 4th. The maximum number of Lüneburg participants is 15. +++ This course brings together students and lecturers from the University of St.Gallen’s program in Management, Organization Studies and Cultural Theory (MOK) and Leuphana University Lüneburg’s program in Culture & Organization (C&O). Designed as an intensive 4-day-experience, the course will take place in cooperation with - and will be hosted by - the Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg (Le Musée d’Art Contemporain du Luxembourg, MUDAM). It is carried out in conjunction with the European Haniel Program on Entrepreneurship and the Humanities (supported by the Haniel Foundation, https://eursummeracademy.com/) and the 'Community Arts and Culture' (part of the TriCo project funded by the the Federal Ministry of Education and Research; https://www.leuphana.de/en/partners/innovation-communities/arts-and-culture.html ). We seek to offer free accommodation in Luxembourg for the nights from Monday (4.11.) to Saturday (9.11.). Students are expected to arrange (train) travel to Luxembourg (on Nov 4) and back (on Nov 9) themselves. Course content Besides the university, the museum of art is one of the oldest forms to think about and effectuate the organization and representation of knowledge, its history of ideas and its repertoire of artifacts and objects. Art museums are currently undergoing an enormous shift in how they perform their own functions. These organizational changes are propelled by different developments such as broader societal shift towards an experience economy and the culturalization of urban life, new practices of audience participation and exhibition formats, debates and demands around more inclusive and decolonial ways of collecting, exhibiting and reflecting art, positioning the art museum in the spotlight of political protest and activism, and – cutting across all of these developments – the ubiquity, everydayness and agencies of digital infrastructures, information technologies and media platforms. In short, the contemporary art museum is an exemplary site of organizational change. Yet how does this change take place? How is the museum organized (differently)? On invitation by the MUDAM, this course will investigate the organizational challenges that museums face, and reflect upon responses and new practices of organizing. Students will have the unique opportunity to empirically engage with a leading art museum and the wider institutional landscape of organizing art and culture. As a site-specific course dedicated to fieldwork-based teaching and learning, the participants will be able to take a closer look behind the scenes, explore the museum’s processes, technologies and atmospheres of organizing, and engage with its curators, technicians, administrators, educators and managers. Joined by further guests and experts, we will jointly work towards an exhibition of the studentsʹ findings on the museum as site of organizational and cultural change. Course structure and indications of the learning and teaching design After an online kick-off session, the course is organized across 4 (full) days in Luxembourg, which consist of thematic discussions, site-specific research, guest speakers, preparatory exercises and project work. Part 1 consists of exploring themes as part of the transformation of contemporary museums and forming groups around a specific theme. Part 2 consists of field work and empirical research based on the themes. In Part 3, we develop empirical findings (also through further literature research) and prepare the exhibition of findings, while Part 4 is setting up the exhibition and presenting the findings.

Forschungskolloquium Soziologie und Kulturorganisation (Kolloquium)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes, Serhat Karakayali, Volker Kirchberg, Andrea Kretschmann

Inhalt: Das Promotionskolloquium dient der Präsentation und vertieften Diskussion der Forschungsvorhaben im Kreise der Mitglieder des Promotionskollegs. Pro Kandidat*in steht üblicherweise 1 Stunde für Vortrag und Diskussion zur Verfügung. Die Präsentationen und Diskussion finden in deutscher oder englischer Sprache statt.

Master Forum (english) (Kolloquium)

Dozent/in: Armin Beverungen, Timon Beyes

Inhalt: This Master Forum, which will be held entirely in English, provides first and foremost an opportunity for students embarking on their MA theses to present an outline of their projects, with the goal of receiving productive critical feedback – both from instructors and from student peers. In addition, it also aims to facilitate critical reflection on a set of what may initially appear to be quite practical or even technical issues – around how scholarly research is carried out and presented – and yet often ultimately prove to be caught up with questions of content, argument and approach. In the first meeting of the Master Forum, Timon Beyes and Armin Beverungen will introduce some of the common issues confronted by those carrying out scholarly research or writing in Cultural Studies, the Humanities and the Social Sciences. This will include general questions, including: how to arrive at and formulate a research question and a suitable framework for your project; how to begin thinking about method and methodology, and starting to conducting research; and ways of referencing and of acknowledging the use of sources. Students are invited to sign up to present an outline of their MA thesis in the subsequent three meetings of the Master Forum, with presentations set to take place in English. While this will ultimately depend on the number of students participating, students should expect to have around 30 minutes in total for the presentation and discussion of their projects, and presentations themselves should last between 10 and 15 minutes, allowing plenty of time for discussion. Students are required upload a two-page summary of their project to myStudy one week before they are due to present. This should include: • a working title for your thesis as well as your research question; • the approach, method or methodology that you plan on using, and the theoretical framework or points of reference for your project; • what you anticipate discovering or arguing in your thesis; • and a list of up to five key works that you will use, along with any additional information about sources you plan on using – such as archives, exhibitions or interview partners. Students are asked to attend all sessions of the Master Forum, not the simply the session in which they will present, and to have read the two-page summaries ahead of time. Please be ready to provide your fellow students with productive critical feedback on their projects! The Master Forum is examined (pass/fail) as a combined scholarly work [Kombinierte wissenschaftliche Arbeit] made up of (a) your two-page summary and (b) your presentation.

Uses and Abuses of Culture in Organized Life (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes

Termin:
Einzeltermin | Mo, 07.10.2024, 10:00 - Mi, 09.10.2024, 15:00 | extern | Die Veranstaltung findet in Bristol, UK, statt

Inhalt: The term culture has two enduring meanings – narrowly, as a particular set of valued beliefs and practices, and broadly, as the way of life of a people. The first sense separates some aspects of human life and terms them ‘culture’ – the sort of things found in an art gallery or opera house but not those in a football ground or factory. The second takes a more anthropological perspective, understanding all the ways of life of a people as symbolic, constituted by meaning and interpretation. Such divisions have been important in informing the history of the study of organization and organizing. In the narrow sense, culture can be opposed to structure, as the soft is opposed to the hard, or the informal to the formal. Such a set up anchors ideas about organizational culture, atmosphere and symbolism as analytically distinct from concepts like ‘economy’, with its underpinning of the masculine rational economic actor. Culture is also, in an era of globalization, imagined as a way of understanding the other, a field that cultivates ideas about cross-cultural communication and international management precisely in order to cancel culture as a form of noise that interferes with properly economic transactions. Yet if we adopt a broad sense of culture then all these distinctions are dissolved, since nothing is outside language and symbolism. Social and economic structures cannot be imagined as somehow different from other anthropological practices that human beings engage in. There is no outside to culture, which means that any understanding of the term culture is itself cultural, a word made by the flows and tangles of the present, and hence being shaped by contemporary concerns as much as disciplinary history.

Organization, Society and the Arts: An Introduction (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Armin Beverungen, Timon Beyes, Justin Skye Malachowski

Termin:
wöchentlich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 13:45 | 14.10.2024 - 31.01.2025 | C 40.256 Hybridraum

Inhalt: This is the introductory module for the bachelor major organization, society and the arts. The module introduces students to the subject of the program at the intersection of organization, society and the arts, and through exemplary cases shows how cultural organization and the arts are involved in processes of societal change and transformation.

Leuphana Bachelor - Leuphana Semester - Cultural Studies: Organization, Society, and the Arts – An Introduction

Course Schedule

Veranstaltungen von Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes

Lehrveranstaltungen

Organizing Culture (Seminar)

Knowing Colour (Seminar)

Organizing culture: The art museum as site of organizational change (Seminar)

Forschungskolloquium Soziologie und Kulturorganisation (Kolloquium)

Master Forum (english) (Kolloquium)

Uses and Abuses of Culture in Organized Life (Seminar)

Organization, Society and the Arts: An Introduction (Seminar)