Speakers: 

Iben Have, AIAS Carlsberg Monograph Fellow, Associate Professor at Department of Journalism & Media Studies, School of Communication & Culture, Aarhus University and 
Maria Louw, AIAS Carlsberg Monograph Fellow, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, School of Culture & Society, Aarhus University  

The seminar is held in-person, but online attendance is possible via:  https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/65173958293

In this dual talk, the two Carlsberg Monograph Fellows hosted at AIAS will each present their research and work on transforming decades of research into the format of a monograph. Iben Have on her monograph 'Reading with Ears and Writing with Voices' and Maria Louw on her monograph 'Spectral Ethics: Rebuilding Moral Worlds in Post-soviet Kyrgyzstan.' During the seminar there will be time for quesions, commenting and discussion.

'Reading with Ears and Writing with Voices' by Iben Have, AIAS Carlsberg Monograph Fellow

The monograph 'Reading with Ears and Writing with Voices' documents and investigates an aural and oral turn in digital communication and media culture in the last decade. Born-written media like newspapers, books, letters, notes, e-mails, and text messages, are presently experiencing a surprising popularity in digital audio versions and offer a convenient and effective way to communicate in everyday life compared to encoding and decoding visual letters. Social and cultural implications following from ear-reading and voice-writing are critically discussed in relation to concepts like a ‘polyphonic public’ and a ‘resonant democracy’. The monograph is also an international consolidation of the research field of audio media in media- and communication studies.

'Spectral Ethics: Rebuilding Moral Worlds in Post-soviet Kyrgyzstan' by Maria Louw, AIAS Carlsberg Monograph Fellow

Massive social changes have swept through former Soviet Central Asia in the decades that have passed since the breaking up of the Soviet Union, leaving many people in precarious circumstances and putting into question received moral values and ideas. Most recently, the war in Ukraine has left its marks on the region, which is situated at a geopolitical crossroads between Russia, China, the Western world, and the Islamic world. Based on ethnographic material gathered in 2006-2022 and engaging with moral theory in philosophy and anthropology as well as feminist care ethics, and using imagistic methods, the monograph explores how people in Kyrgyzstan redefine what a good life, a good person and a good society may be. Each of the chapters of the monograph takes a point of departure in encounters with ancestor spirits who, in Kyrgyzstan, are ethically motivated beings who appear to care for the living when their moral worlds break down.

What is an AIAS Seminar?

The AIAS Seminar is a session of seminars held by the AIAS fellow or by other speakers proposed by the fellows. In each seminar, one fellow will present and discuss his/her current research and research project, closing off with a question and discussion session.

All seminars are held in English.