Mini-Cluster Frames and Framings in Transcultural Interactions (MC 4)

Coordination: Joachim Kurtz, Melanie Trede, Hans Harder

Neither objects or images nor concepts, doctrines, texts, or practices that disperse into new cultural environments do so spontaneously and without mediation. Studies exploring how all these items are set in motion across cultural and linguistic boundaries need to examine, firstly, the concrete agents involved in such processes and, secondly, the modifications necessary to ensure their functionality in new settings. Thirdly, and this was the focus of this research group, they need to analyse the material, textual, rhetorical, conceptual and linguistic devices by means of which objects, images, texts, etc. are packaged, or "framed," for new audiences and contexts. Supplementing studies of flows and other types of encounters, the three projects of this research group analysed and theorised the role of literary, material and visual framings from the disciplinary angles of art history, literary history and history of sciences and particular transcultural interactions encompassing Japan, China, South Asia and Europe.