IFK

The cultural paradoxes of globalization
The politics of looking – visual cultures in conflict

The IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies announces its
call for applications for Senior and Research Fellowships for the academic
year 2007 – 2008. Related to the call for applications is the announcement
of two new research foci. “The cultural paradoxes of globalization” and
“The politics of looking – visual cultures in conflict”:

The term “Globalization” has become a fashionable buzzword in recent
scholarly and political debates and has replaced “modernization” as a key
concept in theories of social and cultural change. With the research
program “The cultural paradoxes of globalization“ the IFK focuses on the
cultural dimensions of globalization and seeks to analyze its dynamism and
paradoxes, its symbolic articulations and transformations, and its public
and academic expressions and negotiation.

With its second program “The politics of looking – visual cultures in
conflict” the IFK invites analysis of the phenomenon of antagonistic
visual cultures, which mirror different social codes of the gaze and
different concepts of looking, desire, image prohibition, and shame. This
focus entails the analysis of iconophilia, iconophobia, and iconoclasm
within the wider context of Western and non-Western cultures and their
modes of imagery, and thus wants to shed light on the interplay of media
and the international renaissance of religious beliefs.

Application-forms and more details on: www.ifk.ac.at

International Research Center for Cultural Studies
Reichsratsstrasse 17
1010 Wien
tel. 0043-1-504 11 26
fax 0043-1-504 11 32
e-mail: ifkifk.ac.at