Birgit Mersmann – författare

Modernization and digital globalization have proven to mark major thresholds where paradigmatic shifts and realignments take place. This volume aims to capture the reconfiguration of humanistic study between the forces of global integration and cultural diversification from a full range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The key issue is discussed in three major parts. The first chapter examines transnational interpolations of the humanities as potential indicator for a globalizing humanistic research. The second chapter deals with humanistic revisions of modernity with and against globality. The third chapter discusses the ambiguous constitution of cultural diversity as a complement and counter-movement to global integration, ideologically moving between social cohesion and exclusion. The final chapter outlines what the threshold-crossing from modern to global humanities will mean for the future of humanistic research.The multidisciplinary study of culture within the history of the humanities documents and reflects the mobility and migration of its concepts and methods, moving and translating between disciplines, research traditions, historical periods, academic institutions, and the public sphere.

Multiperspective approach towards photography as a nomadic device and photographs as mobile objects of circulation.From its introduction in the early nineteenth century and through ongoing technical developments, photography has been a mobile medium closely tied to equipment, social conditions and cultural framings. The volume Nomadic Camera investigates the technical, medial and aesthetic relationship between photography and displacement in historical and contemporary perspectives. The contributing authors adopt the term ‘nomadic’ – signifying a transitory form of existence – to explore photography beyond static concepts of being and national boundaries. Viewing photography as a formative part of this history of mobility and migration, the book explores the interplay between the concepts of the ‘nomadic’ and the ‘camera’, offering new perspectives on photography as a medium on the move. The interdisciplinary contributions approach this topic from various angles. They examine photographic tools and technologies; investigate the role of bodies, agents, and performative acts in photographic practices; explore how photography constructs and conveys narratives of movement; and address issues of image circulation, archiving, and memory.