About the group
The arts have a long tradition for translating, defining, and even provoking and inspiring phenomena such as attachment, attraction, community, friendship and love in ways that resonate in spectators, listeners, and readers.
The research group The Sense of Community (SOC) takes as its point of departure that:
- The arts serve a crucial role in instigating and maintaining communities.
- Art is an unavoidable resource in understanding their foundations and relevance.
This is widely known in the aesthetical tradition. Many cultural critics have argued that the cultural condition in late capitalism suffers from a crisis in the consolidation of traditional senses of community. The social sciences tell of new forms of attachment and of loneliness and of the emergence of new precarious communities.
Research interests
SOC will investigate the grounds of various forms of community. We discuss how the notion of community has been described and conceptualized in various genres under different cultural and historical conditions.
Central questions are:
- How does literature, art and philosophy deal with the foundations of community in its double meaning, as feeling and as concept?
- How do sensual experiences, affects and emotions facilitate various notions of community?
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How does literature and art contribute to inventing new arenas for sharing the sensible in ways that might facilitate new forms of attraction, attachment and senses of belonging?
Theoretical and literary texts
The research group meets regularly to discuss theoretical and literary texts.
Some important theoretical references are: Aristotle, Adam Smith, John Dewey, Hanna Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Rancière, Nicolas Bourriaud, Roberto Espositio and Martha Nussbaum.
We are doing research on literary writers as diverse as Plato, Michel de Montaigne, George Eliot, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, Michel Houellebecq and Virginie Despentes.
Fellowships
PhD fellows and post docs are warmly welcome to the group.
Doctoral projects
The research group’s host department, ILOS, announces PhD fellowships once a year. We welcome promising doctoral projects in the fields of comparative literature and German literature related to the research foci of the group.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action postdoctoral fellowships
The research group is also interested in hosting Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action postdoc fellows from across the world, and has the capacity to work together with a limited number of qualified researchers on applications every year.
If you are interested, you must send us a concise project idea and an academic career plan (including your key qualifications, where you see yourself in ten years, and an explanation of how a stay at our department would help you develop your qualifications) by February 1st if you wish to be considered for working with us on an application the same year.
Activity
02.12.23. Workshop with Alexandre de Vitry (Sorbonne, Paris) about ongoing research.
01.12.23. Open lecture with Alexandre de Vitry (Sorbonne, Paris) at the Seminar of Aesthetics: “Fraternity”, “brotherhood”: what can literature tell us about the history of a social concept? https://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/research/news-and-events/events/guest-lectures-seminars/aesthetics-seminar/2023/alexandre-de-vitry.html
29.11.23 Workshop with Stephen Asma (Columbia College Chicago): Friendship and Intimacy in the Digital Age: An Optimistic Perspective. (Cooperation with LCE – Literature, Cognition and Emotions)
14.11.23. Discussion of Gorkij + publication plans (book project).
11.10.23. Discussion of Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City
12. 09.23. Discussion of «The Comrade» in Walt Whitman's Calamus-poems + publication plans (book project).
16.08.23. Discussion of Patricia Lockwood, No one is talking about this
16.06.23. Discussion of Anni Ernaux, Mémoire de fille
25.04.23. 27.03.23. Discussion of Jan Assmann, «Freundschaft, Feindschaft und Gemeinschaft im Alten Ägypten»
09.01.23. Discussion of Sigbjørn Obstfelder, «Venner» and «Jeg ser»
Seminar: Vennskapets politikk
9. desember 2022
Program
9.15 - 9.45 Velkommen og presentasjon av deltakerne (kort om forskningsinteresser)
9.45 - 10.45 Christian Janss: Introduksjon til Jan Assmanns analyse av vennskap i eldre egyptisk kultur
Pause
11-12 Iver B. Neumann: Vennskap mellom stater
12-13 Lunsj
13-14 Ingvild Folkvord: Felleskapsformasjoner i 22. juli-litteraturen
Pause
14.15-15.15 Hallvard Fossheim: The Political Turn in Plato´s Charmides
Pause
15.30-16.30 Tone Selboe: Kjærlighetsbrevet: Historikk og retorikk
10.10.2022. Discussion. Sherry Turkle: Reclaiming Conversation
19.09.2022. Discussion. Maurice Blanchot: L'Amitié
12.08.2022: Kl. 9.15 – 16.30: Workshop: Vennskapets filosofi og litteratur
Program
9.15 - 9.45
Velkommen og presentasjon av deltakerne (kort om forskningsinteresser)
9.45 - 10.45
Camilla Schwartz: Friendship in a Time of Neoliberalism
11-12
Diskusjon. Bernard Stiegler, "Five Hundred Million Friends: The Pharmacology of Friendship" (2012)
12-13 Lunsj
13-14 Christian Refsum: Vennskapets politikk i den europeiske samtidsromanen: Elena Ferrante, Ali Smith, Virginie Despentes
Pause
14.15-15.15. Christian Janss: Vennskap i Rainer Maria Rilke, Die Sonette an Orpheus, Sonett nr. XXIV (se vedlegg)
Pause
15.30-16.30 Diskusjon. Sheila Heti, Pure Colours (2022)
Previous activities
24.03.2022. Discussion. Nietzsche
11.02.2022. Discussion. Emerson
21.01.2022. Discussion. Nussbaum
03.12.2022. Discussion. Cicero
10.11.2022. Frederik Tygstrup: Om "Kunsten som forum" + diskusjon om Édouard Glissant
18.09.2022. Ali Smith, Autumn