“Transitive Modernities” aims to examine international, transnational and trans-European trajectories through the study of various cultural forms and spaces, and focus on transnational connections and dialogues in conjunction with a recent reflection on borders, migration, mobility, collective memory, essential to understanding our current moment.
While cultural transfers have often been explored as movements between the various peripheries and metropolitan European (and Euro-American) centres, this project will also focus on movements across the cultures of what is problematically called peripheries or semi-peripheries. This methodology aims at examining and fostering novel conceptions of how such aesthetic, cultural and social interactions may challenge established trajectories of modernities on local and global levels.
“Transitive Modernities” was launched by Anne Reynes-Delobel (Aix-Marseille Université) and Stamatina Dimakopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), under the auspices of CIVIS, Europe’s Civic University Alliance*, in 2021.
It federates researchers from diverse and interrelated fields, spanning the fields of art, literature and their histories, avant-garde and experimental forms, decolonial practices and thought, all embedded in transatlantic encounters and Mediterranean encounters across Europe, Africa and the Americas.
Building on the transdisciplinary research and shared methodological and pedagogical praxis generated in the context of CIVIS-sponsored programmes that have been running since 2022, “Transitive Modernities” now aims to expand its reflection on transitive events/temporalities and spaces, and examine experimental literary, artistic, and cultural forms that entail and generate transformative experiences and practices.
This project, called “Transitive Modernities : Response/able Imaginaries,” will bring together researchers from diverse and interrelated fields, spanning the fields of art, literature and their histories, avant-garde and experimental forms, decolonial practices and thought, all embedded in transatlantic encounters and Mediterranean encounters across Europe, Africa and the Americas.
Affiliations:
As of January 2024, Transitive Modernities is affiliated with the Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) at Aix-Marseille Université.
Transitive Modernities is also affiliated with two other CIVIS-sponsored pedagogical and research projects, CARE (Care, Agency, Repair, Engagement) in Alternative Modern(c)ities, lauched by Raluca Bibiri (University of Bucharest) and Postracial Transmodernities launched by Mina Karavanta (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens).
*CIVIS is Europe’s Civic University Alliance, formed by 11 leading research higher education institutions across Europe: Aix-Marseille Université, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University of Bucharest, Université libre de Bruxelles, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Sapienza Università di Roma, Stockholm University, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, University of Glasgow, Paris Lodron University of Salzburg and University of Lausanne.