This week, I will be kicking things off with a presentation ‘Emplaced/Embodied/Inhuman: rethinking anthropocentrism in interdisciplinary visual culture studies’, which offers some framing thoughts on the need for and potential of interdisciplinary approaches by focusing in on the emplaced and embodied nature of human experience. I am particularly interested in how visual/material culture encodes its own space-time matrices, and what it might look like to study using alternative temporalities/ontologies than the mostly linear, Cartesian modes of Western ‘historical’ time. Second, I complicate the potential anthropocentrism of embodied/emplaced by thinking about non-human agencies, drawing attention to models from a range of disciplines that might offer some suggestions for decentring the human and recentring the object.

Given that this is our first meeting and the mailing list is far bigger than the capacity of the room, it would be very helpful if you could (just this once!) fill in this quick Google form to let me know you are coming on Friday. If even half of you attended, we would be sardines in Rees Davies room and I will need to move us to the lecture theatre.

Google form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSciEjcfnTeuToo6uGLccfXpNZKL4n8HmosUi40O8bbIQyRrrg/viewform?usp=sf_link