Menetelmä ja materiaalisuus

Humanistisen tiedekunnan tulevaisuusrahaston tuotot tutkijoiden väliseen yhteistyöhön

Literature exists in ever-expanding cultural and material contexts, including audiobooks, digital networks and social media, and this challenges literary studies to develop new methods for describing our varied and changeable material, irrespective of the language it is written in. While the current disciplinary structure at the University of Helsinki Faculty of Arts ensures that literature is studied and taught as an integral part of its linguistic and cultural context, this network was created for literary scholars to make the fullest use of the methodological expertise we share.

The network brings together internationally active scholars with expertise in interdisciplinary literary studies, from literary theory and sociopolitical contextualisation to discourse studies, sociolinguistics, and digital, empirical and cognitive approaches. The focus is on the issue of method and matter: on a) the tools of analysis we share, even when we apply them to different kinds of literary materials, and b) on extending our grasp on the new materialities of literature itself. This methodological focus deepens our understanding of how traditional literary methods connect to the interdisciplinary methodologies currently in play.