Contents

CULTURE STUDIES: TRADITION AND PRESENT

PhD. Antonio Penedo-Picos Antonio.Penedo@uab.cat

1. The (new) communication in the digital age.

2. Postmodernism in the third millennium,

3. Fiction, History and ‘Social Reality’: digital narratives and hermeneutics.

4. (Pseudo)artificial intelligence and natural intelligence: body, mind and consciousness.

7. Economy, technology and (new) social classes: the transversal cybersubject.

8. Subjectivity, identity and ‘semiotic capacity’ of the person.

Are we verbally equipped for digital citizenry? The path being cleared by digital technology will not be paved by the correct use of different formats, interfaces or channels, but by the abililty to recodify ourselves via the messages we send through them. Il will be a semiotic issue, not a computer issue. We experiencing a genetic mutation in our brain. However, in order for such a scenario to endure, we need highly literate, actively grammatical subjects, with the ability to comprehend and synthesise information, as well as transmit and generate alternatives. This is the key to the new poetics of the digital age: if life expectancy is going to reach 100 years; if parliamentary models are failing to properly manage our societies; if hitherto unquestionable ideas are being questioned; if, on top of every else, the ability to access and be shaped by information is what will define our freedom, are we analogically prepared for the digital world?

DANTE: YESTERDAY AND TODAY: FROM TERRIBLE SERIOUSNESS TO POP ICON

PhD. Eduard Vilella Eduard.Vilella@uab.cat

It would be hard to find an author who has raised such a diffuse and continuous interest throughout the centuries as Dante. This is a phenomenon that involves a wide range of cultural spheres of western culture. In addition to his status asone of the most prominent classics in literary history, Dante holds in contemporary culture an unparalleled vigour as regards authors of his category. My sessions aim to briefly explore these realities, presenting centrally the Divine Comedy and examining some of the recent forms of creative reception it has elicited in postmodern narrative and post-dramatictheater, as well as rock, comics, painting and film.

Bibliography:

Auerbach, E., Mímesis. La representación de la realidad en la literatura occidental, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1983.

Coetzee, J. M., “‘¿Qué es un clásico?’, una conferencia”, Costas extrañas. Ensayos, 1986-1999, Debate, Barcelona, 2005, págs. 11-29.

Metamorphosing Dante : appropriations, manipulations, and rewritings in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries / edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Fabio Camilletti, and Fabian Lampart , Weien, Turia-Kant, 2011

Dante on view : the reception of Dante in the visual and performing arts/edited by Antonella Braida and Luisa Cale. London, Routledge, 2016.

Komparatistische Perspektiven Auf Dantes 'Divina Commedia': Lektüren, Transformationen und Visualisierungen, Heimgartner, Stephanie ; Schmitz-Emans,Monika; Schmitz-Emans, Monika ; Heimgartner, Stephanie. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2017.

Página web \"Dante Today\"

https://research.bowdoin.edu/dante-today/

IBERIAN SPACES

PhD. Jordi Cerdà Jordi.Cerda@uab.cat

In the last three decades, the so-called Iberian studies have been presented as an area of knowledge that accommodates European and, of course, transcontinental Ibero-Romanic linguistic and cultural diversity. In the current context of pluralisation and problematisation of identities, the recognition of the diversity of Iberian cultures and their historical interdependence and imaginaries may be relevant. Iberian studies are a possibility of creating a practised and multipolar space, always unfished and ambiguous, as an alternative to traditional monolithic ensembles.

CULTURAL STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICA

PhD. María Fernanda bustamente MariaFernanda.Bustamante@uab.cat

Cultural studies in Latin America have had a huge significance and a particular development, as the historical rootedness of modes of circulation of local cultural productions—situated in a position of "peripheral modernity"—the importance of Latin American cultural criticism, and the attention paid to how culture determines identities and its political implications have made the continent a fertile space for their development. These align in a unique way with postcolonial and decolonial studies, feminist movements, and debates surrounding Latin American identity.

1. Introduction to Latin American cultural studies and the Latin Americanist perspective

2. Review of key theoretical-critical categories and perspectives: identity, subalternity, gender studies, post/decolonial studies, memory studies...

3. Case studies

Bibliography:

Anzaldúa, Gloria (2016), Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Madrid, Capitán Swing.

Colombi, Beatriz (2021), Dictionary of Critical Terms of Literature and Culture in Latin America. Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, CLACSO. https://www.clacso.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Diccionario-terminos-criticos.pdf

Cornejo Polar, Antonio (2018), Writing in the Air: An Essay on Heterogeneity in Andean Literatures, Lima, Antonio Cornejo Polar Center for Literary Studies.

García Canclini, Néstor (2009), Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Mexico City, Debolsillo.

Golubov, Nattie (ed. and coord.) (2024), Arte-facts for Literary Studies. Mexico City, National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Poblete, Juan (ed.) (2021), New Approaches to Latin American Cultural Studies: Culture and Power. Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, CLACSO and Mexico City, UNAM. Available at http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20211006114458/Nuevos-acercamientos.pdf.

Quijano, Aníbal (1988), Modernity, Identity and Utopia in Latin America, Lima, Sociedad y Política Ediciones.

Szurmuk, Mónica (ed.) (2010), McKee Irwin, Robert (ed.), Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies, Mexico City, Siglo XXI.

POETICS OF THE END OF THE WORLD: TRANSITS THROUGH DYSTOPIAN UNIVERSES

PhD. Iván Gómez García ivangg@blanquerna.url.edu

UNIVERSITATRAMON LLULL-BLANQUERNA Ciencies de la Comunicació

Historians and economists often remind us that they do not deal with the future, because it is something unknown and unpredictable. But there are few who have wanted to imagine, from the field of fiction, what will be the future that awaits us.

Authors as diverse as Aldous Huxley or William Gibson have explored the implications of our future through capital works, lighting up a subgenre within science fiction, the dystopian, which has shown itself as one of the most active and recurring in cinema and literature.

Through these sessions we will explorethe political implications of a series of essential works of the dystopian genre, studying cinema and literature in a comparative way, analyzing in detail the ideas and positions that important authors have developed over the last century.

Dystopia works not only as a warning of our (in) avoidable future, but also as a criticaldiagnosis of our most immediate present.

That’s why the objective of the study is not only to map the dystopia genre but to explore how, through imagination, these works have thought about the future, have developed a discourse on our present and have positioned themselves on issues essential within our cybercultural landscape.

Poetics of the End of the World: Transits through the dystopian universes

1. Utopia: The questioned idea about a better future.

2. About the (im) perfect kingdoms: the topos of a good life.

3. The era of turbocapitalism: a countergeography of the\"fragile\" capital.

4. The hell of a mechanized world: classical dystopias (from Orwell to Bradbury)

5. Cyberpunk as an (inner) image of capital (from J.G. Ballard to William Gibson)

6. (Dat) Apocalypse Snow: the world buried by information.

7. Industrialization, modernization and rationality: Exposure to urban life.

8. The city as an emerging system: urban environments and information.

9. About the end of progress: poetics of the end of the world.

Bibliography:

Baccolini, R., Moylan, T. (eds.): Dark Horizons. Science Fictionand the Dystopian imagination. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Barber, S.: Ciudades proyectadas. Cine y espacio urbano. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2006.

Brockman, J. (ed.): Los próximos cincuenta años. El conocimiento humano en la primera mitad del siglo XXI. Barcelona,Kairós, 2004.

Brockman, J. (ed.): El nuevo humanismo y las fronteras de la ciencia. Barcelona: Kairós, 2007.

Buck-Morss, S.: Mundo soñado y catástrofe: La desaparición de la utopía demasas en el Este y el Oeste. Madrid: Antonio Machado, 2004.

Catalán, M.: El prestigio de la lejanía. Ilusión, autoengaño y utopía. Barcelona: Ronsel, 2004

Dahrendorf, R.: Conflicto social moderno. Madrid:Mondadori, 1990.

Davis, E.: Techgnosis. Myth, magic and mysticismin the age of information.London: Serpents Tail, 2004. Domingo, A.: Descenso literario a los infiernos demográficos. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2008.

Fernández Buey,F.:Utopías e ilusiones naturales. Mataró: ElViejo Topo, 2007.

Kluitenberg, E.: Delusive Spaces. Essays on Media, Culture and Technology. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008.

Kosko, B.: El futuro borroso o el cielo en un chip. Barcelona: Crítica, 2000.

Molinuevo, J.L.: Humanismo y Nuevas Tecnologías. Madrid: Alianza, 2004.

Molinuevo, J.L.: La vida en tiempo real. La crisis de las utopías digitales. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2006.

Nicholas Taleb, N.: El Cisne Negro. El impacto de lo altamente improbable. Barcelona: Paidós, 2010.

Nicholas Taleb, N.: Antifrágil. Las cosas que se benefician del desorden. Barcelona: Paidós, 2013.

Ryan, M.L.: La narración como realidad virtual. Barcelona: Paidós, 1999.

Sennett, R.: Vida urbana e identidad personal.Barcelona: Península, 2001

Sloterdijk, P.: Esferas III. Espumas. Esferología plural. Madrid: Siruela, 2006.

Wegner, Phillip E. (ed.): Imaginary Communities. Utopia, the Nations, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

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