Akademiestraße 24
5020 Salzburg
Austria
Phone: +43 662 8044-4400
Fax: +43 662 8044-167

Ansprechpartner:
Sabine Coelsch-Foisner: sabine.coelsch-foisner@sbg.ac.at

British Cultural Studies forms and integral part in the curriculum of the study of "Anglistik und Amerikanistik" as well as "Unterrichtsfach Englisch". The teaching programme offers courses that introduce students to the culture and cultural history of the British Isles and involve questions particularly relevant to British cultural studies: e.g. high culture versus pop-culture, the medialisation of life after WWII, multicultural life, gender and racial politics. On a more advanced level we are trying to make students familiar with aspects of British culture and heighten their awareness of critical issues by looking at the interaction of culture and literary texts.

Current research projects in the field include the work on "Fantastic Body Transformation in British Literature from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to the Present". This Project concentrates on representations of the transformable, unstable, metamorphic body in British fantastic literature from pre-Romanticism to posthumanism. Its focus on shifting shapes is predicated on both the transformative aesthetic of the fantastic and on shifting concepts of the human body in Western culture.

It breaks radically new ground by exploring fantastic body transformations in their relation to

• a) changing ideas about the body
• b) changing forms and generic developments
• c) the creative processes by which the fantastic subverts the status quo and presents the impossible as conceivable.
  
  This research project connects with several international dissertation networks, one concentrating on "Literature as Communication". Within these networks we organise regular PhD-symposia.

On the last weekend in October, usually Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, the Department organises an annual conference - aiming at some 30 participants - on an aspect or theme in literature, mainly English, but with comparative elements and a cultural studies focus being welcomed. (For past topics and current calls for papers see: www.uni-salzburg.at/ang/conferences.) The conference volume appears in the series SEL&C (Salzburg Studies in English Literature and Culture), edited by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner.

Partner universities on the British Isles:

• University of Aberystwyth / Wales
• Queen's University Belfast / Northern Ireland
• University of Cork / Ireland
• Trinity College / Dublin
• University of Dundee / Scotland
• University of Exeter / England
• University of Glasgow / Scotland
• University of Leeds / England
• University of Leicester / England
• University of Liverpool / England
• University of East Anglia, Norwich / England
• Oxford Brookes University / England
• University of Portsmouth / England
• University of Southampton / England
• University of Wales , Swansea / Wales

The IRCM is an interdisciplinary research centre that forms the core of the University Schwerpunkt “Wissenschaft und Kunst”. Its aim is to explore the multiple levels of interaction between the theory and practice of art. The IRCM examines phenomena of cultural, social and aesthetic change from antiquity to the present. To this end it looks upon Ovid's Metamorphoses as a reference text in Western culture that is predicated on the principle of permanent change. It concentrates on the concept of metamorphosis from the perspectives of production, reception, and perception.

At present, research at the IRCM is conducted by members from the departments of

• Classical Philology
• Educational Science and Cultural Sociology
• Linguistics
• German Studies
• Romance Studies
• English Fine Arts, Musicology, and Dance
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Music in Education.

Web:

• www.uni-salzburg.at/ang