Figures, Types, and Images of the Social in the 19th and 20th Century:
Practices of Social Imagining in the History of Knowledge and the Sciences.

The workshop deals with the intertwined histories of concrete images of the social, social types, and social figures and of practices of social imagining in-between individual and society, and in literature, art, and the sciences. Specifically, the workshop asks how social ideas took shape in the early 19th century by means of visual techniques of observation, modeling, and representation, for example in drawings and daguerreotypes, maps, tables, and diagrams, in the medium of journals, novels, social reportages or scientific treatises. We also ask how this influenced the formation of concepts and theories in the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences in the broad context of the so-called social imaginary.

Venue: Erfurt, International Meeting Center, M38 (IBZ, Erfurt University).

Program

Thursday 20 November

13:15–13:45 Welcome & Introduction
Bernhard Kleeberg (Erfurt), Adriana Markantonatos (Jena), Jasmin Köhler (Jena)

13:45–15:00 Session I Chair: Adriana Markantonatos (Jena)
Tobias Schlechtriemen (Freiburg):
Social Figures as Articulations of the Social: Between Literature, the Public, and Sociology
Kathrin Yacavone (Marburg):
Types and Series: On the Photographic Construction of Writers as Public Figures

15:00–15:30 Coffee Break

15:30–17:30 Session II Chair: Bernhard Kleeberg (Erfurt)
Hannah Goetze (Paris):
L’Éducation sociale ? Learning to Read as Political Instruction in the mid-1800s in France
Jessica Resvick (Oberlin):
Character and Type in the Realist Novel
Kevin Kempke (Stuttgart):
Literary Model Cases – Social Figures in the Works of Siegfried Kracauer and Early 20th-century Sociography

17:30–17:45 Coffee Break

17:45–19:00 Session III Chair: Maxim Braun (Jena)
Sarah Goeth (Aachen):
Common Sense and Observance: Statistical Narration of the Social in the 19th Century
Christoph Streb (Paris):
From Infrastructure Networks to Social Networks: Complicating the Relationship between Technological and Social Images in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

19:30 Dinner
Friday 21 November

9:00–10:15 Session IV Chair: John Norrman (Jena)
Dirk Schuck (Erfurt):
Early Social-Scientific Reflections on Servant Girls and Fashion Objects
Miray Eroglu (Philadelphia):
Affairs of the Heart: Representations of Foreigners in Late-Ottoman Exotica

10:15–10:45 Coffee Break

10:45–12:45 Session V Chair: Jasmin Köhler (Jena)
Annelie Ramsbrock (Greifswald):
The Addict: On the Social Cartography of a Global Figure in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Ya’ara Gil-Glazer (Tel-Hai):
Reframing the Erotic: Art Nouveau and the Shaping of Sexual Typologies in Suck Magazine
Manuel Bolz (Göttingen):
Urban Crisis Figures in the Entertainment History of Hamburg St. Pauli after the Second World War – Ethnographic Perspectives

12:45–13:15 Final Discussion

The workshop program is also available as pdf at: https://www.gw.uni-jena.de/phifakmedia/175527/figures-types-and-images-of-the-social-workshop-program-erfurt-20-21-11-2025.pdf?suffix=pdf

Workshop Concept & Organisation:
Maxim Braun, M. A. (Jena)
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kleeberg (Erfurt)
Dr. Jasmin Köhler (Jena)
Prof. Dr. Anja Laukötter (Jena)
Dr. Adriana Markantonatos (Jena)
John Norrman, M. A. (Jena)

Venue:
To get to the IBZ from Erfurt main station, take the streetcar line 3 (direction Europaplatz) or line 6 (direction Rieth) to the stop "Fischmarkt" or "Domplatz". From Fischmarkt (2nd stop after the main station) the IBZ is 400 m away. Walk past the town hall in the direction of Benediktsplatz and then turn left into Michaelisstraße, where the IBZ is located. If you get off at Domplatz (3rd stop after the main station), the guesthouse is 600 m away. Walk directly at the stop into the Pergamentergasse and at the end you will come to the Michaelisstraße. The IBZ is on the right hand side about 100 m from the corner.