Hier finden Sie Ausschreibungen für Stellen, Forschungsstipendien und Preise sowie Aufrufe zur Einreichung von Konferenzbeiträgen.
Here you will find calls for positions, research grants and awards, and calls for conference papers.
CfP: Confessions of Bad Taste: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Guilty Pleasures
Workshop from June 2–4, 2027 at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (KWI)
Organizing team: Dr. Paul Buckermann (KWI), Dr. Morten Paul (RUB), Dr. Roxanne Phillips (KWI)
Performances of shamelessness and mechanisms of shaming define our contemporary world. Yet not so long ago, confessions of supposedly shameful activities were accompanied by a sense of glee. Enjoying rom-coms, reality TV, or fast food was framed as a „guilty pleasure“ – and reflexively dismissed as trivial and self-explanatory. However, closer inspection reveals guilty pleasures to be a complex and contradictory discursive phenomenon. The workshop “Confessions of Bad Taste” sets out to investigate guilty pleasures as a specific speech act. What is at stake in the public performance of guilty pleasures? Where, exactly, does the desire to confess one’s own guilty pleasures come from? And why do we take such delight in doing this?
Please find the full call here.
The workshop is organized as part of the research project „Towards a Genealogy of Guilty Pleasures: Performing Reflexive Consumption“ based at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (KWI) and the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). It is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung under the funding initiative „Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies“. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered.
Format: max. 20-minute presentation + 25-minute discussion
Language: English
Submission guidelines: Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography to paul.buckermann@kwi-nrw.de by October 15, 2026.
CfP: Arrangements und Politiken des Komischen
Jahrestagung des DFG-Netzwerks Comic Literacies – Kulturtechniken des Komischen an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 10.–12. März 2027
Organisator:innen: Sandra Fluhrer (Erfurt), Susanne Greilich (Regensburg), Martina Groß (Hildesheim), Kurt Hahn (Graz), David Roesner (München)
Es ist der, im weiten Sinn politische impact komischer Arrangements, zu dessen Erkundung die interdisziplinäre Tagung des Netzwerks alle (film-, kultur-, literatur-, medien-, musik- und theaterwissenschaftlich, aber auch linguistisch, soziologisch und ethnologisch) Interessierten herzlich einlädt. Potentielle Untersuchungsgegenstände und Fragestellungen für Vorträge könnten unter anderem folgende Aspekte aufnehmen:
- Welche ästhetischen Verfahren und medialen Rahmungen bedingen – auch über den engeren Entstehungskontext hinaus – wirkmächtige Komisierungsphänomene?
- Wie setzen sich in einzelnen Künsten/Gattungen/Formaten modellbildende Muster des Arrangierens, des Timing und der Taktung, der rhetorischen, akustischen und visuellen Regimes, der Erzählweise oder der Sympathielenkung etc. durch?
- Welcher comic literacies, d.h. welches ex- oder implizite Wissen und Können bedarf es, um das Komische effektvoll zu arrangieren und ebendiese Arrangements zu aktualisieren?
- Wie korrelieren Erwartungshaltungen und Rezeptionsgewohnheiten mit der Kreativität komischer Performanz?
- Inwiefern sind Arrangements des Komischen imstande, soziokulturell prägende Kategorien/Differenzaxiome wie race, class, gender, disability, sexuality oder age zu ridikülisieren, ad absurdum zu führen oder aber zu stabilisieren?
- Auf welche Weise entfalten komische Inszenierungsmuster in verschiedenen Kontextualisierungen politische Explosivität?
Wir freuen uns sehr auf Ihre Vortragsvorschläge in Form eines Abstracts (max. 500 Wörter) und knapper biographischer Informationen (max. 100 Wörter) bis zum 1. Oktober 2026 an: d.roesner@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Vollständige Ausschreibung (PDF)
Weitere Informationen über das DFG-Netzwerk Comic Literacies – Kulturtechniken des Komischen
Call: KWI Schreibwochenende für Promovierende Oktober 2026
Intensive Arbeit am Text von Qualifikationsschriften ist in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften unverzichtbar. Gerade Doktorand:innen, die nicht in strukturierten Programmen, wie zum Beispiel Graduiertenschulen oder Sonderforschungsbereichen, promovieren, vermissen oftmals den Austausch und können auch von den Folgen von Vereinzelung und Selbstisolation betroffen sein. Um diesen Herausforderungen zu begegnen und junge Forscher:innen in ihrer Arbeit zu unterstützen, veranstaltet das KWI auch im Wintersemester wieder ein Schreibwochenende mit einem spezifischen Angebot für Promovierende in den Geistes-, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften.
Das Angebot richtet sich primär an Promovierende, die an einer der drei UA Ruhr-Universitäten als Doktorand:innen eingeschrieben oder Angehörige der UA Ruhr sind, aber auch an Promovierende anderer Universitäten. Die Teilnehmenden sollten sich bereits in der Schreibphase, d.h. in eigener Textarbeit, befinden, da wir in einer Tandemphase während des Wochenendes mit konkreten Textbeispielen aus den Dissertationen/Artikeln arbeiten werden.
Es stehen maximal zwölf Plätze zur Verfügung. Anmeldefrist ist der 15.8.2026. Detaillierte Informationen zu Programm, Teilnahmevoraussetzungen und Ansprechpartnerinnen finden Sie hier im Onlinetermin.
Call: KWI International Fellowships
From 1 April 2027 until 30 September 2027
The KWI Fellowship Programme is designed for excellent humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences researchers. We invite applications from research fellows who have completed their PhD and have up to six years of post-doctoral experience. Project proposals should address KWI’s research agenda. The KWI International Fellowship Programme is open to researchers from around the world. German nationals may only apply if they are currently employed at an international institute. The institute provides fellows with modern infrastructure, office space, technical support, and offers a library service, event and research management, as well as administrative and communicative support.
Please find the full call here.
For further questions, please contact international.fellowship@uni-due.de.
The application deadline is 17 August 2026.
Call: Thyssen@KWI Fellowship
From 1 April 2027 until 30 September 2027
The Thyssen@KWI Fellowship is integrated into the fellowship programme and addresses excellent researchers from the humanities, cultural studies, and the social sciences. It is most generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. We invite applications from research fellows who have completed their PhD and have already gained several years of post-doctoral research expertise. Project proposals should address KWI’s research agenda. International researchers are invited to apply, as well as scholars of German nationality, if they provide excellent international contacts and work experience.
Please find the full call here.
For further questions, please contact international.fellowship@uni-due.de.
The application deadline is 17 August 2026.
CfP: Articles for a special Issue on ‚Comic Literacies‘ by the journal ‚Comedy Studies‘, abstract deadline: 31 July 2026
Like other studies in literacy (media, social, visual, etc.), we understand comic literacies as culturally and socially situated discourses and practices that produce, process, transform and contest meaning in a variety of different comedic contexts. In this sense, comic literacies can be understood as shared yet unevenly distributed repertoires of knowledge that allow performers and audiences to perceive and mobilise something as comic in historically specific ways. Existing norms and hierarchies may be reinforced or destabilised in the process, sometimes both at the same time. Three areas appear crucial to this endeavour: Comic literacies can be observed when studying comedy’s materialities, its arrangements and its affects. Regarding the first area of investigation, the special issue asks how comic literacies are connected to, and indeed depend on, the materiality of human or non-human bodies and things. The second area of inquiry turns to practices of arrangement in comedic dramaturgy, choreography, oratory, etc. which involve the positioning and coordinating of words, bodies, things, actions or sounds in space and time. Finally, the special issue is interested in the evolving relationship between comic literacies and affect.
We invite discussions of historically and culturally situated comedic artefacts and practices throughout the ages that explore the theoretical parameters of comic literacies through a social, economic, political, ethical, media, and/or aesthetic lens. Submissions that approach comic literacies comparatively or genealogically as well as empirical case studies using qualitative methods are also encouraged.
We suggest that authors choose whether to focus more on materialities, arrangements or affects to explore comic literacies. Topics and questions might include but are not limited to:
- How do specific comedic artefacts or practices produce, mediate or negotiate comic literacies within their historically and culturally distinct contexts?
- How do comedic materialities, arrangements or affects shape, probe and/or defamiliarize tacit knowledge, respectively?
- How might the comedic negotiation of established knowledge depend on specific media settings, genre conventions or audiences?
- What would a methodology of comic literacies look like that takes audiences’ access to, processing of and affective responses to comedy’s tacit knowledge into account?
- Finally, how can we theorise the relation between a comedic artefact or practice and shared knowledge, (Western) systems of knowledge production and epistemological uncertainty – including situations in which shared knowledge fails?
Please submit proposals (250-300 words) to aileen.behrendt@uni-potsdam.de by end of July 2026. Selected proposals will be invited to prepare articles of 6000-8000 words which will be due on 31st of January 2027 and will be peer reviewed. Articles will be published on-line as they are accepted.
The articles will be published as a special issue of the journal Comedy Studies in early/mid 2028. The special issue is edited by Aileen Behrendt (University of Potsdam), Karin Peters (University of Bonn) and Roxanne Phillips (KWI Essen). For more information please click here.