JMU Cultural Studies

JMU Cultural Studies is dedicated to exploring culture in terms of material, symbolic, and aesthetic practices as well as media technologies. The key question asked by cultural studies is how such practices and technologies express, constitute, or transform power relations.

We are particularly interested in:

Intersections between cultural studies and GLOBALIZATION studies (practices of local, national and global 'worldmaking' in contemporary and historical perspective; 'terrains of consciousness')
Intersections between cultural studies and LINGUISTICS ('languaging'; articulation; the cultural significance of 'voice')
Intersections between cultural studies and the critical study of DIGITIZATION/DIGITALIZATION and MEDIALITIES (technologies and practices of 'networking'; networked cultures; transmediation)
Intersections between cultural studies and (popular) MUSIC studies or SOUND studies
Intersections between cultural studies and the ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES
And, not least: CULTURAL STUDIES itself as a project of engaged scholarship with national, transnational, historical and theoretical dimensions

Each semester the Cultural Studies Colloquium (CSC) takes on a different topic in a collaboratively taught discussion- and research-based format for advanced students. We also regularly intergrate students from partner universities into transnational online/hybrid Cultural Studies Colloquia. The Colloquium concludes with a CSC Study Day that brings early-stage cultural studies scholars at the JMU into dialogue with established scholars and international colleagues.

The JMU Cultural Studies publications series brings that dialogue into print.

The first volume in the series Global Cultural Studies? Engaged Scholarship between National and Transnational Frames was edited by CSC-alumnus Tobias Jetter and features work developed in CSC collaborations with Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMI) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
A second volume Listening In: Perspectives on Sound, Voice, and (Popular) Music is currently in preparation under the editorship of Maria Denzlein and Sophie Schönfeld (graduate students in English-Speaking Cultures).

Credit Photo Header: Volodymyr Hryshchenko / Unsplash
JMU Cultural Studies Logo & Further Design: Marina Greb

If you are interested in participating in the Cultural Studies Colloquium or other JMU Cultural Studies activities, please contact us via culturalstudies@uni-wuerzburg.de .

Prof. Dr. Zeno Ackermann (British Cultural Studies)
Prof. Dr. Gesine Drews-Sylla (Slavic Studies)
Prof. Dr. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber (American Cultural Studies)

CSC Topic Summer Semester 2025

Bollywood – Hollywood. Film Musicals on Trans/National Screens

This interdisciplinary research seminar - Indian and American Studies – will be exploring two film musical traditions that developed within national frameworks, but have a powerful transnational reach.

Bollywood – Hollywood. Film Musicals on Trans/National Screens

Picture credits